Burnett creates an insistently poetic, devastatingly ironic world and work.

This intense film, a mix of horror, fantasy, and history that convinces on all those levels and mixes them up with dizzying brio, is a searing cinematic experience, a beautiful, terrifying vision from writer-director Guillermo del Toro.

Every performance here is wonderful, and the movie abounds in moments so true as to be cringe-worthy.

There Will Be Blood is, in fact, not a historical saga; rather, it's an absurdist, blackly comic horror film with a very idiosyncratic satanic figure at its core.

As stomach-churning a suspense exercise as the cinema has seen since the salad days of Hitchcock.

A triumphant revisiting of territory in which Scorsese is an unchallenged master -- the crime drama.

Every performer in the international cast -- Seigner, de Bankole, von Sydow (magnificent as Bauby's father), and the late Jean-Pierre Cassel to name but a few -- completely disappears into each of their roles, which I think is as much a testament to Schnabel's talents as to theirs.

The slapstick-comic set pieces involving Remy and Linguini's cooking struggles might solicit the admiration of Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati.

Lee and company handle the particulars of the tale with the requisite meticulousness and exquisite taste that marks all the director's films.

While avoiding specious bromides about universality, Persepolis insists on communicating with its audience, and insists that communication and empathy are the keys to our survival.

A remarkably appealing success story full of heart and humor and poignancy, with Swank as winning as she’s ever been.

A phantasmagorical slab of epic entertainment that satisfies on every conceivable level.

A compelling, rousing and at times strangely moving entertainment.

The plot is pretty convoluted, but Miyazaki has a very good handle on it and lavishes his customary heart, humor, and inventiveness on every situation he depicts.

I'm glad that 2046 is different from "Mood" even while being strangely of a piece with it. Like "Mood," it’s a movie of utter wonder and ravishment. But the key here is different.

Herzog not only tells an incredible story but implies a dark metaphysic of the natural world that makes this film unsettlingly larger than its human subject.

A superb effort by a first-rank director, and manna from heaven for Cheung fans.

It's a rare film that can be convincingly tender, bitterly funny, and ruthlessly cutting over the course of fewer than 90 minutes. The Squid and the Whale not only manages this, it also contains moments that sock you with all three qualities at the same time.

This is more than just the best animated comedy of the year--it's the best comedy of the year, period.

Playful, poetic, shocking, saddening, and ultimately gratifyingly and honestly big-hearted.

This lengthy, nuance-filled story about how eye-for-an-eye stuff differs from theory to practice is one of the most considered, thoughtful, and involving movies of its kind.

For all its seeming simplicity, this is an emotionally and intellectually complex film that holds the viewer in a grip as tight as any classic thriller you can name.

Composed of relatively few events and scenes, it's often excruciatingly tense and never less than heartbreakingly human. And as much as I admire "Munich," Shadows leaves Spielberg's film in the dust in the moral-ambiguity department. Never before seen in the States, it's already on my year's ten-best list. (April 2006 Premiere)

The most impressive thing about the film's technical wizardry is, finally, how unimpressive it is. One doesn't leave the movie with a mind blown by visual bedazzlement but with a soul shattered by the profound sense of tragedy Linklater and company so beautifully put across.

As it happens, each one of these tales is also a love story, and The Fountain is Aronofsky’s profession of faith concerning love’s place in the idea of eternity. It’s a movie that’s as deeply felt as it is imagined.

Black Book is Verhoeven's best film since "RoboCop": audacious, smart, shamelessly entertaining.

It's the stuff of not quite dreams, and it's rendered with such accuracy and hilarity that I am tempted to call Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters the most successful full-on surrealist film since Bunuel and Dali's 1930 "L'Age d'Or."

One of Cronenberg's subtlest, most insinuating pictures, and one of the highlights of the year so far.