It was the year of Prozac, and it was the year of Tom Hanks. I wonder if these facts are in any way connected? Originally prescribed for depression, Prozac has become America’s favourite over-the-counter happiness pill, a kind of upbeat valium that doesn’t so much take the edge off things as polish them up a bit and leave them all nice and shiny. The medical profession may not have managed to come up with a cure for cancer, AIDS or even the common cold, but at least they’ve cobbled together something to stop you worrying about it.

Prozac is an antidote to life. If only Kurt Cobain had been on Prozac, instead of going around moaning “I hate myself and I want to die” before blowing what was left of his brains out with a double barrelled shotgun, he would probably be still with us, writing Gen X anthems like ‘Every Day In Every Way I’m Getting Better And Better’ and accepting royalty cheques for letting ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ be used in a deodorant commercial. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Tom Hanks is a Prozac actor. He’s the man you can’t hate – believe me, cause I tried. I met him in February, hit him with my hardest questions and laughed, despite myself, at his self-deprecatingly goofy replies, or found myself nodding along with his genuinely considerate political liberalism. Asked to define his cinematic appeal he came up with “I’m Mr Amiable, Mr Nice Boy, Mr Welcome To My Living Room, Here Are My Children, Would You Like To Stay For Dinner?” Oh, how we laughed. But I stayed for dinner.

Hanks hits the dial smack bang in the middle: he’s fairly handsome, mildly amusing, reasonably talented, he’s like a younger, taller, better looking Dudley Moore (without Pete), or a male Meg Ryan (without the sex appeal). He is inoffensive almost to the point of offensiveness. And he’s the biggest godamned star in the movies.

Who would have believed it possible? This light comic actor is now considered a bigger asset than Arnie, more bankable than Tom Cruise, more popular than Robin Williams. He is the new top gun, capable of charging $10 million just to grace a movie with his presence. He made the whole of America want to cuddle a gay man with AIDS in Philadelphia, then had them hanging on every banal utterance of a simpleton with a haircut from hell in Forrest Gump. “Laff is li-uk uh box uh chocuhlates...” Yeah, right. Only someone else ate all the nice ones.

Gump was Prozac: The Movie. No matter how much bad stuff kept happening to the blank central character, he just didn’t seem to notice. Race riots, Vietnam, Watergate, well, like Forrest says, shit happens. And then they make a shit movie about it.

Hanks will next bring his magic touch to the screen as real-life astronaut James Lovell in Apollo 13, the story of the ill-fated moonshot during which an explosion in the command module ruptured an oxygen tank and almost left the three-man crew (Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton will be trying to perk up the proceedings as Hanks’ sidekicks) stranded in deep space. It could be a claustrophobic, nail-biting nightmare, except director Ron Howard (Splash, Cocoon, Parenthood, Far And Away . . . now this guy’s gotta be on Prozac) has thrown the emphasis on family values by cutting between loveable Lovell and the wife waiting for his return.

She’s the usual all-cooking, kid-raising doormat who thinks her husband is too obsessed with his work to appreciate the finer things in life, like her meat loaf. The script is peppered with lines like “Jim, you’re missing life on earth!” and “You’ve already been to the damn moon!” and “It’s just a piece of rock. We’re alive! We’re here!” With a nagging bitch like that back home it’s no wonder Jim wanted to go to into space. We can only thank Christ Anne Archer wasn’t available for the part.

Living under constant threat of earthquakes, droughts, fires, riots, drive-by shootings and the possibility that you could run into Jim Carrey at a party, it is hardly surprising that Prozac became the drug of choice in LA. But if the regular citizens are popping those pills like there’s no tomorrow (or more like if they pop enough of them tomorrow will turn out just like today), celebrities certainly aren’t. If you compare earthquake mortalities with the statistics for movie stars involved in violent altercations with the law, Hollywood’s citizens actually stand a greater chance of being attacked by someone famous than killed in one of the cities many natural disasters. Now there’s a thought.

When celebrity golfer Jack Nicholson was cut off by another car while trying to make a right turn, the world’s richest movie star gave high speed chase, caught up with the other motorist at some traffic lights, leaped out brandishing one of his golf clubs and apparently decided to tee off on the car bonnet, smashing the astonished driver’s windscreen, and generally behaving in the kind of abusive and threatening manner he is paid millions for onscreen. Instead of being grateful for the personal performance, his audience of one called the police and Jack was arrested. He received the usual celebrity fine and community service, and no doubt put it down to good publicity.

Amateur pugilist Mickey Rourke put in forty hours community service, after a violent altercation outside his club (imaginatively titled Mickey’s Club) in Miami Beach. The judge decided Mickey should sponsor a boxing clinic and share his skills with underprivileged children (he probably ruled out an acting clinic after viewing a few of Mickey’s recent straight-to-video performances and deciding that underprivileged children could do without learning how to fake orgasms and mumble their lines). James Caan suffered the indignity of a citizen’s arrest after he pulled a gun during a drunken row with a neighbour (who promptly wrestled him to the ground, unarmed but apparently more dangerous than the screen tough guy). And, after a spat with supermodel girlfriend Kate Moss, Johnny Depp demonstrated that hanging out with rock stars was beginning to rub off on him when he was arrested for leaving his deluxe suite at a Manhattan hotel looking like Edward Scissorhands had redecorated it.

The hotel dropped the charges after Johnny coughed up $9,767 for repairs, was reconciled with Kate and was last seen playing bass on television with Shane Macgowan, proving that if money can’t buy you happiness, at least it can buy you out of jail, get you laid and put you on Top Of The Pops.

But at least these were all actors with hard man images to keep up. The real evidence that something was going seriously awry in the Hollywood psyche came when cuddly Dudley Moore, concert pianist, comedian and sex symbol for the vertically challenged was arrested after getting violent with his girlfriend. What was never made clear was where he hit her, although she was later seen limping down Sunset Boulevard with a bandage around her knee. Dudley did the honourable thing and kissed and made up on the cover of National Enquirer before promptly marrying her, thus ensuring that he could beat her up in private in future and she couldn’t testify against him.

And then there was OJ Simpson, the man they call The Juice (Orange to his friends), known throughout the USA as the greatest American Footballer who ever lived, and throughout the rest of the world as the token black guy with the afro hairdo in the Naked Gun series. And this certainly looked like a case for Frank Drebin. After the discovery of the violently mutilated bodies of his wife and a friend, prime suspect OJ led the LA police and media on a televised low-speed car chase while holding a gun to his own head and threatening to shoot. This is not something that anyone without celebrity status should be encouraged to try at home, where the police are likely to take you on your word so that they can get it all over with and bog off.

Despite a tattered alibi, the discovery of a bloody ski mask in his house, DNA tests that match his blood to blood on the scene, cuts and grazes on his face and body, a witness who saw his car outside his wife’s house at the time of the killing and another witness who saw OJ buy a hunting knife that matched the murder weapon the week before, the superstar has been telling fellow inmates that he’ll walk. And in LA, who would bet against the prospect of OJ doing his time by running a community service teaching underprivileged children how to turn their sporting skills into lucrative advertising contracts?

Michael Jackson produced his own get-out-of-jail card, and it didn’t come cheap. His multi-multi-multi-million dollar out-of-court settlement with Jordan Chandler bought the silence of the boy who had accused him of sexual abuse, and the LA police finally dropped their investigation. Instead of ordering another face and starting an anonymous new life in the suburbs as a neighbourhood weirdo, Michael headed straight back into the headlines when it was revealed that the crown prince of pop, world superstar, professional virgin, alleged child molester, self made mutant and patron saint of plastic surgeons had secretly married divorced mother of two, Lisa Marie Presley, only living progeny of the King of Rock’n’Roll.

Record executives were already drooling at the prospect of their as yet unconceived child, but the marriage fell apart quicker than Michael’s face in a heatwave. Rumours that Bubbles the chimp would be named in the divorce affidavit were dismissed as entirely malicious (actually, I just made them up). Apparently the real reason for the estrangement is that Lisa Marie’s two young children don’t like Michael. On the advice of my lawyers I’m not going to even make a joke about that. I only have three words for anyone who was dreaming about a mixed race, rock’n’funk star called Elvis Jackson: Frank Sinatra Jnr. I rest my case.

But in another Hollyweird year, the wackos who run the movie industry outdid themselves to ensure that events on screen remained stranger than anything they could conjure up in real life. The most successful films of 1994 included the adventures of a man with a talking bottom (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective), the adventures of the same man with a green face (The Mask), Die Hard on a bus (Speed), a live action version of an old TV cartoon series about a bunch of prehistoric folk and their pet dinosaurs (The Flintstones), a politically controversial cartoon about a bunch of talking jungle animals (The Lion King), Arnold Schwarzenneger as a muscle bound computer salesman in the most expensive film ever made (True Lies), a harrowing black and white recreation of the holocaust from the director of ET (Schindler’s List), an English comedy about four weddings and a funeral (er, Four Weddings And A Funeral) and anything with Tom Hanks.

Jesus. No wonder Prozac has become so popular.

FILMS OF THE YEAR

(1) BACKBEAT

Iain Softley’s debut movie is no masterpiece, but it’s an electric charge of sex and drugs and rock and roll, like the Commitments with more nudity, harder drugs and a better band. OK, so I’m a Beatles fan – but cinema rarely gets this close to the music.

(2) THREE COLOURS RED

A seductively intelligent and involving meditation on fate, marking the retirement from cinema of every sub-editor’s nightmare, Krzysztof Kieslowski. Fabulous film maker, but a bugger to spell.

(3) VIOLENT COP

The title does not say it all. Takeshi Kitano directs and stars in an elegiac tragi-thriller that slouches towards violence in long, carefully considered takes, like Dirty Harry shot by Jean Pierre Melville. I underrated this movie when I first reviewed it, but it grows on you.

(4) THE AGE OF INNOCENCE

More is always more for Martin Scorsese, who brings his kinetic camerawork to bear on the Merchant Ivory world of turn-of-the-century New York, conjuring up a tableaux of immense emotional violence without getting any blood on the carpet.

(5) IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER

A howl of political rage, with camerawork, music and cutting capturing all the drama of Daniel Day Lewis and Pete Postlewaite’s brutally moving performances. D-Day had to keep it all in for Scorsese, but let’s it all hang out for Sheridan, as a hippy framed for an IRA bombing. Bugger the begrudgers, who needs facts when you’ve got right on your side?

(6) PULP FICTION

Impossible to top for sheer verve, Tarantino’s follow up to Reservoir Dogs was the most viscerally entertaining film of the year, with wit, style and a gallery of high class performances. Substance however was another matter (unless we’re talking about substance abuse). Tarantino’s characters can’t stop talking but I’m beginning to wonder if the director has anything to say.

(7) SHORT CUTS

An old master with a cast of thousands and almost as many sub-plots attempts to conjure up a subtly interlocking vision of life as it is lived. Cerebral and involving, it nonetheless looks a little pale next to Tarantino’s similarly interweaved portmanteau.

(8) THE LAST SEDUCTION

Another sassy, smart, economic noir from John Dahl, raised head and shoulders above the pack by Linda Fiorentino’s showstopping performance as a kind of high heeled, sharp talking fem(inist) fatale.

(9) LE PARFUM D’YVONNE

Melancholic, sensual, archly witty, perfectly paced, poetic little love story from Patrice Leconte, who seems capable of distilling all the most romantic notions of France in his free form films.

(10) SCHINDLER’S LIST

I almost begrudgingly include this. I’m not sure it’s a great film, but it is an immensely ambitious attempt to capture the numbing horror of genocide, and contains some of the most moving and shocking footage ever seen. The last half hour’s a mess, but much of what proceeds it is supremely accomplished.

Special mentions to: Naked, Go Fish, Golden Balls, High Boot Benny, Dazed And Confused, Fearless, Belle Epoque, The Red Squirrel, Le Petit Prince A Dit, Philadelphia, Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould and the most enjoyable, purely commercial films of the year – Speed and Four Weddings And A Funeral

TURKEYS OF THE YEAR

Some films are obviously going to be bad (Police Academy 7, Look Who’s Talking Now, sequels in general and anything with Pauly Shore in it) but this year there were quite an astonishing number of really bad major films, and I have restricted my list to these, on the grounds that not only are they a waste of cinema space, but they are a quite awesome waste of money and talent.

(1) MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN

Or rather Francis Ford Coppola’s Kenneth Brannagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. But it is the man they call Ken who must ultimately take responsibility for this badly written, hammily acted, over-heated, mis-directed gothic monstrosity. Not unwatchable, just unpalatable. And for God’s sake put yer shirt back on, Ken!

(2) ON DEADLY GROUND

The two-fisted, two-footed, one pony-tailed, karate kicking hero of mindless American violence is apparently something of an environmentalist. In his directorial debut, Seagal delivers his usual all-action sadism with a PC message, declaring “The planet is dying!” in a two-minute end of movie speech. After sitting through On Deadly Ground you could be forgiven for thinking Steven had just kicked it to death.

(3) BAD GIRLS

Or How The West Was Domesticated. A posse of gun-slinging ex-hookers bust one of their gang out of jail, take over a ranch and hold homesteader James Le Gros hostage and what’s the first thing they do? Clean and tidy the place and cook him a good meal.

(4) STRIKING DISTANCE

Wet Bruce Willis thriller. The ad line was ‘They shouldn’t have put him in the water if they didn’t want him to make waves’. What it should have said is ‘They shouldn’t have put him in bicycle shorts if they wanted anyone to take him seriously’.

(5) THE COLOR OF NIGHT

It’s a Bruce double whammy. In one of the miscasting coups of the year, the blue-collar action-man and light comedian plays a psychiatrist in a Hitchcock-and-bull, get-yer-kit-off (no not you Bruce) erotic thriller. Ugly, bald and wrinkly . . . and that was just Bruce’s willy.

(6) GETTYSBURG

A top notch cast hide behind huge mounds of facial hair in long, historically accurate, long, minutely-detailed, long, extremely tedious, long, long and awfully long reconstruction of American Civil War battle. War sure is hell, but does it have to be boring too?

(7) CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER

Harrison Ford wears his concerned liberal expression for two-and-a-half hours of convoluted (but not very convincing) political thriller. Constitutional crisis in the White House is eventually resolved by head of CIA, Harrison, punching it out with a Colombian drug baron. Maybe we should send him to sort out Bosnia next.

(8) HEAVEN AND EARTH

Oliver Stone meant well, bless him, but he’s such a man’s man his feminine Vietnamese saga doesn’t heat up until Tommy Lee Jone’s goes psychotic on the wimpy female lead in the final reel. All Stone can manage by way of atonement for American atrocities in Vietnam is to make the place look like a chocolate box and then have some soldiers stamp on it.

(9) THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS

A Latin American epic of miscasting. Jeremy Irons plays a villain in fake tan, black moustache, protruding false teeth and wandering accent. Meryl Streep ages from teens to sixties without actually changing her appearance. Glenn Close plays a spinster who looks like Morticia Adams on a bad hair day. Winona Ryder plays a torture scene like she’s modelling for Vogue, and the only genuine Latino, Antonio Banderas, just smoulders for the camera and shows his bum a lot. It’s like a bad mini-series, without the ad breaks.

(10) WOLF

Jack Nicholson plays a book editor who is bitten by a wolf, grows some sideburns and starts running about the woods like a hairy, pot-bellied drunk who can only move in slow motion. The only film in this bottom ten to actually score in the so-bad-its-good stakes, this should have been retitled An American Werewolf in Hushpuppies and marketed as a comedy.