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.