The Best Cinema of 1998

1. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN Steven Spielberg's astonishing epic opens with what may be the most unforgettably brutal sequence in the history of war movies. Can any cause justify such carnage? That is the question the director of Schindler's List poses here, and answers, without cliche, by dramatizing how honor can be wrested from absurdity by decency and dutifulness.2. LES VAMPIRES Louis Feuillade made this breathless serial thriller in 1915. Now, in a beautifully restored, tinted video release, the streets of Paris are again alive with hurtling action, amazing stunts and the glamour of villainy.3. HAPPINESS With unblinking wit, Todd Solondz paints Hell as a place very like New Jersey, where an 11-year-old boy has an urgent sex chat with the pedophile father who loves him. Has tenderness ever been so frightening?4. 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 mini-holocaust. Arson, murder, madness: Neil Jordan, the writer and director, transforms it all into a bruising metaphor for the larger violence of our times.5. THE OPPOSITE OF SEX 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.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 Guadalcanal as a battle between little men and fierce Nature. In one embracing vision, Malick gives you Eden and the Fall.PAGE 1|
There was more than just Monica
Nothing could touch Saving Private Ryan
Tom Wolfe returned as the novelist in full
France's World Cup of joy brimmed over
Seinfeld's sayonara was much ado about nothing
No prizes for guessing The Big One
A noble winner--and a pair of Nobel losers
Saving Suriname ... and the swordfish7. 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, distracted Bard gets in touch with the genius he doesn't yet know he possesses.8. 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. One wise woman tells her young beau that making love involves two people. That's exactly right: delirious director and dazzled moviegoer.9. VOYAGE TO THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD Marcello Mastroianni's last film is a lovely elegy: an old man revisiting his earliest memories. A glorious tribute from Manoel de Oliveira, the Portuguese auteur who turned 90 last week.10. CENTRAL STATION A sour old woman (the uncompromising Fernanda Montenegro), and a boy (the winsomely suspicious Vinicius de Oliveira) set out across the Brazilian vastness to find the lad's errant father. Director Walter Salles Jr. ravels their odyssey in an unforced, unsentimental fashion. His imagery, like his storytelling, is clear and quietly, powerfully haunting.AND THE WORSTThe Hong Kong Brain Drain. All right, this is good news, bad news. Jackie Chan has his all-time biggest hit; Jet Li kicks big-budget butt; Samo Hung stars in his own TV series; Chow Yun-fat defends the killer's code. But they all do it in Hollywood! And most of the top directors are there too! Though it's nice to see the West accept Asia's kinetic talents, the industry that nurtured them is in danger of death from malnutrition. Quick: paging the next generation.|2
There was more than just Monica
Nothing could touch Saving Private Ryan
Tom Wolfe returned as the novelist in full
France's World Cup of joy brimmed over
Seinfeld's sayonara was much ado about nothing
No prizes for guessing The Big One
A noble winner--and a pair of Nobel losers
Saving Suriname ... and the swordfish