Colossal entertainment -- the eye-popping, mind-bending, kick-out-the-jams thrill ride of summer and probably the year.

Lukas Moodysson, a young Swedish director, crafts a stunner of a film out of familiar turf.

By the time they're onstage, your pulse is pounding right along with theirs. Spell this movie: g-r-e-a-t.

Ronin represents an exhilarating return to form for Frankenheimer.

Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland plumb the violence of the mind with slashing wit and shocking gravity. Happy nightmares.

Lin is a talent to watch. There's a sting to this film that gets to you.

Despite over-ripe narration and an understandable urge to cram too much in, Ghosts of the Abyss is a thrilling documentary.

It would be easy and convenient to dismiss Irreversible as blatant sensationalism. But Noe's bruising film is too artfully crafted to write off as exploitation.

What catches us in Spider's web -- besides the indelible performances of Fiennes and Richardson -- is the director's sympathy with this freak man-child who struggles to order his confused memories into a kind of truth.

Leave it to a g-rated cartoon to give the live-action epics a lesson in action, fun and bracing originality.

Unabashedly hokey, but would you want it any other way? In an era of cynical junk (did anyone say “Bad Boys II”?), Ross restores the good name of crowd-pleasing.

A film of female empowerment that resonates deeply.

The result is a movie miracle; it soars.

I've seen A Mighty Wind only twice so far. Maybe it is less fresh than "Guffman," more strained than "Best in Show." Who cares? It's still a gift from comedy heaven.

Don't stall about seeing Sofia Coppola's altogether remarkable Lost in Translation. It's a class-act liftoff for the fall movie season. Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson give performances that will be talked about for years.

Without an ounce of phony Hollywood uplift, Winterbottom's film cuts right to the heart.

In Kill Bill, Tarantino brings delicious sin back to movies -- the thrill you get from something down, dirty and dangerous.

To those who see no purpose to this film, I say the purpose is learning not to turn a blind eye. The unique and unforgettable Elephant keeps its eyes wide open.

You won't see more explosive acting this year.

Crowe -- fierce, funny and every inch the hero -- gives a blazing star performance.

It's a feast of smart, sexy, glorious talk. The Oscar for best foreign film belongs right here.

It's comic, touching and a visual knockout.

Wayne Kramer, who co-wrote the scrappy script with Frank Hannah, makes a potent directing debut and strikes gold with the cast.

Director Tim Burton finally hooks the one that got away: a script that challenges and deepens his visionary talent.

This is a film in which ideas resonate as well as action. Gandalf’s words to Pippin about death have a muscular poetry.

It will knock you for a loop like no other movie this year.

The specter of war haunts Cold Mountain, but you remember it for the heat of its romantic yearning and the mysteries that wrap themselves around you until you're lost in another world.

Altman, showing the ardor and assurance of a master, pulls us into his film with seductive power. You won't want to miss a thing.

Hits hardest when it bypasses sentiment to ponder the inextricable mix of love and pain that comes with the ties that bind.

Director Wolfgang Petersen puts such a fresh spin on the familiar that it all works like gangbusters.

Chases so many ideas that it threatens to spin out of control. But with our multiplexes stuffed with toxic Hollywood formula, it's a gift to find a ballsy movie that thinks it can do anything, and damn near does.

LaBute achieves a bracing originality by observing human folly as a means to understand rather than condemn. Love or hate his films, LaBute is one of the most challenging filmmakers to emerge in years.

Kidman gives the most emotionally bruising performance of her career in Dogville, a movie that never met a cliche it didn't stomp on.

The film shines at capturing the watercolor delicacy of China's past.

It’s one of the blackest comedies to hit the screen since Dr. Strangelove. Spurlock proves himself a supersize talent; he makes you choke on every laugh.

Shrek 2 may be computer-generated, but its innate heart and glorious sense of mischief make it one of the best and most humane movies of the summer.

This little-hyped thriller emerges as a dark-horse winner by reminding us of how pleasurably exciting a popcorn movie can be when it's populated by actors who are in it for more than an exorbitant fee.

Not only is this dazzler by far the best and most thrilling of the three Harry Potter movies to date, it's a film that can stand on its own even if you never heard of author J.K. Rowling and her young wizard hero.

Keep "Survivor" and "Fear Factor," and give me this spellbinding mind teaser, the ultimate game for movie buffs.

Fanaticism is Dannelly's target, not faith. That's what makes his film a keeper: It sticks with you.

It's one for the time capsule.

Moore has marshaled what's on the record and off into a stinging indictment of where we're going. In a multiplex filled with Hollywood cotton candy, we need him more than ever.

A sequel of twisted thrills and sly surprises.

You can't shut the door on this spellbinder. It gets into your head.

If you've forgotten the kick you get from watching a globe-trotting, butt-kicking, whiplash-paced action movie done with humor, style and smarts, take a ride with The Bourne Supremacy.

Kudrow's Michele is a deadpan delight as she joins fellow misfit Romy (a deliciously funny Mira Sorvino).

Down in the mud with the guys, Moore finds the heart of her character and a career beyond vanity and hype. She's never looked better.

No crime film in years boasts a cooler vibe than Michael Mann's dazzling Collateral.

The ending -- a more devastating surprise than "The Village" could manage -- caps eighty sweat-job minutes of imaginative, jolting suspense.

The butt of the hilarious and heartfelt screenplay by Paul Rudnick (Jeffrey) is homophobia, and his sting is wickedly on target.

Darroussin is killer good and director Cedric Kahn turns Georges Simenon's seminal novel into a darkly comic spellbinder that pins you to your seat.

Throbs with action, suspense and a seductive rhythm all its own.

A mesmerizing look at an asthmatic, rich-boy medical student in the act of discovering his insurgent spirit.

The result is a film that defies description. I'd call it some kind of miracle.

Using Staunton's face as his canvas, Leigh crafts a powerfully moving film that is unmissable and unforgettable.

A ruthlessly clever musical, a punchy political parody and the hottest look ever at naked puppets -- the first film, porn included, in which a woody is actually made of wood.

Jamie Foxx gets so far inside the man and his music that he and Ray Charles seem to breathe as one.

Glorious entertainment.

Scrappy, funny, hot-to-trot biopic.

An emotional powerhouse.

Mike Nichols' haunting, hypnotic Closer vibrates with eroticism, bruising laughs and dynamite performances from four attractive actors doing decidedly unattractive things.

Forget "Hero" -- that cult hit was just Zhang Yimou's warm-up for this martial-arts fireball that throws in a lyrical love story, head-spinning fights and dazzling surprises.

When it flies, it soars.

A rich blend of humor and heartbreak.

Bird has crafted a film -- one of the year's best -- that doesn't ring cartoonish, it rings true.

The knockout punch comes from Eastwood. His stripped-down performance -- as powerful as anything he's ever done -- has a rugged, haunting beauty. The same goes for the movie.

It's Bacon who overcomes all obstacles.

Fresh comic thinking spices up this smart cookie of a satire from director-writer Paul Weitz (About a Boy). He makes it sexually provocative and subversively hilarious.

In Washington's haunted eyes, in the stunning cinematography of Roger Deakins (Fargo) that plunges into the mad flare of combat, in the plot that deftly turns a whodunit into a meditation on character and in Zwick's persistent questioning of authority, Courage Under Fire honors its subject and its audience.

Sleepers, for all the doubts it raises, is the work of a man who speaks for absent friends and "for the children we were." It's his secret heart.

Immensely entertaining and provocative.

The acting is electric. By the end of this haunting, hypnotic film, you feel you have watched lives being lived, not just imagined.

A riveting and indispensable record of the war in Iraq because it comes from the men who lived it.

A fiercely funny human comedy with jokes that sting and leave marks.

The fierce and funny film version has been directed by Texan Richard Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise) with rare grace and compassion.

As always with Park Chanwook, you just hold on and let him rip.

The worst thing I can say about this savage, sexy and ferociously funny screen translation of three stories from Frank Miller's Sin City series of graphic novels is that it's too much of a good thing.

This bonbon spiked with malice is a triumph for Jaoui, who takes witty and wounding measure of the small betrayals that leave bruises on us all.

Funny, touching, vital.

It's the classic American tale of the family man triumphant, and Howard makes sure that it hits you right in the heart.

There's a word for the kind of comic, dramatic, romantic, transporting visions Miyazaki achieves in Howl's: bliss.

Performance artist Miranda July hits a grand slam as the writer, director and star of her first film. It's a moonbeam romance laced with startling wit and gravity.

It's original, outrageous and murderous fun.

Sometimes a movie comedy just clicks. Welcome to one of those times.

It's a popcorn-movie deluxe.

Broken Flowers may be too low-key for laugh junkies, but Jarmusch fills his sharply observed comedy with wonderful mischief. The mix of humor and heartbreak brings out the best in Murray.

Herzog conducts his own expedition into knowing the unknowable -- the true task of any filmmaker. Herzog makes it an art.

The gripping, seat- clutching suspense in this baby will pin you to your seat.

Director Fernando Meirelles and screenwriter Jeffrey Caine put a human face on John le Carre's novel of sex, lies and dirty politics in modern Africa. Prepare for a thrilling ride.

It's warped and wonderfully effervescent. Ditto the songs by Danny Elfman, who sings the role of Bonejangles, the frontman for a skeleton jazz band at a swinging underworld club. Best of all is the love story.

Watson and Everett, both superb, bring ferocity and feeling to their roles. But the one you won't forget is Wilkinson (In the Bedroom) in a towering performance of grace and grit that deserves to put him on Oscar's shortlist. Good show.

Capote is a movie that doesn't pull its punches. It's a knockout.

Without jerking tears or reducing the acid content of his wit, Baumbach's humane movie gets under your skin.

In ninety-three tight, terrifically exciting minutes, Clooney makes integrity look mighty sexy.

The movie, from the 1992 best seller by Olivia Goldsmith, isn't deathless art. But as pure entertainment, this witty revenge romp is sinfully satisfying.

The script, co-written by Antonioni and Peter Wollen, focuses on a TV journalist (a superb Jack Nicholson).

Witherspoon has nailed it before, notably in "Election," but her portrayal of June is astounding in its vitality and richness.

This one-of-a-kind spellbinder from first-time director Laurence Dunmore is not afraid to shock. Depp is a raunchy wonder, especially in a time-capsule-worthy opening monologue.

Sam Peckinpah lives! The rampaging spirit of the late filmmaker, known as Bloody Sam for films such as "The Wild Bunch" and "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia," is all over this blistering modern Western from first-time director Tommy Lee Jones.

Woody Allen's best movie in years means to trip us up: Sexual sizzle. London instead of Manhattan. Brit actors. Dark humor with a sting that leaves welts. You bet it's a change. And it looks good on the Woodman.

Bana is magnificent in the role.

Casts a spell that grips you and won't let go. The film works as a provocation, on a personal and a political level.

Malick and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki -- a grandmaster at blending color and natural light -- craft a tone poem that may throw some audiences through its use of interior monologues.

This unique and devastating look at the Holocaust is drawn from the autobiographical novel of 2002 Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertesz.

Why We Fight deserves high praise for making it that much tougher to wear blinders.

A potent and provocative look at life unhinged. Bubble is said to be the first in a series of six low-budget films from Soderbergh. If they all rock the boat like this one, bring 'em on.

If you're looking for action movie heaven, try Speed, a crackling blend of suspense and fun that gives you the rush of a runaway roller coaster.

This is more than a movie, it's a privilege.

The radiant Barrymore energizes Cinderella with a tough core of intelligence and wit.

McGrath's script is faithful: fierce when it needs to be and devilishly funny.

Driver's tough core of honesty and wit is bewitching. So's the movie.

The explosive V for Vendetta is powered by ideas that are not computer-generated. It's something rare in Teflon Hollywood: a movie that sticks with you.

Both sides of the political fence will feel royally skewered. All that's lacking is a warning from the Surgeon General: This film will make you laugh till it hurts.

Renier and Francois give deeply affecting performances that help soften the film's harsh blows. But only in the compassionate eye of the Dardennes do these three children achieve a state of grace.

No wonder Kurt Cobain was a fan. But it's the way Feuerzeig walks with him on the line between creativity and madness that digs this haunting and hypnotic film into your memory.

Smart, witty and alert to the buried resentments that poke through the shiny surface of affluence, Holofcener's film recognizes that money is the new sex.

Down in the Valley is a wild thing that sticks with you long after it's over. You know, a real movie.

What Cars teaches is how to blend brash comedy with technical astonishments so that each enhances the other. I can't imagine who wouldn't want to test-drive this one. Like the promos say, "It's got that new-movie smell."

Take a swig of this moonshine. There's magic in it.

If you're looking for a crime story that sizzles with action, sex and the visceral jolt of life on the edge, Miami Vice is the one.

Kirby Dick's indispensable guerrilla attack on the film-ratings system gives Hollywood a swift, smart and hilarious kick in its institutional, hypocritical ass.

One of the best and liveliest movies of the year - funny and touching in ways you can't predict.

This unnervingly funny and quietly devastating film -- director Todd Field's first since his smash 2001 debut with "In the Bedroom" -- pulls you in like a magnetic-force field.

With lyrical intelligence and scrappy wit, Coppola creates a luscious world to get lost in. It's a pleasure.

A film of awesome power and blistering provocation.

Nolan directs the film exactly like a great trick, so you want to see it again the second it's over. I'd call that wicked clever.

Through haunting home movies, Mina's diaries and interviews with Mike, a raw, riveting portrait emerges of what a child sees in his parents' relationship and what lies beneath.

For three years, the camera focuses on the Chicks as wives, mothers, entertainers and political flash points. Their fight to stay uncompromised is inspiring.

Craig gives us James Bond in the fascinating act of inventing himself. This you do not want to miss.

Catherine O'Hara is comic perfection as Marilyn Hack.

Von Donnersmarck has crafted the best kind of movie: one you can't get out of your head.

Gibson has made a film of blunt provocation and bruising beauty.

This baby dazzles like nothing else anywhere.

This is Soderbergh's show, and a haunting and hypnotic show it is.

Bouchareb's film helped shame the French government into raising pensions for more than 80,000 of these veterans. Here's that rare movie that really did change things. I'll be damned.

My advice, in the face of such hallucinatory brilliance, is that you hang on.

Cuarón has a gift only the greatest filmmakers share: He makes you believe.

In this steadily gripping hothouse of a thriller, it's Cooper -- funny, fierce and bug-wild -- who gives us a look into the abyss.

Unique and unmissable.

Is it that scary? Yes. Will it reduce you to quivering jelly? Oh, my, yes! Does it bust the bonds of the Godzilla formula to fuse fright with feeling? Better believe it, dudes.

The Lookout is Frank's show. He's crafted a haunting and hypnotic film that transcends pulp by creating characters that get under your skin.

Just for starters, no movie about the Dutch Resistance during World War II has any right to be this wildly entertaining, not to mention this provocative and potently erotic.

By stooping low without selling out, this babes-and-bullets tour de force gets you high on movies again.

Gere gives 'em the old razzle-dazzle with his roguish charm and sharp comic timing. The surprise is the unexpected feeling he brings to this challenging role.

He lacks Scorsese's raw inventiveness, but there's no denying De Niro's skill in keeping this pungent street epic brimming over with action and laughs without sacrificing intimacy. He is a supreme director of actors.

Keaton has crafted something rare: a screwball comedy that cuts to the heart.

The film is rapturously beautiful, enticing us into a lush, aristocratic world.

All the acting is first-rate -- Dukakis gives major dimensions to a supporting role. And Christie, a Sixties screen goddess in "Darling" and "Doctor Zhivago," shows that her spirit and grace are eternal. She's a beauty. So is the movie.

This remarkable movie will haunt you for a good long time.

It's a magical, beguiling wonder.

Hartley's debut deserves heralding; he combines a rigorous social conscience with the exuberance of fresh comic thinking.

Within its small, darkly funny range, Trust is an exceptional film that stays alert to the mysteries of love.

Amateur is Hartley heaven, a sharp-witted thriller that takes off into dark and uncharted territory.

The Doors is a thrilling spectacle - the King Kong of rock movies - featuring a starmaking, ball-of-fire performance by Val Kilmer as Morrison.

The boldness of director Danny DeVito's violent epic is matched by Nicholson's astonishing physical and vocal transformation into Jimmy Hoffa.

Rogen and Heigl step up to the plate with a tougher task from Coach Apatow: Nail every laugh and the emotions underlying them. No worries. They knock it out of the park.

For those who don't believe that truth trumps fiction for whacked-out depravity, mark this shockingly fierce and funny spellbinder as Exhibit A.

Parenthood, heartfelt and howlingly comic, also comes spiced with risk and mischief. Just when you fear the movie might be swept away on a tidal wave of wholesomeness, a line, a scene or a performance poke through to restore messy, perverse reality.

Dahan's impressionistic heartbreaker of a movie gets it all in. And Marion Cotillard, lip-syncing Piaf's songs and digging into her soul with gale-force urgency, gives a performance for the ages.

The film belongs to Jolie. She won an Oscar for 1999's "Girl, Interrupted," but this is by far her best performance.

It's a movie as timely as it is thrilling to watch.

In a summer of dumb, shameless drivel, Moore delivers a movie of robust mind and heart. You'll laugh till it hurts.

What makes Ratatouille such a hilarious and heartfelt wonder is the way Bird contrives to let it sneak up on you.

It will hook you good and keep you riveted.

It's hard to resist the film's exuberance.

The movie is thunderously exciting, but what makes it resonate is the wrenching story we read on Damon's face. We've waited all summer for a wild ride to grab us with more than jolts. Now it's here. Hang on.

It helps that the fun doesn't stop. It helps even more that the pitch-perfect script doesn’t step out of character for a joke.

In Eastern Promises, shot to envelop by the great Peter Suschitzky, Cronenberg brings us face to face with the horror of self.

Penn, in tandem with the superb cinematographer Eric Gautier (The Motorcycle Diaries), captures the majesty and terror of the wilderness in ways that make you catch your breath.

Artfully exciting and compulsively watchable even at a butt-numbing 152 minutes, the film makes good on the promise New Zealand writer-director Andrew Dominik showed with "Chopper" in 2000.

Lee is a true master, and his potently erotic and suspenseful Lust, Caution casts a spell you won't want to break.

Deliberate, demanding and character-driven, Michael Clayton flies in the face of what sells at the multiplex. I couldn't have liked it more.

All the acting is exemplary. Brody, new to Wes' World, is revelatory as Peter.

It's Corbijn, shooting with a poet's eye in a harshly stunning black-and-white, who cuts to the soul of Ian's life and music. You don't watch this movie, you live it.

Gone Baby Gone is full of dark secrets, and how they unravel will keep you glued.

A dynamite film that ranks with the year's best.

Carell shows a whole new side to his talents.

Call it the black "Scarface" or "the Harlem Godfather" or just one hell of an exciting movie.

Zemeckis springs so many pow 3-D surprises you'll think Beowulf is your own private fun house.

So what if nothing is revealed. Todd Haynes is a mischievous visionary who puts the music and the myth of Bob Dylan before us in I'm Not There and dares us not to revel in the troubadour's poetic, contentious, ever-changing essence. It's a feast for the eyes, the ears and the Dylanologist scratching around our minds and hearts.

With the help of acting giants, Jenkins turns The Savages into a twisted, bittersweet pleasure.

The movie will wipe you out. Schnabel's previous two films (Basquiat, Before Night Falls) also focused on artists. But this is his best film yet, a high-wire act of visual daring and unquenchable spirit.

Dissenters who see this film as a wallow in self-absorption aren't paying attention. Baumbach is acutely attuned to the droll mind games of smart people who only think they're impervious to feeling.

There's a special kick that comes in finding a new star. So step up, Ellen Page, and take your bows.

This Sweeney is a bloody wonder, intimate and epic, horrific and heart-rending as it flies on the wings of Sondheim's most thunderously exciting score.

This one belongs with the leaders of the scare pack. Isn't it time that we give Romero his due? It's hardly an accident that Stephen King, Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo del Toro, Simon Pegg and Wes Craven recognize Romero as a master. He is.

The film's sound design, sampling Beethoven and Nino Rota, among others, links up with visual miracles performed by Rain Kathy Li and Wong Kar-Wai's noted cinematographer, Christopher Doyle (In the Mood for Love), to take us inside Alex's head. The result, a defiant slap at slick Hollywood formula, is mesmerizing.

Even when the script slips into sentiment, Peirce sticks with her troubled, questing soldiers, and through this raw and riveting movie, they stick with us.

This you-are-there spellbinder is a master director shining his light on the best rock band on the planet.

A heartfelt human drama that sneaks up and floors you.

A raucous ride through one man's pain.

All praise to acting dynamo Robert Downey Jr., who brings so much creative juice to the party that Iron Man achieves instant liftoff.

No fair giving away the mysteries of The Dark Knight. It's enough to marvel at the way Nolan -- a world-class filmmaker, be it "Memento," "Insomnia" or "The Prestige" -- brings pop escapism whisper-close to enduring art.

Director-writer Martin Hynes shapes his first movie into something emotionally truthful, painfully funny and vibrantly alive. It's a near-perfect road movie, since you don't want the ride to end.

You'll go limp from laughing.

A knockout of a comedy that keeps you laughing constantly. It's also killer smart, lacing combustible action with explosive gags.

Johnny Depp, who paid for the 2005 funeral in which Thompson's ashes were fired out of a cannon, narrates with just the right mix of awe and impertinence.

The movie brims over with action -- check out Alex's run through traffic on the Paris beltway -- but Canet scores a triumph by plumbing the violence of the mind.

Getting lost in the hypnotic Half-Blood Prince is what gives the movie its haunting power.

Lessin and Deal have made Trouble the Water a spellbinder you do not want to miss.

Appaloosa is gripping entertainment that keeps springing surprises.

Director Ron Howard has turned Peter Morgan's stage success into a grabber of a movie laced with tension, stinging wit and potent human drama.

The acting is of the highest caliber. Winger, magnificent and too long between films, is a volcano of repressed anger.

No list of the year's best performances should be made without her (Sally Hawkins).

Jolie is inspired casting. She plays the role like a gathering storm, moving from terror to a fierce resolve. And Eastwood, at the peak of his artful powers, tightens the screws of suspense without ever forgetting where the heart of his film lies.

Stick your neck out for this Swedish horror show. It's a winner, full of mirth and malice, plus a young romance you'll never see on the Disney Channel.

Brimming with humor and heartbreak, Slumdog Millionaire meets at the border of art and commerce and lets one flow into the other as if that were the natural order of things.

Dark secrets are unlocked, words draw more blood than punches, and Desplechin turns one family into a universe that resembles life as a startling work of art.