Top 10 Films

Musts to Avoid. Best-of lists are, of course, highly subjective, but I'm certain that these were the sickest and most insidious Hollywood films of the year: The American President; Father of the Bride Part II; Just Cause; Mighty Aphrodite; The Scarlet Letter; Species; The Tie That Binds; To Die For; Waterworld; and White Man's Burden.

Best As-Yet Unreleased Movie of the Year. Still without a distributor, Sixteen-Oh-Sixty--a Brazilian amalgam of Buñuel, Renoir, and Almódovar that depicts the vicious class struggle in São Paulo--was the most refreshingly nasty piece of work on hand at last fall's New York Film Festival; one of our more adventurous exhibitors in town would do well to inquire about its availability. My sense is that even a disturbingly acerbic, fiercely anti-capitalist movie such as this could perform commercially--that is, if it were properly marketed.