13. “Dogma” (1999)
Kevin Smith‘s “Dogma” is kind of a mess, but it’s a mess that comes from overreach rather than laziness, and from attempting something of surprisingly ambitious scope rather than going back to the trough of tired pop-culture cliches and warmed-over genre riffs that have comprised too much of his more recent back catalogue. It is, in a nutshell, a likable mess. The story of two fallen angels wandering about New Jersey and attempting to cheat their way back into God’s good graces, it’s a bit of a muddle, theologically speaking, and the quirk overload can be all-consuming at times, but it’s hard to stay mad at a film that imagines Alanis Morissette as God (oh, the ’90s!), or Chris Rock as a disciple written out of history because he is black, or humanity’s last hope coming in the spiky, sarky form of Linda Fiorentino. Affleck’s Bartleby and Matt Damon‘s Loki are perfectly cast as the rather despicable ex-angels whose story, almost inadvertently allows a glimpse of a miraculously rare sight: Kevin Smith being sincere, and, under all the poop monsters and sexual innuendo, sincere about faith.
12. “Shakespeare in Love” (1998)
To maintain that John Madden‘s slight, frilly trifle “Shakespeare in Love”did not deserve to win Best Picture that year (and it didn’t, certainly not when “The Thin Red Line” was in the frame) is not to say that the film is without merit. In fact, when you step away from its over-awarded dazzle, it’s a genuinely solid, occasionally very funny film, that wears its erudition lightly and keeps everything moving along at a snappy pace. And a lot of its laughs come, as is often the way in these things, not so much from the central star cross’d pairing of Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes, but from the supporting cast. Affleck, though he has only a small role as the egotistical superstar actor Ned Alleyn is kind of a hoot, lampooning his own star persona and the Hollywood system in general with his portrait of an utterly self-centered and rather doltish actor who must nonetheless be courted for his bums-on-seats clout.
11. “Armageddon” (1998)
One of Michael Bay’s overblown, high-concept festivals of nonsense, nonetheless “Armageddon,” we’ll maintain, is one of his very least bad films too. Partly because no matter how underwritten and sketchy their roles, any film that features Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Steve Buscemi, Owen Wilson, Peter Stormare, Michael Clarke Duncan, William Fichtner, Liv Tyler, Jason Isaacs and Udo Kier (Udo Kier, for heaven’s sake!) has to have at least some passing pleasures. And “Armageddon” really does — if it’s a rare example of a film that works, in which we are asked to root for Affleck as an uncomplicatedly heroic good guy that’s probably only because 1) there are so many other fun elements to distract us, 2) it’s entirely lunk-headed to begin with, and 3) the real love story actually happens between the father/daughter pairing of Willis and Tyler anyway. For evidence of how wrong a Bay movie with Affleck as the hero can go, just see “Pearl Harbor.” Or rather, don’t, not ever, if you can help it.
