1. STAR TREK : GENERATIONS (David Carson, USA 1994) 8/10
This isn't the best directed, best acted or best scripted film of the year, but it's nevertheless the one I'd recommend above all others to anyobody who asked. The seventh in the uneven Star Trek series, it's where the old generation - Captain Kirk - meets and hands on the baton to the new - Captain Picard. It's a tremendously thrilling, involving spectacle that doesn't sacrifice plot or character development to special effects - although the latter are phenomenal. It borrows heavily from an unexpected source - Tarkovsky's Russian classic Solaris - but if you're going to steal, you might as well steal from the best.

2. QUIZ SHOW (Robert Redford, USA 1994) 8/10
A poised, elegant, sharply witty dramatisation of a very unpromising premise - behind-the-scenes corruption on a 1950s American TV quiz show. Ralph Fiennes gives the performance of his career as a suave Ivy League literature professor who becomes a national celebrity on the show, but at the price of his principles. Best feature: the razor-edge script by Paul Attanasion, also responsible for this year's over-hyped but underrated Disclosure.

3. THE USUAL SUSPECTS (Bryan Singer, USA 1995) 8/10
Trailed as the new Reservoir Dogs, this is an altogether darker and more complex beast than anything Tarantino has produced. It's apparently the tale of a bungled heist involving a band of low-lifes brought together for an identity parade, and how they end up getting entangled with a mysterious Turkish arch-villain. "Apparently" is the key word, because by the end the viewer is left completely disorientated and unsure whether what's been shown on the screen is anything but a tantalising, meaningless joke. Kevin Spacey gives the year's outstanding screen performance as the hangdog chatterbox "Verbal" Kint, and Oscar recognition must be on its way.

4. SHALLOW GRAVE (Danny Boyle, GB 1994) 8/10
The best British film of 1995 was one of the first to be released, back in early January. It's the startlingly confident debut from TV-director Boyle, telling the story of three smug Scottish flatsharers who take in a fourth tenant, enigmatic Keith Allen, only to have him die in mysterious circumstances leaving a suitcase full of cash in his room. What enfolds [sic] is a dazzling, dizzying compendium of cinematic references and trickery (the Coens' Blood Simple is an obvious source), given vibrancy and substance by the assured teams in front of and behind the camera.

5. SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION (Fred Schepisi, USA 1993) 8/10
Its British release was much delayed, but Six Degrees proved well worth waiting for when it arrived. Adapted from a hit play, it features a knockout turn from Stockard Channing - still best known for playing Rizzo in Grease back in the 70s - as a snooty Manhattan art dealer's wife (the sublime Donald Sutherland is the husband) who is taken in by smooth-talking young con-man Will Smith. He claims to be the son of Sidney Poitier, and eases his way into the pair's confidence. Schepisi is his characteristically inventive self, and the film is, by turns, hilarious, compelling and moving. An intellectual roller-coaster ride.

6. BARCELONA (Whit Stillman, USA 1994) 8/10
Whit Stillman isn't as well known over here as he should be. He made a splash a couple of years back with his debut Metropolitan, a no-budget drift through the empty lives [sic] of the Manhattan yuppie, and Barcelona is of a similar high calibre. It's exactly the same as its predecessor - the type of people, the actors used, the directorial style (subdued), the talky script - but that's no bad thing. Stillman may never make a blood-soaked shoot-em-up, but nobody's ever held that against Woody Allen.

7. CLERKS (Kevin Smith, USA 1994) 8/10
One of the year's cheapest, cheekiest, funniest films. It's one amazing day in the tedious life of a smalltown shop worker, featuring sex, death, hockey and just about everything else. The shoestring genre is well-established in the States and Clerks shows it continues to produce the most focused, original work around.

8. JUDGE DREDD (Danny Cannon, USA/GB 1995) 7/10
This could have been so bad, but Cannon - responsible for the dreadful Young Americans a couple of years back - gets it just right. Stallone makes a passable Dredd, but gets brilliant back up from a supporting cast including Diane Lane and the venerable Max Von Sydow. It looks great, the script is funny and tight and - unlike the summer's other sci-fi blockbuster Batman Forever - it actually has a story that makes sense.

9. BULLETS OVER BROADWAY (Woody Allen, USA 1994) 7/10
Some way off his great pictures (Annie Hall, Manhattan, Stardust Memories) but nevertheless head and shoulders above most products of the Hollywood film factory, this is partly a gangster movie, partly a back-stage comedy, in which the airheaded girlfriend of a gangland bigwig finds herself the star of a new, highbrow drama. Problems develop when her minder - Chazz Palmintieri - reckons the script isn't up to scratch, and turns out to be a better scribe than the real playwright. A delight.

10. WINGS OF HONNEAMISE (Oritsu uchugun Oneamisu no tsubasa, Hiroyuki Yamaga, Japan 1997) 7?/10
The Manga cycle came of age with Honneamise, available on video and shown in a couple of repertory cinemas around the country in 1995. It tells the story of a space race on a far-off planet, and features a level of ingenuity and wit seldom to be found in live-action pictures. And, of course, the animation is out of this world.


Neil Young
December 1995

[written for the January 1996 edition of Double Entry magazine, and including films released in the UK during 1995]