Lou Lumenick

I can't wait to see Borat, which has twice as many laughs as all of this year's other movie comedies combined, for a fourth time.

Happy Feet is not only the year's best animated movie, it's one of the year's best movies, period. Go.

Four stars simply aren't enough for Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, which just may be the most entertaining movie I've ever labeled a masterpiece in these pages.

May not have the starry casts of the Coens' more recent films, but it has plenty of heart and soul.

An absorbing, deeply affecting, well-acted --and remarkably evenhanded -- antiwar statement. It's also incredibly suspenseful and very blackly funny.

A hilarious and touching animated masterpiece that takes a gloriously imaginative, sometimes scary leap into the mind of a girl on the cusp of adolescence.

A rare case of an American remake that actually improves on a European movie.

Brilliantly acted and directed, Ava DuVernay’s towering Selma is Hollywood’s definitive depiction of the 1960s American civil rights movement — as well as perhaps the most timely movie you’ll see this year.

This flick is fast and ferocious, his (Sidney Lumet) sharpest and best since "Prince of the City" (1980) - and surely one of the year's finest.

The year’s best film so far.

Pure magic.

Comes as close to perfect as any movie I've seen lately.

Brilliantly acted by the year’s most carefully assembled cast, Spotlight is one of the year’s best films, showing just how hard it is to uncover painful truths.

Hands-down the best movie of the year.

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."

Compared by some to “2001: A Space Odyssey,’’ Cuarón’s relatively intimate space epic is equally groundbreaking in the spectacular way it depicts space.

Darkly hilarious, brilliantly acted.

You'll laugh, you'll cry -- the year's best movie.

Vividly re- creates TV news icon Edward R. Murrow's historic face-off with Sen. Joseph McCarthy in devastatingly low-key detail -- is the right movie at the right time.

An unqualified triumph.

An exquisite work of cinematic art that also happens to be the funniest, most touching, most exciting and most entertaining movie released so far this year.

One of the year's best films and so tapped into the zeitgeist that it's positively scary.

Delightfully unpredictable, hilarious comedy with wonderful performances that tug at your heart in ways that utterly transcend gender labels.

Deserved an end-of-the-year prestige release, is a true work of art in a marketplace filled with velvet paintings. It's positively magical, the reason we loved movies in the first place.

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

This is a serious movie overflowing with memorable acting, unforgettable images, searing tragedy, unexpected humor and an eloquent plea for international understanding. And while it's by no stretch of imagination light entertainment, it's fundamentally a more optimistic work than either "Amores Perros" or "21 Grams."

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

A spectacularly rendered tale of a family of superheroes, takes the art form to a whole new level.

Christopher Nolan's dramatically and emotionally satisfying wrap-up to the Dark Knight trilogy adroitly avoids clichés and gleefully subverts your expectations at every turn.

Break out the popcorn and prepare to be blown away. King Kong is the most pulse- pounding and heart-stirring romantic adventure since "Titanic."

Masterful, atypically political - and flawlessly acted.

The year's best foreign-language movie an absolute must-see.

Old-school filmmaking at its best.

Walk the Line superbly combines music and two of the year's most riveting performances to tell one of the screen's great love stories.

Tomlin and Elliot relive their characters’ pain and anger so deeply that they could very well both end up with Oscar nominations.

Summer hasn't even started, but you won't likely find a better catch this season than Finding Nemo, a dazzling, computer-animated fish tale with a funny, touching script and wonderful voice performances that make it an unqualified treat for all ages.

The best reason to wade into this (let's be honest) challenging but hugely rewarding film is Quvenzhané Wallis.

It falls to Hanks and his movie-star presence to anchor this ambitious enterprise, and he does some of his most impressive acting without saying a word.

Visually imaginative, The Theory of Everything is an unusually compelling true-life story about an extraordinary couple triumphing over adversity. It’s my favorite movie so far this year.

A heart-pounding experience that makes you think and contains a gallery of characters that will haunt your nightmares for years to come.

Like all great movies, 127 Hours takes us on a memorable journey. Which is not easy when 90 percent of the movie takes place with a virtually immobile hero in a very cramped setting.

Sorry, the beloved Singin’ in the Rain isn’t the finest of the legendary MGM musicals. For my money, it’s a close second to The Band Wagon, which has better music, better dances, better direction, more lavish sets and costumes and a wittier script (by the same writers).

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

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.

Denzel Washington dazzles in his best screen performance to date as Frank Lucas.

A thrilling, beautifully crafted, fact-based horse story that's not merely the summer's finest movie, but may well be the one to catch come Academy Awards time.

No film I’ve seen so far this year has provided the sheer moviegoing pleasure of We Are the Best!

Audacious, thought-provoking and ruefully funny.

Glossy, big-budget thriller that qualifies as the season's biggest and most rewarding surprise.

A truly superb courtroom drama. [02 Jan 2008, p.35]

A spare, exquisitely realized masterpiece about faith, redemption and boxing that beautifully illustrates his longtime philosophy that "less is more."

Everything a summer blockbuster should be but rarely is - a whip-smart, slam-bang piece of entertainment where we deeply care about the fate of the central characters.

Nolan blurs the distinction between dreams and reality so artfully that Inception may well be a masterpiece masquerading as a summer blockbuster.

Lee's incendiary and brilliant new film.

It's impossible to conceive of this ruefully funny entertainment without Bill Murray, who is nothing less than brilliant.

This spectacularly great reboot is surprisingly owned not by Hardy, who is fine, but by Charlize Theron.

Genius director Christopher Nolan reaches for the stars in Interstellar — and delivers a soulful, must-see masterpiece, one of the most exhilarating film experiences so far this century.

Well-meaning films like “Lincoln’’ and “Lee Daniels’ The Butler’’ merely scratch the surface compared to the deep and painful truths laid bare by 12 Years a Slave. It’s about time, Scarlett O’Hara.

Perhaps the year's most daring and fully realized movie, is a pitch-perfect re-creation of '50s melodramas, showcasing a four-hankie performance by a peroxided Julianne Moore.

Caouette has used art, wit and a huge heart to forge his experiences into an unqualified masterpiece.

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.

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.

Miyazaki offers a vivid, at times fantastical view of Japan between the wars, wracked by the Great Depression, a fearsome earthquake that leveled Tokyo in 1923, a tuberculosis epidemic and the rise of fascism.

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.

Smiling more than in all of his movies since "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" combined, Penn goes way deep and soulful in a highly ingratiating performance that's the one to beat for the Best Actor Oscar.

Short and sweet, small and smart, Tadpole is the oasis in the desert of dopey summer blockbusters - an uproarious, sophisticated coming-of-age comedy so flawlessly written, acted and directed it seems practically miraculous.

Whip-smart, sexy and delightfully twisty romantic thriller.

A blue-chip Oscar contender that's also a rousing popcorn movie, Ben Affleck's Argo offers plenty of nail-biting thrills as well as funnier scenes than you'd ever imagine possible in the grim context of the Iran hostage crisis.

Expertly mixing tears and laughs with the sort of alchemy not seen since "Terms of Endearment," this superbly written, directed, acted, and yes, Oscar-friendly movie perfectly captures the blackly comic insanity that can overtake a family forced to confront an impending death.

Bridge of Spies, Steven Spielberg’s best film since “Saving Private Ryan,” stars a flawless Tom Hanks in the smart, old-school thriller as James Donovan.

Hollywood's Woman of the Year is a pregnant 16-year-old, the incredibly hip, smart-mouthed and totally endearing heroine of the wise and witty Juno.

Less a conventional biography than a performance film - one that stuns and delights.

An unqualified triumph, the year's best movie so far.

It takes a world-class storyteller and a great yarn to rivet your attention for nearly three hours. This very classy, old-school movie - employing cutting-edge technology that will make your eyes pop - did it for me.

This eye-popping, inspired and often-demented (in a good way) cross between "The Red Shoes" and "All About Eve" channels horror maestros David Cronenberg, Brian De Palma and Dario Argento.

Taken together, Eastwood's masterworks - two of the best films of 2006 - may be Hollywood's last word on World War II.

The very sex-positive The Sessions treats intimacy with an explicitness and honesty that's very rare in movies. It may be the first film that doesn't turn premature ejaculation into a punch line.

The movie equivalent of a 12-course feast crammed with unforgettable images and mind-boggling stunts.

A really classic adventure yarn with one of Hollywood's great actors hitting one out of the ballpark. If you're seeing only one movie this season, this is the obvious choice.

This is one perfectly terrifying movie, an instant classic.

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.

A gorgeous, poetic and stirring epic.

Beach ("Windtalkers") gives a tremendously moving, Oscar-caliber performance as Hayes, portrayed by Tony Curtis in an earlier movie and celebrated in a song performed by both Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan.

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.

The best and most entertaining movie adaptation of a stage musical so far this century - and yes, I’m including the Oscar-winning "Chicago."

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

Being John Malkovich, which contains not a frame of extraneous footage, is more than a must-see movie: It's a must-see-more-than-once event.

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

We now have the distance to see just how close to a flawless and utterly timeless a film Steven Spielberg and his collaborators crafted – one that transcended genres (sci-fi and kids’ movies) to become of one of the greatest and most durable of American movies. [2002 re-release]

There’s no shortage of brains, brawn, eye candy, wit and even some poetry in this epic battle between massive lizard-like monsters and 25-story-high robots operated by humans.

What might seem like showing off in another movie is dazzling storytelling here, packing in an hour's worth of human misery.

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

This is perhaps the most effective 3-D movie I have ever seen, with a sophisticated, involving story that will appeal to many adults. The only reservation I have is with the PG rating, which seems too lenient for a story that may give very young children - particularly if they are sensitive - nightmares.

So gorgeously animated and so thoroughly entertaining for all ages that only an ogre would complain it's not quite as fresh as the original.

A triumph of low-budget filmmaking.

It's the well-wrought details that explain, perhaps better than any earlier film, how an entire country bought into Hitler's genocidal madness.

Julie Christie is simply astounding as a woman slipping into the ravages of Alzheimer's in Sarah Polley's deeply affecting and artfully crafted Away From Her.

This remarkable new documentary from Raymond De Felitta ("City Island") fruitfully revisits the aftermath of a TV doc that his father, Frank, produced for NBC in 1965.