An emotional triumph.

Proof that movies don’t always have to be busy to entertain and enrich, this tale of life at a bucolic Korean monastery is at once profound and simple.

It was the greatest rock & roll party you never heard of.

A distinctive story with universal appeal.

One wishes for a chewier whodunit – there just aren't enough clues for the viewer to work with – and the reveal of the mole is perversely anticlimactic. But maybe that's just stickling. We always knew Smiley'd get his man.

Half Nelson, with its bleakly hopeful view of humanity both damned and redeemed – simultaneously – is uncomfortably, almost exactly right.

A gripping presentation of a little-known true story and its historical lessons.

An immersion into the characters' world in toto, from the "Oh geezes" and the "Oh, yaahs" to the dark and flinty core beneath.

As sad and poignant and potentially hopeful as it is amusing. The movie is our story as much as it is Schmidt's, no matter if it's viewed as a self-reflection or cautionary tale

In this sushi age of methamphetamine concert DVDs and dysfunction junction music tell-alls, Jonathan Demme dreams us back to the golden age of performance films.

A far cry from his earlier films sex, lies, and videotape and Kafka, Soderbergh skillfully pulls off what could have ended up as a sappy glob of treacly nostalgia. Instead, the director populates his young hero's chaotic world with genuinely disturbing people, images, and events.

A carefully constructed thriller whose clever dialogue keeps pace with its fascinating lead actress.

A screen spectacle that beseeches its audience for adoration and mass acceptance.

Take Shelter is a deeply unsettling movie. Writer/director Jeff Nichols (an Austin resident and director of the award-winning 2007 feature "Shotgun Stories") doles out information as strategically as a government official.

Loud, hilarious, and enormously entertaining, 24 Hour Party People makes you want to toss current FM radio out on its pre-fab, corporate-sponsored backside. And not a moment too soon.

Clearly the single best, the single coolest (to borrow from Harry Knowles) animated film in a great while.

It’s not quite as brutalizing as McEwan’s brilliant source novel – it bears too much of a Great Art buff – but it ravishes nonetheless in its grand exploration of the sins of the daughter and a lifetime spent making reparations.

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

A stylistic tour de force, one that wordlessly emotes and wears its emotions on its literal silk sleeves.

Hardly a serious caper film, Out of Sight instead takes a lighter approach, effortlessly offering up as many unexpected chuckles as it does bullets.

Restrepo is an example of photojournalism at its finest.

Even when The Tree of Life does not achieve the heights for which it aims, it soars boldly and fearlessly.

This revisionist Western – intellectually, aesthetically, and narratively absorbing – rattles to the bone, but never quite rends the heart.

There's no denying it's a tragic film from start to finish, but equally undeniable is the endless stoicism displayed by the women, and Panahi's crisp, meandering direction.

An absorbing human drama.

Not entirely without some laughable or dated scenes, Halloween remains an original that continues to inspire a genre and probe middle America's fears about what's really lurking in the laundry room after midnight.

Holy Motors is as individualistic a movie as you're likely to encounter – both in terms of the filmmaker's intent and the viewer's takeaway. Warmth and humor abide within its every frame but, like Carax's dreamer at the film's outset, you must find the key within yourself that unlocks the mysteries.

Thornton, who wrote, directed, and stars in Sling Blade, has created an unforgettable character and situation, a film that's sure to become an American classic.