This will be my final movie review for wcsh6.com.  For the past three years I’ve greatly enjoyed many hours in darkened theaters and my efforts to explain to you precisely why I did or did not like what I saw there.  I think by now you probably know the kind of movies I like:  ones with good scripts, smart directing and clever casting.

So let’s gather by the electronic fireplace and look back at my favorites from the year that is now ending -- a particularly good one for movies.  Here they are in order of excellence, but all are surely worth seeing.

With its clever script, terrific cast and 1970s vibe, here’s a movie to put a spring in your step and a song in your heart (maybe by America or Steely Dan), even if it is all about corruption.

“Some of this really happened,” we are told at the start of the movie, which is loosely based on the Abscam scandal of 1978, even though the characters portrayed here are fictitious.  With his elaborate comb-over and bulging paunch, it’s hard to recognize Christian Bale as Irving Rosenfeld, a small-time New York con artist, who makes his living with a chain of dry cleaners and by selling fake or stolen art work and making empty loan payments to desperate losers at five-thou a pop.