Retro Lists! Best Films of the Year: 1996

Again, continuing my intermittent retrospective top ten lists of backdated year-by-year Best Ofs (sporadically ongoing whilst I attempt to juggle this year's London Film Festival, a few current print articles and bits and pieces elsewhere - and as a fill-in before I resume with regularly scheduled Dark Eye Socket reviews, comments and general film write-up shenanigans), here are My Ten Selections for Best Films and Acting of 1996:

01. Safe (Todd Haynes)

02. La cérémonie (Claude Chabrol)

03. Where is the Friend's Home? (Abbas Kiarostami)

04. Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch)

05. The Passion of Darkly Noon (Philip Ridley)

06. Madagascar Skin (Chris Newby)

07. Strange Days (Kathryn Bigelow)

08. 12 Monkeys (Terry Gilliam)

09. Smoke (Wayne Wang/Paul Auster)

10. Cyclo (Anh Hung Tran)

Five more in no order:

Beautiful Thing
Fargo
Le confessional
Nadja
Secrets & Lies

Male & Female Acting of the Year:

* Julianne Moore Safe
Isabelle Huppert La cérémonie
Angela Bassett Strange Days
Grace Zabriskie The Passion of Darkly Noon
Katrin Cartlidge Breaking the Waves

* Bernard Hill Madagascar Skin
Babek Ahmed Poor Where Is My Friend’s House?
Harvey Keitel Smoke
George Clooney From Dusk Till Dawn
William H. Macy Fargo

* (Although Where Is the Friend's Home? was made in 1987 it wasn't released theatrically in the UK until 1996)