1. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN Steven Spielberg's astonishing epic opens with what may be the most unforgettably brutal sequence in the history of war movies. Can any cause justify such carnage? That is the question the director of Schindler's List poses here, and answers, without cliche, by dramatizing how honor can be wrested from absurdity by decency and dutifulness.

2. LES VAMPIRES Louis Feuillade made this breathless serial thriller in 1915. Now, in a beautifully restored, tinted video release, the streets of Paris are again alive with hurtling action, amazing stunts and the glamour of villainy.

3. HAPPINESS With unblinking wit, Todd Solondz paints Hell as a place very like New Jersey, where an 11-year-old boy has an urgent sex chat with the pedophile father who loves him. Has tenderness ever been so frightening?

4. THE BUTCHER BOY In a provincial 1960s Irish town, an emotionally starved child feeds his imagination on crud culture and warped religiosity, then innocently creates a mini-holocaust. Arson, murder, madness: Neil Jordan, the writer and director, transforms it all into a bruising metaphor for the larger violence of our times.

5. THE OPPOSITE OF SEX Don Roos' Seven Characters in Search of a Spanking is pure modern romance: anguished, raunchy, caring. Praise be the entire cast and, what the heck, a Nobel Prize to Lisa Kudrow as a twisted spinster.

6. THE THIN RED LINE Two great World War II epics in a year, and so different. This one, the first film directed by Terrence Malick since the 1978 Days of Heaven, imagines Guadalcanal as a battle between little men and fierce Nature. In one embracing vision, Malick gives you Eden and the Fall.

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R E L A T E D
S T O R I E S :

YEAR IN REVIEW There was more than just Monica CINEMA Nothing could touch Saving Private Ryan BOOKS Tom Wolfe returned as the novelist in full SPORTS France's World Cup of joy brimmed over

PEOPLE Seinfeld's sayonara was much ado about nothing SCANDALS No prizes for guessing The Big One BUSINESS A noble winner--and a pair of Nobel losers ENVIRONMENT Saving Suriname ... and the swordfish