OPTICAL ILLUSIONS IT REALLY WASN'T A BAD YEAR AT MOVIES - IT JUST SEEMED LIKE IT.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Appropriately enough for the start of a new millennium, the year 2000 looked like a transitional one for the movies.

New film formats and delivery systems emerged, new ways of approaching old genres were tried, and a new understanding of what the 21st-century audience looks like became apparent. Barriers were broken, long-running formulas fizzled out, and emerging techniques, like video-shot features and realistically ``invisible'' computer graphics, came closer than ever to artistic maturity.

And of course, as in any period of big change, many people were left with the impression that the movies of 2000 sucked.

This was true in some ways. It's tough to remember a year in which quite so many high-profile, highly anticipated productions so perversely managed to disappoint. ``Gladiator'' was a stirring marvel to behold - with, unfortunately, all the dramatic depth of ``Death Wish'' in togas. ``The Perfect Storm'' was a white-knuckle breathtaker with every new wave - that went completely slack whenever any of the cardboard characters opened their mouths. ``Proof of Life'' ... wasn't there supposed to be some intriguing romance here?

The list of big, beautiful-but-dumb features was unusually long this year, no question. But the feeling that 2000 was a loser at the movies is also partly a reflexive response to the shock of the new.

While the listless action formulae of ``Get Carter'' and ``The Sixth Day'' or the sub-``Patch Adams'' sentimental manipulation of ``Pay It Forward'' may represent screen strategies that have finally worn out their welcome (many years too late, if you ask me), more polarizing films may be setting the agenda, like it or not, for the next decade's cinema.

Despite naysaying cultural critics, we could well expect to see crude comedy grow even less restrained - and, to be honest about it, more imaginative - than was manifested this year in such high low-humor points as ``Scary Movie,'' ``Nutty Professor II'' and ``Me, Myself & Irene.'' With cheap video becoming an increasingly acceptable way to make features, truly daring directors will have more opportunity to explore unsettling yet exhilarating new emotional and socio-cultural territory, as was done this year with the controversial ``Time Code,'' ``Dancer in the Dark,'' ``Chuck & Buck'' and ``Bamboozled.'' And with multiculturalism now an established fact at the multiplex (once again, many years too late), prejudices of all kinds are being challenged at the movies like never before.

See? Cinema 2000 offered something to bother everybody - and, in the process, hinted at great promise for the future. And it also produced more truly fine work than many want to give it credit for. In the following, we celebrate some of that.

PERFORMER OF THE YEAR:

Laura Linney

In ``You Can Count on Me,'' the New York actress presented us with the most fleshed-out, contemporary American woman to hit the big screen in years. Perfectly convincing as a loving mother, concerned sister, adult orphan, imperfect professional, irresponsible lover, level-headed churchgoer and a marvelously protean bundle of wisdom and confusion, Linney illuminated fascinating facets of behavior with awesome adroitness and not a single stitch of strain. And in the Edith Wharton adaptation ``The House of Mirth,'' her crystalline portrayal of high-class wickedness was something of a perfect miniature - in a few sharp turns, she displayed everything it took the rest of the cast volumes of dialogue to impart about the Edwardian era's soul-crippling unfairness.

RUNNERS-UP:

It was an extra good year for actors who did exceptional work in more than one place, so much so that it would be negligent not to acknowledge the following:

Jim Carrey (``How the Grinch Stole Christmas,'' ``Me, Myself & Irene''), Billy Crudup (``Almost Famous,'' ``Jesus' Son,'' ``Waking the Dead''), Willem Dafoe (``Animal Factory,'' ``Shadow of the Vampire''), Benicio Del Toro (``Snatch,'' ``Traffic,'' ``The Way of the Gun''), Robert De Niro (``Meet the Parents,'' ``Men of Honor''), Kirsten Dunst (``Bring It On,'' ``The Virgin Suicides''), Frances McDormand (``Almost Famous,'' ``Wonder Boys'') and Joaquin Phoenix (``Gladiator,'' ``Quills,'' ``The Yards'').

CLASS OF 2000:

A bumper crop of new, or new to America, faces lit up the screen and added fresh vision behind the scenes.

Actors we'll look forward to seeing more of include Patrick Fugit (``Almost Famous''), Javier Bardem (``Before Night Falls''), Jamie Bell (``Billy Elliot''), Mike White (who also wrote ``Chuck & Buck''), Zhang Ziyi (``Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon''), Jamyang Lodro (``The Cup''), Bjork (if she ever makes another movie beside ``Dancer in the Dark''), Rob Brown (``Finding Forrester''), Michelle Rodriguez (``Girlfight''), Taylor Momsen (``How the Grinch Stole Christmas''), Mark Ruffalo (``You Can Count on Me'') and anyone from the youthful amateur cast of ``George Washington.''

Talented filmmakers arriving this year include Jasmin Dizdar (``Beautiful People''), Rod Lurie (``The Contender,'' ``Deterrance''), David Gordon Green (``George Washington''), Karyn Kusama (``Girlfight''), Valerie Breiman (``Love & Sex''), Lynn Ramsay (``Ratcatcher''), Bahman Ghobadi (``A Time for Drunken Horses''), Jon Shear (``Urbania''), Sofia Coppola (``The Virgin Suicides''), Robinson Devor (``The Woman Chaser'') and Kenneth Lonergan (``You Can Count on Me'').

And among the nondirecting writers we hope to hear from again, ``East Is East's'' Ayub Khan-Din and ``Urbania's'' Daniel Reitz head the list.

WHAT HAVE THEY DONE?:

Gone away, my choice for the greatest film actor of all time, Alec Guinness (this category heading paraphrases his pitch-perfect final line reading from ``The Bridge on the River Kwai''). And not far behind him, quality-wise, fellow stage-and-screeners John Gielgud, Walter Matthau and Jason Robards Jr. Heaven's gain, to be sure.

EXAMINING LEGENDS:

While movies always repackage storylines about heroism, revenge, terror and transcendence that have been in use since around the time the first words were spoken, the smartest movies of the 21st century inquired into why perennial folk, classical and pop-culture legends (all three in the case of ``O Brother, Where Art Thou?'') continue to engage imaginations, and what the effects of that may be.

Warnings were sounded against taking the disposable fables of comic books (``Unbreakable'') and cult films (``Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2,'' ``Dancer in the Dark,'' ``Shadow of the Vampire'') too seriously. Films as diverse as ``Crouching Tiger,'' ``Ghost Dog'' and the information-age ``Hamlet'' questioned the place of traditional honor codes in relation to the ever-changing reality of the human condition. And ``Bamboozled,'' ``Urbania'' and ``The Virgin Suicides'' showed how some of our more toxic social myths mutate like viruses in a supposedly more enlightened culture.

NEW KINDS OF MUSICALS:

While they were not all successful, films such as ``Almost Famous,'' ``Billy Elliot,'' ``Bootmen,'' ``Dancer in the Dark,'' ``Groove,'' ``High Fidelity,'' ``Love's Labours Lost'' and ``O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' tried to meld film, music and dance with more individual and collective ingenuity than at any time since the genre flamed out in the late 1960s.

TAKE THAT, BIG AGGRESSIVE WHITE MEN:

While Arnold and Sly were humiliated at the box office and even the reinvigorated Bruce Willis failed to meet expectations three out of three tries, movie girls were kicking ... well, all kinds of things, but good, this year in ``Aimee and Jaguar,'' ``Bedazzled,'' ``Bring It On,'' ``Charlie's Angels,'' ``Chocolat,'' ``The Cell,'' ``The Contender,'' ``Coyote Ugly,'' ``Crouching Tiger,'' ``Erin Brockovich,'' ``Eye of the Beholder,'' ``Girlfight,'' ``Love & Basketball,'' ``Miss Congeniality,'' ``Saving Grace,'' ``Traffic,'' ``The Whole Nine Yards'' and ``X-Men.''

Also turning the socio-aesthetics of late-20th-century Hollywood into a distant memory was the explosion of not only African-American-centered movies but of new, multiracially cast films coming to market virtually every week.

The year was also marked by a growing Asian influence, from both across the Pacific (the astounding popular success of ``Crouching Tiger,'' the rising recognition of Taiwan's ``Yi Yi'' as the year's best arthouse import, the first serious set of Korean features to hit these shores and even revitalized activity from the long-dormant Japanese cinema) and here at home (``Mission: Impossible 2,'' ``Romeo Must Die,'' ``Shanghai Noon,'' ``Charlie's Angels'').

And subtitled Spanish was commonly spoken in long stretches of such mainstream productions as ``Traffic'' and ``All the Pretty Horses.''

AND THE CINEMATIC EVENT OF 2000:

The long-delayed commercial and theatrical release of a film cycle made in 1988, Krzysztof Kieslowski's 10-part masterpiece of contemporary moral inquiry, ``The Decalogue.''

In 2000's abyss, a few dancers in the dark

So, yes, Hollywood really dropped the ball this year. But you know what? Expecting the big commercial entertainment conglomerates to even understand that cinema is an art form is an ever-snowballing mug's game. It's time we got over delusions that they will ever be able to think beyond the level of ``How can we make an X-Men movie that won't suck.''

Happily, there were wonderful, intriguing films made on the margins in 2000. Those of us lucky enough to live in Los Angeles had access to most of them. Yeah, I too would be very depressed about the state of millennial movies if I lived in a state where chain multiplex fare was all there was available to see. But, encouragingly, some of the best films of this year were made in those very areas, not to mention other parts of the world.

And they came our way. Past Hollywood! There is something to cheer about.

1. ``Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon''

2. ``Dancer in the Dark''

3. ``O Brother, Where Art Thou?''

4. ``You Can Count on Me''

5. ``George Washington''

6. ``Chicken Run''

7. ``Quills''

8. ``The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg''

9. ``Girlfight''

10. ``Bamboozled''

- Bob Strauss

CAPTION(S):

5 photos, box

Photo:

(1) ``Chicken Run''

(2) ``George Washington''

(3) ``Quills''

(4) ``You Can Count on Me''

(5) ``Dancer in the Dark''

Box: In 2000's abyss, a few dancers in the dark (see text)