I took a decade! to respond to your excellent post. I certainly agree with your comments about Abbas Kiarostami, who passed away this year under strange circumstances. He was one of the greats.It's strange to write in the past about him. His sophisticated engagement between past and present seems so futuristic; He was also so much ahead of mainstream culture in his mixture of the documentary and the fictive or stylized.

I finally managed to buy a dvd of ann Hui's Song of Exile. I'm very excited about watching it, as well as a Blu-ray of her highly popular film A Simple Life. I am finally going to catch up with An Hui :-)

I am also writing to hail a film I overlooked back in 1990 (This thread is for films released in 1990 after all) and again I overlooked it when I posted this list and tried to watch any important 1990 films I had missed. Adrian Lyne's JACOB'S LADDER is a must-see and maybe a great film. Part of its effectiveness is how it keeps you guessing whether to call it a psychological drama or a fairly realistic horror film. It belongs to any discussion about films that broach Vietnam and US military intervention in general. Why did I miss it? I don't gravitate to film's starring Tim Robbins. Elizabeth Pena is fantastic in the earthy, concerned girlfriend role. Pena dies to young. I loved her in La Bamba and Lone Star. She was named after the town where she was born. I am not really a fan of other movies directed by Adrian Lyne such as Flashdance and Fatal Attraction. I notice that after being idle for almost 15 years, he is scheduled to direct a "steamy thriller" again. Anyway, Jacob's Ladder is pretty good, good enough for a spot in my Top 10 Favorite movies of 1990.