The Best of 1998 Cinema
1 SAVING PRIVATE RYAN The director of Schindler's List surely
knows that World War II was morally necessary. So it is a
measure of Steven Spielberg's maturity that by opening Saving
Private Ryan with what may be the most unforgettably brutal
sequence in the history of war movies--his astonishing
re-creation of the Omaha Beach landing--he forces us to wonder
if any cause can justify such carnage. It is a measure of his
growth as a questioning humanist that the rest of his tense,
brilliantly wrought epic puts men in mortal peril as they
attempt to rescue a soldier whose life is no more valuable than
theirs, then shows us how honor can be wrested from absurdity by
common decency and modest dutifulness.
2 DECALOGUE A decade ago, Krzysztof Kieslowski made his 10-part
cycle of short films, which dramatize the Ten Commandments in
modern Poland. In their scope, wit, power and ethical poignancy,
they stand even taller today. The series, available in some
video stores, still has not achieved U.S. release--a high crime
against high artistry.
3 SHAKESPEARE in Love Forbidden romance, raffish show-biz
comedy, literary pranksterism and class warfare jostle joyously
in this intricately imagined, exuberantly acted, cunningly
directed tale of how the young, infinitely distracted Bard gets
in touch with the genius he doesn't know he possesses. To
Gwyneth Paltrow, muse of Miramax, we send our heart.
4 HAPPINESS Todd Solondz sees the pursuit of happiness as a
quest open to all souls, especially doomed ones. With unblinking
wit and guile he paints hell as a place very like New Jersey,
where an 11-year-old boy has an urgent sex chat with his loving
father, a pedophile. Has tenderness ever been so frightening?
5 THE BUTCHER BOY In a provincial 1960s Irish town, an
emotionally starved child feeds his imagination on crud culture
and warped religiosity, then innocently creates a miniholocaust.
Arson, murder, madness--Neil Jordan transforms it all into a
bruising metaphor for the larger violence of our times.
6 THE THIN RED LINE Two great World War II epics in a year, and
so different. This one, the first film directed by Terrence
Malick since the 1978 Days of Heaven, imagines the Guadalcanal
battle as a standoff between man at his most frantic and nature
at its most rapturous. In one embracing vision, Malick gives you
Eden and the Fall. Welcome back, Terry.
7 BULWORTH With public disgust at our mendacious public life at
critical mass, Warren Beatty imagines a U.S. Senator who starts
telling the truth about the powerful. He's nuts, of course, but
the star, director, co-writer and rapster is in a reckless mood.
His maniacally skillful movie is that Hollywood rarity:
political satire with real, wounding bite.
8 THE OPPOSITE OF SEX A 16-year-old tramp seduces her gay half
brother's lover, says she's pregnant and steals $10,000. Don
Roos' Seven Characters in Search of a Spanking is pure modern
romance: anguished, raunchy, caring. Praise be the entire cast
and, what the heck, a Nobel Prize to Lisa Kudrow as a twisted
spinster looking for love.
9 WITHOUT LIMITS A portrait of the artist as a long-distance
runner. Steve Prefontaine (well played by Billy Crudup) is a
knothead and a hothead, determined to shape his life and race to
his own vision. This biography, from director and co-writer
Robert Towne, is a sweet, sober meditation on winning, losing
and the enigmas of American maleness.
10 LIVE FLESH It could be a 1940s Hollywood melodrama or an
1840s French farce, but Pedro Almodovar's gaudy thriller is as
modern as Monica. His characters hurl themselves off fate's
precipice to find love, lust, deliverance. A wise woman tells
her beau that "making love involves two people." That's right:
delirious director, dazzled viewer.
And the Worst
PEEPEE POOPOO! Movies have been regressing for
ages, but this year they went totally infantile. How many potty
jokes can you stuff into a shrill "kids'" film like Doctor
Dolittle or Rugrats? Enough to make toddlers giggle, parents
groan and critics fret about the millennial devolution of cinema.
