Nothing this year comes close to being as utterly unforgettable as Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, an extremely dark and disturbing fairy tale for audiences say, ages 12 and up.

It is filmmaking as it should be but usually isn't.

If there is a genius working in Hollywood today, it's animation director Brad Bird, who tops the delightful "The Incredibles" with arguably the finest 'toon in the Pixar canon, Ratatouille.

Quite possibly the first truly great fact-based movie of the 21st century.

Bursting with energy and originality even after 36 years, A Hard Day's Night is easily the best show in town.

Like the fictional Clarice Starling in "The Silence of the Lambs,'' Maya is a consummate professional who brilliantly performs her job in an often hostile work environment.

In the compelling but slow-moving Iranian film A Separation, a downbeat family drama of no particular distinction gradually turns into a mystery that raises painful moral questions. There may be several guilty parties.

A Japanese cross between "Alice in Wonderland" and "The Wizard of Oz" -- is such a landmark in animation that labeling it a masterpiece almost seems inadequate.

An all-time classic that seems even better after two decades.

Stretched both timewise and for plausibility.

A charming, hilarious robot love story aimed at the entire family.

A sublime variation on the buddy road movie, infusing the midlife crises of the two main protagonists with hope and poetry.

A majestic conclusion to a nine-plus-hours epic that stirs the heart, mind and soul as few films ever have.

Carlos is exciting entertainment, even if its subject's two-decade reign of terror is reprehensible.

All great films have imagination; this one also has the sense of experience.

You have never seen a movie like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon because there has never been a movie like it.

The various witnesses tell contradictory tales that turn this into a real-life “Rashomon." The fact that two of the principals — Sarah and Michael, who delivers touching and eloquent on-camera narration that he wrote himself — are accomplished actors adds another level of confusion and interest that help make this compelling storytelling.

Presents an intelligent, profound and at times heartrending slice of Taiwanese middle-class existence - as seen by characters at different stages of life.

You won't have a more viscerally emotional experience at the movies this year.

The Class offers no Hollywood ending, but is rewarding for those up to the challenge.

Denis -- who has called the film a tribute to the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu -- keeps dialogue to a minimum as she delicately examines how immigration is changing the face of France.

Between D-Day, the sheer ambition of Paul Thomas Anderson's historical epic and Robert Elswit's dazzling cinematography, this is a must-see movie - even though its emotional temperature rarely rises above freezing and the climax goes way, way, way over the top.

So consistently involving because the excellent cast delivers their lines with the kind of utter conviction not seen in this kind of movie since the first "Star Wars."

While Tarr's newest epic, Werckmeister Harmonies, isn't intended for the shopping-mall crowd, it is more viewer-friendly and will please adventurous moviegoers.

May not be a masterpiece, but it still had me in tears at the end.

A groundbreaking, highly influential film, A Man Vanishes is a fiercely brilliant piece of work, but it's more intellectual challenge than pleasure.

A rousing indictment of a barbaric practice.

It is an important, thoroughly bewitching work of art.