Director : Neil Jordan
With : Annette Benning, Stephan Rea, Robert Downey Jr.

A good intelligently scary movie is a rarity in this era of mindless rejuvenated teen flicks. Gone are the days of “The Shining,” “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Carrie,” having been replaced by heavily marketed crud featuring a ton of cleavage or personally-trained muscles on some young hip TV actors trying to make the jump to the big screen into primarily mindless unscary drivel. There have, however, been a few decent horror films including “Seven,” “Mute Witness” and now “In Dreams” that deserve acknowledgment.

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Director : Wes Anderson
With : Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman

Had I seen “Rushmore” before putting together my Best of 1998 list, this film would have easily found a spot very near the top. Created by the comically gifted minds responsible for “Bottle Rocket,” their latest film has easily assumed the honor of becoming one of the greatest movies about a prep school ever made. Having attended a similar looking and feeling school myself, it was not without a decent amount of nostalgia that I watched as Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson captured the weirdness and naivete of prep school life. The show belongs to Max Fisher (played by Jason Schwartzman- son of Talia Shire and by transitivity the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola), the nerdy extracurricular President of over fifty school organizations including the fencing, backgammon, beekeeping, and kite flying clubs. Referred to as one of the worst students in the history of the school, Max is a wonderful blend of contradictions – wildly ambitious and creative yet painfully underachieving and unfocused, completely determined yet preoccupied and irrational.

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