- New York, 5 January:
 In Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, an unknown and lethal virus has wiped out five billion people in 1996. Only 1% of the population has survived by the year 2035, and they are forced to live underground. James Cole (Bruce Willis), a convict, reluctantly volunteers to be sent back in time to 1996 to gather information about the origin of the epidemic (which he's told was spread by a mysterious "Army of the Twelve Monkeys") and locate the virus before it mutates so that scientists can study it. Unfortunately Cole is mistakenly sent to 1990, six years earlier than expected, and is arrested and locked up in a mental institution, where he meets Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe), a psychiatrist, and Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), the insane son of a famous scientist and virus expert.
 - Los Angeles, 21 January: Shine is a tearjerker by Australian filmmaker Scott Hicks, a surprising story about real-life classical pianist David Helfgott, an Australian who rose to international prominence at a very young age in the 1950s and '60s, and suffered a psychological collapse after enduring years of abuse from his father (Armin Mueller-Stahl). Hicks has three very fine actors portraying Helfgott at different stages of his life, including the adorably wry and goofy Noah Taylor, who takes up the character's teen years, and Geoffrey Rush, giving a great performance playing the musician as a schizophrenic adult. Despite the Helfgotts' compromised psychological health, Shine is hardly a depressing experience. If anything, the story is really about how long one person's life can take to make glorious sense of itself. John Gielgud, in golden form, plays Helfgott's teacher, Cecil Parkes. -- Tom Keogh, Amazon.com
- Paris, 24 January:
 Although he has been starring in some movies (Molière, 1977, and La Gloire de mon père and Le Château de ma mère, both 1989), Philippe Caubère's more of a "theatre-type" person. In 1983 he began telling his own story through twelve rather brilliant plays, all of which were between 150 and 210 minutes long and in which he was the only actor on stage, playing all the roles he had written. In 1995 he played the whole thing for the last time (in Paris) and decided to film each episode so that there would be a trace of it. Les Enfants du soleil (Children of the Sun) is the result. It's full of laughs, tears, love, hate, jealousy, incredibly funny and poignant at the same time. An absolutely brilliant trip...
- Park Cities, 28 January: Winners of the Grand Jury Prizes at this year's Sundance Film Festival were Todd Solondz's Welcome to the Dollhouse (dramatic) and Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern (documentary), which also won the Audience Award in that category. In dramatic films, the Audience Award was given to Lee David Zlotoff's The Spitfire Grill. The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award went to Stanley Tucci and Joseph Tropiano for Big Night. Cutting Loose and Girls Town also merited special attention at the Festival.
 - New York, 21 February: Two years ago, budding writer-director Wes Anderson teamed up with the Wilson brothers, Luke and Owen, for a 13-minute short comedy called Bottle Rocket. Now Columbia releases the feature film debut of all concerned in a full-length comedy-mystery of the same name. Upon his discharge from a mental hospital following a breakdown, the directionless Anthony (Luke Wilson) joins his friend Dignan (who seems far less sane than Anthony.) Dignan (Owen Wilson) has hatched a hare-brained scheme for an as-yet unspecified crime spree that somehow involves his former boss, the (supposedly) legendary Mr. Henry. With the help of their pathetic neighbor and pal Bob (Robert Musgrave, also repeating his role from the short film), Anthony and Dignan pull a job and hit the road, where Anthony finds love with motel maid Inez (Lumi Cavazos). When our boys finally hook up with Mr. Henry, the ensuing escapade turns out to be far from what anyone expected.
- Los Angeles, 3 March (AP):
 Dr. Haing S. Ngor endured unspeakable torture in life, only to suffer ignominious death in the dilapidated carport of a Chinatown slum, his blood spilling for the last time across a concrete slab stained with motor oil. His blood had spilled many times before, across the killing fields of his native Cambodia, where the Khmer Rouge tortured and maimed him, and killed the only woman he ever loved and their unborn child. He won an Academy Award for the 1984 film The Killing Fields, but he wasn't really acting in Hollywood's first look at Cambodia's rule by genocide under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.
Last Sunday about 8:45 p.m., someone pumped two .38-calibre bullets into Ngor. No one, save the killer or killers, seems to know if it was assassination or random murder. In this neighborhood, where purses are yanked off shoulders at midday and people live behind bars, few, including the police, are talking. Det. John Garcia said robbery doesn't appear to be the motive. "But I'm not going to say whether it was or it wasn't. We're still working it," Garcia said. Police questioned postal carrier Deborah Spigner on her Chinatown route, where Ngor lived in a shabby apartment behind a battered screen door and water-stained drapes. "The detective said he didn't think it was robbery. The man's pockets hadn't even been gone through," she said. Spigner wasn't surprised neighbors said they saw nothing the night of Ngor's murder. Few of them speak English, and most know only too well that death is easily delivered. But in the dense configuration of apartments on Beaudry Avenue, where any number of windows look directly onto Ngor's open carport, it would be hard not to notice two shots ringing out. "Our biggest problem is the cultural thing," Det. Garcia said. "We had to get a crash course on what's going on today in Cambodia."
Overthrown in 1979 by Vietnamese communists, the Khmer Rouge now have an estimated force of 5,000, mostly in northwestern pockets of Cambodia, where they have declared war on the government that came to power in 1994. Ngor's brother thinks they may be responsible for his death. "He often told me that Khmer Rouge people in the United States were unhappy with his activities against them," said Chan Sarun, a director of forestry at the Ministry of Agriculture in Cambodia.
Though he had an Oscar, wrote an autobiography and earned good money from film and television roles, Ngor disdained Hollywood life and spent most of his last years in Cambodia. There, he oversaw the humanitarian Haing S. Ngor Foundation and operated a small sawmill that provided jobs. He also built an elementary school. In the United States, Ngor had many Cambodian friends and relentlessly raised funds for Cambodian aid. Yet he was a very private man who never remarried and rarely spoke of any woman besides his wife, friends said. Ngor won the supporting-actor Oscar for portraying Dith Pran, a real-life Cambodian assistant to Sydney Schanberg, then a New York Times reporter covering the war that engulfed Cambodia and Vietnam.
 - New York, 8 March: Leave it to the wildly inventive Coen brothers (Joel directs, Ethan produces, they both write) to concoct a fiendishly clever kidnap caper that's simultaneously a comedy of errors, a Midwestern satire, a taut suspense thriller, and a violent tale of criminal misfortune. It all begins when a hapless car salesman (played to perfection by William H. Macy) ineptly orchestrates the kidnapping of his own wife. The plan goes horribly awry in the hands of bumbling bad guys Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare (one of them being described by a local girl as "kinda funny lookin'" and "not circumcised"), and the pregnant sheriff of Brainerd, Minnesota, (played exquisitely by Frances McDormand in performance worthy of an Oscar® nomination) is suddenly faced with a case of multiple murders. Her investigation is laced with offbeat observations about life in the rural hinterland of Minnesota and North Dakota, and Fargo embraces its local yokels with affectionate humor. At times shocking and hilarious, Fargo is utterly unique and distinctly American, bearing the unmistakable stamp of its inspired creators. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
- Los Angeles, 25 March:
 Sometimes previous awards and festivals can give a good indication of how the Academy will vote. Other times, the soothsayers come up empty. This was the case at the 68th annual Academy Awards when Mel Gibson's Braveheart was named by Academy voters as Best Picture, and Gibson won the Best Director Oscar®. The film had not collected a single best picture prize from any other awards group prior to the Academy Awards. Compounding the surprise, the historical Scot epic ended up with a bigger total of prizes than any other film of the year, five in all. So Gibson, who'd never been nominated for an acting award in his 19-year film career, went home with two statuettes, one for his direction, the other as one of the producers of Braveheart. All the acting award recipients were first-timers: Nicolas Cage, winning Best Actor for his dysfunctional alcoholic who never draws a sober breath during Leaving Las Vegas; Susan Sarandon who, after four previous Best Actress nominations, won for her performance as a real-life Louisiana nun in Dead Man Walking; Kevin Spacey, voted Best Supporting Actor for his performance as the enigmatic Verbal Kint in The Usual Suspects; and Mira Sorvino, Best Supporting Actress for Mighty Aphrodite, in which she added dimension to a "dumb blonde" part. Two documentaries about the Holocaust took the awards in their categories: One Survivor Remembers won Best Documentary Short Subject, and Anne Frank Remembered was awarded the Feature Documentary Oscar®. Christopher Reeve, whose participation in the cermonies had been kept secret, appeared in a wheelchair and, after a sustained ovation by those assembled, introduced a selection of highlights from films that dealt with social issues. He challenged current filmmakers "to do more, to take risks, to tackle the issues." Marleen Goriss' Antonia (Antonia's Line), a film from Holland in which women break out of their traditional roles, won the Best Foreign Language Film award.
 - New York, 12 April: Disney, through its Buena Vista subsidiary, releases James and the Giant Peach, a musical adventure-fantasy. Roald Dahl's modern classic for children becomes a delightful combination of live action and stop-motion animation by the team that made The Nightmare Before Christmas: director Henry Selick and producers Tim Burton and Denise Di Novi. The story concerns young James (played for real and through voice-overs by Paul Terry), who is orphaned and left in the charge of two cruel aunts (Miriam Margolyes, Joanna Lumley). Rescued by a mysterious fellow (Pete Postlethwaite), James ends up inside a giant peach, drifting over the Atlantic Ocean in the company of a gentleman grasshopper (voiced by Simon Callow), a fast-talking centipede (Richard Dreyfuss), an anxious earthworm (David Thewlis), a matronly ladybug (Jane Leeves), and a sexy spider (Susan Sarandon). The collection of actors and their creepy-crawly alter egos are a delight, especially when some of the song-and-dance numbers (tunes are written by Randy Newman) get everyone going. -- Tom Keogh, Amazon.com
- Los Angeles, 10 May: Amblin Entertainment (Steven Spielberg, executive producer, and Kathleen Kennedy, Ian Bryce and co-writer Michael Crichton, producers), Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. have combined to produce Twister, certain to become one of the summer's blockbusters. Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt head the cast in this story of TV weatherman Bill Harding (Paxton), who is trying to get his tornado-hunter wife, Jo (Hunt), to sign divorce papers so he can marry his girlfriend Melissa (Jami Gertz). But Mother Nature, in the form of a series of intense storms sweeping across Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, has other plans. Soon the three have joined the team of stormchasers as they attempt to insert "Dorothy," a revolutionary measuring device, into the very heart of several extremely violent tornados.
 - Cannes, 20 May:
 Mike Leigh's Secrets & Lies was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 49th Cannes Film Festival, held over the past two weeks, and Brenda Blethyn received the Festival's best actress award for her work in Leigh's film. Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves received the Grand Prix. Daniel Auteuil and Pascal Duquenne shared the best actor prize for their performances in Jaco van Dormael's Le Huitéme jour (The Eighth Day). The jury, headed by American producer-director Francis Ford Coppola, gave its Special Prize to Crash, David Cronenberg's latest shocker which stars James Spader and Holly Hunter as people who become obsessed and sexually aroused by car crashes.
- New York, 14 June: Bernardo Bertolucci latest film, Stealing Beauty, has received mixed critical reviews, and the movie will probably enjoy only a brief theatrical release. It does feature a young actress named Liv Tyler (who is the daughter of Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler) as a 19-year-old beauty, Lucy, who summers at a villa in Tuscany with a variety of artistic types who immediately respond to her inspirational innocence. An amateur poet who has decided it's time to lose her virginity, Lucy has come to Italy after the death of her mother, who visited this artist's refuge 20 years earlier. Several young Italian men find Lucy quite heavenly, and she's not immune to their attentions, but she'd rather spend time with a playwright (Jeremy Irons) who is dying of AIDS and therefore has something other than sex on his mind. The movie's plot is about as substantial as Tyler's character (she's sexy, all right, but hardly an intellectual muse), but Stealing Beauty creates a serene mood that could act as a balm for the soul, and Tyler and Bertolucci can share the credit for making this two-hour vacation so charmingly relaxing.
 - New York, 21 June: Lone Star complex and rich film by John Sayles stars Chris Cooper as the contemporary sheriff of a Texas border town still under the sway of his late, legendary lawman father (Matthew McConaughey, seen in flashbacks). The discovery of a skeleton and crusted-over badge -- buried some 40 years -- initiates an investigation into an old crime no one wants to talk about but which will determine for Cooper's character, once and for all, various truths about his father's life. Sayles ingeniously sets this mystery against the backdrop of a developing, multicultural community losing its economic base while haggling over a history of racism. The overall effect is of a complicated American tragedy mitigated by the possibility of personal redemption. A terrific experience. -- Tom Keogh, Amazon.com
- Los Angeles, 3 July:
 After a lengthy and expensive promotional campaign, Fox has released Roland Emmerich's Independence Day, the effects-laden story of the ultimate encounter when mysterious and powerful aliens launch an all-out invasion against the human race. The spectacle begins when massive spaceships appear in Earth's skies. But wonder turns to terror as the ships blast destructive beams of fire down on cities all over the planet. Now the world's only hope lies with a determined band of survivors -- which includes the American President (Bill Pullman), a geeky computer genius (Jeff Goldblum), a Marine fighter pilot (Will Smith) and his father (Judd Hirsch), and a washed-up crop-duster who claims he was once abducted by aliens (Randy Quaid) -- uniting for one last strike against the invaders. July 4th will either be Earth's Independence Day or the end of mankind.
 - New York, 19 July: With its hallucinatory visions of crawling dead babies and a grungy plunge into the filthiest toilet in Scotland, you might not think Trainspotting could be one of the best movies of 1996, but Danny Boyle's film about unrepentant heroin addicts in Edinburgh is all that and more. That doesn't make it everybody's cup of tea, but the film's blend of hyperkinetic humor and real-life horror is constantly fascinating, and the entire cast (led by Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle) bursts off of the screen in a supernova of outrageous energy. Adapted by John Hodge from the acclaimed novel by Irving Welsh, the film was a phenomenal hit in Englanda and Scotland. For all of its comedic vitality and invigorating filmmaking, the movie is no ode to heroin, nor is it a straight-laced cautionary tale. Trainspotting is just a very honest and well-made film about the nature of addiction, and it doesn't pull any punches when it is time to show the alternating pleasure and pain of substance abuse. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
- Los Angeles, 16 August:
 Tin Cup is a quirky love story that stars Kevin Costner as washed-up golf pro Roy "Tin Cup" McAvoy, who has the singular misfortune of falling in love with the girlfriend (Rene Russo) of his arch rival (Don Johnson). Although he is inspired to re-ignite his golf career, challenge his opponent in the U.S. Open, and win the affection of the woman of his dreams, McAvoy has just one flaw: he's a show off when he should just focus on playing the game. Reunited with his Bull Durham writer-director Ron Shelton, Costner fits into his role like a favorite pair of shoes, and costar Cheech Marin scores a memorable scene-stealing comeback as McAvoy's best buddy and caddy, Romeo Posar. Mixing his love of sports with his flair for fresh, comedic dialogue, Shelton takes this enjoyable movie down unexpected detours (although some may find it a bit too long), and his characters are delightfully unpredictable. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
 - Paris, 21 August: Release of André Techiné's Les Voleurs (Thieves), starring Catherine Deneuve and Daniel Auteuil, a powerful story about a Paris cop (Auteuil) who comes from a criminal family. When his father and brother are murdered, suspicion shifts to his lover (actress Laurence Côté), who then disappears. Auteuil's character reluctantly teams up with her lesbian girlfriend (Deneuve) both to find her and clear her name. The gripping story is told in a nonlinear series of overlapping chapters taking place before, during, and after the killing. Time bends and shifts, forcing the action to ripple through an ever-widening pool of neuroses and tragedy. The best part of the film, however, is the always-mesmerizing cold-fusion chemistry between Deneuve and Auteuil, two great actors who never wear their hearts on their sleeves. Techiné teams them for the second time, after the trio's outstanding Ma saison préférée (My Favorite Season, 1993). -- Tom Keogh, Amazon.com
- Los Angeles, 5 September:
 Irish writer-director Neil Jordan follows up his surprise 1992 hit The Crying Game with a controversial biography of IRA leader Michael Collins (Liam Neeson), one of the most important political leaders of the 20th century. The film, which premieres today, follows Collins as he matures from guerrilla leader to national hero and statesman. Jordan's take on Collins is that he was set up by Irish president Eamon De Valera (Alan Rickman), who was jealous of Collins's legendary popularity. De Valera puts Collins in the position of negotiating a peace treaty that would never satisfy the Irish hero's hard-core followers. When the IRA leader returns with a first-step compromise, De Valera undercuts Collins's popularity by refusing to support the revised treaty. And the civil war continues for decades. Michael Collins occasionally loses focus and momentum, but is the kind of exciting historical drama that deserves to be called "sweeping." It is also one of the most beautifully photographed films in years: cinematographer Chris Menges uses color and texture to set moods and accent emotions. The movie also stars Aidan Quinn, Julia Roberts, and Stephen Rea. -- Jim Emerson, Amazon.com
- Venice, 7 September: Roman Polanski headed the jury, which included Souleymane Cissé and Anjelica Huston, for this year's holding of the biennial Mostra. The Golden Lion was awarded to Neil Jordan's Michael Collins, for which Liam Neeson also won the Volpi Cup as best actor. Four-year-old Victoire Thivisol was voted best actress for her performance in Jacques Doillon's Ponette, the youngest person ever to receive that honor at the Festival. Career Golden Lions were presented to Robert Altman, Vittorio Gassman, Dustin Hoffman and Michèle Morgan.
The Grand Jury Special Prize was awarded to Brigands, chapitre VII, directed by Otar Iosseliani.
- Toronto, 14 September: This year's People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival went to Scott Hicks' Shine. Hettie MacDonald's Beautiful Thing was second, and Carroll Ballard's Fly Away Home placed third.
- New York, 20 September:
 There are times when one can tell that one is witnessing a labor of love, a film in which the story, characters and setting are so close to the hearts of the filmmakers that each frame is an ode to their commitment to the subject. So it is with Big Night from the writing-directing-producing-acting partnership of Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci. The story concerns Primo (Tony Shalhoub) and Secondo (Tucci), two brothers who have emigrated from Italy to open an Italian restaurant in 1950s New Jersey. Primo is the irascible and gifted chef, brilliant in his culinary genius, but determined not to squander his talent on making the routine dishes that customers expect. Secondo is the smooth front-man, trying to keep the restaurant financially afloat, despite few patrons other than a poor artist who pays with his paintings. Pascal (played by the scene-stealing Ian Holm), the owner of the nearby restaurant, enormously successful (despite its mediocre fare), offers a solution -- he will call his friend, the big-time jazz musician Louis Prima, and ask him to come by their restaurant after his show. Primo begins to prepare his masterpiece, a feast of a lifetime, for the brothers' big night. The film wouldn't be interesting if all went according to plan, but the interplay between the acting ensemble -- especially Shalhoub and Tucci, whose contrasting goals and personalities are bound by blood and love -- gives this film a magical quality that makes one want to stop off and eat Italian on the way home from the theater. And, in what can only be accomplished in a small, independent film, the last scene is a simple camera-in-the-corner shot that just lets the actors do their thing as the camera rolls. Also featured in this cinematic delight are Minnie Driver, Isabella Rossellini and Allison Janney as the women in the restauranteurs' lives.
- New York, 27 September: Mike Leigh's Secrets & Lies opens today. The story, every bit as believable and real as the rest of Leigh's work, centers on a woman, Cynthia Purley (Brenda Blethyn), whose mid-life crisis is further exacerbated by the appearance on the scene of the daughter she gave away at birth, the wonderfully named Hortense Cumberbatch (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) -- a young, beautiful, professional black woman who causes a few eyebrows to be raised in the family, and forces Cynthia to come to terms with her past. Alternating between high comedy, scathing one-liners (Blethyn telling daughter Claire Rushbrook she has a face like a "slapped arse" is a moment to treasure) and tear-jerking poignancy, with Timothy Spall, Rushbrook and Jean-Baptiste all offering strong support, this picture is nothing short of superb.
- Los Angeles, 4 October:
 From Scandinavia comes Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves, a drama set in a repressed, deeply religious community in the north of Scotland, where a naïve young woman named Bess McNeil (Emily Watson) meets and falls in love with Danish oil-rig worker Jan (Stellan Skarsgård). Bess and Jan are deeply in love but, when Jan returns to his rig, Bess prays to God that he returns for good. Jan does return, his neck broken in an accident aboard the rig. Because of his condition, Jan and Bess are now unable to enjoy a sexual relationship and Jan urges Bess to take another lover and tell him the details. As Bess becomes more and more deviant in her sexual behavior, the more she decides that divine instruction is leading her toward the life of a prostitute -- with disastrous but somehow beautiful results. Von Trier has made a wonderful, disturbing, entirely unexpected, and rigorous work of discovery in this film, with a formal visual design that recalls classic films by Carl Theodor Dreyer and Robert Bresson. Watson is a phenomenon, her wide-eyed wonder at the world as God's handiwork a breathtaking portrayal of conviction.
 - New York, 9 October: Jacques Perrin narrates a fascinating film by Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou, Microcosmos: Le peuple de l'herbe, a documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching. The English language version is narrated by Kristin Scott Thomas
- New York, 18 October:
 The first thing you need to know about Sleepers is that it's based on a novel by Lorenzo Carcaterra that was allegedly based on a true story. The movie repeats this bogus claim, which was attacked and determined by a wide majority to be misleading. Knowing this, Sleepers can be a problematic movie because it's too neat, too clean, too manipulative in terms of legal justice and dramatic impact to be truly convincing. And yet, with its stellar cast directed by Barry Levinson, the movie succeeds as gripping entertainment, and its tale of complex morality -- despite a dubious emphasis on homophobic revenge -- is sufficiently provocative. It's about four boys in New York's Hell's Kitchen district who are sent to reform school, where they must endure routine sexual assaults by the sadistic guards. Years after their release, the opportunity for revenge proves irresistible for two of the young men, who must then rely on the other pair of friends (Brad Pitt, Jason Patric), a loyal priest (Robert De Niro), and a shabby lawyer (Dustin Hoffman) to defend them in court. Despite the compelling ambiguities of the story, there's never any doubt about how we're supposed to feel, and the screenplay glosses over the story's most difficult moral dilemmas. And yet, Sleepers grabs your attention and pulls you into its intense story of friendship and the price of loyalty under extreme conditions. The movie's New York settings are vividly authentic, and Minnie Driver makes a strong impression as a long-time friend of the loyal group of guys. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
 - New York, 1 November: Australian Baz Luhrmann takes a shot at reinventing Shakespeare's story of star-crossed lovers as a visual pastiche inspired by MTV imagery, Hong Kong action-picture clichés, and Luhrmann's own taste for deliberate, gaudy excess. The result, William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, is explosive chaos, both in terms of bullets and visual sensibility, which some may find impossible to stick with for more than a few minutes. Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes play the leads, though not with much distinction, Harold Perrineau Jr. assays Mercutio, John Leguizamo is the fiery Tybalt, Miriam Margolies is the Nurse, while Pete Postlethwaite makes a huge impression as this movie's version of Friar Laurence. The film is successful in spots, but overall its fever-dream game plan is difficult to ride out. -- Tom Keogh, Amazon.com
- New York, 6 November:
 With The English Patient (based on Michael Ondaatje's prize-winning novel of love and loss during World War II), Saul Zaentz presents one of the most richly produced independent films of modern times. Hana, a nurse (Juliette Binoche), tends to an archaeologist (Ralph Fiennes) who has been burnt to a crisp in a plane crash. As their relationship intensifies, he flashes back to his overwhelming passion for a married woman (Kristin Scott Thomas). Meanwhile, Hana begins a new romance with a man who defuses bombs (Naveen Andrews). Willem Dafoe almost steals the show as the thumbless thief Caravaggio, and Jürgen Prochnow is outstanding in a brief part as his German interrogator. The intricately layered flashback narrative, sounding the depths of the lovers' hearts, is masterfully directed by Anthony Minghella, who wrote the screenplay.
 - New York, 6 December: Premiere of Jerry Maguire, Cameron Crowe's film about a sports agent (Tom Cruise) whose fall from grace motivates his quest for professional recovery, and the slow-dawning realization that he needs the love and respect of the single mom (Renée Zellweger in her breakthrough role) who has supported him through the worst of times. This is one of Cruise's best, most underrated performances, and in an Oscar-worthy role, Cuba Gooding Jr. plays the football star who remains Maguire's only loyal client on a hard road to redemption and personal growth. If that sounds touchy-feely, it is only because Crowe has combined sharp entertainment with a depth of character that is rarely found in mainstream comedy. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
- New York, 12 December: Univeral Pictures brought its dueling volcano race with Fox 2000 to a boil on Friday by announcing a new 7 February release date for the studio's Dante's Peak. The date switch moves the film's release up by a full month, and it leapfrogs three weeks ahead of Fox's competing project, Volcano.
- Los Angeles, 12 December: Buena Vista's 101 Dalmatians made a feast of the Turkey Day weekend, lapping up a studio-estimated $34.2 million in three days and chewing to shreds the previous Friday-Sunday Thanksgiving record of $29.1 million set by the studio's Toy Story last year.
- Los Angeles, 25 December:
 After more than a decade of false starts and several potential directors, the popular Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice musical Evita finally makes it to the big screen with Brit Alan Parker at the helm and Madonna in the coveted title role of Argentina's first lady, Eva Perón. A triumph of production design, costuming, cinematography, and epic-scale pageantry, the film follows the rise of Eva Perón to the level of supreme social and political celebrity in the 1940s. Like Madonna, Perón was a material girl (she was only 33 when she died); she was instrumental in the political success of her husband, Juan Pern (Jonathan Pryce). But Eva was also a supremely tragic figure whose life was essentially hollow at its core despite the lavish benefits of her nearly goddess-like status. The film has a similar quality -- it's visually astonishing but emotionally distant, and benefits greatly from the singing commentary of Ché (Antonio Banderas), who serves as a passionate chorus to guide us through the elaborate parade of history. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
 - Washington, DC, 31 December: James Dean remains the embodiment of cool more than forty years after his death, but if stamp sales are any indication, there is only one King in the battle for philatelic immortality. Dean's brooding mug adorning a thirty-two-cent stamp proved to be the most popular single issue of 1996, according to figures released by the U.S. Postal Service. The post office determines popularity based on the number of stamps purchased but not used, as opposed to those affixed to mail. More than 31 million James Dean stamps were collected this year, second only to a twenty-stamp set honoring the Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta. Yet the impressive numbers for the Rebel Without a Cause star earn but a bronze medal in the post office's de facto American Icon Olympics. Last year's best-seller was Marilyn Monroe at just over 46 million stamps collected. That's good enough for silver, but a far cry from the 124 million Elvis Presley stamps preserved in 1993, which pole-vault the King to the winner's platform as the reigning champ of the unlicked.
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2 February - Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, CA, 
