- - - - - - - - - - - - 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

BY CHARLES TAYLOR | IN A NOT-VERY-GOOD year for movies, the problem with a 10-best list isn't knowing what to put on, but what to leave off. Once you get past the ludicrousness inherent in any of these lists (how much better is No. 6 than No. 7?), it becomes harder to decide what makes the cut and what doesn't. So I've cheated. I've put 11 movies on my list. My excuse is that excluding any of them from a list of the year's best movies made the resulting list feel incomplete. Among my honorable mentions are two movies opening in the next few weeks: Gillian Armstrong's flawed and magical "Oscar and Lucinda" and the wild-card political satire "Wag the Dog." I was disappointed that the anything-goes road romance "A Life Less Ordinary" wasn't the hit it deserved to be, and happy that John Woo's crazily operatic "Face/Off" was. There are two less-well-publicized pictures, both on video, that I hope people will seek out: Angela Pope's "Hollow Reed," a wrenching domestic drama beautifully acted by Martin Donovan, Joely Richardson and Ian Hart, and Clare Peploe's "Rough Magic," a piece of hard-boiled magical realism with Bridget Fonda, picking up where Lauren Bacall left off in "To Have and Have Not," and Russell Crowe, displaying more charm and sexiness than he does in "L.A. Confidential." And there are other performances that shouldn't be missed: Mike Nichols in "The Designated Mourner," Martha Plimpton in "Eye of God" and Robert Downey Jr. in "One Night Stand." The hunger for good movies this year may explain why "L.A. Confidential" was so wildly overrated, and why the awesome triviality "Titanic" is being treated as if it were Griffith or Lean when it isn't even Irwin Allen. At the end of each year film critics look at our lists and try to glean some story from them. This year, I can't see anything more important than the conviction of people who, despite everything, still believe that good work is possible. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "Irma Vep" (France): Olivier Assayas' deceptively modest comedy about the making (and unmaking) of a movie is actually a demonstration of how, for a filmmaker, an entire movie can be contained in one face. Here that face belongs to Hong Kong star Maggie Cheung, playing herself starring in a remake of Feuillade's "Les Vampires." She's muse both to Assayas and the director of the film within the film, played by French New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Leaud in an endearingly eccentric performance. Parodying the foolhardiness of both the art houses and the multiplexes, "Irma Vep" acknowledges everything that stands in the way of making movies today and then defies those obstacles by brimming over with the freedom and lyricism and inventiveness too many of us are ready to relegate to the past. "Irma Vep" is alive to the possibilities of the movies in a way that nothing else I saw this year comes close to. Cheung, scampering over the roofs of Paris in black and white, could stand for the glories the movies have given us and the glories they've yet to yield up. "Donnie Brasco" (U.S.): This exceptionally intelligent and adult gangster film, directed by Mike Newell and written by Paul Attanasio, is distinguished by the work of Johnny Depp as an FBI agent who goes undercover to infiltrate the mob, and Al Pacino as the aging hood he befriends and must betray. Depp's performance hums with the tension of casting an instinctively expressive actor as a man whose life depends on being able to control his reactions. And Pacino, in a role that offers him a dozen ways to go soft, dries out the conception of a hood-with-heart and turns in his warmest performance. N E X T+P A G E +| A lesbian, a necrophiliac and a musical

PHOTO COURTESY OF UNITED ARTISTS | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED