American Splendor reminds you that sometimes, simply getting out of bed each morning can be the most heroic of acts.

There's nothing about United 93 that qualifies as entertainment in the traditional sense: It is an unpleasant, wrenching experience, which is just as it should be.

This remarkable, continually surprising documentary turns out to be something far richer and more complex, closer in spirit to "Crumb," another devastating film about a family's gradual self-destruction.

It's a sign of just how much Coppola respects her characters that she doesn't make us privy to that final line: It is only meant for them to share. But like the rest of the ethereal Lost in Translation, you don't need to have it spelled out in order to feel it.

Beautifully textured and layered movie.

The result is one of the most visually astonishing martial-arts fantasies ever made.

As suspenseful as a full-blown thriller.

It takes some exceptionally intelligent and witty people to make a dumb comedy this funny and perceptive: Borat may be offensive (to some), infantile, low-brow or even just a stunt, but you won't hate yourself in the morning for loving it.

A brazen stunt that pays off. Writer-director Michel Hazanavicius, simultaneously channeling "Singin' in the Rain" and "A Star is Born," tells a story about 1920s Hollywood made in the style of that era.

A thoughtful, audacious meditation on love and relationships that finds a group of wildly disparate talents clicking together in perfect unison.

Letters From Iwo Jima, much like any war movie, honors the courage of men who took part in a war not necessarily of their making. But by placing us on the opposite side of the battlefield, the movie forces us to approach it from a fresh perspective.

I can't imagine anyone seeing Once and not instantly falling in love with it.

A unique bond still develops between the two outcasts, leading to an unexpected resolution that ends this subtle, deeply humane movie on an ambiguous, but unmistakably hopeful, note.

The movie implies that despite its thunderous success, the book also destroyed Capote, who crossed a line in his quest for personal glory for which he could never forgive himself -- no matter how many accolades it brought him.

The movie isn't a thriller, but it has the tension of a thriller, and its cool, icy tone, deliberate pacing and clean, antiseptic lines are reminiscent of Kubrick and Antonioni.

As this intimate, beautifully observed film unfolds, you realize that the story's themes -- the nature of love, the role of sex in relationships and the ways in which we learn to make peace with our guilty consciences -- are relevant no matter what age you happen to be.

For now, The Two Towers feels like the second installment in what next year, when Frodo finally reaches Mount Doom and the story draws to a close, we'll surely be hailing as a masterpiece.

The package is perfectly irresistible.

Rousing, exhilarating entertainment.

Unabashedly frank in its depiction of sex -- too frank, probably, for more discreet viewers -- but it's never exploitive or seedy.

It's impossible not to shake the feeling that we've been here before, and the movie never does convince you that a return trip was entirely necessary.

Luminous, melancholy and ultimately heartbreaking.

Doesn't feel so much like a movie as a glimpse into the extraordinarily messed-up life of a young man about to make the simple yet life-changing realization that actions have consequences, and that other people matter, too.

This is a quiet, powerful film about the lengths we'll go to for the sake of the people we love - and the depths we'll sink to for the sake of the ones we hate.

Shot in the style of a documentary, which lends the movie an aura of utter realism, Maria Full of Grace derives an unsettling power from the clinical details of Maria's ordeal.

The most compelling -- and horrifying -- portion of the film, which interweaves archival footage and stylish graphics with the interview segments, centers on the firebombing of Japan during World War II.

This poignant, wise and subtle picture -- which, yes, happens to be the best movie of the year -- should be approached with humble expectations. Lee's approach to this delicate material is suffused with melancholy, metaphors and small, telling touches that favor subtlety over exclamation points and rough-hewn simplicity over grandiloquence.

As usual for the Dardennes, the plot is slight but loaded with hairpin turns of tremendous emotional power.