Aaron Hillis

This is as exceptional as microbudget cinema gets.

Inland Empire is interchangably terrifying, maddening, shockingly hilarious and perversely exciting, and that's just to those who end up disliking it.

Land of the Dead is Romero's long-awaited masterpiece, a slyly suspenseful and droll thrill-ride that expounds on both the highbrow and the chewed-off-brow concepts of his previous trilogy, then flippantly dismisses the cheap scare tactics of the control-pad generation's gimmicky genre knockoffs.

Scene for radiant scene, shot for nary a wasted shot, The New World is the most artfully sculpted film in American cinema this year.

Documentarian Liz Garbus masterfully turns her minimalist camera's eye on young girls institutionalized at the Waxter Juvenile Facility near Baltimore.

How 49 Up differs from its precursors for the better is that it's the first to have its participants interact with Apted the filmmaker, no longer a one-sided interviewer.

Fantastic news, true believers: Spider-Man 2 is smarter, hipper, faster, funnier, and flat-out more electrifying than the original, swinging to new summer-movie heights as the greatest comic-book adaptation yet made.

So far the funniest, headiest, most playfully eccentric American indie of the year, Bujalski's perceptive avant-garde comedy...teases out unanswered existential and behavioral questions about mankind's curious obsession with artificial intelligence and automation.

This self-reflexive ode to following muses, finding meaning in nothingness, and transcending the sensitive roadblocks between fathers and sons is loopy, irreverent, and more intensely personal than anything its mystic creator has invented before.

Herzog smartly takes a broad, bird's-eye perspective of our early techno-evolution.

Kasper Collin's melancholy, beautiful feature debut does more than just chronicle this undervalued musician; it brings Ayler and his message of spiritual unity back to life.

The retro photos and footage are also bountiful and, natch, jazzily edited enough that the standard talking-head techniques are instantly forgivable.

Manically imaginative and very funny.

Marker's even-handedness and playful spirit tries to show that innocent art and activist politics are two sides of the same culture, even if deviant government duplicity threatens the balance between them.

A truly remarkable and compassionate debut from a savvy, self-confident filmmaker. No bull.

The mood never droops, however, saved by Mario’s well-studied ability to channel his father, a performance as delicately nuanced and polished as the film is frenetic and raw.

Open Water may not be a pristine or complex suspense thriller, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anything else as terrifyingly potent in such a tiny package.

Where Dans Paris truly pops, besides its spot-on leads or the slick curation of its fashions and locales, are in its mood-mixing musical moments.

The brilliant subtleties of this absorbing, must-see drama are best seen through Penn, who transforms a strongly nuanced script into the greatest performance of the year.

At its most simplified, Sucker punches its way to the top of the Italian-western mountains, but never reaches the peak of its immortalized trilogy brethren.

Preaches post-9/11 family values to conservatives while appeasing liberals with ideas of tolerance and social activism.

Under the clichéd spell of rock-and-roll promiscuity and pills popped, Seigner shows astonishing range as the detached superstar who still fixates on her ex-boyfriend and has mood swings like a manic-depressive on fast-forward.

A conventional but genuinely heartrending exposé of the Indiana boy who grew to be a powerful religious cult leader, director Stanley Nelson's thoroughly researched doc is not a posthumous character assassination, which would be all too easy and unnecessary.

Paprika ain't no kiddie 'toon, even if its thumpin' techno-pop and bubble-gum thrills have the same splashy palette as an episode of "Pokémon" or "Dragon Ball Z."

This critic found much to digest (pun barely intended), with thoughts of FDA politics and standard practices, the ritualism and sacrifice of our own species, why baby animals are considered protectable innocents (and inversely, grown steaks-to-be just a fact of life), plus, on a meta level, how people's dietary philosophies will inform their reactions to the work.

Whatever you want to label this quick-paced crowd-pleaser, it is definitely one of the year's must-sees.

A richly drawn, ambitious character piece both socially relevant and genuinely suspenseful.