Return to the March 1998 A&E Preview Cover

Arts & Entertainment Preview - March 1998 B Y   E L L A   T A Y L O R The Ella Awards for the Best of 1997 Kim Basinger As independent film, colonized by Hollywood, moves steadily toward the middlebrow, the year's most elegant, intelligent, and heartfelt movie was a studio offering that failed to clean up at the box office but -- if justice and decent marketing prevail -- may sweep the Oscars. Best Picture: Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential doffs its cap to James Ellroy's best-selling novel while lifting it out of pulp fiction into a funny, smart, ardent morality play about the brash humanity of 1950s Los Angeles. Runners-up: Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter, an artful yet faithful homage to Russell Banks's novel about the impact of a school-bus crash on a small town; Chasing Amy, Kevin Smith's deliriously wordy rumination on misbegotten love between a callow youth and a lively lesbian; Barry Sonnenfeld's hilarious Men in Black, in which Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones dally with special-effected aliens, cute and otherwise. The Making of Boogie Nights Best Newcomer: The director Paul Thomas Anderson, for his assured debut features, Hard Eight and Boogie Nights. Runner-up: The director Greg Mottola, for The Daytrippers, a stylish, talk-driven chamber piece about a family's disastrous outing in Manhattan. Best Foreign-Language Picture: In the tradition of Ken Loach, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes's searing docudrama La Promesse takes on the exploitation of illegal immigrants in contemporary Belgium. Runners-up: Chronicle of a Disappearance, Palestinian director Elia Suleiman's playful yet quietly angry account of his journey to Israel to piece together his fractured identity as an exile; Jan Troell's Hamsun, a harrowing account of Norwegian Nobel Prize-winner Knut Hamsun's deluded love affair with the Third Reich; Jacques Audiard's A Self-Made Hero, an inquiry into the inner life of a French non-resister after the Second World War. Best Actress: Julie Christie returns in quiet triumph as a destroyed former B-movie star pining for lost glory and a lost child in Alan Rudolph's Afterglow. Runners-up: Ghita Norby, as the Nazi-loving wife in Hamsun; Emily Watson, powerfully restrained as the IRA prisoner's wife who falls for Daniel Day-Lewis in Jim Sheridan's The Boxer; Helen Hunt, as the compassionate waitress who sees through Jack Nicholson in James L. Brooks's As Good As It Gets. Max von Sydow in Hamsun Best Actor: Max von Sydow, magnificent and abject as the literary lion broken by his alliance with Hitler in Hamsun. Runners-up: Guy Pearce, moving without apparent strain from a flamboyant drag queen in Priscilla: Queen of the Desert to a buttoned-up career cop in L.A. Confidential; Robert Duvall, carrying the show as the flawed preacher in his own The Apostle; Al Pacino, dazzling as the has-been hood in Donnie Brasco and as a lawyerly Satan in The Devil's Advocate; Dustin Hoffman, as the Hollywood honcho who stage-manages a war with Albania in Barry Levinson's Wag the Dog. Best Supporting Actress: Julianne Moore, for a daring performance as the schizoid, motherly porno queen in Boogie Nights. Runners-up: Gloria Stuart, for her serenity and loud toenails as the 101-year-old survivor in James Cameron's Titanic; Kim Basinger, for her discerning hooker in L.A. Confidential; Gabrielle Rose, as the hapless bus driver in The Sweet Hereafter; Nathalie Richard, as the excitable lesbian wardrobe mistress in Olivier Assayas's Irma Vep. Best Supporting Actor: Burt Reynolds, for his sly intelligence as the family-values pornographer in Boogie Nights. Runners-up: Bruce Greenwood, as the monosyllabic mechanic who loses his children in The Sweet Hereafter; Rupert Everett, as Julia Roberts's pal, the only actor worth sticking around for in the otherwise stolid My Best Friend's Wedding; Robert Forster, returning in low-key style as the honorable bail bondsman in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown. Ella's Silver Turkey Awards A Life Less Ordinary. If only. Danny Boyle's tepid tale of love on the lam between poor boy Ewan McGregor and poor little rich girl Cameron Diaz left Trainspotting fans wondering where had all the talent gone. This postman won't ring twice Jean-Jacques Annaud's Seven Years in Tibet felt like a lifetime in epic hell. Never mind that the hero was a Nazi. Mike Figgis's One Night Stand felt like seven years in divorce court. The Postman, or Male Carrier: Kevin Costner Plays God, Part III. Having danced with wolves and dried out a watery world, our hero restores a pillaged futuristic America by overnight delivery. Piece of cake. G.I. Jane. Bionic biceps and a foul mouth are all it takes for Demi Moore to make Navy SEAL. Piece of cake. Air Force One. President Harrison Ford sees off what's left of Soviet communism while dangling from the wing of his own wounded aircraft. Piece of cake. Ella Taylor is a film critic for LA Weekly. Go to ... Copyright © 1998 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved.