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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

It is an important, thoroughly bewitching work of art.

Chomet's wacky tale is so crammed full of eye-popping images, it's impossible to forget afterward.

All hail the great Helen Mirren, who after her triumph in HBO's "Elizabeth," delivers the performance of a lifetime as that monarch's frumpy, 20th century namesake in Stephen Frear's witty, touching and engrossing The Queen.

Haunting is the best word for Waltz With Bashir, a striking animated documentary - not an oxy moron, despite how it sounds - from Israel.

The first movie I've seen in a very long while that deserves to be called a masterpiece. It's such a stunning achievement in storytelling.

The filmmaker doesn't speculate about why these men are talking, but he leaves you with an excellent guess.

A film of such cyclonic visual and emotional power, of such dazzling virtuosity and shattering humanity, that it is difficult to endure, yet alone describe. Savagely beautiful and savagely true, Saving Private Ryan is an excruciating masterpiece.

The breathtaking visual and aural restoration by Coppola and Murch makes the film's original glories even more intense than you remember them.

An astonishing re-creation of the Londonderry massacre of January 1972.