A few flicks to add to your watch list

I'm no longer the movie buff I was as a child, but I'm not averse to renting DVDs from time to time. Here are a few of my latest picks:

Gran Torino: I actually saw this one at the theater with my girlfriend. She didn't want to go see it (though she didn't tell me that until afterward) but ended up loving it. This film might just be the best ever, at least dollar for dollar. It's easily the best low-budget film I've ever seen, in other words. Clint Eastwood gets credit as writer, actor, producer and director. GT was filmed in Detroit, in one of the scary neighborhoods I once took my AAU basketball team. It's a story about revenge and redemption. Check it out. (Try not to be offended by all the epithets.)

Manda Bala: This is a documentary about corruption and blowback in Brazil. Latin America has been long understand as a region of the world rife with corruption, but often Brazil is seen as the more enlightened and less austere country on the South American block. The film is a mix of corruption, violence and mind-numbing groupthink. Worst of all, it's real. Filmmakers follow a Brazilian plastic surgeon who specializes in the reconstruction of severed ears. The criminal element in Sao Paulo has made a cottage industry of kidnapping. Very often the ear of the captive is cut off and mailed to family members with the demand for money. This is a must-see film for anyone who has ever studied the politics of Latin America.

There will be Blood: I saw this film at the theater a year ago and recently watched it again on DVD. I'm still convinced that this is the film that should have won the Oscar for best picture last year, even though "No Country for Old Men" was a similarly great film. The film is a chronicle of the life of Daniel Plainview, a greedy California oil man at the turn of the 20th century. It's a film about the corrosive affects of money. It's extremely dark and certainly not a feel-good flick. It's based loosely on a book (Oil!) written by Upton Sinclair in the 1920s.

Mr. Smith goes to Washington: Jimmy Stewart stars as Mr. Smith in this 1939 film about inside the beltway Washington. It's the story of what happens to Washington D.C. in the prsence of an honest man and, perhaps more importantly, what happens to that honest man. It's arguably the most controversial film of the era. America needs another Mr. Smith in Washington.

Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains: This is a simple and effective documentary film of the life of Jimmy Carter. For much of the film, Carter is followed as he travels the country promoting his controversial book "Palestine: Peace, not Apartheid." It's a very honest look at the man and a disposition that belies his stature in the world.