Even though we're aware of the tragic trajectory of the singer's life, for a while it almost seems as if reality got it wrong and Curtis might just squeak past the reaper's scythe with no more than a shave and a haircut.

One of the 10 best films ever made, period.

Gilliam keeps the audience guessing, and in doing so creates a startlingly effective rumination on the nature of sanity and madness cloaked in the shroud of a sci-fi thriller.

Such gorgeous explosions, such a terrible vision, such an amazing work of art. Go. Now.

It's not necessary to be a longtime fan of the Star Trek universe to appreciate the sheer emotional punch and swagger of this rough and randy Enterprise crew.

It's thrilling and lovely and sad and explosive in all the right ways, and it needs to be seen – on the big screen, in 3-D – to be believed.

Everything fits perfectly, from titles to fin, but most of all Firth, who dons the role of George like a fine bespoke suit.

Blomkamp and his entire cast and crew have created an instant genre classic that transcends the self-limiting ghetto implied by the term "science fiction" and instead, like precursors such as Robert Wise's "The Day the Earth Stood Still," engages not only the mind but the heart as well. It's magnificent.

Zombieland is dead set against being dead serious. Its tonal pallor has more in common with a foreshortened "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" than with "28 Days" or "Weeks Later," and then, again, there's that jaw-dropping cameo. It'll kill ya.

Possibly the best argument against couples therapy ever, Antichrist is a tour-de-force trip inside the mind of a dangerously depressed man. That man is Danish filmmaker von Trier, and he has gone on record as having conceived and executed Antichrist in the wake of a deep depression.

Nothing short of horror-hound heaven.

This isn't some pomo arthouse picture looking to score points by subverting the gangster paradigm; it's a killer film about killers who idolize film but are unable or unwilling to parse the doom that always crops up come Act III.

It's enough to make you weep.

Like Mumbai, Slumdog pulses and throbs with raw, unadulterated life and the hope for a better Bombay, today. It's brilliant.

Could be summarized as a vampire tween romance, but that cheap and tawdry sum-up does zero justice to the magnificent emotional resonance of this gemlike bloodstone of a film.

This is a dream cast for both Scorsese and the viewer, and everyone is working at the peak of their craft. Nicholson's flawless performance as the increasingly unhinged crime boss is a marvel of manic, paranoid ruination.

This is Pixar's finest and most emotionally powerful film yet, and it draws on a wealth of cinematic resources that run the gamut from Chaplin's best to Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati, and even Martin and Lewis.

Be forewarned: Folman closes his film with a grisly, real-death denouement that may give you some nightmares of your own. As well it should.

Pixar's animation is simply flawless; colorful, deeply realized, and ably conveying both the chaos of the kitchen, and the sensual allure of food well prepared.

Hauntingly beautiful film.

It's a masterful film, the kind you itch to see twice or more, as elliptical as a dream and as direct as the short sharp shock of lead kissing flesh.

The Host is a freewheeling mix of high style and goofy, good-natured fear-mongering.

Much has been made about the film's "humanizing" of Hitler, but he's only human here in the most prosaic of terms.

This second incarnation of the Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt-produced animation anthology is, if anything, even better than the first.

If Victorian Manchester had been remotely like this, H.G. Wells never would have bothered to pen "The Time Machine" – he'd have just stepped outside and into the fray.

Honestly, this ultra-noir adaptation of Frank Miller's black-and-white cult comic series is a visual feast ripped straight from the original medium's blood-soaked pages.

Provides that rarest of documentary accomplishments: a glimpse into the artists' sunny, dark hearts.

Sauper's delicately horrific documentary is a short, sharp slap in the face of the developed world, and a long overdue one at that.