Best films 1996

Your Politically Incorrect, High-Cholesterol Film Guide To 1996

 Film Year 1996 began well and ended—but I’m getting ahead of my story. 

Rebecca (Ben Wheatley, 2020)

Rebounded

(WARNING: Plot of Daphne Du Maurier's / Alfred Hitchcock's / Ben Wheatley's Rebecca discussed in explicit detail!)

"How dare he?" I hear the folks hissing: "an Alfred Hitchcock classic, and an Oscar Best Picture winner!" Critics haven't been kind to Ben Wheatley's 2020 adaptation of the Daphne Du Maurier novel, and who can blame them? It's as if he'd taken a spraycan to La Giaconda and smeared her smile lime green.

Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls, 1948); Yi ge mo sheng nu ren de lai xin (Letters from an Unknown Woman, Xu Jinglei, 2004)

A pair of unknown women 

(WARNING: details of Stefan Zweig's story, on page or in the big screen, are explicitly discussed!) 

Speaking of great, what other word can you use to describe Max Ophuls' Letter from an Unknown Woman? Hollywood refused to allow Ophuls his trademark long shots but even so you recognize the Ophuls style--in shorter gasps perhaps but thrillingly alive. The characters are filmed--caught if you like--in constant flux, literally and dramatically, fully aware that their life at any moment will irrevocably transform, like moths in an oil lamp.