Unnervingly good, Little Children is one of the rare American films about adultery that feels right--dangerous, hushed, immediate.

Borat is a rarity: a comedy whose middle name is danger, or as the Kazakhs say, kauwip-kater.

The beauty of the Turkish film Climates, a small but indelible masterpiece, is more than skin-deep. No 2006 film meant more to me. It's as sharp and lovely as the best Chekhov short stories.

The word masterpiece costs nothing to write and means less than nothing in an age when every third picture and each new Clint Eastwood project is proclaimed as such. After two viewings, however, Letters From Iwo Jima strikes me as the peak achievement in Eastwood's hallowed career.

The style is brash, and it works. Tucker and Epperlein illustrate Yunis' account of his eight-month imprisonment, much of that time spent at the notorious Abu Ghraib compound, with literal illustrations--pages seemingly torn out of a Frank Miller graphic novel.

Burnett's documentarian empathy, coupled with his easygoing skill as a dramatic essayist, result in a film that doesn't look, feel or breathe like any American work of its generation.

Arnold reminds us that the best thrillers don't settle for taking the audience away from their everyday experience; rather, they burrow inward and, by sheer power of cinematic observation, make it hard for us to look away lest we miss something--on a screen or off.

It's a very small piece, working in a deceptively casual storytelling style. But it's my favorite music film since "Stop Making Sense," and it's more emotionally satisfying than any of the Broadway-to-Hollywood adaptations made in the last 20 years.

Its sense of humor is more sly, more sophisticated and more interesting than most PG-13 or R-rated comedies at the moment. The film may be animated, and largely taken up with rats, but its pulse is gratifyingly human.

May be the best and saddest film of the year so far.

It is a wonder, marked by a sense of wondrous skepticism that has nothing to do with cynicism.

It is wonderful: a rhapsodic adaptation of a memoir, a visual marvel that wraps its subject in screen romanticism without romanticizing his affliction. It left me feeling euphoric.

Baumbach’s achievement stings. It also has the sureness of tone and direction of a Chekhov story.

Day-Lewis... the role of a lifetime.

The first great film of the year. It’s beautiful but so much more—full of subtle feeling, framed by a monstrous, eroding landscape.

The result is a mixture of unified atmosphere and lived-in character study, and while Vasiliu’s role is not as indelible as that of her co-stars, Marinca’s Otilia and Ivanov’s steely abortionist are just about perfect.

Green is a rare bird in American filmmaking: a humanist who knows how to tell a story.

It's unlike any other war film, in any language.

A gem made by a filmmaker who loves life, and knows how to capture its ebb and flow and sweet complication.

A kinetic delight, Reprise comes from director Joachim Trier, born in Denmark but raised in Oslo, Norway, and it’s a highlight of the filmgoing year so far.

While I may argue with the little guy's taste in musicals, it's remarkable to see any film, in any genre, blend honest sentiment with genuine wit and a visual landscape unlike any other.

Sensational, grandly sinister and not for the kids, The Dark Knight elevates pulp to a very high level.

This is a superb picture, sharp, open-minded, wised-up and cinematically accomplished.

The film itself is perfectly poised between artistry and audacity. It's beautiful.

Trouble the Water is so much better and truer and deeper and more illuminating than either of them ("Bowling for Columbine"/"Fahrenheit 9/11").

It works from a specific place and lets audiences relate to that place, and the people in it, like trusted intimates.

Ballast strikes me as one of the few American pictures of 2008 to say what it wants to say, visually and narratively, about a specific situation and part of the country, in a way that transcends regional specifics.

This is one of the real finds of 2008.