Different strokes

A year for documentary and comedy

I've been indifferent to action pictures for years, bored stupid by explosions and special effects. In 1996, I got numbed to tidy, well-mounted costume dramas. Please, no more Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë and Shakespeare and Conrad and Hardy, at least on screen. But I also grew drowsy from mildly pleasant, formally unambitious American indies made for no deeper reason than a big-bucks distribution deal at Sundance.

Films I disliked that practically everyone else applauded: Big Night, Ridicule, Shine, Antonia's Line, Microcosmos, I Shot Andy Warhol, Trainspotting.

Is it time for gardening? Or TV watching?

Fortunately -- and who noticed? -- 1996 was a pretty terrific year for documentaries. The best of the lot, and the genuine masterpiece of 1996, is Richard Gordon and Carma Hinton's The Gate of Heavenly Peace, a subtle, learned, vastly complex mosaic of the days and nights of student struggle at Tiananmen Square. A great political document.

Likewise excellent were A Personal Journey Through American Movies with Martin Scorsese, Nick Broomfeld's saucy Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam, the Oscar-winning Anne Frank Remembered, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's riveting tabloid Paradise Lost, Nikita Mikhalkov's Russian memoir Anna, and Greta Schiller's feminist history Paris Was a Woman. Also The Celluloid Closet, and three very good music films, Nico Icon, Hype!, and Spread the Word: The Persuasions Sing A Cappella.

That's 11 fine documentaries!

Besides, 1996 was, for me, an A-OK year for comedy. I love Jim Carrey's Sylvester-the-Cat-like spewing psycho in The Cable Guy, and Albert Brooks and Debbie Reynolds are deft and amusing in Mother. Citizen Ruth is a smart satire. Call me a dumbbell, but I think the best American film of the year is the Eddie Murphy-starring The Nutty Professor. The ending was Hollywood sellout, but before that? Wow! Obese Eddie is the embarrassed Uncle Tom, pushed about in the white world and ashamed of his let-it-all-hang-out "natural" family. He takes the potion and turns into sleek, sexual, hip Eddie, self-sufficient black pride, and whitey's worst nightmare.

Think of the dandy scene at the dinner table where Eddie plays all members of the exuberant black family. Get aboard! You don't have to be French to chortle your derriere off!

Best Actor: Eric Roberts as the dying-of-AIDS guy in It's My Party. Nobody saw this film, but the final 20 minutes are the most tear-inducing of any narrative in several years. Director Randall Kleiser's autobiographical story, despite some messy editing, is the Most Underrated Film of 1996. Runners-up: Bound, that juicy "lesbian" noir, and, again, the much-maligned The Cable Guy.

Best Actress: newcomer Emily Watson, radiant in Breaking the Waves. Runner-up: veteran Catherine Deneuve, getting her best post-Belle de jour role in Ma saison préférée.

Best Supporting Actor: Gene Hackman, The Bird Cage. Best Supporting Actress: Kristin Scott Thomas, Angels and Insects and The English Patient.

Best Director: Mike Leigh, Secrets & Lies. Runner-up: Theo Angelopoulos, Ulysses' Gaze.

Best Screenplay: Ethan and Joel Coen, Fargo.

Best Cinematography: France's Caroline Champetier, for her amazing long, long takes down hotel hallways in A Single Girl. Runner-up: Chris Doyle, Chungking Express.

Best Foreign Language Film: The White Balloon, a mesmerizing children's fable from Iran that turns into a dark parable.

Best Local Series: the Harvard Film Archive's showing of the oeuvre of Werner Herzog, including the revelatory shorts and a filmmaker appearance.

Gutsiest Evening: the Coolidge Corner's recent screening of X-rated women's shorts. A most worthwhile, mind-and-body expanding night.

Best Revival Series: the Brattle's "Magnificent Marcello Mastroianni."

Hottest Arthouse Ticket: hands down, the MFA's live Q&A event "Chow Yun-fat: The Coolest Actor in the World."

Most Moving Media Happening: a long morning of spry, imaginative videos by inner-city high-school kids at the Kendall Square.

Most Eventful Film Day: six classic films in a row by the late Marcel Carné at the French Library.

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The Ten Best Films of 1996

The Gate of Heavenly Peace (best)
The White Balloon
The Nutty Professor
A Single Girl
Angels and Insects
Fargo
It's My Party
Secrets & Lies
Welcome to the Dollhouse
A Personal Journey Through American Movies with Martin Scorsese