The Ten Best Films of 1998
01. The Truman Show
Few films have tapped into the cultural zeitgeist with the timeliness, precision, and sheer mastery that Peter Weir's "The Truman Show" did in 1998. Just as ready to tackle the social influence of the media as "Network" did in 1976, "The Truman Show" features Jim Carrey (in a career-redefining performance) as Truman Burbank, a man who has unwittingly been the star of his own 24-hour television show even since being adopted at birth by a corporation headed by a megolomaniac creator (Ed Harris). The film traces Truman's eventual discovery of the truth, and as he does, the film finds truth, too, in the elusive way in which we have become dependent on television to tell us how to feel and function in a haywire world. "The Truman Show" features scenes that I'll truly never forget, and it also has the distinction of being one of the few films I've seen that I wouldn't even hesitate to call flawless.
02. Life is Beautiful
"Life is Beautiful," basically a solo effort for actor-writer-director Roberto Benigni, has attracted its share of criticism for finding humor among the darkest of events, the Holocaust. More rightfully though, it's been attracting worldwide acclaim, as "Life is Beautiful" is a tremendously moving film. Told as a two-act fable, the movie opens with a charming romance, but ends up in set in a concentration camp. As a father who knows nothing other than being a clown of sorts, Benigni convinces his young son that the entire experience is actually an elaborate game played to win an army tank. It's a serious charade, though; he uses it to keep his son alive. "Life is Beautiful" does more than walk a narrative minefield; it veritably skips through it. It concludes with one of the most unforgettable moments I can recall, and establishes itself as the best foreign language picture I've seen this decade.
03. Happiness
There are people out there like this. That's kind of scary considering the inhabitants of Todd Solondz's sophomore film are representatives of human beings at their emotional and social lowpoints. In his first movie ("Welcome to the Dollhouse," also a No. 3 finisher on this list in 1996), Solondz examined the life of one sadsack junior high school girl. Here, he broadens his canvas, objectively observing a pedophile and his perfect family, an overweight man obsessed with obscene phone calls, a depressed woman who longs for happiness and finds only rejection, an aging couple whose marriage is slowly falling apart, and various other just-as-unhappy souls wandering through life as best they can. Why does "Happiness" work so well? I think its because Solondz, almost alone among contemporary filmmakers, realizes that even the lowest of souls are searching, just like everyone else, for some type of meaning in life. Some type of happiness.
04. Gods and Monsters
"Gods and Monsters" was almost like watching two fascinating movies at the same time--one about a famous Hollywood filmmaker, and another about an aging man's slow descent into death. Turns out that these two descriptions apply to the same man, as Bill Condon's "Gods and Monsters" presents a fully-rounded portrait of "Frankenstein" director James Whale, a gay artist who has a few gods and monsters of his own. Ian McKellen stars in a showstopper of a performance as late-in-life Whale. He begins to toy with his straight (and mostly fictional) groundskeeper (Brendan Fraser), but the two end up forming one of the most curious and fascinating friendships you'll find. "Gods and Monsters" is a riveting film, and with McKellen's witty performance, it boasts one of the best one-man shows of the year.
05. Shakespeare in Love
British costume pictures have for years been synonymous with Sleepytime for many moviegoers. All bets are off, though, with John Madden's "Shakespeare in Love," a sunny, rapturous new comedy from writers Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, who have injected some jazz and juice into a genre that needed it. A young William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) is having trouble writing and staging his new play, "Romeo and Ethel the Pirates Daughter." Once he meets a beautiful young gentlewoman (Gywneth Paltrow), his creativity and passion flourishes. He doesnt know, though, that shes also disguising herself as the star of the no-girls-allowed stage production. "Shakespeare in Love" is smart, witty, and not for a second dull.
06. Saving Private Ryan
If Steven Spielberg didn't quite re-invent the war film, he certainly re-discovered it this year with "Saving Private Ryan," a humbling World War II drama that boasts some of the most expertly-filmed battle sequences in movie history. Starring Tom Hanks as a worn army captain leading a haggard troop of soldiers out to find the sole private in a set of brothers that the war has not already claimed, "Private Ryan" does for the American soldiers of WWII what Spielberg's "Schindler's List" did for the concentration camp prisoners. Jeremy Davies gives one of the year's best performances as a cowardly soldier. "Saving Private Ryan" is a dignified, moving film.
07. Central Station
Brazilian actress Fernanda Montenegro gives a soul-stirring performance in this unforgettable road movie directed by Walter Salles. As an embittered old woman who transcribes letters for the poor in Rio de Janeiro's main train station, Montenegro is ruthless in making her character not particularly likeable. But when she encounters a young boy (Vinicius de Oliveira) whose mother has just been killed, she reluctantly helps him search for his long lost father. As she does, we see a pair of mismatched souls bonding with careful advancement, as well as a vivid portrait of a part of the world so often ignored on movie screens. Unfortunately overshadowed in the foreign language arena by Italy's "Life is Beautiful," "Central Station" is a tearjerker for the ages.
08. The Spanish Prisoner
Complex as its serpentine plot is, whats most refreshing about David Mamet's "The Spanish Prisoner" is the fact that it doesnt purport to be anything other than a puzzle for viewers to navigate through. Just like 1991's "Dead Again," here's a thriller than is pure contraption and knows it, tossing up one narrative jackknife after another. Campbell Scott stars as a man who has sold a big company on The Process, some sort of formula he's devised, and now wants to be duly compensated. The company has other ideas, as they send him on a tantalizing trip through hell and back. Steve Martin and Rebecca Pidgeon (Mrs. Mamet) shine in two of the year's best supporting performances.
09. There's Something About Mary
Any movie that could make me laugh so hard for so long must be included among my fondest movie memories of 1998, and "There's Something About Mary" certainly was such a movie. Ben Stiller, Cameron Diaz, and Matt Dillon elicited fine comic timing in this story of a sadsack nerd who hires a sleazy private eye to track down his high school crush. What elevates Peter and Bobby Farrelly's outrageous comedy above the usual gross-out pack is its willingness to build and layer their gags, some resulting in 10-minute sequences that keep wringing every possible laugh out of a joke that most movies would have abandoned after one rimshot.
10. Out of Sight
The best big screen adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel yet, Steven Soderburgh's "Out of Sight" crackles, largely thanks to the amazing chemistry between its lead performers. George Clooney finally felt like a real movie star as a sly career criminal being pursued by a fiery U.S. marshal (the fabulous Jennifer Lopez in one of the year's most-smartly written female roles). This pair find themselves locked together in a car trunk early on in the film, and from then on they're dodging their loyalties to their occupations because of their mutual attraction. "Out of Sight" simply sizzles.
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