Marc Savlov

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.

One of the 10 best films ever made, period.

So bereft of hope... that it's a chore to withstand.

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.

Fiercely original in every respect.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

It’s odd and unfortunate, however, that The Return of the King just barely misses the eye-misting emotional wallop of the series’ previous installment, The Two Towers, which had a lyrical subtlety underpinning the vast vistas of growing chaos (and Christopher Lee hardly hurt matters) and hobbits-in-peril.

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

The concept of loss, and the sorrow that shadows it, is not what you'd call an uncommon theme in films, but rarely is it handled with such uncommon eloquence as it is in Maborosi.

Such gorgeous explosions, such a terrible vision, such an amazing work of art. Go. Now.

This is high fantasy of the best kind.

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.

Harrowing and important documentary.

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

Full of period locations, costumes, and one very clever Lana Turner gag, it's easy to see why Ellroy is so pleased with the film.

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

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.

Wilson and Beckinsale, as the couple on the rocks, do their damnedest to go along for the creepfest, but nothing in Vacancy manages to come anywhere close to the quiet and steadily mounting dread of the real thing, much less the purview of Norman Bates or his beloved mother.

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.

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.

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.

Only Yesterday is a little-seen gem in the crown of Japanese animation powerhouse Studio Ghibli.

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!

Unconventional and idiosyncratic love story.