A quintessential New York director made this quintessential New York movie in 1973, with Pacino at his best.

This is an op-ed polemic, and it's refreshing to see one so skillfully produced by filmmakers with a shoestring budget and meager access to mainstream distribution. A must-see movie, no matter what your politics are.

There's a new visual idea every second, each teeming with energy, pitch-dark comedy, and inspired cinematic lunacy.

Smart and sumptuous.

This documentary strives to fill the gap, and the result is memorable; viewing is mandatory.

His readings of his own work are especially thoughtful, moving, and provocative in the best possible ways.

The movie is woven with care and complexity, again confirming von Trotta's place as one of the world's greatest female filmmakers.

A walloping entertainment, brimming with the magic-realist action that made Ang Lee's somewhat similar "Couching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" a hit.

Strange, scary, and atmospheric, with a delicious Claude Debussy score.

The director's cut of this 2001 cult fantasy is a deliriously subtle exploration of storytelling possibilities, and a deliciously wry teen-pic to boot. Brilliant.

Deeply personal, morally alert, and highly entertaining.

A skeptical view of George W. Bush's chief political strategist, Karl Rove, using argumentative strategies common to agenda-driven documentaries.

The movie's main contribution is its fresh look at the Vietnam War, being refought in the Kerry-Bush presidential campaign at the time of the film's release.

Not a great movie, but a valuable and revealing document.

It's all deliberately homemade and raggedy, and that's where its charm comes from, along with the delightful old-music score.

Supercharged with an energy and ingenuity that "Run Lola Run" once had a patent on.

Leaving aside Huston's bland acting and a few other flaws, Sayles's politically charged drama raises a rousing number of issues and ideas, inviting us to ponder them and draw our own conclusions.

This is a funny, sad, stunningly smart movie about the end of movies, made in Tsai's inimitable, unblinking style. No movie lover should miss it.

One thing few will disagree on is the quality of the film's acting, especially by Gael García Bernal as Guevara and Rodrigo de la Serna as his friend. Both effortlessly embody the footloose, sometimes feckless quality of this "On the Road"-style adventure.

Hearing her speak her finely honed mind in unscripted, un-"handled" terms is worth the price of admission in itself.

Thai filmmaking continues its renaissance with this moody, offbeat drama.

While it's not a great movie, it's a revealing study of how long it often takes for businesspeople to realize they're being freaked out, not flattered.

What makes the movie powerful is Timoner's decision to structure it via Taylor's perspective on his competitor, with no holds barred.

Absorbing.

Harrowing, extremely disturbing at times, but brought to the screen in dazzling pop-art images that make the movie's grim content very much worth watching.

Contains amazingly candid views of warriors behind the scenes of battle.

Informative documentary about the recent history of efforts to legalize gay marriage, tying these in with the history of marriage as an institution.

The acting is brilliant and Leigh's screenplay - developed through his usual process of improvisation and rehearsal - is very long on compassion, very short on preaching and politics.

This sometimes harrowing, often delightful drama stands with his (Sembène) most compassionate, colorful, and artfully filmed works.

Riveting documentary about the early California cable outlet and its ingenious programmer, Jerry Harvey, whose unsettled life and tragic death provide a dramatic framework for the account.

Not a masterpiece, but definitely one of the year's most entertaining movies.

See it with an open heart and a tapping toe.

Illuminating and alarming.

The eerie tale is steeped in brooding atmosphere and psychological suspense thanks to Glazer's hugely imaginative visual style and creative use of music, sound, and silence.

Fascinating.

A hilarious and harrowing cautionary tale.

The delights of the movie lie in its zany characters, its goofy settings, and above all its surrealistic visual style.

It's inexplicable that Wong's early masterpiece has been virtually absent from American screens since he completed it in 1991.

Visually sublime and intellectually dense, this is one of the extremely rare movies that prove cinema can be as complex and profound as the very greatest art works in any form.

A must-see account that casts a harshly illuminating light on a key period of recent American history.

It's great, fantastical fun.

Intimate and engaging.

Gripping, suspenseful, and spiced with fascinating information about the long history of chess between human and mechanical opponents.

The director of "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums" scores his most funny-sad movie to date.

It's an ideal match, and Eastwood deserves accolades as both director and star of this powerfully made picture.

As a nonagenarian, de Oliveira is the world's oldest working filmmaker, and still one of the best. This is a lovely, lively, timely treat for the eyes and mind.

Superbly acted.

This is one of the rare movies to explore American materialism through the eyes of an all-too-ordinary person who isn't up to the challenges of everyday life.

Tuneful, colorful, delightful.

Rigorous and riveting.

Hollywood censors made Wilder reshoot one scene, but the original version has been rediscovered; while it's tame by today's standards, it makes the movie's caustic social commentary more potent than ever.

Rohmer's films are renowned for their beauty, so it's surprising that he made a picture using digital video rather than film. But this was the right choice.

Payami's gentle comedy captures a subtle range of human feelings through a quietly inventive visual style that embodies the best life-affirming tendencies of modern Iranian film.

From its star-studded cast to its indelible camerawork by the legendary Giuseppe Rotunno, it's an unforgettable experience by a revered master of European cinema.

The timeless fairy tale about a young woman who agrees to dwell with a mysterious monster, as interpreted in 1946 by one of cinema's most brilliant visual stylists and mythmakers.

The acting is smart and gritty, Almereyda's visual style has a raw immediacy found in few films with Shakespearean pedigrees, and an eclectic music score adds atmosphere and surprise every step of the way.

Tsai's cinematic style is unique: He unfolds his stories in long, static shots that let you discover their surprises and mysteries on your own. And that's great fun. What Time Is It There? is perky, entertaining, and one of a kind.

This thriller is ingeniously woven with motifs suggesting the difficulty of seeing and understanding truth, and substitutes psychological chills for commonplace gore.

A scrupulously balanced look at the subject outlined in the title. Packed with historical, sociological, and cultural context.

Imaginatively acted, endlessly atmospheric.

A major treat for the eyes.

Concise, humane documentary.

Utterly unsentimental, deeply moving.

Revealing and harrowing.

Masterly by any measure.

This superbly filmed Italian drama stands with Bellocchio's best work. Originally titled "Ora di religione."

Three short documentaries about photography made by one of France's finest directors.

A riveting re-creation of three world-changing collapses: those of the Nazi party, of militarized Germany as a whole, and of the Führer who guided them into self-destructive ruin.

Filmed in a leisurely, understated style, this dark comedy is downright entrancing. A spectacular directorial debut.

Superb acting and authentic details energize this rare Iran/Iraq coproduction.

Always hard-hitting and often grimly, revealingly satirical.

This is epic filmmaking on a profoundly human scale, directed to perfection and magnificently acted by everyone in sight.

Illuminating, disturbing, evenhanded.

Gentle, humanistic, delicious.

Scott has the courage to let the imaginative story unfold at its own leisurely pace, and it's not surprising that the acting is excellent, considering that he's among the very best American screen actors.

Visually stunning animation.

This wry comedy drama has excellent acting and surprises galore.

If it weren't so smartly filmed and acted, this might add up to an over-the-top mess. But watch how inventively Mr. Antal keeps the action moving and you'll see why his picture has won a passel of prizes.

Stranger than fiction, indeed.

The best is "Equilibrium" by Soderbergh, about a man being analyzed by a distracted shrink.

As quietly dazzling as a small, very precious stone.

Like all this adventurous filmmaker's work, it's truly one of a kind.

Spellbinding.

Quiet, mysterious, sometimes violent, ultimately close to sublime.

It's unlikely there will ever be a more moving portrait of the shared selfhood, usually veiled by politics, common to the Palestinian and Israeli peoples.

Superbly cast, evocatively directed.

This thoughtful, troubling drama is leagues above the sensationalistic stuff Araki peddled in earlier films.

A triumph of psychological drama, owing as much to Ms. Bier's sensitive style as to Anders Thomas Jensen's smart screenplay, based on Bier's own story idea.

It's hugely ambitious, with a sweeping range of character types, frequently shifting moods, stylistic flourishes of many kinds, and some mighty wry satire, aimed largely at the world of psychotherapy.

Wrenching on both personal and political levels.

The material is right up Schrader's alley, and while his vision of the first "Exorcist" chapter isn't a masterpiece, it's far superior to the Renny Harlin prequel to "The Exorcist" released last year.

This is moviemaking on the highest dramatic, psychological, and moral plane.

Faucher's filmmaking is exquisite, Naymark's acting is luminous, and superb use of music lends a crowning touch.

In sum, the classical Ron Howard and his splendid cast have made a spellbinding movie that joins "Million Dollar Baby," as well as "Raging Bull," the first two "Rocky" pictures, and "Fat City" as one of boxing cinema's all-time heavyweight champs.

Yedaya's prizewinning debut film is acted and directed with uncommon psychological realism.

Touching, transfixing, unique.

You run across animation this ingenious about as often as a moving castle comes your way.

Hou's sensitivity plus Ozu's inspiration equals sublimity of sight and sound.

Riveting, suspenseful, and a perfect antidote to the too-tricky documentary "Super-Size Me."

Riveting and unique.

There's much subtle beauty in the last movie completed by Merchant Ivory Productions before Merchant's untimely death.

Superbly acted, movingly written, and directed with a tough-minded lyricism rarely found in today's films. A summer movie to love.

Should be required viewing for every concerned citizen.

Suspenseful, surprising, and psychologically rich.

As stylish as it is suspenseful.

Weerasethakul's latest has received mixed responses on the film-festival circuit, yet while it's anything but commercial, it's also anything but unadventurous.

This is a brilliant, if challenging, film.

A plan for a perfect murder goes wildly wrong in this 1958 melodrama by one of France's great filmmakers.

This is a lively, life-affirming documentary no viewer is likely to forget.

Its leisurely, deliberative style is a perfect complement to the emotions it deals with - emotions so penetrating that I warn you at the outset how jarringly intense you may find Bergman's most brilliant drama in decades.

The filmmaker keeps things lively by roaming far and wide with her camera, returning to the statesmanship side of the documentary often enough to let us follow relevant events as they unfold.

A travelogue unlike any other.

On the screen, Burton turns out to BE the ideal filmmaker for this deliciously bizarre yarn. He's given free rein to his fantasies in past movies, but rarely as wittily and consistently as he does here.

A true American tragedy, directed with skill and conviction.

An ingeniously scripted psychological thriller.

The movie's underlying theme is the complex relationship between objects and memories, worked out through a taut, compelling story and superbly understated acting. Ryuichi Sakamoto composed the atmospheric score.

This low-key drama is a miracle of mood, atmosphere, and sensitivity.

Filmed to perfection by the great Christopher Doyle and others.

This deliciously offbeat Canadian comedy gets its charm from marvelous acting and from a screenplay bursting with ideas. Great fun.

At once dreamily surreal, acutely intelligent, and strikingly tough-minded, this pitch-dark dramatic comedy recalls David Lynch and "Donnie Darko" while remaining fresh and original to its core. A stunning directorial debut.

Brilliant, poetic, and utterly unique.

Can a misguided adult start afresh with a new set of values and priorities? This ambitious drama, directed by one of France's most resourceful filmmakers, explores that crucial question in depth and detail.

Required viewing for anyone interested in the struggle for American racial equality.

Frequently funny, sometimes sad, often electrifying.

Gilliam has rarely been more inventive, energetic, or just plain funny.

Lively documentary about McGovern's disastrous run for the US presidency. The interviews with him are worth the price of admission.

Altogether remarkable, a near-masterpiece.

On the personal betrayals that accompany Capote's ache for literary transcendence. The betrayals were necessary to create "In Cold Blood." This is why Capote is such an unsettlingly ambiguous experience.

The film's final seven-minute shot is one of the great denouements in film history.

In the end, the finest achievement of Wright's movie is that it fully captures what Martin Amis, writing on Pride and Prejudice, said of Austen: "Money is a vital substance in her world; the moment you enter it you feel the frank horror of moneylessness, as intense as the tacit horror of spinsterhood." All that, and a great love story, too.

A first-rate crime thriller from 1960.

One of the great Bertolucci's most acclaimed films...Trintignant gives a legendary performance.

Brokeback Mountain is a tragedy because these men have found something that many people, of whatever sexual persuasion, never find - true love. And they can't do anything about it.

Marvelously enjoyable.

This is a Holocaust movie that is so relentlessly observed and so aware of woe that it never feels like it belongs to a genre.

Soldier's Daughter thrives less on Hollywood-style drama than on nuances of personality, details of everyday life, and emotions so commonplace that conventional movies rarely take the time to acknowledge them, much less explore them with loving care.

Writer/director Peter Duncan's first film is darkly humorous, with dashes of slapstick, brilliant, and original material.

The film's approach is highly instructive, deeply moving, and geared to deploring the racism that breeds violence rather than reactivating old hatreds.

What United 93 demonstrates, as if we needed proof, is that it is too soon - it may always be too soon - to sort out the feelings from that day.

A heartbreakingly powerful masterpiece.

When class conflict stirs the viewer's attention as much as a canine hero's homecoming, it's clear that this isn't the usual (read: mindless) family entertainment.

Helen Mirren gives the mostly subtly expressive performance based on a living historical figure that I've ever seen.

Most powerfully, Berg also films a number of O'Grady's victims as they recount their trauma and, in some cases, loss of faith.

John Schlesinger's rollicking version of Stella Gibbons's novel is acted with the highest of spirits by Kate Beckinsale, Joanna Lumley, Eileen Atkins, Ian McKellen, Freddie Jones, and many others.

I hate to sound blurby, but Borat is the funniest comedy I've seen since I don't know when.

For Your Consideration is, except for "Borat," the funniest film of the year. Or, it's the funniest film that you don't have to watch through parted fingers.

At times the film is so supercharged that it glosses over the story's thematic richness and turns into a very high-grade action picture. But if that's the worst thing you can say about a movie, you're doing all right. The best thing to be said about Children of Men is that it's a fully imagined vision of dystopia.

In tone, Pan's Labyrinth resembles a cross between "Alice in Wonderland" and H.P. Lovecraft, with some Buñuel thrown in for good measure. It is a tribute to - as well as a prime example of - the disturbing power of imagination.

A lyrical, yet intensely rooted, tragic vision.

This is a startlingly funny portrait of Gothic Americana.

Directed by Ulu Grosbard, who has never done a better job of filling the screen with superb acting, and shows great ingenuity at interweaving music with other aspects of the story.

Dustin Hoffman gives the inspired performance that launched his movie career, and director Mike Nichols shows a gift for social satire that has never glistened quite so brightly since. [Review of re-release]

Stunning.

A feel-good musical that, for a change, actually makes you feel good.

Perhaps the most cogent and straightforward dissection of the Bush Administration missteps leading up to the current Iraq nightmare.

Amir Bar-Lev's documentary is fascinating on all kinds of levels: as a movie about the nature of art, the lure and pitfalls of celebrity, and the complicated conundrums of parenting.

One of the great American films of the past decade, and the crowning masterpiece of Lumet's long career.

The movie is true to its own fierce vision and it's the better for it. I haven't seen a stronger or better American movie all year.

Delivers more goose bumps than anything Hollywood has served up in years – which I hope does not mean that Bayona, a first-time feature director and music video whiz, will be enlisted to direct "Saw V."

The New Wave of Romanian cinema is the most exciting in the world right now. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days is its latest masterpiece.

A supremely cranky and lyrical feat.

There's something both simple and sweet about Bolt, yet epic, that's entirely surprising.

A marvelous documentary that brings home the terror and heroism brought forth by the Katrina debacle.

It's a giddy nightmare. Nothing is quite what it seems in I Served the King of England, and this is poetically appropriate. The world it depicts is too dangerous and too lovely to classify.

The personal triumphs in Happy-Go-Lucky may be small-scale but its embrace is all-encompassing. It's a wonderfully humane movie.

And yet the great conundrum of the Holocaust is that it was perpetrated by human beings, not monsters. Few movies have rendered this puzzle so powerfully.

Improbably, it's one of the most affecting films of the year, which once again demonstrates that all you need to make a good movie is talent.

Wherever you were schooled, in public schools or private, in the slums or in the suburbs, you will recognize yourself in this film and laugh and beam and cower.

Waltz With Bashir is a supremely courageous act, not only as a piece of filmmaking, but much more so as a moral testament.

There's plenty for us to feast on in Under the Sea 3D without drawing a single drop of blood. If you have small children, you'd be crazy not to take them to this film.

Troell, at 78, continues to turn out films that will last for as long as there are movies. No wonder he feels such a deep connection to Maria in Everlasting Moments. The film is one hero's salute to another.

As the film plays out its melancholy story, we realize that what we are watching is far rarer than the usual sports flick.

In the end, this melancholy, inspiriting movie achieves a breathtaking emotional harmoniousness.

The scene is so emotionally ravishing that it breaks you apart. The peacefulness that finally descends on Séraphine in the film's final moments is more than a balm. It's a benediction.

Plenty of terrible movies know how to work your tear ducts. Here's a weepie that, in Pfeiffer's performance, touches you on the highest levels.

A marvel.

Hands down the funniest movie I've seen all year and also the smartest.

Toy Story 3, has more emotional power than either of its predecessors. Come to think of it, it also has more emotional power than most of the live-action movies out there.

It's a strange, one-of-a-kind film that was to be Benacarraf's only full-length feature.

One of the sweetest and most heartfelt movies ever made about a life in the theater.

An amazing, galvanic experience. It's about the hushed-up story of Benito Mussolini's first wife and child, but no one will ever mistake this movie for a standard biopic. It's too raw, too primal.

Altogether fascinating.

Granik filmed in actual locations and enlisted many locals as actors. They blend unobtrusively with the professionals in the cast.

Fan's camera moves sinuously through these people's lives and gives a human face to a national panorama.

A remarkable movie about a remarkable friendship. It honors the audience's intelligence, which makes it a double rarity.

A breathtakingly beautiful achievement in every way.

A quintessential Mike Leigh performance. It deepens as it goes along until, in the end, in its final close-up, it overwhelms.

Despite its length, it is one of the most consistently engrossing and powerful movies ever made.

It's a transcendently uplifting tragedy.

These paintings speak to us; they both compress and elongate time. In Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Herzog is reaching for ways to comprehend what he imagines to be the emblems of the birth of the modern soul.

Says Lauro: "This is about as close as you can get to the way it sounded during slavery days." Lauro and McGlynn understand, too, that these clips must be experienced whole. They let the music unfold in real time, not snippets.

A semi-improvised, microbudget marvel with a range of feeling that shames most big-budget star-driven movies.

Clooney and Payne are coconspirators, too. They know that the story they are telling is too emotionally complicated to muck up with a lot of preening and artifice. They head right into the sad and crazymaking humor of the situation. This is a modest marvel of a movie.

A Separation is not the work of a constrained artist. It's a great movie in which the full range of human interaction seems to play itself out before our eyes.

The reason we feel so close to Socha, a man who at first seems nothing more than a racist scoundrel, is that his moral odyssey, with its advances and retreats, is so emotionally believable.

A marvelously captivating animated feature.

In Panahi's case, he is insuperably handicapped by his current constraints. And yet, despite everything, here is This Is Not a Film, which is emphatically a film – and an extraordinary one.

By holding the shot, as she so often does in this film, Takesue is encouraging audiences to take a deep, long look at things they might otherwise miss.

The performances by Phoenix and Hoffman are studies in contrast. Phoenix carries himself with a jagged, lurching, simianlike grace while Hoffman gives Dodd a calm deliberateness. Both actors have rarely been better in the movies. The real Master class here is about acting – and that includes just about everybody else in the film, especially Adams, whose twinkly girl-next-door quality is used here to fine subversive effect.

Photographic Memory is about the permanence and impermanence of what we choose to preserve: on film and in our heads (which is often the same thing). I would like to think that one day Adrian might look at this documentary and see it as a supreme act of paternal love.

Ballard filmed across hundreds of miles of South African desert, and there are times when the whole throbbing universe seems to resound for him.

Essentially two movies for the price of one. But those halves add up to more than most movies right now.

Baumbach captures the ways in which children takes sides in a war they can't even begin to comprehend.

The visuals are irrepressibly witty and so is the script, which morphs from the classic fable into a spoof on "War of the Worlds." I prefer this version to Spielberg's.

There's ample reason to stay with this series. When Harry says "I love magic," you believe it.

The Ice Harvest isn't a subversive piece of work; it's not making some grand statement about the dark side of the holiday spirit. But what it IS saying in its grimly funny way is that we can't always control the timing of our disasters.

Spiritual redemption is a big theme of Narnia, but on a purely entertainment level, the movie also goes a long way in redeeming the current sad state of children's fantasy filmmaking.

Blossoms of Fire fulfills the first criterion of any good ethnographic study: It's about an inherently interesting subject.