Marc Savlov

Zombieland is dead set against being dead serious. Its tonal pallor has more in common with a foreshortened "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" than with "28 Days" or "Weeks Later," and then, again, there's that jaw-dropping cameo. It'll kill ya.

Paranoid Park shows the Portland-based director to be working at the pinnacle of his art in every frame, in every composition. It's breathtaking, heartbreaking, tragic, gorgeous, and true all at the same time.

Harris' thought-provoking performance art/life isn't yet over, but by film's end he's become unplugged, both literally and metaphorically.

An order-of-magnitude leap forward in animated storytelling.

It's a masterful film, the kind you itch to see twice or more, as elliptical as a dream and as direct as the short sharp shock of lead kissing flesh.

Clearly the single best, the single coolest (to borrow from Harry Knowles) animated film in a great while.

The Host is a freewheeling mix of high style and goofy, good-natured fear-mongering.

By the time the explosive finale arrives (with a wistful Ray Charles crooning over shots of cataclysmic destruction, no less), you'll be hard pressed to name a recent film with this much action, pathos, and smarts.

A romance of fantastique proportions, a cautionary tale that revels in throwing caution to the wind, and a de facto monster movie with loose but loving ties to director Jack Arnold’s classic "Creature From the Black Lagoon" and Cocteau’s "Beauty and the Beast," del Toro’s latest is a masterpiece of compassion and insight into the (in)human condition and the transformative power of love.

A brilliant, exhilarating piece of filmmaking. It may even be the best mainstream film of the year thus far.

Moll's film is a far cry from the elegiac poetry of, say, Night and Fog; it's a document more than an examination, and its power of record is inarguable and incorruptible. And then, at the end, somehow you find yourself with that least likely of expressions on your face, a smile, courtesy of Representative Lantos.

Osama begins in fear and ends in terror. In between there's all manner of hopelessness, deprivation, and death, which is to say that as the first film to come out of a post-Taliban Afghanistan, it's practically a documentary.

Feels brief and dreamlike. Waking from its spell, you touch your face, and it's wet, but you're smiling anyway.

That Aimée & Jaguar manages so well in triple duty as a wartime melodrama with a lesbian twist is remarkable.

It speaks to both the head and the heart, and it is, in myriad ways, some of the best work the legendary animator has ever created.

At times poignant, joyful, and terrifying, Shawshank Redemption is an altogether brilliant movie and the debut of an equally brilliant director.

Is it a comedy? A documentary? An underground gore-fest? Man Bites Dog, the first feature film from Belgian director Rémy Belvaux, is all of these and much more, a ghastly, shocking and explosive debut with all the genuinely ruthless ability to disturb as an oily blue-barreled revolver jammed in your mouth. And it's funny, too.

The end result is an electrifying, morally complex story of the evil that men (and women) do in the name of the greater good.

A crazed, lovestruck, wholly original (and yet amazingly referential) beast, part pop-culture wasteland, part glowing tribute, and part wild-eyed roller coaster (of love).

It's a ripping good yarn, to boot, breathlessly paced and seamlessly edited, but most important, resoundingly and surpassingly fun.

The effect is devastating, both emotionally and physically. You literally can’t take your eyes off Saul.

The film is delicious, welcome, and entirely satisfying and, as an added bonus, far and away the best genre-fan date movie of the year.

Cooly feral in dark suit and tie, Glover’s the man in the gray flannel suit gone way, way over the edge, and it’s one of the most fully realized screen performances in ages, rats and all.

Casting is everything, and the casting of Stallone -- playing way against type -- as the powerless hayseed sheriff in Cop Land is nothing short of inspired.

It is violent, certainly, but it's also a genuinely excellent film, horrifying and touching and beautiful in a bloody sort of way. A bit like real life, really.

Everything about this swift and gorgeous and tremendously enjoyable film is played out in a rush of staccato edits, crisp performances, and charmingly giddy subplots that coalesce into Spielberg's most purely entertaining movie in years.

The subtitle of Richard Linklater: dream is destiny is drawn from a line of dialogue found in his equally groundbreaking and hypnagogic animated art film "Waking Life," and it serves as a mission statement of sorts for his entire oeuvre and endlessly curious philosophy.

This remarkable adaptation of the supposedly "unfilmable" novel by David Mitchell achieves near-perfection on virtually all levels.