irst, the runners-up: ''Dancing at Lughnasa,'' ''Happiness,'' ''Twilight,'' ''Mrs. Dalloway,'' ''Primary Colors,'' ''American History X,'' ''High Art,'' ''Hillary and Jackie,'' ''The Spanish Prisoner,'' ''The Celebration,'' ''He Got Game,'' ''Mother and Son,'' ''Under the Skin,'' ''Monument Ave.,'' and ''Love and Death on Long Island.'' Next, a reservation: I haven't yet seen Terrence Malick's ''The Thin Red Line,'' about an American rifle company trying to turn World WarII around on Guadalcanal, and advance word is it might be a contender.
"Saving Private Ryan"
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Still, it faces an uphill battle to overtake Steven Spielberg's ''Saving Private Ryan,'' my choice for best film of 1998. Taking the war movie farther than ever before, Spielberg has never seemed a more authoritative image-maker. Working on a huge canvas with almost improvisatory flair, he created a D-Day invasion and other battle sequences that will serve as benchmarks of their kind. And his skill was deployed not in the service of thrills, but on the side of dignity and idealism - his movie enkindled a reawakening of the stories of the men who fought the war. It comes at a time when national events and the national mood badly need a reminder of what a nation can accomplish when its citizens unite in a cause with a weight of moral rightness behind it. It reassures us that it's the electorate, not politicians, that keeps the country going.
Now, to the pleasure principle. ''Shakespeare in Love'' is the year's most sparkling delight. Tom Stoppard, who wrote the script with Marc Norman, is to the last third of the century what George Bernard Shaw was to the first third - the wittiest writer and the one with thewidest-spanned worldview. Here, he burrows into the Elizabethan era to imagine the events that went into the writing of ''Romeo and Juliet.'' It's one of the best backstage comedies ever written, exhilarating us with its inventiveness and its tongue-in-cheek humor as Joseph Fiennes's smitten Shakespeare desperately hurtles through his world.
Just as exhilarating, for different reasons, was Warren Beatty's ''Bulworth.'' In one inspired stroke, it zapped the usual cant attached to political speechifying and replaced it with bracing straight talk from a California incumbent with a death wish. Beatty plays Bulworth as a man feverish with the idea of telling it like it is after years of gasbagging it through campaign after campaign. His way of cutting through the usual drivel - even if only for two hours, and only in a movie - deserves the gratitude of a nation.
''A Simple Plan'' is another surprise. Nominally a study of the corrosive effects of a bagful of dirty money, it is at heart a rueful and deeply moving story of the shifting moral ground between two brothers in a farm town. Bill Paxton has the harder role as the successful sibling who went to college and has all the advantages, but ends up being shamed by Billy Bob Thornton's slob who got left behind - the ugly-duckling brother exceeds the ''winner'' in generosity and heart. Because Thornton's role is the more vivid and sympathetic, he'll figure more prominently in the awards scene, but both performances are tremendous.
''The General'' is a gravely beautiful film (in wide-screen black and white) by John Boorman about an Irish career criminal who was an antiauthoritarian folk hero, a warm family man to a menage a trois, and also a dangerous psychopath. Brendan Gleeson, covering all the bases, is brilliant in the title role, partly because he has Jon Voight's career cop, the Dublin Ahab, chasing him so devotedly. Just as gripping is the Russian film ''Brother,'' which emits the most sizzling energies of any gangster movie this year as it tells the story of a Russian youth who finds he's a natural at crime.
''The Truman Show'' and ''Pleasantville'' refreshingly never descend to sermonizing as they examine the gulf between TV and reality. In the first, Jim Carrey has never seemed more appealingly innocent as Truman, who has no idea that his life has been fodder for an ongoing TV show, and wants to break out when he discovers the truth. In ''Pleasantville,'' Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon are '90s sibs who escape their drab life by magically inserting themselves into their favorite '50s sitcom, only to find that its cocooning boundaries start breaking down because of what they bring with them. Gary Ross's allegorical use of color is inspired. Joan Allen and William H. Macy, as '50s archetypes whose lives are shook up, are funny, touching, wistful, superb.
''A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries'' is an affecting invocation of expatriate novelist James Jones, less as artist than as father to an unconventional but loving family. Kris Kristofferson has never had a richer role, and he plays it beautifully; Leelee Sobieski is equally good as his daughter.
In ''Elizabeth,'' Cate Blanchett plays the daughter of Henry VIII, whose life was a roller-coaster ride until she emerged triumphant as the Virgin Queen. In this bold and vivid film, Shekhar Kapur presents the story of Elizabeth I as a sort of feminist ''Godfather,'' with its bloody power struggles demanding the ultimate in nimble-wittedness - a quality Blanchett's queen convinces us she possesses in spades.
''The Horse Whisperer'' is perhaps the ultimate Robert Redford film, presenting him, as ''Jeremiah Johnson'' did, as a loner in love with the great outdoors. It's a big improvement on the novel, conveying a feel for its rugged terrain and for slower, deeper rhythms of life that are the antithesis of so-called civilization. Redford is one of the few figures Hollywood would allow to get away with making a film about patience. This labor of love is a beautiful one.
Finally, ''Rushmore'' is the year's most bracingly idiosyncratic coming-of-age film, not least because it makes the best use yet of Bill Murray's ability to make us feel there's a lot going on behind his deadpan countenance.
