- - - - - - - - - - - - PLUS: The year in TV 10 highs and lows on the small screen - - - - - - - - - - - - ALSO THIS WEEK The Sweet Hereafter Mysterious beauty in the ultimate loss Jackie Brown Tarantino's valentine to Pam Grier As Good as it Gets Jack Nicholson's grubby fairy tale - - - - - - - - - - - - LAST WEEK Titanic Glub, glub, glub Tomorrow Never Dies 007 has lost his verve - - - - - - - - - - - - RECENTLY A full list of recent reviews, interviews and table talk. - - - - - - - - - - - - Blue Glow DAILY TV PICKS - - - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE MOVIE ARCHIVES TV ARCHIVES

THE YEAR IN FILM | PAGE 2 OF 2 "Haut bas fragile" ("Up Down Fragile") (France): Legendary French filmmaker Jacques Rivette's sort-of-musical, with its sort-of-plot about three young women (Laurence Cote, Natalie Richard, Marianne Denicourt) in summertime Paris, is typically long (nearly three hours). But that length allows us to experience the sense of expanding time that's Rivette's great subject. He fills his movie with songs and incidents for the sheer pleasure of enjoying the company of the people he puts on-screen. This joyous picture -- released in France in 1995 but shown at several U.S. film festivals this year -- is like an attempt to extend the feeling of Manet's "Le dejeuner sur l'herbe," to make us, for its duration, so alive to our surroundings that the deep satisfaction of Manet's perfect moment doesn't have to pass. ("Haut bas fragile" can be ordered from its distributor, Baltimore's Cinema Parallel.) "Kissed" (Canada): As the tape-recorded message at my local art theater described it, "That movie about necrophilia." And there wasn't a sweeter, more erotic movie this year than Lynne Stopkewich's debut. Based on a Barbara Gowdy short story, "Kissed" is about a young female mortician who makes love to the male corpses she prepares because she can't separate her sexuality from her spirituality. In the lead, Molly Parker had the most winning fresh-from-the-lily-pad look since Sissy Spacek in "Carrie," taking in everything through her huge eyes as if she were seeing it for the first time. "Welcome to Sarajevo" (U.K.): Messy and visceral, and with an articulate, pointed anger, Michael Winterbottom's openly polemical film is about a British reporter (Stephen Dillane) who begins to question the distance that is his profession's article of faith when he tries to rescue a 9-year-old girl from the siege of Sarajevo. Winterbottom is out to make the misery of Sarajevo seep into your bones, and to make you outraged at the Western officials who allowed genocide to occur. His methods may not be those of an artist, but his movie is so raw and alive that it makes questions of art seem beside the point. "Chasing Amy" (U.S.): Kevin Smith's ragged and affecting boy-meets-lesbian story is the only romantic comedy in a while to acknowledge, even to celebrate, the fact that love and sex are emotional anarchy, upsetting our most cherished beliefs about who we think we are. As much of a mess as a movie can be and still be good, "Chasing Amy" takes risk after risk that pays off. The pleasure of this bracingly, liberatingly profane comedy is that of seeing a movie that feels absolutely contemporary. "The Sweet Hereafter" (Canada): I've never liked anything by Atom Egoyan before, and there are still traces of cold schematism in this adaptation of Russell Banks' novel. But the subject of this film -- the aftermath of a school bus crash that kills nearly all the children in a rural Canadian town -- requires a director who can come to grips with the world's profound lack of safety and certainty. Fittingly, Egoyan responds with the realization that he must learn to trust his instincts. Weeks after seeing this haunting and mournful film, its mood still comes flooding over me, especially when I recall the face of the remarkable Sarah Polley, who plays a teenage girl who survives the accident. She offers the camera the face of someone who never had regrets until she learned the uselessness of regretting. "Boogie Nights" (U.S.): Twenty-seven-year-old Paul Thomas Anderson is a wildly ambitious filmmaker who can't yet distinguish his good instincts from his bad ones. Before it falls into Scorsese-and-Tarantino mannerisms in its second half, this epic comedy about the glory days of the California porn industry (the late '70s and early '80s) is the most loving look at the cracked schemes of American fantasists since Jonathan Demme's "Citizen's Band" and "Melvin and Howard." With the help of a superb ensemble cast, including Burt Reynolds doing the best work of his career, "Boogie Nights" sails right past the moralism that usually defines dramatic treatments of porn and surges with the exhilaration of the most daring American comedies. "The Wings of the Dove" (U.K.): As a young woman who tries to persuade her lover to romance a dying American heiress (the heartbreaking and luminous Alison Elliot) so they can inherit her fortune, Helena Bonham-Carter does her best work yet. This adaptation of Henry James' last novel requires her to keep her divided, ever-shifting motives hidden behind a Jamesian veil. It's a ferociously difficult role, and she's superb. "The Wings of the Dove" is sumptuously shot by Eduardo Serra and beautifully directed by Iain Softley ("Backbeat"), but this costume drama never sacrifices passion to production values. Layered and complex, it also carries a sting in its tail. "Kundun" (U.S.): Martin Scorsese's lovely film on the early life of the 14th (and current) Dalai Lama has the simplicity of a fairy tale that's been handed down for generations. "Kundun" clears away the clutter of Scorsese's recent films. Staying true to the spirit of his subject, Scorsese and his cinematographer, Roger Deakins, have made a film that's a flow of incidents and images that might be described as chastely ravishing. It's a movie that affects you with its dignity and tranquil conviction. "The Boxer" (Ireland): Set against the backdrop of the recent Northern Ireland cease-fire, Jim Sheridan's drama doesn't soar as his earlier "My Left Foot" and "In the Name of the Father" did. But in the title role of an IRA soldier who returns to his Belfast neighborhood after 14 years in prison, determined to restart his life free of the old sectarian grudges, Daniel Day-Lewis gives a performance of controlled passion without a wasted word or gesture. And as an IRA prisoner's wife he's out to win back, Emily Watson combines the bloom of a young girl with the weariness of someone made to honor allegiances that take no account of her. SALON | Dec. 24, 1997  Charles Taylor lives in Boston and is a regular contributor to Salon. What are your choices for the best movies of 1997? Join the conversation in the Movie section of Table Talk.

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