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.