Marc Savlov

Even though we're aware of the tragic trajectory of the singer's life, for a while it almost seems as if reality got it wrong and Curtis might just squeak past the reaper's scythe with no more than a shave and a haircut.

Harrowing and important documentary.

Corman's legendary parsimony has rarely been so inobvious; House of Usher has the look and feel of a film made for far more than its tiny $200K budget (and on a tight, 15-day shooting schedule). Its authentically creepy dream-sequence – all grasping hands and hazy blue-gelled fog swirls –­ is a minor surrealist masterpiece by its own right.

One of the 10 best films ever made, period.

A pure cinematic experience like Monos is a rare and precious gem. Colombian director Landes has created a surreal, sumptuous assault on the senses that’s as lushly beautiful as it is unforgettable.

This knuckle-whitening depiction of a man of God toppling into his own spiritual abyss is one of Schrader’s finest and most excoriating films to date.

Nolan maintains gut-wrenching suspense throughout by cross-cutting between the various characters and their plights. I’d go so far to say that Dunkirk could easily serve as its own master class in the art of film editing. Add to that an absolutely terrifyingly discordant score from Hans Zimmer and the result is, well, a bona fide classic.

Mandy, though, is flat-out orders of magnitude a more emotionally adept and shockingly powerful film in virtually every department, from the dazzlingly insane cinematography and lysergically–inclined production design to what I can only believe is Nicolas Cage’s single best performance to date.

Unstoppable and righteous, it roars across the no-lane hardpan like the four-iron horseman of the kinetic apocalypse, amped up on bathtub crank and undiluted movie love. Oh, what a movie. What a lovely movie!

Arguably the best cross-dressing comedy of all time, it's also one of director Billy Wilder's most fluid, vibrant, laugh-out-loud accomplishments, rife with zippy one-liners delivered in Lemmon's impeccable style, and a rakishly outrageous Cary Grant impersonation from Curtis. Monroe is at her gooey, blonde best here as the pouty, hard-drinking Sugar.

To this day one of the most riveting, horrific, and empathetically turbocharged pieces of motion picture history ever recorded, Eisenstein's mind-bogglingly complex composition – utilizing a seeming cast of thousands of extras in addition to the unnamed, iconic main figures – is a gory ballet of marching Cossacks, frantic Odessites, trampled innocence, and doomed dissent.

It’s an absolutely crazed fever dream of a film, and like a febrile infant it begins with a few odd notes and barely heard, often off-camera sounds, and then proceeds to build those seemingly minor instances of weird until it crescendos into an ear-piercing, panic-inducing visual and aural shriek.

Director Keith Maitland’s film is one of the finest documentaries ever made, and it’s also one of the most unusual.

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is as real as it gets, a snapshot stolen from the very year everything turned to sh-t. It’s a masterpiece.

It's a short, sharp, shock to the cinematic system that's virtually impossible to dislike, and if you don't leave the theatre grinning your face off, then buddy, movies just aren't for you.

Gilliam keeps the audience guessing, and in doing so creates a startlingly effective rumination on the nature of sanity and madness cloaked in the shroud of a sci-fi thriller.

Like the culturally complex and often overwhelming island nation itself, Black Mother is a haunting and singular experience unlike any other.

Audacious, thrilling, erotic (and in three languages, no less), I Am Cuba is a lost masterpiece of filmmaking finally seeing the light of day 30 years after its production.

It's a thrilling, powerful movie, and one that certain people in certain quarters may have at one time called dangerous. Some of them may yet still.

There's even a Simon and Garfunkel tune on the soundtrack, which makes Braff's character seem like the only living boy in New Jersey, which, of course, he may well be. L'chaim!

Lean on Pete is a methodical and memorable film primarily because director Haight, adapting from Willy Vlautin’s novel, keeps a distance from his characters, never taking the easy route, and never, ever letting the movie enter the killing fields of the corny or cliched.

At almost three hours, it's a masterwork of brilliant editing and design; not a frame is unwarranted, not a scene excessive, and it holds together over its lengthy running time in a way few films half its length can manage.

Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Skarsgård) is as joltingly nightmarish as fans could have hoped for.

The gut-wrenching Amy is, in the end, as much an indictment of our celebrity-obsessed (global) pop culture as it is of the perils of rampant success arriving unexpectedly fast, tires squealing and driving a hearse.

Szpilman takes to performing sonatas in thin air, eyes closed, those jittery fingers stroking nothing but air. It's a wonderful moment in a wonderful, ghastly film, and one of the most moving arguments for the redemptive powers of art ever made.

Love, death, hope, and hatred: Spider-Man 2 has ’em all, in spades.

Electrifying and decidedly downbeat slice of life and death in Ajami.

One of Jordan's best films, and almost certainly in Nolte's top two percentile.

An unexpected classic.

It's thrilling and lovely and sad and explosive in all the right ways, and it needs to be seen – on the big screen, in 3-D – to be believed.

Audition's take on the war between the sexes is bleak and almost entirely devoid of hope. --It's enough to make you give up dating altogether.

Mystic River asks plenty of questions but rarely if ever offers any answers, and certainly no easy ones. If this fine and sorrowful film is what can be expected from our aging cinema icons, here’s to the golden years, dark though they may be.

Much has been made about the film's "humanizing" of Hitler, but he's only human here in the most prosaic of terms.

As a documentary on the origins and backstory of the unfilmed film, Jodorowsky’s Dune is unsurpassable. More than that, however, it also allows audiences a rare glimpse inside the furiously creative mind of Jodorowsky, who still, at 84, is a wonderfully mad genius of the moving image.

Coco is animatedly empowering entertainment for anyone who’s ever had to go against the wishes of their family to achieve their most heartfelt dreams.

Cloverfield is the most intense and original creature feature I've seen in my adult moviegoing life, and that's coming from a guy who knows his Gojira from his Gamera and his Harryhausen from his Honda. Cloverfield isn't a horror film – it's a pure-blood, grade A, exultantly exhilarating monster movie.

This is horror with a wink and a nod to drive-in theatres and sweaty back seats. This is how it's done.

Piglet, your time has arrived. Sooth us.

Absolutely mandatory viewing for aspiring animators and filmmakers. (In terms of pacing, scoring, editing, and narrative, it's a film school unto itself.) For the rest of us, however, it's simply magic.

This riveting documentary about powerhouse never-say-die Aussie yacht skipper Tracy Edwards is every bit as thrilling and emotionally grueling as "Mad Max: Fury Road." And it’s all true.

This is what great dialogue -- and by extension great movies -- is made of.

Like Mumbai, Slumdog pulses and throbs with raw, unadulterated life and the hope for a better Bombay, today. It's brilliant.

There are many questions raised and answered in this film, but one that isn’t is why on Earth it’s garnered an R rating. Love Is Strange is anything but. It’s a seriocomic romance of the most genteel sort, full of heartfelt “I love yous,” brief (and definitely unerotic) snuggling, and a wealth of tremendously fine acting from all involved.

Screenwriter Audrey Wells adapts Thomas’ YA novel with a sure hand and the supporting cast – especially Hornsby’s deeply protective and loving father, and Sabrina Carter as one of Starr’s white besties who just doesn’t get it – are pitch perfect.

While the evil that men do to one another in this film may well be rooted in the Cain-like enabling of original sin from one doomed brother to another, the final familial tragedy feels exactly like classic Lumet.

The end result goes far beyond the simple colorization of moldering battlefield documentation. It restores the humanity of the combatants, both the British and, surprisingly, the German. Ultimately, it’s a you-are-there time capsule of enormous emotional and historical importance.

Spanning three decades, Map of the Human Heart is one of those rare films that illuminates a single human story, and does it so well that you're hardly aware you're watching a movie.

This is high fantasy of the best kind.

Small Engine Repair is a real American horror story, skillfully shot, perfectly cast and acted, and carrying a sorrowful message that resonates with brutal truth.

It's an audacious, affecting, and unexpectedly hilarious debut, and most definitely the most original film I've seen all year.

Pollock is that rare breed, a biopic that makes you want to learn more about its subject, as much as you can, as fast as you can.

The balance between the slight, near-mythic narrative and the eye-wateringly beautiful cinematography (courtesy of Bradford Young), as well as the aching, spare score by Daniel Hart, create a movie that’s a more lovingly crafted tone poem than anything you’re likely to see on Texas screens this summer.

This is a dream cast for both Scorsese and the viewer, and everyone is working at the peak of their craft. Nicholson's flawless performance as the increasingly unhinged crime boss is a marvel of manic, paranoid ruination.

What makes Under the Skin such a mind-blower has everything to do with Johansson’s chillingly unempathetic turn as the, well, whatever she is, coupled with cinematographer Daniel Landin’s disorienting, hallucinogenic visuals.

Set in some sort of post-apocalyptic Parisian deli o' the damned, this lunatic's take on the future of man is so delightfully warped that it's impossible to shake it out of your head and go get a decent night's sleep.

This may be the first film to examine the intricacies of the Colombia-to-U.S. drug route in any detail.

It's something of a Tiananmen Square face-off, minus the overt politics, which makes it all the more spellbinding.

By the end of this epic and thoughtful expedition, you’re left with the unmistakable feeling that some things – in this case, the natural splendor of the Rio Grande ecosystem – should and indeed must remain unsullied by cheap Washington grandstanding and election year promises.

As with all of Lee's films, there's much more going on beneath the surface than is immediately apparent.

At once emotionally charged and genuinely, disconcertingly surreal...a marvel of subdued, genuine filmmaking.

It's a keeper, a tumultuous love story set against the backdrop of 24 hours of really, really inclement weather in the Oklahoma heartland.

The bulk, the heft, and the girth of Bukowski: Born Into This arrives in the form of the author himself, giving beery readings to Berkeley audiences clearly enjoying a contact high or sitting, ill-kempt but quiet, pensive, Heineken in one yellowy paw, in his apartment.

It's a "keep calm, carry on" wartime melodrama of the first order, and stiff though it may be, it is never less than brilliantly done.

The most costly and the most popular film in South Korean history is also one of the most gripping and epic war films ever made, and certainly the only one I can think of the portrays the Korean war from the viewpoint of both sides of the conflict.

Face/Off works like a charm right on down the line thanks to brilliant, exhilarating performances from Cage and Travolta, and the many tremendously enjoyable action set-pieces that are Woo's hallmark.

Miller has somehow, inadvertently by his own admission, managed to capture the essence of the human throng, in all its maddening, scintillating permutations. It's a tour unlike any you have ever taken.

New and amazing -- it takes you back to the days when French filmmaking and French filmmakers were the darlings and saviors of the cinematic cutting edge. It's a great film, simply told, and a pleasure to watch.

While there’s hardly a plot to speak of, that’s never hobbled Linklater before and is indeed the director’s keenest, cleverest trick: the ability to make something sweet, honest, and true out of the ephemeral marginalia of youth minus the rose-tinted bullshit.

The Polish/Israeli co-production picked up the Best Horror Feature award at Fantastic Fest 2015, and it’s a shame that Wrona is gone, but at least we have this superlative example of his cinematic brilliance.

Sophie Scholl plods along inexorably, one step after another, to its grim, sad end. It's almost unbearable.

Citizenfour is obviously in Snowden’s corner, but as an example of pure cinema vérité, this is the finest – and most disturbing – political documentary since Alex Gibney’s Oscar-winning "Taxi to the Dark Side."

This is Denzel Washington’s third at bat behind the camera while directing himself and, holy smokes, does he knock it out of the park with a vicious, visceral performance that fairly sets the screen ablaze.

As if the dazzling performances and audaciously intertwined storylines weren’t enough, Waves is a visual stunner, too, thanks to director of photography Drew Daniels, whose restless, reckless camerawork paints a family tragedy in dizzying, near-psychedelic hues, mirroring the increasingly frenetic storyline.

Why Don’t You Play in Hell? isn’t for everyone, but neither was Stravinsky’s "The Rite of Spring." Genius is genius, no matter how many audience members may riot.

Banderas, taking time off from voicing kids' films and appearing in Robert Rodriguez outings, plays Ledgard with just the right amount of borderline-freaky, intensity, and Anaya is another of Almodovar's terrifically talented and shockingly beautiful female leads.

Everything fits perfectly, from titles to fin, but most of all Firth, who dons the role of George like a fine bespoke suit.

The decidedly defiant grande dame of African American literature is shown here as an intellectual and creative dynamo who, at the age of 88, shows zero signs of deceleration; if anything, she appears to be just getting warmed up. Haters beware.

A bitter, bloody masterpiece with adrenalized emotions and hyper-realized images, this is perhaps as close to battle as any sane human being should ever hope to tread.

Closer is an un-love story as honest and naked as Cupid in the devil's dock, the whole truth, and nothing but.

This quiet, contemplative gem of a film paints a painfully accurate portrait of familial love, loss, and healing-by-degrees among the migrant communities bordering San Antonio.

Shimuzu sees darkened staircases and hears the rustle of dead autumn leaves and reacts as if from the devil’s own haiku. And his dread is catching.

As fluid and intellectually stimulating as the man himself, a tragic, heartfelt take on an event some 40 years old that feels as fresh as yesterday's Times.

So full of good stuff that it's impossible not to fall in love with it.

It's a jaw-droppingly good performance from this pint-sized, first-time actor.

Sauper's delicately horrific documentary is a short, sharp slap in the face of the developed world, and a long overdue one at that.

Greenaway and his picture-perfect cast weave so many interlacing threads into the story, and so many curious subtexts - stylistic and otherwise - that it sometimes leaves us scratching our heads in wonderment.

As we are informed in the film’s prologue, "Cats live in loneliness, then die like falling rain." Sh--, man, whatever. This is so stupid it’s positively genius.

A spare, discomfiting score and uniformly excellent performances, and you have a quiet little masterpiece of dark and chilling beauty.

Be forewarned: Folman closes his film with a grisly, real-death denouement that may give you some nightmares of your own. As well it should.

Once Upon a Time is an elegiac mash note to Hollywood 1969, at times sublimely, almost surrealistically moving while simultaneously managing to be the director’s funniest and least violent film to date.

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.

Definitely not for the squeamish, Wake in Fright is calibrated for maximum psychic impact. Its madness is viral and disconcerting. Truly, you're going to want a stiff drink and a hot shower, or a noose, after visiting the Yabba.

One of the most suspenseful films of all time, its wartime action setting makes it easy to forget it's also one of the most spiritually righteous. [Director's Cut]

Just plain unforgettable.

The Blue Room is mesmerizing, psychologically complex, and, at the very end, viscerally devastating. They don’t make them like this much anymore, but they should.

Loud, hilarious, and enormously entertaining, 24 Hour Party People makes you want to toss current FM radio out on its pre-fab, corporate-sponsored backside. And not a moment too soon.

Crowe has rarely been better, and the same goes for director Scott, who parallels and then dovetails Lucas and Roberts' stories with sublime, gritty precision, working up to a magnificent "Godfather III"-style crosscutting sequence that electrifies an already explosive tale.

For those who only recall Bana from his bland showing as Ang Lee's super-thyroidial meltdown monster, his performance here is a revelation.

While it’s perhaps not the best date film of the year, it is a grim and unmistakable masterpiece of bleak, black sorrow.

A sweet-natured romantic fable, albeit one that packs in carnivorous cockroaches, rampaging brontosaurs, and the ever-Freudian Empire State Building among its requisite emotional baggage. And, too, it's a corker of an action/monster movie.

Factotum, for all its grim grind, is funny-serious, and smart-stupid. Just like you after four beers, and me after eight.

As concert films go, this is heady stuff.

Danny Boyle's 127 Hours is the calm, cool, and tear-your-hair-out exciting mirror image of Tony Scott's bland and formulaic "Unstoppable."

You can take a page from Wes Craven before he went flat and keep repeating, "It's only a movie; it's only a movie; it's only a movie." But is it?

As far from "Slacker" as you could possibly get and still be using a motion-picture camera, The School of Rock is nonetheless pure Linklater, pure rock & roll, and pure fun. Gabba, gabba, hey!

Pixar's Finding Nemo may well have the best casting of any animated film of the past 30-odd years.

Kempner's documentary is a streamlined, gorgeous piece of work, full of revelations of time, place, and person.

This pleasantly rambling absurdist father/daughter drama is also one of the most strikingly unusual films of the year, period.

A glorious, action-and-pathos packed capstone to the rebooted Apes franchise.

It's almost dreamlike in its weird little tone, a Manischewitz hangover of a nightmare that's giddy enough to usher chuckles and is thoroughly unique.

More emotionally complex than even I had thought possible, Chasing Amy is the sound of burgeoning genius on the fast track to maturity.

It's no wonder Imamura has now collected not one but two Palmes d'Ors; The Eel is a flash of quiet brilliance that resonates long after the images have faded from the screen.

It's not necessary to be a longtime fan of the Star Trek universe to appreciate the sheer emotional punch and swagger of this rough and randy Enterprise crew.

Dueñas and Lucas give knockout performances as two twisted souls seemingly locked in a match to the death to determine who is the madder one. I’ll call it a tie, and I’ll also say Alleluia is a grotesque masterpiece. L’amour fou, indeed.

Absolutely harrowing, shocking in its sudden revelatory immediacy, and very, very well done, Black Hawk Down is one of the best depictions of the outright lunacy inherent to battle I have ever seen.

Perhaps the best way to sum up Boy and the World is by saying it is what it is and what it is, is absolutely remarkable.

Possibly the best argument against couples therapy ever, Antichrist is a tour-de-force trip inside the mind of a dangerously depressed man. That man is Danish filmmaker von Trier, and he has gone on record as having conceived and executed Antichrist in the wake of a deep depression.

Everything about Gaia works in tandem to create a steadily escalating mood of Blastomycotic body-horror distress (including Pierre-Henri Wicomb’s anxiety-inducing score). Fans of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy and its Annihilation adaptation, and lovers of the defiantly feminine and vengeful natural world will find plenty to chew on in Gaia.

Vladimir Putin’s Russia – brutal, carnivorous, delusional, but monstrously well-evolved for crushing both spirits and lives large and small – is taken to task in this excoriating portrait of the state’s omnivorous hunger for control in a far-flung northern fishing community on the Barents Sea.

The director is unflinching in his portrayal of the horrors that occurred, and nearly all the characters, from Voight's Wright to Rhames' Mann, are wonderfully nuanced, desperately believable creations.

Hauntingly beautiful film.

Everything here from costuming and production design to the note-perfect score from Edward Shearmur works in tandem to create not so much a film as a singular and joyous tribute to a vanished age when wonder only cost a nickel and played three time daily at the Bijou.

It's the truth, unshackled and captured against all odds, and it's one of the most powerful documentary films I have ever seen, period.

The most original comedy from either side of the pond in years.

Disturbing, harrowing, visceral, and even sporadically humorous, Kids is one of those rare films that begs the description “a must-see.” For once, it's the truth.

Snatch is nothing if not watchable: It has the insane, popcorn rhythms of a Road Runner cartoon, and for that reason alone it's a minor masterpiece.

Park is one sick puppy, and I mean that in the very best sense of the phrase.

If Victorian Manchester had been remotely like this, H.G. Wells never would have bothered to pen "The Time Machine" – he'd have just stepped outside and into the fray.

For those willing to submit to its terrible charms, it may be the single most important debut to come out of the Americas in years.

As sequels go, Paddington 2 is up to the challenge. It’s neck and neck, or paw and claw as to which is the better, so why not just watch both back to back?

Don’t leave until the final credits finish rolling or you’ll miss what many are considering Kill Bill: Vol. 1’s best bit. Trust us on this one.

It is, in fact, an instant classic, the sort of film that will make you check under your bed at night and then amplify into terror the midnight creaks and 3am breezes that unsettle every house at times, most especially yours. Highly recommended.

Wildly entertaining, "Shakespeare in Love" minus the Bard and the babe, but with substantive style to burn.

An altogether more viscerally engaging film, from its relentless pacing and slam-bang effects work to the fine, appropriately heroic score by John Ottman. That the movie has an obvious gay subtext neither adds nor detracts from the film’s smashing popcorn appeal.

There are so many terrific things going on in the film – rapid-fire wordplay, split-second visual gags, and some veddy, veddy British punning – that, frankly, Paddington deserves more than one viewing. Huzzah Paddington, and marmalade forever!

Like a car crash in slo-mo, it's a riveting, beautiful mess.

Filled with brilliant, stand-out performances.

There are plenty of great things to say about director Janice Engel’s portrait of the late, legendary Ivins, but maybe the best is that after watching Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins, you'll immediately want to go back and re-read all her books.

This is nobody's idea of a happy family story, but it is a pristinely chilling depiction of familial meltdown in a post-Stalinist, Twilight Zone anti-place, the dark heart of heartlessness and mysterious parenting techniques.

Amreeka is anything but a depressing digression on American wartime paranoia.

There's so much information and so many finely honed arguments in this ultimately joyous film that it's liable to send audiences scurrying home to their computers to download the bands they've just heard.

Seems more like a subtle, elegiac tone poem than an indictment of human banality and the evil that men do.

An antidote to holiday cheer like no other, this French tale of psychological horror is as harsh as they come -– it’s like finding a severed finger in your stocking and then finding it’s even better with hollandaise.

So upbeat it might as well arrive on a sunbeam.

"Always be good to rock and roll and it will always be good to you," the film quotes Phil Spector as saying, and a more fitting explanation of the Bingenheimer mystique you'll likely never find.

This is highly personal artwork writ in a grand, towering script, and all the more intellectually and artistically legible for it.

Take the politics out and you’d still have a powerhouse action film. But please, don’t take the politics out.

Narco Cultura smartly and movingly focuses on the cultural cycle of violence, beginning with a young, Los Angeles-based rapper, Edgar Quintero, whose main job is penning lyrics celebrating the orgiastically violent lifestyles of the drug thugs for his band Buknas de Culiacán.

It ends up seeming more real and more artistically, morally, and spiritually honest than any dozen bedrock documentary films you'd care to name.

The quiet respect Venus displays toward lions in winter, defanged though they may be, is rare enough; the film's respect for unfinessed lionesses-to-be is rarer still. Wherever they're going, no one here is going quietly.

You can't help but feel conflicted watching this superb documentary about the seminal New York-based punk rock vanguard, the Ramones.

It’s a spooky, moody doozy of a debut, lensed by Director of Photography Lyle Vincent in a radiant monochrome that somehow makes even the darkness sparkle.

That they were just hormonally blitzkrieged kids at the time, unaware of their role in history, only makes Peralta's superior doc that much more winning.

Fresh and raw like a blown-out vein, Narc takes a walking-dead, cop-flick subgenre and beats new life into it.

12 is every bit as much of a moral powerhouse as its predecessors but with the added bonus of being simultaneously intellectually riveting and, at times, almost indescribably poetic.

Absurdist humor abounds throughout a story whose underlying themes echo Elvis Costello’s eternal question, “What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?” even as corpses dangle from a foregrounded gallows.

Provides that rarest of documentary accomplishments: a glimpse into the artists' sunny, dark hearts.

A genuinely outrageous and occasionally brilliant coupling of American animation and classic early-Eighties heavy metal (does anybody even remember Riggs and Trust?).

This second incarnation of the Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt-produced animation anthology is, if anything, even better than the first.

Amid the increasingly horrific images of daily ghetto life are moments of utterly unexpected, haunting beauty, including a reel of color film that does more to humanize an inhuman situation than anything I've ever seen.

Fiercely original in every respect.

With such a frenetic, brain-melting load of images to ponder, it's easy to forget that there are also some terrific actors at work here, not the least of whom is the amazing Vinnie Jones.

Ferociously subversive and trippily beautiful debut feature from director and screenwriter Coralie Fargeat.

Nearly a perfect film, from its bold and epic man-vs.-nature conflict to the breathless scripting, editing, acting, and direction.

God forbid this should ever play on an IMAX screen -- the concussive soundtrack and relentless visuals would likely strike viewers deaf and blind (but what a way to go!). Simply breathtaking.

Far from being atypical, the events of June 12 and the litany of tiny nightmares that led up to that day are brutally obvious.

You’ve got to hand it to director Andy Muschietti. Adapting any Stephen King novel – or, for that matter, shorter material – is always a hit-or-miss gig, but It Chapter Two manages to pull out all the stops and in several areas actually tops the first film.

Castle-Hughes and Paratene are nothing short of remarkable in their roles.

This astonishing animated feature from first-time Slovenian director Krstić is required viewing for art history majors and anyone else with even a glancing interest in the works of everyone from Warhol to Gauguin, Diego Velázquez to Joan Miró.

Anything but dull, Gibney’s clarion call whipsaws along like a combo Jason Bourne/007 thriller minus all that running. Unnerving and likely to give viewers some bitter food for thought, Zero Days is Gibney’s most important work yet.

You miss out on this and you miss out on something entirely, amazingly original and jaw-droppingly entertaining. C’est magnifique!

Let Me In is by far one of the best-looking films of the year, genre or no genre. It's a nightmare, sure, but what childhood isn't?

Could be summarized as a vampire tween romance, but that cheap and tawdry sum-up does zero justice to the magnificent emotional resonance of this gemlike bloodstone of a film.

This isn't some pomo arthouse picture looking to score points by subverting the gangster paradigm; it's a killer film about killers who idolize film but are unable or unwilling to parse the doom that always crops up come Act III.

Niccol's futuristic fable is a gorgeous construct, from its cast on down to the brilliant, clinical nature of the set design that reflects a future in which even a particle of saliva can be one's undoing.

Gravity is a major filmmaking accomplishment, no doubt, although it would have been interesting to see how it might have played sans dialogue. Unthinkable to Hollywood, sure, but still … Kowalski and Stone’s backstories and banter are, in the end, secondary to the film’s jaw-dropping visuals.

Fight Club's dirty little secret is it's one of the best comedies of the decade.

Feels feverishly dreamlike while keeping its subject firmly rooted in the present. If you desire a female empowering musical manifesto with both claws and kisses, here it is.

It's enough to make you weep.

Death and the Maiden is a streamlined razor-ride of a movie: taut, riveting, and a psychological horror show that will leave nail-marks in your palms for days afterwards.

It's Cronenberg's film, but it's the actors who elevate Eastern Promises from mere thriller to some other, more disturbing plane.

Cavite isn't a horror film, per se – its nightmarish sense of unreality is thoroughly grounded in the geopolitical here and now – but the emotions it conjures from the audience can be traced straight back to Shockers 101.

Wisely, a lot like the real event. No answers are given, barely any questions are asked, and the film unfolds at a leisurely, inexorable pace that stymies the traditional filmmaking tropes of tension and release.

Dreamlike, disjointed, and possessed of a stunningly complex sensual and narrative poetry that may confound audiences not familiar with Chinese director Wong's defining stylistic tropes, Ashes of Time Redux is, simply, one of the most gorgeous films ever made.

In many ways, A Field in England is a funhouse mirror of audience expectations and something of a filmic Rorschach test.

The great director's masterpiece of bad juju. [Director's Cut]

It's an out-of-this-world, real-life adventure for kids of all ages, budding Neil Armstrongs and Ray Bradburys alike.

It's a veritable shoo-in for an Oscar nod this year, and one of the more disturbing films to come out of a major studio in ages.

Diehl’s performance is a model of restraint; he more often imparts information by a look, a glance, the slump of his shoulders, than he does with a spoken word.

Nothing short of horror-hound heaven.

Honestly, this ultra-noir adaptation of Frank Miller's black-and-white cult comic series is a visual feast ripped straight from the original medium's blood-soaked pages.

Sellbinding, distressing, and possessed of a dark and terrible beauty.

Cyberpunk meets renegade romance, à la Orwell.

An immersion into the characters' world in toto, from the "Oh geezes" and the "Oh, yaahs" to the dark and flinty core beneath.

Pixar's animation is simply flawless; colorful, deeply realized, and ably conveying both the chaos of the kitchen, and the sensual allure of food well prepared.

Remarkably fresh and exciting.

Terribly Happy isn't, but it is wonderfully unhinged, and a painstakingly constructed meditation on a place where good and evil meet, mate, and make sour times sublime and, dare I say it, beautiful.

Alternating between color footage and the genius interplay of startlingly lovely sequences of Stanton singing and playing harmonica in granular black-and-white, Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction perfectly captures the essence of the man.

McCarthy’s film is rich in tone and subtlety, but has precious little dialogue. It feels less like a modern motion picture than some odd poem long lost and then discovered in another age, a timeless, ageless gem of hard-resined emotions melting into real life.

Which ultimately is what Applause is really about: applying the greasepaint of the daily mundane over the scar tissue of a damaged life, striving for a reality outside of a bottle (and off the stage) while still maintaining some semblance of what made this particular lion roar in the first place.

McKim’s documentary is as jangly and urgent as its subject and his art, and it packs a melancholy wallop, using the artist’s own running commentary via cassette tape (there were two hundred hours of it) and layering it over snatches of Wojnarowicz’s Super 8 films, countless photographs, and recollections from those who were both there at the start of Wojnarowicz’s career and at the end of his life.

This is Pixar's finest and most emotionally powerful film yet, and it draws on a wealth of cinematic resources that run the gamut from Chaplin's best to Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati, and even Martin and Lewis.

A wholly original creation, crossed with shadows and light and the everyday madness of Savannah and its remarkable citizens.

Frankenweenie is that rare film that's both kid- and adult-friendly.

The Kids are All Right, a grin-cracking great portrait of a modern American family in minor and then major crises.

An anime version of "Mr. Mom" this is not. Director Hosoda’s clear-eyed story allows for comic moments of fatherly ineptitude but focuses just as often on the marital and familial stress this sudden role reversal causes.

A third-act revelation will knock viewers silly and cause them to reevaluate everything that’s come before, but even without that jaw-dropping information, Moss’ film is a righteous piece of empathetic, of-the-moment documentary filmmaking.

Blomkamp and his entire cast and crew have created an instant genre classic that transcends the self-limiting ghetto implied by the term "science fiction" and instead, like precursors such as Robert Wise's "The Day the Earth Stood Still," engages not only the mind but the heart as well. It's magnificent.

The Princess Blade opens with one of the most note-perfect action sequences ever committed to film.

The images this war photographer shoots are beyond awful, but there's just no looking away.

About a Boy knows exactly what it wants to do: It wants to make you smile, and grin, and then laugh with recognition, and it manages all three, again and again.

It is with immense pleasure that I can report that Disney's Muppet reboot movie is an absolute delight.

This is the sort of masterpiece that will obliterate memories of lesser, later efforts in the "meeting the parents" comedy lineage. Brilliant.

It’s this hunger for the entirety of a person’s life that makes Marjorie Prime one of the most riveting, moving films of the year.

This is a determined, resolutely paced, and atypical samurai movie, more an epic of the heart than of the battlefield, and all the more powerful for it.

Riveting, and frankly it's great fun to see Leth best the smirky von Trier five times running.

This feature-length expansion of Cohen's deliciously ridiculous character accomplishes what decades of Soviet propaganda failed to do: It points out and underscores issues of race, religious intolerance, classism, and all manner of very American social ills by giving the culprits just enough rope to hang themselves by their own petards (and then some).

The masterful Land of Mine slowly, almost without notice, transforms into one of the most viscerally intense anti-war films since Dalton Trumbo’s "Johnny Got His Gun."

As riveting as a documentary can possibly be, this slim (74-minute) film is also one of the most politically aware films of the year.

Absolutely unlike any documentary you’ve ever seen, Step Into Liquid nearly qualifies as a religious experience.

By far the most gorgeous slice of sunlit sadism so far this summer, I’m Not Scared also manages to be oddly sweet: a boy’s life, with treachery.

The story (even more so if you weren't around in July of 1969) is gripping, eloquent, and powerful stuff, the right stuff right down to its pioneering heart, taking manifest destiny to the stars themselves.

Fantasies and phantasms aside, Fincher proves himself yet again to be a better cinematic psychologist of (in-)human nature than almost any other director alive. It’s another squirmily excellent date movie from hell, courtesy of contemporary cinema’s most overt nihilist.

The hippies, the ravers, the bumbling bobbies and nonplussed locals, the mud, the rush of being in the crush, up against the barricades, torn between the need for a restroom and the need for more room, to dance, to sing, to carry on like a stark loony regardless of your faraway day job – all of this is captured by Temple's unblinking, seemingly everywhere-at-once eye.

This is a Disney film, so there's never any real question regarding Bolt and his friends' ultimate success or failure, but the writing team of Dan Fogelman (Cars) and co-director Williams (Mulan) have concocted one of the most witty and often hilarious Disney outings in years.

But the best way to enjoy Ong Bak is on its own gritty, low-budget level, skins, brains, and guts galore, a viscerally entertaining slice of Thai filmmaking that will leave you grinning ear to ear.

I think it's a mess, but - and this is a major caveat - an endearing, beautiful, hopelessly honest mess that's supported by a pair of performances so unnaturally natural that they draw you in and clutch you, struggling, to their flipping, flopping hearts.

It may not be art, but it's vastly more entertaining than anything Coppola senior has done in far too long.

Bird's grim, picture-perfect direction -- the Sierras are more character than backdrop, and everything else looks like it's already been digested and expelled -- augments what is frankly a small, albeit lusterless, gem of a horror show, for once with as many smarts as body parts.

Ford, as usual, is a delight to watch; his portrayals of both Henry the Ruthless Lawyer and Henry the Reborn are dead-on, unerring in their accuracy. Bening is likewise excellent.

This single film beats every other Hollywood action film of the past five years, hands down. It's not even close. Welcome back, Mr. Tsui.

These scenes of debauchery and lust that make up the film's centerpiece are among some of the most powerful and disturbing ever put to film.

Durkin's film seems to exist in its own fractured dream state. It's hypnotic, narcotic, and trembling on the verge of either dread or redemption or some hazy state of nothingness in between.

An American remake of Jorge Michel Grau's 2010 Mexican shocker, this Sundance and Fantastic Fest fan favorite is undeniably creepy stuff that’s been given a dusty, American Gothic anti-sheen courtesy of cinematographer Ryan Samul.

A spare and perfectly droll kinda-sorta comedy from Norwegian director Hamer.

It clings to your psyche, a parasitic creepy-crawl of anxiety that will test the viewer’s own ability to get a good night’s sleep long after the closing credits fade to black.

This artful documentary about renowned Tokyo sushi master Jiro Ono is not going to help save Charlie the Tuna one iota.