It's a white-knuckler all the way, with most of that tension coming from the smallest facial expressions exchanged in uneasy silence between compatriots who knew what they were getting into, but were nevertheless unprepared for the moral and emotional fallout of their patriotic actions.

The movie elevated the basic gangster picture into what became known as the niche genre of poetic realism. And, aside from Garbo, never have key lights on a star's face caused so much swooning among fans.

It took the German restorers four years to ready this print using dupe negatives and old prints found in archives around the world. Their work speaks for itself. Each frame of this classic is drop-dead stunning, the more so now that the movie no longer hiccups its way across the screen.

Beaming back on screens for its 20th anniversary, holds up spectacularly well.

Handsome, passionate and fun. It's everything we go to the movies for.

It's a deceptively simple tale that tackles, serenely and with surprising humor, issues of gender, power, custom and change.

An insanely delicious animated feature.

"Chocolat" was just a warmup for the stunning display of the male form against National Geographic settings in her new Beau Travail.

A juicy noir stew of amorality that's the best thing since "Chinatown."

This stirring children's movie about separation anxiety is swimming with comic references only adults will catch, thus greatly expanding the potential audience.

Gloriously inventive, delightfully nutty comic treasure is unlike anything you've ever seen. It's lunatic.

Clever, buoyant and surprisingly human.

No matter which floor you're on, the huge cast is extraordinary, and Altman gives the actors free rein to bring their characters to life despite such close quarters.

This extraordinary film refracts truth through the prism of memory, until what you get is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, full of sacrifice and betrayal.

A sunny-looking movie about the darkest paranoia.

After all the observations on heartache, politics, art, commerce, passion, identity, mortality, even mental health, six hours begin to seem downright compact.

The most gorgeous movie of the year. This smashing martial-arts romance from Chinese director Zhang Yimou is stunning in other ways, too, like the eroticism that ripples just beneath the surface.

You can reexperience the humor and magic -- and the essence of Streisand -- in this William Wyler classic.

The strangely mesmerizing dance contest in "Pulp Fiction" was born of Jean-Luc Godard's 1964 New Wave classic Band of Outsiders.

Like watching an American teen-sex comedy through a glass darkly.

With its agile, clever script and winning characters, Toy Story 2 is that rare thing -- an excellent children's movie with no upper age limit.

Excellent, troubling social commentary based on a true story.

Powerfully uplifting precisely because it's so horrifying.

Inordinately clever, sprightly romantic comedy.

A gentle comic stew of monster movies, adding dashes of Bugs Bunny irreverence and British gentility.

Accomplishes two great things on what was undoubtedly a minuscule budget. It breathes life into a small story that has larger ramifications. It also shows that America, as represented by Jackson Heights, is still the promised land for people about whom movies are rarely made.

Gently unfolds into an epic, heartbreaking love story that's far greater than the sum of its parts.

Tarnation represents a breakthrough in the possibilities of the personal film as a mix of poetry and journalism. It's also harrowing as hell.