Cinema

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

1 SHREK It's the donkey, dummy. He's a needy nuisance, a sweet-souled cynic, a brave coward, a bouncy optimist. In Eddie Murphy's brilliant vocal characterization, he's just the guy to lift Mike Myers' eponymous ogre out of his slough of despondency and serve as long-eared Cupid in his romance with Cameron Diaz's princess. The movie runs on his delightful spirit--and runs right past an adult's expectations for animation. We usually hope not to get too restless as we indulge the kids in their cinematic treats. But this pretty, fractured fairy tale offers us real wit--including some nice, satirical hits on the Disney tradition--while still giving the wee ones plenty of broad, silly fun.

2 BLACK HAWK DOWN This is big-time, big-budget moviemaking at its best. A hugely complex re-creation of a 1993 special forces fire fight in Somalia, it is masterfully orchestrated by director Ridley Scott. Brutal, bloody, breathless in pace, it shows us modern warfare's newest, ugliest face and finally becomes, like all great war movies, an antiwar movie--at least in the beholder's savaged eye.

3 IN THE BEDROOM A promising youth is stupidly murdered in a small New England town, and his parents (superbly played by Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek) grapple with how their silences and evasions contributed to the crime. And with how to achieve the vengeance their troubled souls require. Director Todd Field builds patiently toward a melodramatic conclusion that's as plausible as his sympathetic evisceration of middle-class life is compelling.

4 AMORES PERROS Director Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu makes the year's most exciting debut in a movie that intricately intertwines three stories about the lives of the people--and their distinctly anti-Disney dogs--involved in a car crash. Bleakly funny, his film is a deeply unsettling portrait of dangerous, beautiful Mexico City and of the human nature that shares its traits.

5 THE DEEP END It's a great twist--a woman (Tilda Swinton, right) and her blackmailer (Goran Visnjic) fall in love. She's trying to protect her son from extortion, but she can't protect herself from the soulful, vulnerable man who wants her cash. The result, co-directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, is an elegant, romantically doomy movie that rises well above its precipitating gimmick.

6 LANTANA A woman disappears after her car breaks down. A troubled cop (Anthony LaPaglia) investigates. He's soon caught up in a mystery that is less a twisting line than a series of surprisingly interlinked, steadily shrinking circles. Director Ray Lawrence and a great cast always remember that the enigmas of the human heart provide our most entrancing puzzles.

7 FAITHLESS This is Ingmar Bergman's third retelling of an autobiographical fragment about one of his failed, youthful love affairs. But this time he's added a darker layer of melodrama to his screenplay; Liv Ullmann has burnished her direction with a forgiving glow, and in Lena Endre the two have found a perfect new generation Bergman heroine--beautiful, strong and rueful.

8 WITH A FRIEND LIKE HARRY A man who claims to be an old school pal encounters a luckless writer and his fractious family on a French highway. He sets about bettering their fortunes--an activity that requires a number of capital crimes. Director Dominik Moll exceeds Hitchcock in wry and energetic perversity in this dryly delicious movie.

9 ALI Michael Mann takes a slice out of the boxing champion's life. It's the best part--when he was stripped of his title for refusing to join the Army in the Vietnam era, then won it (and our hearts) back. One of the rare biopics that lets us make up our own minds about the subject, this is a smart movie, crafty and handsomely crafted.

10 LIAM In Depression-era England, a father loses his shipyard job, drifts into native fascism and, finally, into a tragic embrace of terrorism. Meantime his adorable young son (Anthony Barrows) struggles, with no less intensity, with the issues of growing up. Director Stephen Frears resists moralizing Dad's story or sentimentalizing the son's. The result is a tough, touching, instructive portrait of an almost lost world.