On Screen In '93: Behemoths & Bombs Dinosaurs Roamed And Arnold Schwarzenegger Flopped; Gender Was Bent And Heroes' Emotions Were Repressed. But, Most Important For Hollywood, It Was A Money-making Year.

Dennis the Menace II Society, Rising Son-in-Law, The Remains of the Dazed and Confused . . .

It's all beginning to blur: More than 250 movies later, 1993 has finally decided to call it quits. The Oscar campaigns are underway, the 10-best lists have been tallied, the moguls have jetted to Aspen and Maui for the holidays. And we're left here sifting through the rubble, trying to remember which Anthony Hopkins-Emma Thompson tale of repressed Brits came out this year (The Remains of the Day); which cross-sexual Asian art-house pic we really liked (Farewell My Concubine?, The Wedding Banquet?, M. Butterfly? - definitely not M. Butterfly), and what the name of that bittersweet period-piece about a sensitive boy's search for a father figure was? (King of the Hill, This Boy's Life, Jack the Bear, The Man Without a Face - hey, try all of the above).

In truth, despite more than a few parallel story lines and a bunch of ubiquitous thespians (Jeff Bridges, Emma Thompson, Tommy Lee Jones, Andie MacDowell, Robert De Niro, Liam Neeson and Denzel Washington with three pictures apiece), it hasn't been that difficult keeping the performances and the pictures straight. Indeed, it's been a pretty good year for the movies - and the movie business. (Until box-office receipts leveled off around Thanksgiving, industry money-watchers were predicting a record-setting $5.3 billion year, but, even in the face of late-season doldrums, the studios are going to come away with nice, tidy sums, thank you very much.)

Steven Spielberg scored commercially and artistically, serving up the top moneymaker of all time in his dino-spectacle Jurassic Park ($860 million worldwide), and delivering one of the decade's most lauded art films, the three-hour-plus, black-and-white Holocaust drama, Schindler's List. And never mind all that hooey about another Spielberg snub at the Academy Awards. He'll get his best director nomination - and he'll probably get the statuette, too. After all, Schindler's first name is Oskar.