1996--The Year in Review

Even though I absolutely adore all of the films in my top 20 (and especially in my top five), the picture I’ve easily chosen as 1996's champ is so magnificent, I cannot even measure my love for it. Lars Von Trier's Breaking the Waves is an otherworldly dive into devotion and faith that astounds me again and again. Honestly, it contains one of the three most devastating performances in cinema history (I would put Faconetti's The Passion of Joan D'Arc and Brando's A Streetcar Named Desire in that top three). If it weren’t for the unmatchable Emily Watson, the four-year-old Victoire Thivisol, winner of the Venice Film Festival's Best Actress accolade, would have definitely gotten my choice as Best Actress for her remarkably prescient performance as Ponette (actually, the entire 1996 Best Actress roster is just completely out of hand with greatness--1996 might be the best year for female actors since the 1950s). Yet Emily Watson--in her debut feature performance--is superb as the fiercely faithful, love-starved Bess McNeill; her performance, in fact, seems beyond comprehension (it probably helped that she had rarely been in front of a camera before, even if her relationship to it seems altogether magical). Von Trier, along with his athletic photographer Robby Muller and an astute team of editors, created a film work that is truly unlike anything ever seen--it's so emotionally powerful, you feel like you've been wholly remade after seeing it (its final shot kills you with a devastating gut punch--you have to rub your eyes to take it in). Yes, I love the Coen Brothers' Fargo like everyone else does--it's definitely the best American movie of the year. And I adore Billy Bob Thornton's debut film Sling Blade nearly as much--his lead performance as Karl Childers, an insightful yet slow-minded murderer released into the real world, is easily among the most staggering actor-to-character transformations in cinema (Thornton also wrote and directed the film in an equally singular fashion--it's a shame he hasn't been able to match it; the difficulty of getting a movie made and seen has really gotten to him). 1996 was a dazzling year for independent films, so much so that nearly all of the Best Picture nominees that year hailed from indie outlets. The eventual Best Picture winner, Anthony Minghella's moving epic The English Patient (which wrongfully though predictably swept the awards), helped mint Harvey and Bob Weinstein's Miramax Films as a go-to spot for filmmakers looking to tell more challenging stories. From here on to the present day, the Weinsteins' efforts would be considered Oscar gold. 1996, as such, stands as a cinematic milestone. NOTE: These are MY choices for each category, and are only occasionally reflective of the selections made by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (aka The Oscars). When available, the nominee that actually won the Oscar will be highlighted in bold.

PICTURE: BREAKING THE WAVES (Denmark/UK, Lars Von Trier)
(2nd: Fargo (US, Joel Coen)
followed by: Sling Blade (US, Billy Bob Thornton)
Secrets and Lies (UK, Mike Leigh)
Ponette (France, Jacques Doillon)
Flirting With Disaster (US, David O. Russell)
Citizen Ruth (US, Alexander Payne)
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (US, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky)
Lone Star (US, John Sayles)
Bottle Rocket (US, Wes Anderson)
Trainspotting (UK, Danny Boyle)
Bastard Out of Carolina (US, Angelica Huston)
Trees Lounge (US, Steve Buscemi)
The English Patient (UK/US, Anthony Minghella)
Hamsun (Sweden/ Norway, Jan Troell)
Hamlet (UK, Kenneth Branagh)
Schitzopolis (US, Steven Soderburgh)
The Quiet Room (Australia/Italy/France, Rolf de Heer)
Microcosmos (France, Claude Muridsany and Marie Perennou)
The People Vs. Larry Flynt (US, Milos Forman)
La Promesse (Belgium, Jean-Luc Dardenne and Pierre Dardenne)
Freeway (US, Matthew Bright)
Hard Eight (US, Paul Thomas Anderson)
Beautiful Thing (UK, Hettie Macdonald)
When We Were Kings (US, Leon Gast)
Fly Away Home (US, Carroll Ballard)
Tesis (Spain, Alejandro Amenabar)
Box of Moonlight (US, Tom DiCillo)
The Whole Wide World (US, Dan Ireland)
Mother Night (US, Keith Gordon)
The Nutty Professor (US, Tom Shadyac)
Jude (UK, Michael Winterbottom)
Emma (US, Douglas McGrath)
The Crucible (US, Nicholas Hynter)
William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (US, Baz Luhrmann)
The Cable Guy (US, Ben Stiller)
Executive Decision (US, Stuart Baird)
Ridicule (France, Patrice Leconte)
Beavis and Butthead Do America (US, Mike Judge)
Pusher (Denmark, Nicolas Winding Refr)
Love Serenade (Australia, Shirley Barrett)
Courage Under Fire (US, Edward Zwick)
Big Night (US, Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci)
Beautiful Girls (US, Ted Demme)
Grace of My Heart (US, Allison Anders)
Saint Clara (Israel, Ari Folman and Ori Sivan)
Project Grizzly (Canada, Peter Lynch)
The Line King: The Al Hirschfeld Story (US, Susan Warms Dryfoos)
The Funeral (US, Abel Ferrara)
James and the Giant Peach (US, Henry Selick)
Swingers (US, Doug Liman)
The Rock (US, Michael Bay)
Kingpin (US, Bobby Farrelly and Peter Farrelly)
Bound (US, Larry Wachowski and Andy Wachowski)
Crash (Canada, David Cronenberg)
Brassed Off (UK, Mark Herman)
Everyone Says I Love You (US, Woody Allen)
Jerry Maguire (US, Cameron Crowe)
Kolya (Czech Republic, Jan Sverak)
Mars Attacks (US, Tim Burton)
Shine (Australia, Scott Hicks)
Michael Collins (US/UK, Neil Jordan)
Scream (US, Wes Craven)



ACTOR: Billy Bob Thornton, SLING BLADE (2nd: Owen Wilson, Bottle Rocket, followed by: Eddie Murphy, The Nutty Professor; Max Von Sydow, Hamsun; Timothy Spall, Secrets and Lies; Woody Harrelson, The People Vs. Larry Flynt; Stellan Skarsgaard, Breaking The Waves; Kenneth Branugh, Hamlet; Steve Buscemi, Trees Lounge)



ACTRESS: Emily Watson, BREAKING THE WAVES (2nd: Victoire Thivisol, Ponette, followed by: Laura Dern, Citizen Ruth; Frances McDormand, Fargo; Brenda Blethyn, Secrets and Lies; Reese Witherspoon, Freeway; Patricia Arquette, Flirting with Disaster; Kristin Scott Thomas, The English Patient; Jena Malone, Bastard Out of Carolina)



SUPPORTING ACTOR: William H. Macy, FARGO (2nd: Dwight Yoakam, Sling Blade, followed by: Edward Norton, Primal Fear; Steve Buscemi, Fargo; Robert Carlyle, Trainspotting; Noah Taylor, Shine; Cuba Gooding Jr., Jerry Maguire; Paul Scofield, The Crucible; John Ritter, Sling Blade)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Katrin Cartlidge, BREAKING THE WAVES (2nd: Courtney Love, The People Vs. Larry Flynt, followed by: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Secrets and Lies; Juliette Binoche, The English Patient; Natalie Portman, Beautiful Girls; Mary Tyler Moore, Flirting With Disaster; Debbie Reynolds, Mother; Barbara Hershey, The Portrait of a Lady; Joan Allen, The Crucible)

DIRECTOR: Lars Von Trier, BREAKING THE WAVES (2nd: Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, Fargo, followed by: Mike Leigh, Secrets and Lies; Jacques Doillon, Ponette; Billy Bob Thornton, Sling Blade; Danny Boyle, Trainspotting; David O. Russell, Flirting With Disaster; Anthony Minghella, The English Patient; John Sayles, Lone Star)



NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE FILM: PONETTE (France, Jacques Doillon) (2nd: The Quiet Room (Netherlands, Rolf de Heer), followed by: Hamsun (Germany/Norway/Sweden/Denmark, Jan Troell); La Promesse (Belgium, Jean-Luc Dardenne and Pierre Dardenne); Tesis (Spain, Alejandro Amenabar); Ridicule (France, Patrice Leconte); Saint Clara (Israel, Ari Folman and Ori Sivan); Kolya (Czech Republic, Jan Sverak))

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: PARADISE LOST: THE CHILD MURDERS AT ROBIN HOOD HILLS (US, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky) (2nd: When We Were Kings (US, Leon Gast), followed by: Microcosmos (France/Switzerland/Italy, Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perennou); Project Grizzly (Canada, Peter Lynch); The Line King: The Al Hirschfeld Story (US, Susan Warms Dryfoos))

ANIMATED FEATURE: BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD DO AMERICA (US, Mike Judge) (2nd: James and the Giant Peach (US, Henry Selick))



ANIMATED SHORT: WAT'S PIG (UK, Peter Lord) (2nd: Quest (Germany, Tyron Montgomery), followed by: Canhead (US, Timothy Hittle))



LIVE ACTION SHORT: THE WILD BUNCH: AN ALBUM IN MONTAGE (US, Paul Seydor and Nick Redman), followed by: Around the World (France, Michel Gondry); Kill The Day (Scotland, Lynne Ramsay); Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien (US, Jessica Yu) (won as Documentary Short); Commingled Containers (US, Stan Brakhage))



ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, FARGO (2nd: Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, Citizen Ruth, followed by: John Sayles, Lone Star; Mike Leigh, Secrets and Lies; Lars Von Trier and Peter Asmussen, Breaking the Waves)



ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Billy Bob Thornton, SLING BLADE (2nd: John Hodge, Trainspotting, followed by: Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson, Bottle Rocket; Anne Meredith, Bastard Out of Carolina; Anthony Minghella, The English Patient)

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Robby Muller, BREAKING THE WAVES (2nd: John Seale, The English Patient, followed by: Caleb Deschanel, Fly Away Home; Roger Deakins, Fargo; Chris Menges, Michael Collins)

ART DIRECTION: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S ROMEO + JULIET, Hamlet, Evita, The English Patient, Ridicule

COSTUME DESIGN: HAMLET, Ridicule, Emma, The English Patient, The Portrait of a Lady



FILM EDITING: BREAKING THE WAVES, Fargo, Trainspotting, Evita, The Rock 



SOUND: THE ROCK, Twister, The English Patient, The Ghost and the Darkness, Evita

SOUND EFFECTS: TWISTER, The Rock, Daylight



ORIGINAL SCORE: Carter Burwell, FARGO (2nd: Daniel Lanois, Sling Blade, followed by: Gabriel Yared, The English Patient; Rachel Portman, Emma; Howard Shore, Crash)



ADAPTED SCORE/SCORE OF A MUSICAL:  David Caddick and Andrew Lloyd Webber, EVITA (2nd: Adam Schlesinger, That Thing You Do, followed by: Dick Hyman, Everyone Says I Love You) 

 

ORIGINAL SONG: “God Give Me Strength” from GRACE OF MY HEART (Music and lyrics by Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello) (2nd: “That Thing You Do” from That Thing You Do (Music and lyrics by Adam Schlesinger), followed by: “Trees Lounge” from Trees Lounge (Music and lyrics by Hayden); "You Must Love Me" from Evita (Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, lyrics by Tim Rice); “Because You Loved Me” from Up Close and Personal (Music and lyrics by Diane Warren))

SPECIAL EFFECTS: INDEPENDENCE DAY, The Nutty Professor, Multiplicity



MAKEUP: THE NUTTY PROFESSOR, The Crucible, Evita

Film #168: Ponette

Many movies deal with children confronted with the horrors of humanity–wartime, racism, poverty, crime. Yet, in its own quiet way, Jacques Doillon’s diminutive Ponette is among the most powerful of them all, simply because it gets the details of childhood correct. It also never shirks away from the toughest images of abject grief. One should be warned: it’s pretty nigh impossible not to view this movie through a sheen of constantly falling tears. Victoire Thivisol, in the title role, was only four years old when the film was shot, and this must be regarded as a miracle. It’s tempting to read up on how Doillon actually elicited this highly emotional work from such a young soul, but to do so might spoil our impressions of Thivisol as a performer (she would take the 1996 top prize at the Venice Film Festival–as far as I know, the youngest actor to ever win any sort of major award). And this is deserved: by any measure, as her performance is unforgettable.

The film is exceedingly, wonderfully simple. With a tiny cast on her forearm, Ponette is the survivor of a car crash that took her mother’s life. As the film begins, her father (Xavier Beauvois) is comforting her in her hospital bed, and getting ready to drive her back to a boarding school. He expresses anger at his deceased wife–one senses that their relationship was on the skids anyway–while Ponette is still unable to accept that her mother is gone forever. As a parting show of love, she gives her daddy her teddy bear to keep, and he gives her his watch, which she sweetly keeps on her wrist throughout the picture. Doillon then follows this girl, with his camera wisely never lifting above her eyeline, as she struggles to come to terms with her loss.

 

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross once broke down the approach of death into five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. One can see each of these stages illustrated here in Ponette’s journey, too, never with a heavy hand and in very much the same order. Some of the film’s most fascinating scenes have her on the playground with her classmates, navigating this process. The film is filled with nominal talk of God and Jesus, and Heaven–both the adults and the kids indulge in this–and we get the sense that Ponette is alternately comforted, confused and infuriated by some of this stuff (at one point, she chides a teacher for feeding her lies). One bossy girl sends Ponette on a playground obstacle course where the ground is a lava pit of Hell, and where there are only scattered islands of safety to which to jump. Her nominal “boyfriend” Mathias listens as she expresses her mind-twisting sadness, and then he kisses her cheek, comforting her in a scene of such aching intimacy that we’re both amused and relieved when he decides to give her his most prized possession: a Batman toy. “You’re nutty, but nice,” he says. All of this dovetails in a superb scene where Mathias and Carla decide to give Ponette one final test, exiling her to a trash bin for five minutes, to replicate the feeling of death and to strengthen her bravery. Just when we think the film is being unimaginably cruel, her friends find pity for the weeping Ponette and rescue her, excitedly telling her she’s passed muster (and Doillon even finds it possible to wring some laughs from the situation).

To imagine Doillon actually writing this movie–well, it’s nearly unthinkable because he’s got the strange logic and cadence of childhood thought and speech down perfectly. There’s no way that the film was improvised–we know that’s just not an option–yet everything feels ridiculously authentic. We’re forced into realizing that this filmmaker has got a preternatural connection to the world of childhood (and, again, I can’t stress enough the intelligence he shows with his always-close-to-the ground camera, as well as his light hand with Phillippe Sarde’s gentle score). I love the scene where a group of girls are having a giggly but somehow mature nighttime talk about boys and then, later, try and hoodwink Mathias into “marriage” with Carla (“You’re like daddies,” one girl tells him. “You don’t like love,” and then another girl takes offense: “My daddy likes love”). But then we’re stunned when a playground bully produces a pretty realistic toy gun and then pushes Ponette around, blaming her for her mother’s death. This is rough going here, and unlike anything ever seen in cinema–lithe, but mean.

Still, the moments in which Thivisol, alone, commands the screen are the film’s jewels (and she’s in nearly every shot, often in extreme close-up). The pain and turmoil on her frankly adorable face are imminently palpable throughout, and her tears are a real trial for the filmgoer. This is not a movie to watch lightly. And just when Ponette’s depression gets absolutely unbearable–to the point where she discusses with Mathias her wish to die, and then later begins digging in the dirt to join her mother–Doillon provides us with a release valve for all this unrelenting sadness and tension. It’s a twist that’s totally believable, and totally welcome, and it leads Ponette to the only place she really can go–to a nook where she can learn to live again.

NOTE: this review originally appeared in 2015 as part of WONDERS IN THE DARK's genre overview called THE CINEMA OF CHILDHOOD. Check the whole lineup out here: 

Master List #30: The 101 Greatest Films About Childhood

In determining this list for the upcoming overview of The Cinema of Childhood on the estimable website Wonders in the Dark, I had to juggle a few things. First of all, how did the idea of childhood (and often the transition from such a stage into adulthood) most figure into the story. Sometimes, childhood (or, more often, the teen years) ventured too closely into maturity, and so I had to negate such titles (which made it difficult for films like West Side Story, The Last Picture Show, Dazed and Confused, and American Graffiti to make the cut, and made it impossible for the inclusion of films like Breaking Away or Ghost World, which are really films about newly minted adulthood). Sometimes I had to figure out whether a film was about a specific child performance (as in, say, Tatum O'Neal's turn in Paper Moon, which made the list, versus Justin Henry's turn in Kramer Vs. Kramer, which didn't) versus whether it had something to impart about childhood in general. I had to balance how some of these films had as much or more to say about adulthood as they did about being a kid (so, for instance, Anna Paquin's performance in The Piano didn't help Campion's film onto the list). As always on this sort of list, I was forced into determining what films reminded me of my own childhood (which is why, for instance, I really wanted to include one TV series, Freaks and Geeks, into the mix but ultimately only mentioned it in the final caveat). I really wanted to balance out the number of female-oriented films with the male ones, and the films that dealt with radically different childhoods than I had experienced (and in considering that, I had to think about those films that were more about the experience the child in question was feeling, rather than childhood itself--thus, something like Come and See is negated, because it's more about wartime). And, of course, I had to consider simply what were the best films of them all...so, with all this in mind, here are my choices:

1) The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut, 59, US)
2) To Kill A Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 62, US) 
3) Seven Up and Seven Plus Seven (Paul Almond / Michael Apted, 64-71, UK)  
5) A Little Romance (George Roy Hill, 79, US/France)
6) Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman, 83, Sweden)
7) The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 71, US) 
4) ET The Extraterrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 82, US) 
8) The Fallen Idol (Carol Reed, 48, UK) 
9) Zero for Conduct (Jean Vigo, 33, France) 
10) Ponette (Jacques Doillon, 96, France)
11) The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011, US)
12) The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 55, US)
13) Small Change (Francois Truffaut, 76, France)
14) Inside Out (Pete Docter and Ronnie Del Carmen, 2015, US)
15) Hope and Glory (John Boorman, 87, UK)
16) Lady Bird (2007, Great Gerwig, US) 
17) Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014, US) 
18) Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001, US)
19) American Graffiti (George Lucas, 73, US)
20) The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 73, Spain) 
21) Toy Story (John Lasseter, 95, US)
22) The Bad News Bears (Michael Richie, 76, US)
23) Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 55, US)
24) Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 55, India) 
25) Over The Edge (Jonathan Kaplan, 79, US)
26) Los Olvidados (Luis Bunuel, 50, Mexico)
27) A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (James Ivory, 98, US/France) 
28) The Tin Drum (Volker Schlondorff, 79, Germany)
29) Kes (Ken Loach, 69, UK)
30) Moonbird (John and Faith Hubley, 59, US)
31) The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T (Roy Rowland, 53, US)
32) Paper Moon (Peter Bogdanovich, 74, US)
33) Forbidden Games (Rene Clement, 52, France)
34) Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan, 2011, US)
35) Elephant (Gus Van Sant, 2003, US)
36) Mouchette (Robert Bresson, 67, France) 
37) Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Mel Stuart, 71, US)
38) The Long Day Closes (Terrence Davies, 92, UK) 
39) The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 61, UK)  
40) Gregory's Girl (Bill Forsyth, 81, Scotland)
41) Pollyanna (David Swift, 60, US)
42) George Washington (David Gordon Green, 2001, US)
43) West Side Story (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, 61, US)
44) Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini, 48, Italy) 
45) Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 75, Australia)
46) Pixote (Hector Babenco, 81, Brazil)
47) Splendor in the Grass (Elia Kazan, 61, US) 
48) The Black Stallion (Carroll Ballard, 79, US)
49) Sundays and Cybele (Serge Bourguignon, 62, France)
50) Au Revoir Les Enfants (Louis Malle, 87, France)
51) Let The Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008, Sweden) 
52) The Florida Project (Sean Baker, 2017, US) 
53) Little Women (Gillian Armstrong, 94, US) 
54) We Are the Best! (Lukas Moodysson, 2013, Sweden)
55) Streetwise (Martin Bell and Mary Ellen Mark, 82, US)
56) Bugsy Malone (Alan Parker, 76, UK)
57) Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 44, US)
58) To Be and To Have (Nicolas Philibert, 2002, France)
59) Oliver! (Carol Reed, 68, UK) 
60) The Diary of Anne Frank (George Stevens, 59, US)
61) A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001, US) 
62) Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 48, Italy)  
63) Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2005, Japan) 
64) King of the Hill (Steven Soderburgh, 93, US) 
65) Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg, 71, Australia) 
66) My Life as a Dog (Lasse Hallstrom, 85, Sweden) 
67) Europa Europa (Agnieszka Holland, 90, France/Poland) 
68) The Window (Ted Tetzlaff, 49, US) 
69) Invaders from Mars (William Cameron Menzies, 53, US) 
70) The Selfish Giant (Clio Barnard, 2013, UK) 
71) Shoeshine (Vittorio De Sice, 46, Italy) 
72) This is England (Shane Meadows, 2006, UK) 
73) The World of Henry Orient (George Roy Hill, 64, US) 
74) Ordinary People (Robert Redford, 80, US) 
75) Election (Alexander Payne, 99, US) 
76) The Fall (Tarsem Singh, 2008, US/France) 
77) Kikujiro (Takeshi Kitano, 99, Japan)
78) The Man in the Moon (Robert Mulligan, 91, US)
79) Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater, 93, US)
80) C'est La Vie (Diane Kurys, 90, France) 
81) Clueless (Amy Heckerling, 95, US) 
82) Marvin and Tige (Eric Weston, 83, US)
83) Rushmore (Wes Anderson, 99, US)
84) The Grand Highway (Jean-Loup Hubert, 87, France) 
85) The Other (Robert Mulligan, 72, US)
86) Lord of the Flies (Peter Brook, 63, UK)
87) Eve's Bayou (Kasi Lemmons, 97, US) 
88) Empire of the Sun (Steven Spielberg, 87, US) 
89) Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Amy Heckerling, 82, US)
90) Whistle Down the Wind (Bryan Forbes, 61, UK)  
91) The Kid with a Bike (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2011, Belgium) 
92) The Yearling (Clarence Brown, 46, US) 
93) What Maisie Knew (Scott McGehee and David Siegel, 2012, US) 
94) The Reflecting Skin (Philip Ridley, 90, Canada) 
95) Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, 2009, UK) 
96) Phantasm (Don Coscarelli, 79, US) 
97) The Red Balloon (Albert Lamorisse, 56, France)
98) Fresh (Boaz Yakin, 94, US) 
99) The Cowboys (Mark Rydell, 72, US) 
100) My Bodyguard (Tony Bill, 80, US) 
101) The Member of the Wedding (Fred Zinnemann, 52, US)

The movies I'm sad I had to leave off: 

Little Men (2016), Out of the Blue, National Velvet, Shane, Yi Yi, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Valarie and Her Week of Wonders, Somers Town, Lady Bird, Dope, God Bless the Child, Heaven Help Us, Beautiful Thing, Ratcatcher, Little Fugitive, Old Enough, After Lucia, The Miracle Worker (62), Mon Oncle, The White Balloon, Rosetta, The Piano, Careful He Might Hear You, Ghost World, Breaking Away, Freaks and Geeks (US TV series), A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Kid (21), Jeremy, Foxes, City of God, Fame, Heavenly Creatures, Come and See, Leave It to Beaver (US TV series), Pelle the Conqueror, Cooley High, Goodbye First Love, Conrack, Puberty Blues, Play, Bambi, The Parent Trap (62), Pinocchio, Kipperbang, The Iron Giant, Sixteen Candles, A Nos Amour, Peppermint Soda, Big, Vagabond, Never Let Me Go, Monsters Inc., The Ice Storm, 20th Century Women, A Little Princess, These Three, Radio Days, Shadow of a Doubt, Spellbound (2002), Mad Hot Ballroom, Dogs is Dogs, Easy A, Our Mother's House, The Grand Highway, Peter Pan (Disney), Mary Poppins, How Green Was My Valley, The Tribe, Lassie Come Home, The City of Lost Children, The Squid and the Whale, Alice in the Cities, Leon, La Petit Amour, The Little Colonel, Tex, The Outsiders, Moonlight, The Witch, Village of the Damned, A Christmas Story, Miracle on 34th Street (46), Paperhouse, The Chalk Garden, A Boy Named Charlie Brown, Tiger Bay, The Search, The Night of the Shooting Stars, David Copperfield (35), Oliver Twist (48), I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Thirteen, Smooth Talk, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Searching for Bobby Fischer, Killer of Sheep