Manohla Dargis' Hit List

Best screenplay (tie):Out of Sight, Rushmore

Worst (tie):Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line

Best performance:Nick Nolte in Affliction (also-rans: Jason Schwartzman in Rushmore, Eamonn Owens in The Butcher Boy, Joan Allen in Pleasantville, Catherine Keener in Your Friends & Neighbors, Denzel Washington in He Got Game, Bill Pullman in Zero Effect)

Worst performance:William Jefferson Clinton

Best ensemble:Happiness, Out of Sight, Rushmore, A Simple Plan

Worst:Very Bad Things

Best cinematography:The Celebration; Flowers of Shanghai; Khroustaliov, My Car!

Worst:The Horse Whisperer

Best music:The Thin Red Line, Hans Zimmer

Worst:The Prince of Egypt, Hans Zimmer

Best sex scene:Out of Sight

Worst:Very Bad Things

Best written, directed and acted film I hated:Happiness

Worst (tie):Henry Fool, Little Voice, Very Bad Things

Best film about seeing the glass as half full:There's Something About Mary

Worst:Life Is Beautiful

Best surprise:All the good studio movies

Worst fear:That given the disappointing box-office returns, the studios are going to stop making movies like Rushmore and only churn out Farrelly Brothers forgeries ad infinitum.

Best re-release:Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, with help from Rick Schmidlin, Walter Murch, Bob O'Neil, Bill Varney and Jonathan Rosenbaum)

Best unreleased American independent film:One, written and directed by Tony Barbieri

Best guilty pleasure:Enemy of the State, written by committee, directed by Tony Scott

Best retrospective:"The Films of Anthony Mann," at the American Cinematheque

Best retrospective with kinks:"The Films of Doris Wishman," at the Nuart

Best independent distributor:Milestone Films

Best bets for next year's Top Ten:Dr. Akagi, the eccentric, magnificently assured new film from Japan's grand master, Shohei Imamura, which is set to be released this year by Kino International. And The Idiots, an authentically shocking blow to the system featuring pranks, drool and hardcore fucking courtesy Danish madman Lars Von Trier. The film will be released by the hands-down smartest, bravest semi-independent movie company in the country, October Films. The brightest jewel in Universal's tarnished crown, October was forced by its parent company to dump Happiness but nonetheless survived with its integrity and reputation intact. Long may it shine.