2 New Good Movies + Best Movies of the 90s

This is no Chinatown but Roman Polanski has a good one in The Ghost Writer. A movie of great beauty and mystery, mixed with humor and tension. Another goodie out there now is The Art of the Steal. It is a documentary about the Barnes art collection and the battle that ensued over the years for control of this incredible collection of impressionist and post-impressionist art. There were specific instructions left by Barnes himself, but a serious conflict arose between those wanting to honor his intentions and the very powerful and wealthy who had other ideas for the people of Philadelphia and the art world.

Inasmuch as I recently posted on this blog my favorite movies of the last decade, I decided to go back and look over my annual letters in the 90s, which I sent to friends interested in our yearly Oscar pool. Here are my picks:

LA Confidential
Dead Man Walking
Leaving Las Vegas
American Beauty
Fargo
Schlinder's List
The Unforgiven
The Vanishing (Danish version, not American one)
The Sweet Hereafter
Breaking the Waves

I find it necessary to also add the following as "honorable mentions":
The Crying Game, Grace of My Heart, Holy Smoke, Thin Red Line, Last Days of Disco, Exotica, Strictly Ballroom, Mortal Thoughts and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, Her Lover.

Two extraordinary films

Don't miss Werner Herzog's My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done. My favorite movie of the year so far with a visual, verbal and musical beauty in the absurd and mundane. Flamingos. a basketball in a barren tree. The word from within. The exceptional cast includes Michael Shannon, Chloe Sevigny, Willem Defoe, Lido Kier, Brad Dourf and Grace Zabriskey. The producer is David Lynch.
The documentary, The Most Dangerous Man in America, Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, is a depiction of a profile in courage and also should not be missed. A modern day hero whose actions significantly effected the end of the Vietnam War and president Nixon.