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MSNCB.COM
My 15 Favorite Flicks
The year’s best movies and performances
By David Ansen
NEWSWEEK

Jan. 15 issue - For all the bellyaching about what a bum movie year it was, when I looked back on the nearly 200 new movies I saw, there were close to 50 I could recommend. Not a bad percentage, all in all. Of course, alarmingly few were from Hollywood studios, but there’s a lesson in that.

GOOD THINGS AWAIT those with an adventurous moviegoing spirit. I wish I had space to describe a few of the terrific documentaries ("Paragraph 175," "Dark Days," "The Ballad of Ramblin’ Jack") and room to cram in "Jesus’ Son," "Gladiator," "Best in Show" and "Aimee and Jaguar," among other delights. But here are the 15 movies, in order of preference, that gave my bleary eyes the greatest pleasure.

1. WONDER BOYS
2. YI YI
3. ERIN BROCKOVICH
4. RATCATCHER
5. AN AFFAIR OF LOVE
6. BILLY ELLIOT
7. YOU CAN COUNT ON ME
8. TRAFFIC
9. BEFORE NIGHT FALLS
10. CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON
11. HUMAN RESOURCES
12. ALMOST FAMOUS
13. CROUPIER
14. CHICKEN RUN
15. THE HOUSE OF MIRTH There’s nothing genteel about Terence Davies’s powerful and painful adaptation of Edith Wharton’s most savage novel. It charts the fall of Lily Bart (a haunting Gillian Anderson), undone by the malice of high society and her own conflicted desires. The movie rarely raises its voice, but you can hear it scream.

THE END

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