1993 Year in Review : MOVIES : Moviegoers' Trip to Bountiful

By KENNETH TURAN

Dec. 26, 1993 12 AM PT

<i> Kenneth Turan is The Times' film critic</i>

What a difference a year makes.

True, 1992 wasn’t quite as grim as 1991, when finding 10 films remotely worth putting on a list was a feat in itself. Last year was more like a crack sports team without a bench, strong in the starting positions but lacking in the kind of depth, especially where Hollywood films were concerned, that makes for a memorable 12 months.

This year, the problem with constructing a 10-best list is not deciding what to put on but what to leave off. There are probably at least two dozen pictures that are good enough to qualify, and, unlike last year, the studios can rightly take a few deserved bows.

Here then is a 10-best list painfully truncated for an exceptionally good year. We should have problems like this more often.

1. The Piano. In her third time out, Australian-based Jane Campion proves herself a virtuoso director with an innate grasp of the medium most of her peers can’t even begin to match. Displaying a fearless command of all aspects of filmmaking, this sweepingly romantic story shows the good things that happen when an intuitive, emotional director applies herself to traditional, nominally confining forms.

2. Schindler’s List. By holding himself back, Steven Spielberg has taken a great leap forward. Working in black and white and with a non-star cast, he has made a powerful yet restrained film about the Holocaust that is terribly moving precisely because it knows enough not to overdo things. A surprise coming from Spielberg, but a success no matter whose name was attached.

3. The Fugitive. The studios mess up traditional genre filmmaking so often it is a rare pleasure to compliment a job exceedingly well done. Relentlessly directed by Andrew Davis and featuring a thumping rivalry between Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones, it leaves an audience just slightly more out of breath than its nearest rival, “In the Line of Fire.” Guys, why can’t we do this more often?

4. Short Cuts. The controversy over how much empathy and respect director Robert Altman has shown his characters has partially obscured the fact that this adaptation of a group of Raymond Carver short stories is a thoughtful and involving experience, showcasing a mature if acerbic American master working at the top of his form.

5. Naked. British director Mike Leigh’s films are traditionally unlike anyone else’s and this one stands out even from the body of his work. A corrosive yet always surprising look at a snarling malcontent (a performance by David Thewlis that almost can’t be believed), “Naked” furthers Leigh’s determination to push the boundaries of emotional truth on film as far as they can go.

6. The Age of Innocence. High-gloss, high-class filmmaking from an unexpected source, Martin Scorsese. Though this film doesn’t score high in the warmth department, it’s not supposed to, and though it doesn’t have a performance as good as Anthony Hopkins’ in “The Remains of the Day,” it is literate, beautifully mounted and exceptionally well-acted all the way around.

7. Searching for Bobby Fischer. The term weepy is not usually one of high praise, but writer-director Steven Zaillian’s artful debut demonstrates that honest, intelligent films can appeal to the emotions as successfully as the usual bathetic cheap shots that pass for sentimental filmmaking in Hollywood. Making the same point equally as well was “The Joy Luck Club,” a fine return for Wayne Wang, working from a Ron Bass/Amy Tan script based on her best-seller.

8. Leolo. Rarely has potentially hackneyed subject matter (the coming of age of a sensitive, artistic boy in an unforgiving environment) been given such stunningly poetic treatment. French-Canadian writer-director Jean-Claude Lauzon’s autobiographical film will make you squirm, but its ability to emotionally re-create the chaos of childhood is unforgettable.

9. Farewell My Concubine. The breakthrough film as far as China’s emergence on the world cinema scene goes, this gorgeous, intoxicating epic is old-fashioned in form but modern in psychological dynamic. Director Chen Kaige’s superb use of composition, color and light makes this practically a textbook of visual splendors.

10. This Boy’s Life. Not properly appreciated when it came out and not strongly remembered now, the Robert Getchell/Michael Caton-Jones version of Tobias Wolff’s memoir has a sizable emotional heft based on one of Robert De Niro’s best-ever performances and the debut of Leonard DiCaprio, a young actor of surprising range and power.

If there had been room for more films on this insufficient list, they would have been the Emma Thompson-Kenneth Branagh “Much Ado About Nothing,” a captivating example of how to serve a classic while not alienating a modern audience, and the prodigiously inventive “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas,” a revolution in stop-motion animation cracklingly directed by Henry Selick.

And though there were as usual few of them, what documentaries did appear in 1993 were also quite well done. The best were “Visions of Light,” a vivid look at Hollywood’s cinematographers, the agonizing “Silverlake Life: The View From Here,” the politically adept “The War Room” and the documented restoration of Orson Welles’ “It’s All True.” Unfortunately, the vagaries of distribution and exhibition have meant that the absolute best documentary of recent years, “Black Harvest,” still has not been theatrically released in Los Angeles. For shame.

Also worthy of special mention is the dead/alive British film industry, still capable of turning out exceptional films. In addition to “Naked,” 1993 saw Jim Sheridan’s riveting “In the Name of the Father” (set to open on Wednesday), Stephen Frears’ comic “The Snapper,” and two fine films by Ken Loach, “Riff-Raff” and the yet-to-be-released “Raining Stones.”

Foreign films in general prospered in 1993, with excellent movies from France (“Blue,” “Un Coeur en Hiver,” “The Accompanist,” Italy (“Il Ladro di Bambini”), Australia (“Strictly Ballroom”), Taiwan (“The Wedding Banquet”) and even Belgium (“Man Bites Dog”) showing up on local screens.

And the one lost cause of 1993, the film that deserved better but fell through the cracks, was, unexpectedly enough, a product of the sick man of Europe, Yugoslavia. Goran Markovic’s slyly autobiographical “Tito and Me” casts an impeccably droll eye on love, politics and childhood in the great Marshal’s homeland. If you missed it (and most people did), that’s what video stores are for.

Here are the Top 10 lists by other Times film reviewers.

* PETER RAINER

1. Schindler’s List

2. The Story of Qiu Ju

3. The Snapper

4. Stolen Children

5. What’s Love Got to Do

With It?

6. In the Name of the Father

7. Six Degrees of Separation

8. Into the West

9. Dead Alive