With a surgical saw instead of a hatchet, del Toro takes apart patriarchy and opportunistic religion as well as fascism.

It leaves you dazed and sated. Compared to the fast food "eye candy" surrounding it these days, Metropolis is a gourmet 20-course meal.

Rififi, with its stark visuals, dark humor and constrained performances, earned Dassin the Best Director nod at the Cannes Film Festival and a secure place in film history.

Without a single gunshot (and just one flick of a switchblade), it turns into an existential suspense film with the highest stakes imaginable: the survival of the human spirit.

Ratatouille is a sublime dish of a movie, and the company's piece de resistance.

A non-stop cinematic funhouse impossible to resist.

A visual masterpiece about a scared little girl's breathtaking journey of self-discovery. All of the fun is getting there.

The least fussy great movie ever made.

Killer of Sheep is a miracle movie because it's receiving its first theatrical release 30 years after it was made and because, as a movie, it's miraculous.

The Hurt Locker redefines war-film electricity.

The movie does work, spectacularly.

The movie is a marvel - bold, lucid and succinct (even at 123 minutes). It's also harrowing and moving in its depiction of noncombatant men, women and children caught between terrorism and counter-terrorism.

A film that celebrates the intricacies of life in ways both splendid and mundane, revealing it all with unflinching honesty.

It rises, all on its own, to the realm of masterwork.

Rarely has combat been portrayed as beautifully as in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Taiwanese director Ang Lee's thoughtful meditation on menace, mortality and the martial arts.

Except for the Mozart music and Tharp movements around the edges, Amadeus plays like a monument to mediocrity. The movie belongs to Salieri.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly provides an ecstatic lift for movielovers, despite the tragic subject.

The Class ranks with the very best films ever made about teaching, and it's unlike any English or American film about teaching ever made.

Anderson and Day-Lewis strip themselves of their natural talents for invention and poetry, as if any hint of romance, nobility or fun would soften the film.

A movie masterpiece -- thrilling, passionate and wise.

By all means, buy a ticket to The Fast Runner, but don't go expecting a masterpiece; actually, in its first hour, the dramaturgy and staging of scenes set in igloos are cramped and amateurish.

A madcap milestone. Not since Disney's 75-minute Alice In Wonderland (1951) has an animator filled the screen with dazzling flights of random invention that manage to hook up into a swift, brief narrative.

Mirren brings intellect, humor and romance to the role of Elizabeth II.

Views war from the inside out and the outside in. It carries the shock of full disclosure.

Crammed, cheek to jowl, with bleak moments, high hopes, sweetness and naked emotion.

No Country for Old Men is about the kind of amoral madness that can sweep across a country and redefine a landscape. It's so admirably lean and sinewy that it deserves not merely a rave review but a Johnny Cash song about matter-of-fact killings in shady hotels and sun-scoured landscapes.

A glamorous, alluring entertainment that revels in the artifice of Hollywood while exposing its corrupt heart, L.A. Confidential pays stylish homage to some of the great film noirs of the distant and recent past.

The movie's jabbing originality is what sticks in your memory.