1 BUGSY
American Dreaming by the gangster Bugsy Siegel, who, besides inventing himself as a Hollywood celebrity, invented Las Vegas as the playground for our more primitive fantasies. Warren Beatty and Annette Bening are terrific in director Barry Levinson's smart-ironic, romantic-perverse, funny-poignant take on modern life in a fast, deadly lane.
2. MY FATHER'S GLORY/MY MOTHER'S CASTLE
In a radiant two-part adaptation of Marcel Pagnol's autobiography, French writer-director Yves Robert imagines family life in Provence as a storybook dream: loving parents, adventurous but obedient children, an idyllic refuge every summer. This old-men's view of youth tells us that memories are precious because life is short.
3. EUROPA, EUROPA
In World War II Germany, a Jewish adolescent survives by becoming a member of the Hitler Youth. Writer-director Agnieszka Holland based her miraculously jaunty, profoundly moving portrayal of the will to live on the true story of one Solomon Perel. And Marco Hofschneider plays him with a stunned guile that goes beyond acting.
4. JFK
If the political savants who have been denouncing this zippy melodrama hadn't already existed, Oliver Stone might have invented them, because they fulfill his one-size-fits-all conspiracy theory. Hyper down, pundits! Don't deny Stone the right due any artist: to interpret history through his own prism. And give moviegoers the chance to make up their own minds about who shot President Kennedy. The only thing that Stone's dazzling assemblage of political-science fiction attempts to assassinate is complacency.
5. BLACK ROBE
A Jesuit priest goes into the 17th century Canadian wilderness to convert the savages and is himself converted, after terrifying adventures, to cultural relativism. Bruce Beresford's dark dance with the wolves of the spirit is an intelligent, perfectly controlled epic.
6. PARIS IS BURNING
At the Harlem drag balls, gents parade in costumes and personalities of their own baroque creation. Jennie Livingston's thrilling documentary is not just about what it means to be a member of the triple minority of gay black transvestites. It is a testament to the desire -- pathetic, heroic, overwhelming -- that all dreamers have for transcendence.
7. THELMA & LOUISE
Road picture, feminist parable and populist comedy, this tale of two ladies looking for adventure and getting more than they bargained for outraged the humor-handicapped, but dug into the ribs of the ribald. In the title roles, Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon were gloriously wiggy.
8. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
There's plenty of animation dazzle in Disney's latest tuneful fable; the Be Our Guest number manages to evoke both Busby Berkeley and the Folies-Bergere. But Beauty swaps the buoyancy of Disney's last great cartoon feature, The Little Mermaid, for poignancy and emotional depth. That's fine too since, at heart, this story is about a man's need to evoke fear when he is really afraid, and a woman's need to pity a man before she can love him.
9. RAMBLING ROSE