It's so rare to be swept away by a presentation of this magnitude. By all means, go.

One of the most searing experiences to be had at the movies this year.

Remains a remarkable, almost timeless study.

A truly great and deceptively simple work, redefining the power of film.

Has the feel of an instant classic, a melodrama with an exacting precision and a visceral, propulsive energy.

Overflowing with melancholy and tragedy, Road to Perdition is one of the most somber gangster pictures ever made.

Lester managed to come up with a movie that not only holds together as a film but one that has proven timeless and rewards repeat viewings.

A rich, marvelous movie -- the kind that enchants on so many different levels, it leaves you feeling giddy.

The Straight Story truly is one from the heart, and it is wonderful.

Ever the satirist, Payne mines humor from his characters, be it Randall's cockeyed pyramid-scheme ideas or the banality of a ridiculous wedding toast.

What you come to see are the strokes of a visual master. You will not be disappointed.

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.

In a larger sense, Adaptation is a movie about the simple act of enjoying life -- of really embracing it -- without constantly worrying about what others think.

It's the filmmakers' refusal to sugarcoat their tale's darker subtexts that makes Finding Nemo such a resounding piece of storytelling.

Makes the Columbine shootings seem both abstract yet more painful and vivid. It also gets you excited all over again about the things movies can do.

The movie itself is a nominee for Best Animated Feature, and it's good enough to pull a surprise upset over the beloved Finding Nemo. It's a mad masterpiece.

Feels like a miracle, a movie that exceeds even the most formidable expectations without straying from its singular path. All hail this King.

An extraordinary movie that ruffled many feathers when it first came out. Almost 40 years later, it retains the poignancy it delivered back then. Its message is not lost in our present state of affairs.

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

Intentionally designed to rile as much as entertain.

A masterpiece of pop filmmaking -- a fantastic, exuberant entertainment that manages to be both sleek and substantial without being patronizing.

Although it is technically a sequel, Before Sunset stands perfectly well on its own. In fact, the new movie plays better if you haven't seen the original for a while, so its details have grown appropriately fuzzy.

What makes it the best movie of the year -- is its insight into human behavior.

A visually thrilling experience.

One of the many pleasures of this beautifully composed, measured movie is how it reminds you of the power of pure storytelling -- an art that's too often overlooked in contemporary films in the rush for sensation and excitement.

Contains all of the hallmarks of classic genre Spielberg: It shows you things you've never seen before, instills an accompanying sense of awestruck wonder, and delivers long stretches of heightened, delirious excitement that remind you why people started going to the movies in the first place.

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.

This is the most vibrant, exciting and invigorating movie-movie of the year.

It leaves you feeling exhilarated at the invigorating power a well-told story, no matter its subject, can have. If you like Harry Potter, you will love this movie. If you don't like Harry Potter, you will still love this movie.

The new version is a glorious, thrilling throwback that never sacrifices its solid roots in the western genre despite a sharp modern update that actually improves on the original.

A model of pitch and modulation and craft. For two hours, the Coens hold you in their grip so tightly that for long stretches it feels a little hard to breathe.

The interpretation is so painstaking and moving that almost every moment delivers a shuddering jolt to the head and the heart.

The fact that that character happens to be so repellent -- and yet so endlessly fascinating -- is one of the film's many strokes of genius.

Brilliant, suspenseful, absolutely riveting film.

This is a beautiful movie.

A terrific yarn, one so engrossing and surprising that the nature of the story's structure -- each question Jamal gets asked on the show corresponds with a traumatic or momentous moment from his childhood -- never feels like a contrived framing device.

Rousing, exhilarating entertainment.

Sensational documentary.

Like every war before it, the U.S. invasion of Iraq has generated its share of movies. But The Hurt Locker is the first of them that can properly be called a masterpiece.

Basterds isn't so revolutionary or so finely crafted as "Pulp Fiction" was, but it crackles with the same energy and imagination and chutzpah.

That song (Jefferson Airplane's Somebody to Love), which becomes a sort of mantra to the movie, is the key to understanding what the Coens are after: When the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy within you dies, you better find somebody to love.

Up in the Air is also optimistic about the perpetual themes that preoccupy so many movies that endure the test of time: Life is better with company. And everybody needs a co-pilot.

Delivers the heady, rib-tickling rush of an action picture, and it gradually builds to an emotional wallop that blindsides you.

Tom Hooper's terrific, Oscar-worthy film is not merely a spot-on period piece; it's also a heartfelt study in the shadings of courage, a film about duty and friendship that's often warmly funny and sometimes painful to watch.

Part of the accomplishment of Carlos is the sheer accumulation of detail the movie amasses, and the longer running time gives you a deeper sense of the terrorist lifestyle, and when and why Ilich gradually succumbed to ego and self-glorification without realizing it.

The movie is an absolute triumph of culturally relevant filmmaking – a film that will thrill and fascinate sport junkies and non-fans alike. If you like baseball, you will love this movie. If you hate baseball, you will still love this movie.

Leave it to von Trier to conceive an intergalactic sci-fi metaphor for a psychological disorder – and then make it work so astonishingly well.

There isn't a moment in the movie where you don't feel Spielberg's passion, and this time, the film is worthy of his enthusiasm. It's a knockout.

The movie has such a profound and compassionate understanding of human behavior, family ties and the way ordinary people respond when they're forced into a moral quandary, I can't imagine anyone not being transfixed by it.

Project X is an astounding, superlative movie about adolescence - a brutal, unapologetic comedy about the fantasy every high school kid carries around in his head about being popular and cool and beloved.

Brave has a manic, almost daffy energy and sense of humor.

The film is precious and adorable, but it isn't naïve, and the movie breathes so deep that Anderson even gets a real performance out of Willis (this is his best work in years).

This is not the sort of movie you can just leave behind in the theater. And like any true finale to a trilogy, the picture doesn't work nearly as well if you haven't seen the previous two installments: It's not designed to stand alone, and it pays off all that has come before with an exuberant, thrilling high.

It's a beautiful, strange tone poem about childhood and innocence, set in a strange but still recognizable world where the polar ice caps are melting, crayfish shacks float down rivers and enormous aurochs, an extinct breed of bison, are sloughing their way toward our tiny, adorable narrator.

This is the sort of small, intimate drama about unpleasant subject matter Hollywood rarely deals with, but Haneke isn't worried about turning off his audience, because death is something everyone has in common. It fascinates us, the way it also scares us.

The movie gives you what you think you want, and then gives you some more, and just when you think things can't get any worse, Haneke swoops in and smashes the wall between fiction and reality, turning the viewer into a direct accomplice to what's transpiring onscreen. It is an astonishing film, sure to be controversial, and quite simply unforgettable. [30 Jan. 1998, p.6G]

Don't let it slip out of town without getting a look at it.

Profoundly hopeful and optimistic film.

A film of this sort demands superb, seemingly effortless acting, and Holofcener gets it at every turn.

A joyous, amazingly detailed paean to imagination and personal expression that dares -- and succeeds -- to illustrate one of the most mysterious enigmas of all: the creative process.

This playful, immensely entertaining movie knows that art is in the eye of the beholder.

The rapturous power of music has rarely been captured as purely and joyously as it is in Calle 54.

It's an eye opener to how quickly a society can switch from being open and tolerant to pointing fingers -- and worse -- at those deemed different.

A dreamy, passionate ode to freedom -- of thought, of expression, of every person's innate right to simply be.

As magical as "The Wizard of Oz," the film leaves its spare setting and blooms into action in a colorful springtime world to tell the story of an epic romance lush with silken costumes, giggling courtesans, comic servants and rulers cruel and compassionate.

If you like guessing games, don't miss it.

Without a hint of sanctimony, it is a love story as much about soul as heart.

In a film overstuffed with tragedy, the most painful one might be the gradual transformation of Fernando's moral and intellectual indignation into a weary, cynical detachment.

Brings the viewer up close and personal with the face of evil.

More than once during The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat), it's easy to forget you're watching a movie.

One of the most rewarding and engaging movies of the year. Don't miss it.

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

That broad range of subject matter is indicative of the messy, meandering structure of the movie. But if Moore fails to tie this unwieldy movie into a lucid thesis, at least every tangent he chases down has its own payoff.

Movies like Monsters, Inc. literally make you feel like a kid again, marveling at the joyously inventive sights before you, and that's a feat that should not be taken lightly.

An overwhelmingly tactile experience. Scott brings you so close into the action, the grit and smoke and blood seem to spill off the screen and into your head.

Once you're among them, the Tenenbaums -- and Anderson -- cast quite a spell.

An exuberant, appropriately cynical reinvention of the stalwart Broadway hit that deftly straddles the line between old-fashioned Hollywood musicals and experimental concoctions like last year's "Moulin Rouge."

Sharp, witty and decidedly different.

There's nothing in the utterly enchanting Raising Victor Vargas you haven't seen before; you'd just be hard-pressed to name another movie that did it as well.

Even in its most tedious scenes, Russian Ark is mesmerizing.

Puts you on edge about what goes on behind the closed doors of the White House. Even if the case against Kissinger is not fully convincing, the documentary keeps you glued to your seat and thinking long after you've left the theater.

The result is a gripping psychological thriller that, while lacking the power of "Funny Games," is still the work of a master.

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 Exorcist has lost none of its ability to invade your nightmares.

Raucous look at an equally raucous phenomenon.

A searing, heartbreaking metaphor for the futility of war.

The results, for the most part, aren't pretty. The newly expanded Balseros, which adds an hour of footage to the previous film, is an even more compelling, if grimmer, work than the original.

At two hours, the movie is probably 15 minutes too long -- the final half-hour in particular could have used some trimming -- but complaining about having too much of a good thing makes one sound like a grouch.

If The Pianist isn't quite as devastating as "Schindler's List" -- the movie with which all other Holocaust movies must be compared -- it's because Polanski isn't interested in an expansive view of the war.

A remarkable movie that merits a place alongside "The Executioner's Song" and "In Cold Blood" as an unforgettable depiction of tragedy in the heartland.

A film of rare beauty, lifted by some of the best acting you may see in any film this year.

A big, bold movie that gets at undeniable truths about the way no one, no matter how powerful, is immune from manipulation.

If "The Sixth Sense" was Shyamalan's take on ghost stories and "Unbreakable" his ode to comic books, then Signs is the evil cousin to Steven Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

One frenetic movie that doesn't know when to quit -- and leaves you wishing it could go on forever.

Impossible to resist.

One thing that strikes you as you watch Shanghai Ghetto is how little mingling there was between the Chinese and the Jews.

The movie isn't just hilarious: It's witty and inventive, too, and in hindsight, it isn't even all that dumb.

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