- Los Angeles, 7 January: Mike Medavoy, chairman of TriStar Pictures, has announced his resignation. Sony have named Columbia's Mark Canton to fill the post.
- Los Angeles, 9 February:
 Swedish director Lasse Hallström (My Life as a Dog, 1987), the latest foreign import to Hollywood, observes American life with heightened reality but tenderness in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? Quirky and sweetly offbeat, the movie reveals as odd and funny a collection of cares as ever beset a youthful protagonist. As rueful narrator hero Gilbert, a vastly charming and sympathetic Johnny Depp copes with exasprating responsibilities that include his retarded brother, given a stand-out performance by Leonardo DiCaprio.
 - London, 11 February: There is no more controversial subject in Great Britain than the situation in Northern Ireland, and the activities of the IRA. It was therefore extremely bold of Jim Sheridan, the Irish director of My Left Foot, to bring In the Name of the Father to the screen. But although his compelling drama attacks the British judicial system over wrongfully convicting the Guildford Four -- those men imprisoned for many years for pub bombings, and only recently released -- it focuses on one particular poignant father-son relationship. Daniel Day-Lewis, again revealing his wide acting range, is Gerry Conlon, the troubled Belfast young, whose father (Pete Postlethwaite) is also imprisoned when he comes to his son's aid. Emma Thompson plays Gareth Pierce, the lawyer who finally gets them exonerated.
- New York, 16 February:
 The hard-fought 125-day battle for Paramount has now ended. This means success for Sumner Redstone and Viacom, Inc., owner of the MTV and Nickelodeon cable networks, the Showtime pay-TV stations, five other TV stations and a major program syndicator. Main loser is QVC, the home shopping television service company and former Fox and Paramount studio boss Barry Diller, who conceded defeat with the simple statement, "They won. We lost." The ongoing saga began last September with the Viacom tender of an initial offer at $8.2 billion, then was forced to raise the stakes, supported by Blockbuster Entertainment, the world's largest home video retailer. Viacom ended up paying around $10 billion, but now emerges as a media giant with $12 billion in annual revenues, second only in size to Time-Warner.
 - London, 19 February: Derek Jarman, one of British cinema's most controversial and independent directors, has died of AIDS complications at the age of 52. The openly gay Jarman was an active spokesman for AIDS research, after having gained a cult following with his innovative films, many of which are of a homo-erotic nature. Making the most of shoestring budgets, they included Sebastiane, in Latin; The Tempest, which contained a rendition of "Stormy Weather"; Jubilee, a punk vision of England; Caravaggio, a stylized biography of the painter; and finally Blue, which consisted of a personal commentary on the progress of his illness, spoken over an unvarying blue image.
- Berlin, 21 February: Jim Sheridan's In the Name of the Father has won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Festival. Krzysztof Kieslowski was voted best director for White, Tom Hanks and Britain's Crissy Rock were named best actor and actress for Philadelphia and Ladybird, Ladybird respectively, while Fresa y chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate), Cuba's international breakthrough film, captured the jury's special prize.
- Paris, 2 March:
 Mina Tannenbaum is an impressive first feature by Martine Dugowson about the 25-year-long friendship between two Jewish girls in Paris that stretches from 1968 to 1993. The story beautifully captures the awkward, unspoken rivalry between Mina, an idealistic painter, and the more opportunistic Ethel, nicely played by Romane Bohringher and Elsa Zylberstein. Their love/hate relationship reflects their emotional and professional attitudes.
- Hollywood, 4 March: Last night Jack Nicholson became the 22nd and youngest recipient of the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Awards. A second award, given to Elizabeth Taylor, makes her only the fourth woman to receive the honor, following Lillian Gish, Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck. Taylor, who has made 54 films, now devotes her time to campaigning for AIDS research.
- Durango, 4 March: Actor John Candy, aged 43, has died of a sudden heart attack while filming Wagons West in this small Colorado town. Last year, Candy's Cool Runnings grossed $68.8 million.
 - London, 4 March: Set in Oxford in the early 1950s, Shadowlands is the beautifully crafted account of fantasy author and academic C. S. Lewis' love affair with prickly New York poet Joy Davidman (Gresham). Lewis can't quite commit to her, though he marries her so that she and her young son can stay in England. Then she gets cancer... Following his disappointing Chaplin, Richard Attenborough has subtly avoided the trap of sentimentality, making an inspiring and moving film with two great central performances. Newly-knighted Anthony Hopkins as the Catholic Lewis and Debra Winger as the Jewish Gresham make the chalk-and-cheese love affair into something rare and wonderful. Joseph Mazzello (Attenborough's grandson in last year's Jurassic Park) acquits himself well as Winger's young son, Douglas.
- Los Angeles, 11 March: Jack Cardiff has been honored by the Los Angeles Society of Cinematographers with its International Award for Outstanding Achievement. Cardiff has received four Oscar® nominations, three for color cinematography (Black Narcissus, War and Peace and Fanny) and one for direction (Sons and Lovers).
 - Los Angeles, 21 March:
 Steven Spielberg must have been wondering what he had to do to win one of the top Academy Awards in 20 years of trying. Evidently, the answer was to make Schindler's List, though only a cynic would suggest that in choosing the subject of the Holocaust, he had the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars® in mind. The long (185 minutes) and ambitious black-and-white movie was one of the hottest favorites ever to enter the Oscar® race. To add to Spielberg's satisfaction, Schindler's List garnered a further five awards, for art direction, cinematography, editing, original score and screenplay adaptation. In his restrained rendering of the story of Oskar Schindler, the German businessman who rescued more than a thousand Jews from the gas chambers, Spielberg has probably come closer than most directors to filming the impossible. As if to prove there were other films around, the acting awards went elsewhere. Tom Hanks won Best Actor for Philadelphia. As an AIDS-stricken gay lawyer, not only fighting the disease, but prejudice, Hanks displayed hitherto untapped tragic resources. The Best Actress winner was Holly Hunter for her splendid portrayal of the self-imposed mute woman sent from Scotland to 19th-century New Zealand in The Piano. Best Supporting Actress was the amazing 11-year-old Anna Paquin, who played Hunter's daughter, while the Best Supporting Actor was Tommy Lee Jones, long deserving of the honor, for his splendid pursuing federal agent in The Fugitive.
- Los Angeles, 28 March: Lana Turner, who was diagnosed as having throat cancer two years ago, is due to be discharged today from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where she has been undergoing tests.
- London, 1 April:
 The early days of The Beatles in Hamburg provide a colorful backdrop for the story of Stuart Sutcliffe (Stephen Dorff), the Fifth Beatle, who died of a brain hemorrhage in 1962. Backbeat centers on artist Stu's intense affair with style-setting photographer Astrid Kirchherr (Sheryl Lee). The film's major asset, though is the charismatic performance of Ian Hart as a sardonic, angry young John Lennon, loving, envying and influenced by Stu and Astrid. A nicely timed film to tap into the current Beatles revival.
- Los Angeles, 4 April: The film community is in mourning for Frank Wells, who died yesterday in a helicopter accident in Nevada. Wells, aged 62, the universally admired president of the Walt Disney Co., revitalized the Disney studio alongside chief executive Michael Eisner, propelling revenues from $1.5 billion to $8.5 billion with hits such as Pretty Woman, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, and developing the company's theme-park, real estate and merchandising concerns.
- Berlin, 5 April: In a worldwide survey, 456 film critics and historians named the top five German films of all time: M (1931), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (1927), Nosferatu (1922), and People on Sunday (1930). As with any "best" list, there is much debate about which films deserve a place on the list.
 - New York, 15 April: In Serial Mom, bad taste maestro John Waters trashes motherhood, family and middle-class suburbia in grotesque, hilarious style, with an energetic Kathleen Turner to relish. She is a perfect all-American Baltimore homemaker who develops a taste for terrorizing, then hideously murdering, people who dare slight any of her adoring family -- dentist husband Sam Waterston and two perky teenage kids, Ricki Lake and Matthew Lillard. Mom's media-generated celebrity status once she's busted might be satirical, or just evidence of the wicked Waters' eccentricity, but it's not far off the mark!
- Los Angeles, 11 May:
 Bruce Lee's son Brandon, tragically killed last year in a shooting accident on the set of The Crow, is a handsome and brooding presence in the film, a certain hit. A dark-avenger fantasy from a comic, it is, despite a cartoonish script, a somber, exciting and visually stunning story of, ironically, a murdered rock star who returns from the dead to settle the score. The film was completed with the latest in sophisticated digital compositing techniques, creating new scenes from available footage of Lee (an excellent performance) whose death at 28 undeniably adds to the film's macabre lure.
 - London, 14 May: It is extremely rare for a British film to reach number one at the U.S. box office, and also arrive in England on the back of an American triumph. Four Weddings and a Funeral, made on a budget of just £3 million, is an immensely charming romantic comedy, which took Richard Curtis three years to write, and director Mike Newell 36 days to shoot. The very "Englishness" of the picture has been an asset in the United States, but so too is the strikingly handsome Hugh Grant, delightful in the part that has made him a star. The film's title sums up the episodic tale of an accident-prone young man who, alone among his friends, seems unable to get himself hitched.
- London, 19 May: Ex-Beatle George Harrison has sold his production company, HandMade Films, to Paragon Entertainment of Toronto for $8.5 million cash. Among HandMade's biggest hits were Monty Python's Life of Brian and Neil Jordan's Mona Lisa.
 - Cannes, 23 May:
 The announcement that Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction had won the Golden Palm at this year's Cannes Film Festival was greeted with as many catcalls as cheers. The award especially surprised because Krzysztof Kieslowski's Red, the favorite, came away empty-handed. The main objection to Pulp Fiction was the film's excessive violence, the thrust of most of the criticism behind Tarantino's previous (well-received) film, Reservoir Dogs. Violent it is, but, as the title suggests, it is also a witty and brilliantly inventive thriller, drawing on cheap novels of the 1950s and 60s. It was thought that the choice of Pulp Fiction over Red derived from the influence of Clint Eastwood, the president of the jury. Perhaps Catherine Deneuve was behind the best actress award given to the Italian actress Virna Lisi, brought out of retirement to play a devastating Catherine de Medici in the expensive French costume drama, La Reine Margot (Queen Margot), directed by Patrice Chéreau. The best actor was You Ge as a man who survives the fluctuations of modern Chinese history in Yimou Zhang's Huozhe (To Live), which shared the Grand Jury prize with Nikita Mikhalkov's superb Utomlyonnye solntsem (Burnt by the Sun). The latter is about a hero of the Soviet revolution pursued by Stalin's secret police, which contains a fine performance from the director himself. Nanni Moretti, winner of the best director for Caro diario (Dear Diary), stars in his own richly amusing film, subtitled "Events from the life of a splendid forty-year-old."
- Seattle, 25 May:
 After journeying to the exotic climes of China for The Last Emperor (1987), and the Moroccan desert for The Sheltering Sky (1990), Bernardo Bertolucci has ventured into Bhutan for his latest epic, Little Buddha. The moral fable tells of how a Seattle couple (Chris Isaak and Brigitte Fonda) are visited by Buddhist monks claiming their little son might be the reincarnation of one of their most revered lamas. Accompanying the monks back home to their isolated mountain kingdom, the film then flashes back 2,500 years to the beginning of Buddhism and the court of Prince Siddhartha, played by Keanu Reeves. Vittorio Storaro's photography makes the rather simplistic trip in this Anglo-French co-production gloriously worthwhile.
- New York, 3 June: HarperCollins today publishes the long-awaited, expanded second edition of Ephraim Katz's Film Encyclopedia, regarded as the bible of reference books. Katz, who died aged 60 in 1992, completed the original tome in 1979.
- London, 5 June: For the first time in years, Britain's two major studios, Pinewood and Shepperton, are playing host to Hollywood features. Shooting has begun on Mary Reilly, starring Julia Roberts. Sylvester Stallone's Judge Dredd will be underway next month, and Kenneth Branagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is already in post-production at Shepperton. The favorable pound-to-dollar exchange rate has fuelled this welcome trend.
- London, 9 June: At a press conference here yesterday, it was announced that Pierce Brosnan will take over from Timothy Dalton to become the fifth 007, in the 17th James Bond movie.
 - Los Angeles, 10 June: Preview audiences have been screaming with delight at Die Hard cinematographer Jan de Bont's directorial debut, Speed, a Die-Hard-on-Wheels of wild non-stop action that should rocket Keanu Reeves from teen heart-throb to major leading man status. Butchly shorn Reeves is the L.A. cop hero scampering up, down, atop and under a city bus, booby-trapped to explode by crazed extortionist Dennis Hopper should it slow below 55 mph. Sandra Bullock's the plucky passenger who grabs the wheel. This summer's big guns will be hard-pressed to top this for entertainment value.
- New York, 27 June:
 A year ago lawyer-turned-author John Grisham, whose legal thrillers have made him a household name, signed an unprecedented $3.75 million film deal for his uncompleted novel The Chamber. Now a bestseller, it was something of a surprise to winning bidders Universal, since it is not in the same thriller mold as his previous work. The deal was made when The Firm, starring Tom Cruise, the first of the Grishams on screen, became a smash-hit. It was followed by The Pelican Brief, starring Julia Roberts, and The Client with Susan Sarandon will soon be released. Clearly Grisham is considered the goose that lays the golden egg, and studios are wooing him with offeres rumored to be in the neighborhood of $4 million for A Time to Kill, his first novel which he has been cagey about selling without script and star approval. He's at work on a new bood, The Rainmaker, due for completion in the fall when the several contenders anticipate the rights will be theirs for something like a record-setting $6 million.
- London, 20 June: Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1991), still awaiting British censor approval for video release, has re-entered the U.K.'s Top 10. Box-office receipts here are now almost triple those of the U.S.
 - New York, 8 July: Tom Hanks plays the eponymous Forrest Gump, a dim-witted but sweet-hearted innocent whose path through 30 turbulent years of American history accidentally makes him a sports star, war hero and tycoon, while remaining true to his elusive lifelong love (Robin Wright). Director Robert Zemeckis' agility with great special effects sees Gump "interact" with presidents (JFK, LBJ, Nixon), pop stars and TV celebrities in his touching and hilarious adventures. Gary Sinise plays Lt. Dan, Gump's platoon leader in Vietnam, whose legs are amputated after he's wounded in action, and Sally Field plays Forrest's mama, who'll do just about anything to assure that her boy gets a fair shake and hands out homespun aphorisms at the drop of a box of chocolates. The film is too long to sustain its dramatic thrust, but Hanks' unpatronizing, enchanting performance will enthrall.
- Hollywood, 15 July:
 Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Cameron have tried too hard to top 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day, with a reputed $100 million spent on making True Lies, the most outrageously stunt-packed, techo-gadgeted adventure yet. There are muscular thrills and good laughs in the overblown, over-long but entertaining caper of a secret agent's complicated double life, as he tries to save his marriage, with wife Jamie Lee Curtis having to put up with a lot. And Curtis and sidekick Tom Arnold turn in good performances. But making back the film's cost will be as tough as the action -- and that's the truth.
 - Los Angeles, 26 July: Disney has another clear winner as The Lion King hits $200 million after 41 days on release. The story of Simba the cub's journey to manhood and future kingship is presented against a stunning African landscape, in which fearful, funny and tender incidents unfold. A superior voicing team includes Rowan Atkinson, hilarious as Zazu the Hornbill, Whoopi Goldberg's strident Shenzy the Hyena, and, most brilliantly, Jeremy Irons as the murderous villain, Simba's uncle Scar. Elton John and Tim Rice's songs delight.
- New York, 19 August: Hollywood kingpin Michael Ovitz, chief of Creative Artists Agency (CAA), will be teaming up with three regional telephone giants to create a 'cyberstudio' for the acquisition, production and distribution of virtual reality, CD-ROM and other interactive programming. This offers a major financial opportunity for talent agencies, which are barred from feature film investment.
- Los Angeles, 28 August: Shock announcement of the year: Disney supremo Jeffrey Katzenberg has quit the studio amid acrimony.
- New York, 16 September:
 Robert Redford's Quiz Show opens nationwide today. A literate screenplay and A-grade production and cast unveil the insidious corruption at the heart of "Twenty One," the nation's favorite 50s TV show, capturing the look and atmosphere of the time. MC Jack Barry (Christopher McDonald) is the Svengali to competing "contestants," brash Jewish Herbie Stempel (John Turturro) and WASP intellectual Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes). Rob Morrow plays the legal eagle who uncovers the scam. A class act.
 - New York, 28 September: Tim Burton's Ed Wood, starring Johnny Depp in the title role, brilliantly reconstructs the sleazy side of 1950s Hollywood and is a sympathetic -- and some might say "loving" -- tribute to the director of such gems of the awful as Glen or Glenda, Bride of the Monster and Plan 9 from Outer Space. A chronicle of sad dremas and disappointments, with Martin Landau outstanding as washed-up horror star Bela Lugosi, Ed Wood's cast of has-been's and never-was's is filled out by Sarah Jessica Parker (Dolores Fuller), Patricia Arquette (Kathy O'Hara), Jeffrey Jones (Criswell), G. D. Spradlin (Rev. Lemon), Bill Murray (Bunny Breckinridge), Lisa Marie (Vampira) and George 'The Animal' Steel as Tor Johnson. Vincent D'Onofrio appears in a cameo as Orson Welles.
- Los Angeles, 6 October: Carolco Pictures, the independent studio whose blockbusters included Cliffhanger and Total Recall, faces financial disaster owing to severe liquidity problems. In July, Arnold Schwarzenegger defected with his new epic Crusade, while star Michael Douglas quit Cut-Throat Island two weeks before the commencement of shooting.
- Rome, 10 October: Michelangelo Antonioni, in poor health since a stroke in 1984, will co-direct Lies with Wim Wenders. Antonioni's first feature in 13 years, it will begin shooting in Portofino next month with a cast that includes Jeremy Irons, Fanny Ardant and Marcello Mastroianni.
- New York, 21 October:
 Woody Allen is in top form with Bullets Over Broadway, an 18-carat combined side-swipe and affectionate homage to the shenanigans of ego-obsessed theater folk. The plot charts the consequences for aspiring playwright-director John Cusack when his production is financed by a mobster as a vehicle for his talentless girlfriend Jennifer Tilly. Her minder, Chazz Palminteri, sorts out the script, while grand dame Dianne Wiest, making a comeback, causes other havoc. Bullets is rich in originality, cruelly accurate characters and humor. Allen's always brilliant casting has never been better, and his sparkling ensemble should contend heavily for Oscars®. In addition to Wiest and Tilly, Jim Broadbent, Rob Reiner, Tracy Ullman and Mary-Louise Parker give strong supporting performances.
- Amiens, 11 November: The controversial debut feature, Le Demon au feminin (The Demon in Women), from Algeria's first woman director, Hafsa Zinai Koudil, had its first public showing here last night. Made two years ago, the film's anti-fundamentalist stance has brought Koudil death threats and an attempted kidnapping.
 - New York, 16 November: New Zealand's Heavenly Creatures are set to transport American audiences into their secret world. Peter Jackson's film is fluent, imaginative and, given the subject, surprisingly humorous. It deals with the true case of two Wellington schoolgirls, Pauline (Melanie Lynskey) and Juliet (Kate Winslet), who, when their bizarre and intense friendship is put under threat, plan to murder Pauline's mother (Sarah Peirse), whom they hold responsible for their imminent separation. Shocking, compelling, engaging, and very well acted.
- Washington, DC, 27 November: The Library of Congress has announced 25 new titles for preservation in the National Film Registry, bringing to 150 the number of films being protected for their cultural and historic significance. Librarian James H. Billington also announced that next year will see a nine-city tour of selected titles from the Registry, with future plans to tour countrywide. "We will," he said, "put into practice our firmly held belief that films, once preserved, must not be forever locked away in a remote vault or made available only on video or TV screens." The new titles range widely, in time and subject, from D. W. Griffith's A Corner in Wheat (1909) to Spielberg's E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Among the other titles recently announced are Disney's Pinocchio (1940), Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Huston's The African Queen (1951), Wilder's The Apartment (1960), Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) and Abraham Zapruder's 20-second amateur footage of the 1963 Kennedy assassination.
- New York, 29 November: The National Endowment for the Arts, suffering financial cuts, is withdrawing all funds for the preservation of film. The decision affects thousands of films and millions of feet of newsreel footage.
- Toronto, 8 December: The unique talent of director Atom Egoyan has finally been rewarded with eight Genie awards (Canada's Oscar®) for Exotica, his brooding sexually charged drama.
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19 January - New York, USA, 
