48 Hours of Movies: 2000!

by Patrick Bromley

Kick off 2000 Month with a massive movie marathon!

We're now less than a month away from this year's F This Movie Fest, celebrating the movies of the year 2000! To get us started on the coming weeks of 2000 content, I thought I'd program a two-day marathon of stuff from the year we'll be celebrating all month long. Let's watch movies until we can't see straight.

10 am - Bedazzled (dir. Harold Ramis)

We'll kick things off with the last really good comedy made by the late, great Harold Ramis (he made one more really good movie, The Ice Harvest, in 2005, but I'm reluctant to call it pure comedy) and one of his most underrated efforts. This remake of the Dudley Moore/Peter Cooke vehicle Bedazzled casts Brendan Fraser at his goofiest as a hapless guy who is granted seven wishes by the devil (a brilliantly weaponized Elizabeth Hurley). The movie plays out more or less in sketches, with Fraser taking on new and "better" identities in the hopes of winning over the girl he loves. He's so willing to be big and silly and funny in this movie, which manages to land on being genuinely sweet as well.

Noon - Snow Day (dir. Chris Koch)

When I saw this in theaters in 2000 as part of a four-movie day, I didn't think much of it. Rewatching it this month during my 2000 binge revealed it to be a sweet, likable kids movie from a bygone era (era) when such a movie was possible. It's the Fun Size of its day. 

1:30 pm - Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai (dir. Jim Jarmusch)

One of my very favorite Jim Jarmusch movies finds him successfully working in genre, though of course he wouldn't be content to work in just one. A mash-up of samurai films, blaxploitation, and gangster movies, Ghost Dog is maybe the most purely entertaining distillation of his pet themes of loneliness and alienation the filmmaker has ever made. I love the way that star Forest Whitaker's deadly serious eccentricities (he only communicates by carrier pigeon, his best friend is an ice cream vendor who speaks no English) contrast with the clownishness of the gangsters, who for some reason are only ever shown watching cartoons on TV. Maybe it's meant to be a commentary on how cartoonish they all are. RZA's score kicks ass and so does this entire movie, one of the best of its year.

3:30 pm - Little Nicky (dir. Steven Brill)

2000 was the year where the wheels fell off the Adam Sandler express a bit thanks to Little Nicky, an expensive special effects comedy that underperformed at the box office I assume in part because no one wanted to see Sandler styled and talking the way he is in Little Nicky. I still think it's one of the more underrated entries in the comedian's filmography, not because it's especially funny but just for how weird and goofy and ambitious it is. 

5 pm - Love & Basketball (dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood)

The debut feature from Gina Prince-Bythewood (she had two movies this same year, this and the HBO drama Disappearing Acts) is a terrific coming of age romance between Sanaa Lathaan and Omar Epps, best friends and basketball buddies since childhood who slowly realize they have feelings for one another. Sensitive and emotional and exceptionally well-acted, Love & Basketball is one of the better movies New Line released in a very good year for New Line. It's rightfully part of the Criterion Collection.

7 pm - The Perfect Storm (dir. Wolfgang Peterson)

The first of our two Primetime Pizza slots this marathon should be given over to one of 2000's best blockbusters, an adaptation of Sebastian Junger's non-fiction best seller about a fishing crew that gets caught in -- you guessed it -- the Perfect Storm. A strong ensemble and Mark Wahlberg, plus then-state of the art special effects, came together for a movie that felt emotional and smart when actually it's kind of dumb and manipulative, but in the ways that it can sometimes be fun to give yourself over when a movie is working. 

9:30 pm - But I'm a Cheerleader (dir. Jamie Babbit)

I just revisited this one for a recent Smash Cut screening and was reminded of how funny and subversive it is -- a teen comedy by way of John Waters. Natasha Lyonne plays a cheerleader sent to gay conversion camp when everyone around her realizes she's a lesbian. There, she strikes up a romance with Clea Duvall, who would make anyone gay. The filmmaking is colorful but a little stiff and clumsy in that '90s indie way, which immediately sends me back to a very formative time in my movie-loving evolution.

11 pm - Final Destination (dir. James Wong)

This was not a great year for horror, which makes the overnight portion of our two-day marathon a little tricky. We should start with this one because it launched an unlikely franchise that's somehow still going as of last year in which a bunch of people cheat death only to have it come for them anyway in convoluted ways. The original movie, which stars Devon Sawa and Ali Larter in the leads, probably takes the premise the most seriously out of the series, which is why I have a bit less use for it than, say, its immediate follow-up. It's still very skillfully done (by X-Files veterans James Wong and Glen Morgan) and features one of my all-time favorite jumps, even if it makes no sense if you apply even the smallest bit of logic to it. Then again, that's not why we watch Final Destination movies.

1 am - Supernova (dir. Walter Hill)

I have little to no excuse for enjoying this sci-fi horror as much as I do. A true January dump, Supernova tells the story of a spaceship crew that picks up a stray (Peter Facinelli) who turns out to be kind of a monster. The cast is insanely overqualified, probably because this began life as a Walter Hill movie, meaning we get a jacked up James Spader as the lead, plus Angela Basset, Robert Forster, Lou Diamond Phillips, Robin Tunney, and Wilson Cruz as the ship's crew. The production history on this movie is wild, as it went through multiple directors trying to fix/save it (including Jack Sholder and fucking Francis Ford Coppola) before ultimately being credited to the pseudonymous "Thomas Lee." I'd probably watch this over the much more beloved Event Horizon any day because I am broken.

2:30 am - Cecil B. Demented (dir. John Waters)

There's nothing like an insane John Waters cult movie in the middle of the night when we're slaphappy and delirious. This one, his vicious takedown of the '90s indie scene, is one of his most underappreciated efforts. Stephen Dorff plays a wannabe filmmaker who kidnaps movie star Melanie Griffith and gives her the Patty Hearst treatment. The satire is great and the jokes often rise, in the words of Roger Ebert, below bad taste. This needs a US Blu-ray, especially because it's not currently available for streaming.

4 am - The Cell (dir. Tarsem Singh)

I'm in a minority of people who like this movie a whole lot. Jennifer Lopez plays a psychologist who has to literally enter the mind of serial killer Vincent D'Onofrio to help find his most recent would-be victim; Vince Vaughn plays against type as an FBI agent in a performance I like. Director Tarsem Sing's wild visuals are the real draw here, creating a world both breathtakingly beautiful and totally nightmarish. If the story is a little thin, I don't mind. It probably needs to be in order to make the rest of the wildness go down more smoothly. I'm excited to watch this one at 4 in the morning.

6 am - Road Trip (dir. Todd Phillips)

I like the idea of waking up to a comedy, and this is a relatively good one. Todd Phillips has always been pretty bro-y when it comes to his comedies and Road Trip is pretty bro-y too, but it was slightly less noticeable in 2000 when the entire culture was way too bro-y. He's got a good ensemble of actors, here traveling across the country to prevent Breckin Meyers' girlfriend from getting a sex tape of him and Amy Smart. There's little escaping the very 2000 Tom Green of it all, but much of the rest of the movie works well enough to help wake us up.

7:45 am - American Psycho (dir. Mary Harron)

We can't save all the horror movies for the overnight, especially when they're essentially dark comedies disguised as horror. Mary Harron's adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' controversial novel is a triumph of adaptation, a brilliant satire on corporate bro culture with a fantastically committed Christian Bale performance at the center. I haven't read the book in a long, long time but my memory is that the movie is so much better specifically for what Harron and Bale bring to it.

10 am - The Gift (dir. Sam Raimi)

I know most people consider this lesser Sam Raimi and it probably is, but I've always liked his Southern gothic mystery about a psychic (Cate Blanchett) living in a small town among a colorful cast of characters (in some cases, like with Gionvanni Ribisi, a little too colorful) and trying to solve the case of a missing woman (Katie Holmes). Sure, it's not as good as A Simple Plan, but let's not throw the Southern-fried baby out with the Southern-fried bathwater. There's really good stuff here.

Noon - The Way of the Gun (dir. Christopher McQuarrie)

The directorial debut of Usual Suspects writer (and future Mission: Impossible showrunner) Christopher McQuarrie is still my favorite of his films, a nasty and hard-boiled bit of neo-noir starring Ryan Phillippe and Benicio Del Toro as irredeemable criminals looking to make a big score by kidnapping a pregnant woman (Juliette Lewis) and demanding a massive payday. James Caan rules as the fixer hired to bring Lewis back. The dialogue cracks because of course it does, but I particularly enjoy the movie's violence and nihilism. I remember seeing it opening night and thinking it had the loudest gunfights of any movie I had seen to that point. Let's crank the volume on our home system and find out.

2 pm - Ready to Rumble (dir. Brian Robbins)

The trick to programming a two-day marathon is that you have to be sure to keep mixing up tones and genres and even quality, meaning not everything is going to be all that good. That's how we end up watching Ready to Rumble, the wrestling comedy that's essentially a two-hour commercial for WCW and its roster of talent. David Arquette gives it his absolute all as part of a pair of lunkheaded buddies (alongside Scott Caan) who worship a pro wrestler (Oliver Platt, always welcome but probably miscast) and try to get him back into the ring. This is pure junk food, but sometimes you need that.

4 pm - What Lies Beneath (dir. Robert Zemeckis)

It's incredible that this is the lesser of the two Robert Zemeckis movies released in 2000 because What Lies Beneath is pretty f'ing good. Michelle Pfeiffer plays an upper class empty nester who begins to suspect her next door neighbor of a crime and see ghosts; Harrison Ford is her steady husband, because Harrison Ford. The script (by Clark Gregg!) doesn't all work, but the movie is great as pure technical exercise. It's kind of a warm blanket movie.

6:30 pm - Mission: Impossible 2 (dir. John Woo)

Our second Primetime Pizza slot goes to Tom Cruise and the second entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise. It's often ranked among the bottom of the M:I franchise -- that's fair, the world is a rainbow -- but I've always liked it. Revisiting it a year or two ago taught me that while it might not be a great M:I movie, it is a good John Woo movie. It covers many of his pet themes and features some cool actions, plus Tom Cruise and Thandiewe Newton have maybe never been hotter. Let's do shots of Bellorophon while we watch!

9 pm - Unbreakable (dir. M. Night Shyamalan)

Time for a movie that totally rules...until the last two minutes. M. Night's follow-up to The Sixth Sense and his sneaky superhero movie that somehow spawned an unlikely franchise remains just as powerful in 2026 as it was in 2000 -- possibly even more so, now that we know Bruce Willis' own unbreakable body has betrayed him in real life. I love how patient and deliberate this film is and I love all the performances. I just don't love that it's missing an ending, which hobbles the movie but doesn't ruin it entirely. There's too much good that comes before it.

11:30 pm - Urban Legends: Final Cut (dir. John Ottman)

Hot take: I like this mostly in-name-only sequel to Urban Legend better than the original film. It pretty much does away with the "urban legend" hook and instead is just a teen slasher set in film school. The movie is incredibly stupid about what it claims to know about film and film school -- everyone is competing for the coveted Hitchcock award! -- but the setting is still so much fun for movie dorks like us and the cast is having a great time. This was the movie that first made me discover/take notice of Eva Mendes and even Joey Lawrence is good playing an entitled douche. Whoever stays awake through this one wins the Hitchcock!

1:30 am - Scary Movie (dir. Keenan Ivory Wayans)

I like the idea of following one of 2000's best teen slasher movies with this parody of teen slasher movies. I also like the idea of programming something I won't mind falling asleep during at this point in our marathon, because a recent rewatch of the first Scary Movie reminded me of just how dated and juvenile it is -- lots of gay panic and transphobia and lame, dirty sex jokes. There are still some genuinely funny moments! Any movie with this many gags is going to connect a few times. It's perfect for the middle of the night because we can drift in and out and not really miss anything.

3 am - Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (dir. Joe Berlinger)

Try as I might to find the value in this meta Blair Witch sequel, I'm still not able to. I've tried a few times, including as recently as last week. Still, we need some weird genre shit to program in our overnight section and this fits the bill. My hope is that slotting it more than 40 hours into our marathon means we're so sleep deprived and delirious by the time it plays that it starts to make sense and play well. Maybe this is the way to watch it.

5 am - The Road to El Dorado (dir. Don Paul & Eric "Bobo" Bergeron)

Some cartoons in the morning! You know, for kids.

6:30 am - Meet the Parents (dir. Jay Roach)

I guess we can't really do a marathon of 2000 movies without programming one of the biggest comedies of the year. I'm not usually a fan of Discomfort Comedy, which is what Meet the Parents primarily traffics in, but a recent revisit (my first since 2000, I think) made me realize the movie is funnier than I gave it credit for being 25 years ago. Ben Stiller is really giving his all in the role that would more or less define his movie star persona for the next two decades and Robert De Niro is very, very funny as the world's most intimidating father. I wish there were about a fourth as many hilarious misunderstandings but I laughed more than I thought I would this time, making it a good choice to wake us up after two days of this shit.

8:30 am - State and Main (dir. David Mamet)

Ending things on a high note. I have very little use for David Mamet these days but once upon a time his movies were great and very important to me, few more so than this wonderful comedy set behind the scenes of a Hollywood production that invades a small town. The dialogue is so smart and everyone is so funny and Rebecca Pidgeon and Philip Seymour Hoffman get to play romantic leads, something I don't think has happened in any other movie. Go you Huskies.

Happy 2000 month!