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As we head into 2025 and start to celebrate another series of milestones, we wanted to look back one last time at the year 1999. In 2024, we celebrated the 25th anniversary of a major year for American film. Here’s a quick thought on the movies that finished in the top 10 of the domestic box office in the United States in 1999. Then, it’s time to start thinking about the movies of 2000. The new millennium!
10. The Blair Witch Project
Though The Blair Witch Project did not invent the found footage horror movie, it reinvented it for the internet age, and it also made a huge profit that certainly enticed studios to make more found footage horror flicks.
9. Runaway Bride
The Blair Witch Project can still be felt in horror movies of the last decade. Runaway Bride is a throwback. A super-successful romantic comedy? Ahh, the glory days of Julia Roberts.
8. The Mummy
Since some Millennials are likely in the audience, we definitely won’t call The Mummy and/or Brendan Fraser overrated. We definitely don’t think this movie is perfectly fine but unremarkable. Why would we think such a thing?
7. Big Daddy
Adam Sandler is rich as hell so we have no reservations about talking a little trash when necessary. Big Daddy is not a good movie. It’s the beginning of the downturn for the actor when it came to his self-driven comedies.
6. Tarzan
This speaks to the power of Disney. We don’t think of Tarzan as a particularly successful offering from the studio, but it made $171 million domestically and made more money than a Sandler comedy and a Roberts comedy. Impressive.
5. The Matrix
With the benefit of 25 years of hindsight, The Matrix is a good, not great, movie. Its influence cannot be overstated, though, and it was big for Keanu Reeves, which paved the way for John Wick and probably that third Bill & Ted movie nobody saw.
4. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
Imagine, these days, a stupid comedy making over $200 million domestically. We don’t say “stupid” as an insult either, at least not fully. This is a good time to remember the first Austin Powers was not a big hit, but it was a successful in rentals and that paved the way for the sequel to shine.
3. Toy Story 2
Technically, this is a Disney success, but really it’s a Pixar success. Famously, Toy Story 2 was going to be a cheap, direct-to-video sequel, but they decided to put the effort into turning it into a proper theatrical sequel. Yeah, that paid off.
2. The Sixth Sense
Not a good movie. Never been a good movie. All it is really is the twist and that’s cheap filmmaking when all you have is a twist. M. Night Shyamalan has never made a good movie. What a huge hit, though. Also, people still get mad at you if you reveal the twist in conversation. This movie is a 25-year-old cultural touchstone! It’s okay to say that Bruce Willis is dead the whole time!
1. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace
It brought Star Wars back into our lives. It made over $430 million domestically. However, it isn’t any good, and the attempts to salvage the “legacy,” such as it is, for The Phantom Menace is silly. It’s okay for a Star Wars movie to be bad. A lot of movies are bad. Some of them are also incredibly successful.
