Jonze has filmed a fantasy as if it were absolutely real, allowing us to see the world as Max sees it, full of beauty and terror. The brilliant songs, by Karen O (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and the Kids, enhance the film's power.

Del Toro never coddles the audience. He means us to leave Pan's Labyrinth shaken to our souls. He succeeds.

Up is a breathtaking ride into the realm of pure imagination.

Pure movie bliss.

In terms of excitement, imagination and rule-busting experimentation, it's a gusher.

Joel and Ethan Coen's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel is an indisputably great movie, at this point the year's very best.

A new American crime classic from the legendary Martin Scorsese, whose talent shines here on its highest beams.

You leave WALL-E with a feeling of the rarest kind: that you've just enjoyed a close encounter with an enduring classic.

Ang Lee's unmissable and unforgettable Brokeback Mountain hits you like a shot in the heart. It's a landmark film and a triumph for Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Eastwood's direction here is a thing of beauty, blending the ferocity of the classic films of Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai) with the delicacy and unblinking gaze of Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story).

An absolute stunner of a movie.

In the year's richest, most complex and ultimately most heartbreaking film, Inarritu invites us to get past the babble of modern civilization and start listening to each other.

Far from being exploitive, the effect is inspiring: This is the best of us.

Nothing in Joe Wright's screen version of Ian McEwan's dense, internalized 2001 novel of secrets and lies should really work, but damn near everything does. It's some kind of miracle. Written, directed and acted to perfection, Atonement sweeps you up on waves of humor, heartbreak and ravishing romance.

Other films this year will have to sweat bullets to match the explosive power and subversive wit of David Cronenberg's A History of Violence. It slams you like a body punch and then starts messing with your head.

Takes off with the lightning speed of a thriller, the gonzo force of frontline journalism and the emotional wallop of a drama that puts a human face on shocking statistics.

Here is the jaw-dropping, eye-popping, heart-stopping movie epic we've been waiting for all year.

From the first sight of German soldiers goose-stepping past the Arc de Triomphe to a postscript that spells out the fate of characters whose moral confusion is all too real, Army of Shadows is a movie of its time -- and ours.

You won't know what outrageous fun is until you see Borat. High-five!

Volver is Almodovar's passionate tribute to the community of women -- living and dead -- who nurtured him. Through the transformative power of his art -- carried on the wings of Alberto Iglesias' exhilarating score -- we feel their presence. You do not want to miss this one.

It's a total triumph, brimming with humor, heart, sexual heat, political provocation and a crying need to stir things up, just like Harvey did. If there's a better movie around this year, with more bristling purpose, I sure as hell haven't seen it.

A new crime classic.

In uniting to honor Arenas, Bardem and Schnabel create something extraordinary.

This stuff is golden. Directors Brett Morgan and Nanette Burstein make sure the movie goes down like potato chips. It's great fun and compulsively watchable. And don't leave before Dustin Hoffman makes a hilarious appearance as the credits roll.

Some movies are too good to miss. Judy Berlin is one of them...It works like magic.

Logue hits every note of humor and heart in his breakthrough role. Don't miss him. He's that good.

The House of Mirth is not one of those teacup and doily movies; it's harsh and disturbing. Davies does superlatively right by Wharton. There's blood on the walls.

Rea and Davidson are incomparably good in an exceptional film that is by turns darkly funny and deeply affecting. Though Jordan's control sometimes falters, it's a small price to pay for his daring.

The last days of guilt-free glitz had consequences for more than two white chicks and their boyfriends, and Stillman shows how with delicious malice and unexpected compassion.

What makes it such a mesmerizing, wickedly witty entertainment is the revealing portrait it paints of an era in which everyone is presumed guilty where greed is concerned... It's an often chilly movie, but the chill cuts to the bone.

A ravishing, romantic lark brimming over with style, intelligence and flashing wit.

Nothing the Hughes brothers have done in their videos for Tone Loc, Tupac Shakur and others prepares you for the controlled intensity and maturity they bring to their stunning feature debut.

Beach and Adams give remarkable performances that grow in feeling and intensity.

A sharply observant and witty film that plumbs unexpected depths of feeling.

As ever, Freeman delivers miracles; he's as good as it gets.

Duvall is a blazing wonder in a film that ranks with the year's best.

One of the year's best and most provocative films.

One terrific movie... Pacino and Depp are a match made in acting heaven, riffing off each other with astonishing subtlety and wit.

That the performances are uniformly outstanding is a tribute to Rob Reiner, who directs with masterly assurance, fusing suspense and character to create a movie that literally vibrates with energy.

Stupendously exciting and emotionally engulfing... With probing intelligence and passionate feeling, Cameron has raised the adventure film very close to the level of art.

Gilliam, along with the gifted cinematographer Roger Pratt and production designer Jeffrey Beecroft, fashions a disturbing and dazzling lost world.

Taut, tense and enthralling, as smart and surprising as it protagonist.

It's taut, tense and terrific.

A movie of prodigious power and feeling that is also high-spirited, hilarious and scorchingly erotic.

To Die For, sparked by a volcanically sexy and richly comic performance by Kidman that deserves to make her an Oscar favorite, is prime social satire and outrageous fun.

Sensational, sicko fun -- you won't believe your eyes -- and just the thing to shake up the creeping conservatism that is draining the vulgar life out of pop culture.

Savor their technique and the sizzling performances of Frances McDormand as an adulterous wife, Dan Hedaya as her vengeful husband and M. Emmet Walsh as a private detective from hell.

In this risky, riveting film, our most prolific and provocative moviemaker uses his wit to touch a nerve. Crimes and Misdemeansors is so funny it hurts.

Anderson orchestrates a comic romance like no other. The effect is intoxicating. Sandler and the movie will knock you for a loop.

Paradis sizzles in a star-making role that gleams like one of Gabor's blades. She's a spellbinder.

With it's dynamite performances, strafing wit and dramatic provocation, The Insider offers Mann at his best -- blood up, unsanitized and unbowed.

Like the music, the film is outspoken, roaringly funny, defiantly sexual and relentlessly in your face. I couldn't have liked it more.

This is the untamed Apocalypse that Coppola envisioned in 1979 before money and mental pressures made him fear he had created something too long, too weird and too morally demanding for the masses.

Recoing gives a performance that won't soon be forgotten. Neither will Time Out. It's a great movie.

Clooney brings raw intensity to his role; his scenes with McElhone are rooted in a fierce romantic yearning.

A landmark musical tribute.

The pleasure of this unique film comes in watching superb actors dine on Mamet's pungent language like the feast it is.

Cuaron's hot-blooded, haunting and wildly erotic film revels in the pleasures of the flesh without losing touch with thought and feeling.

Michael Gerbosi's script might have reduced Crane to a clueless cliche were it not for the bruised humanity that Greg Kinnear brings to the role. Kinnear is dynamite.

You may want to revisit this profanely hilarious Hollywood satire. . .just to catch the zingers the audience often drowns out with laughter. Hollywood corrupts absolutely, and Mamet turns the toxic process into the year's best and smartest comedy.

The performances are uncommonly fine...Lone Star isn't built to ride trends. It's built to last.

There may be bigger, costlier, weighter films this year. There's none lovelier.

This emotional climax of the film, with its warring glints of despair and hope, typifies the stunning achievement of The Ice Storm and confirms Lee as a director of the first rank.

What can I tell you? It works. Private Parts is a comic firecracker with a surprising human touch.

Gosford Park abounds in scenes to savor. It's a feast, and one of Altman's best.

Director Richard Eyre has struck gold. Twice. Dench and Winslet are a riveting matchup.

It's a wild, whacked-out wonder. Coenheads rejoice.

It is also Nicholson at his bravest and riskiest. By banking his fires and staying alert to the smallest details, he delivers a monumental performance that blasts your expectations and batters your heart.

A triumph of acting, writing and directing that defies glib description...the kind of artful defiance that Hollywood is usually too timid to deliver: a jolting comedy that makes you laugh till it hurts.

You'll thrill to the action, savor the tasty dialogue and laugh like bloody hell.

Has the juice to get its hooks into you, knock you off balance and keep you that way for two hours. It's a triumph for director Sam Mendes. The passion and precision of his Road work is staggering.

Scorches the screen with a badass bravado all its own. Smart, sexy, funny and dangerous this high-wire act is a movie and a half.

It's the Pixar animators who keep grown-ups as riveted as the kids with visual marvels that dazzle and delight.

The actors are outstanding, illuminating four different views of loneliness. But it's Camara's tour-de-force performance that anchors the film, that shocks and unnerves us.

Screenwriting this smart, inventive, passionate and rip-roaringly funny is a rare species. It's magic.

It's a mesmerizing spectacle.

If you haven't already sold your soul to rock & roll, Almost Famous should seal the deal.

Unique and unforgettable.

This volcanically funny and seriously scary look at America's obsession with guns is meant to shake us up good. And it does.

Ang Lee, a world-class director working at the top of his elegant form, has done something thrilling. For all the leaping action, it's the film's spirit that soars.

A hugely entertaining blend of music, fun and eye-popping thrills, though it doesn't lack for heart.

Linklater is a sly and formidable talent, bringing an anthropologist's eye to this spectacularly funny celebration of the rites of stupidity. His shitfaced "American Graffiti" is the ultimate party movie -- loud, crude, socially irresponsible and totally irresistible.

Pulls you in, challenges your prejudices, rocks your world and leaves you laughing in the face of an abyss. It's alive, all right. It's also an uncompromising American classic.

Miyazaki is the Pied Piper -- see Spirited Away and you'll follow him anywhere.

Clint Eastwood pours everything he knows about directing into Mystic River. His film sneaks up, messes with your head and then floors you. You can't shake it. It's that haunting, that hypnotic.

The superbly crafted suspense thriller…slams you like a sudden blast of bone-chilling, pulse-pounding terror.

Starting with the outrageous and building from there, he ignites a slight love-on-the-run novel, creating a bonfire of a movie that confirms his reputation as the most exciting and innovative filmmaker of his generation.

A fiercely poetic study of violence. Stunningly shot in black-and-white. [14 Dec 1989, p.23]

Gangs of New York is something better than perfect: It's thrillingly alive.

Stimulating entertainment, as rigorously challenging and painfully funny as anything the Coens have done. But it's necessary to meet the Coens halfway. If you don't, Barton Fink is an empty exercise that will bore you breathless. If you do, it's a comic nightmare that will stir your imagination like no film in years.

No one interested in the power and magic of movies should miss it.

Chicago, based on Bob Fosse's Broadway smash, kills.

A rapturous masterwork.

Fellowship is the real deal, a movie epic that pops your eyes out, piles on thrills and fun, and yet stays intimately attuned to character.

Part of the miracle of Robert Altman's triumphantly fierce, funny, moving and innovative Short Cuts is that you can't get this movie out of your head. You keep playing it back to savor its formula-smashing audacity, its peerless performances and its cleareyed view of blasted lives.

Exciting and then some, Face/Off blends the director's supercharged images of balletic brutality and spiritual catharsis with an off-the-wall humor that allows John Travolta and Nicolas Cage to really let it rip.

Most movies stress the agony of art (think of Kirk Douglas' Van Gogh in "Lust for Life"). Schnabel's exceptional film honors his friend by showing the act of creation as a natural high.

Ephron homes in on what's been missing in movies and in life: ardor, longing and smart talk about the screwed-up notions that pass for love.