Almodovar is adept at weaving together strands you'd never guess would match.

It took the German restorers four years to ready this print using dupe negatives and old prints found in archives around the world. Their work speaks for itself. Each frame of this classic is drop-dead stunning, the more so now that the movie no longer hiccups its way across the screen.

A gripping thriller whose terror -- unfortunately -- comes from real life.

It leaves the port of enterprise and arrives on the far shore of art.

The sunny, funny, toe-tapping Lagaan is the answer to those who ask why they don't make movies like they used to: They do, but in India.

Masterful.

For film buffs and Lynch fans, this is a glorious high.

A sunny-looking movie about the darkest paranoia.

Borderline brilliant. Tackles the war on drugs from a kaleidoscope of perspectives.

Universally appealing story that plays as well now as it did on opening day a half-century ago. Maybe better.

Normally the sound in movie theaters is of popcorn crunching. But the sound at theaters where Central Station is showing is of hearts breaking.

One of the freshest, richest, most original films to come out of Hollywood in a very long time.

A tart, funny and tremendously sobering movie about the deepest recesses of personal unhappiness.

An adorable, infectious work of true sophistication.

Steven Spielberg's best war film -- and one of the two or three best movies the director has made.

Gloriously inventive, delightfully nutty comic treasure is unlike anything you've ever seen. It's lunatic.

Handsome, passionate and fun. It's everything we go to the movies for.

Turns everything we know about the contemporary world on its head, and substitutes it with one in which spirits, monsters, magicians and animals mix it up in a carnival of energy, good humor and freewheeling illusion.

One of the most original and ultimately confounding mind games to reach the screen since "The Usual Suspects."

Garbus spent three years patiently mining for beauty in the ugliest of environments. The remarkable result stands as a challenge to anyone who would have seen only the worst and walked right by.

As darkness falls over the movie landscape comes the year's darkest and best movie of them all - Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams.

An insanely delicious animated feature.

The most emotionally satisfying because, in addition to having both more intimate drama and more spectacular battles, it resolves all of the issues raised before.

A masterpiece? Probably. Ingenious? Absolutely! Unforgettable? I'll see you at the 10th-year anniversary.

It's said to be an autobiography, but that pertains only in the loosest sense. It's a comedy. It's a 1920s silent movie. It is practically indescribable. And it is pure genius.

A marvel of character-driven drama that no serious filmgoer should miss.

The best comedy of 2004. In fact, it's so far the best movie of the year.

The most gorgeous movie of the year. This smashing martial-arts romance from Chinese director Zhang Yimou is stunning in other ways, too, like the eroticism that ripples just beneath the surface.