Peter Travers

Want to know what it's like to be in on the discovery of a new American classic. Check out Boyhood. Richard Linklater's coming-of-age tale is the best movie of the year, a four-star game-changer that earns its place in the cultural time capsule.

This dizzyingly intricate film reveals new facets each time you see it. We leave Vertigo unsettled, like Scottie, who ends up on the edge of a precipice. Hitchcock is daring us to leap. He has prepared the ultimate fix for a cinema junkie: a movie to get lost in.

From the first sight of German soldiers goose-stepping past the Arc de Triomphe to a postscript that spells out the fate of characters whose moral confusion is all too real, Army of Shadows is a movie of its time -- and ours.

Moonlight, which announces Jenkins as a major filmmaker, gets you good. It stays raw from first scene to last.

The hard action, bracing wit and mournful grace of Peckinpah’s cowboy classic shames every new movie around. It’s a towering achievement that grows more riveting and resonant with the years.

Del Toro never coddles the audience. He means us to leave Pan's Labyrinth shaken to our souls. He succeeds.

Throughout his life, Brown refused to give in to public convention or his own despair; he wouldn't play the victim. Brown labored to express all of his feelings, not just the acceptable ones. Day Lewis works the same way. My Left Foot, a keen match of actor and subject, stands as an eloquent tribute to the talents of both.

You just don't expect Hollywood to produce a masterwork so early in the new year. And it hasn't. This slice of celluloid dynamite comes from Romania, and what you see will floor you.

The movie dissects the universal gap between the haves and the have-nots with shocking wit, stinging topicality and gut-wrenching violence. It’s explosive filmmaking on every level.

If a thing of beauty is a joy forever, as John Keats famously said, then the surpassing loveliness and bracing brilliance of Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma will never pass into nothingness.

Miyazaki is the Pied Piper -- see Spirited Away and you'll follow him anywhere.

Proving himself a world-class director, McQueen basically makes slaves of us all. It hurts to watch it. You won't be able to tuck this powder keg in the corner of your mind and forget it. What we have here is a blistering, brilliant, straight-up classic.

No film this year has moved me more with its humor, heart and humanity.

You wanna feel all right? This is the holiday movie that will do it.

What makes Ratatouille such a hilarious and heartfelt wonder is the way Bird contrives to let it sneak up on you.

An almost-there comedy with diverting compensations.

Sandra Bullock, in the performance of a lifetime, spends most of this wondrous wallop of a movie lost in space, alone where no one can hear her scream.

Director Steve McQueen, adding to his ‘Small Axe’ anthology, deserves a mountain of superlatives for this rapturous immersion into a 1980 London house party where black revelers, denied access to white clubs, cut loose to reggae beats you won’t be able to resist. It’s pure pleasure.

The best high-wire director of his generation wakes up the sleeping giant of American cinema by turning this radical blast of action, fun and fervor into the movie of the year.

Keep your eyes on Garfield - he's shatteringly good, the soul of a film that might otherwise be without one. The Social Network is the movie of the year. But Fincher and Sorkin triumph by taking it further. Lacing their scathing wit with an aching sadness, they define the dark irony of the past decade.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is enthralling on every level. In her hypnotic and haunting film, alive with humor, heartbreak and swooning sensuality, Sciamma has created nothing less than a timeless work of art.

Quentin Tarantino puts his two “Kill Bill” epics together to make one uncut, unrated radically untamed film with extras and Uma unleashed that great godalmighty feels free at last.

It's unmissable and unforgettable.

Cheers to Scotland’s Charlotte Wells for making the best movie of the year by a first-time writer-director. And cheers to Paul Mescal and young Frankie Corio for bringing this heartfelt father-daughter story to such funny, touching and vital life.

These two glam stars of French cinema – Riva in 1959's "Hiroshima Mon Amour" and Trintignant in 1966's "A Man and a Woman" – give performances of breathtaking power and beauty. Prepare for an emotional wipeout.

Here's the Iraq War movie for those who don't like Iraq War movies.

Hang on tight. The knockout punch of the movie season is being delivered by Zero Dark Thirty.

A Separation is a landmark film. No way will you be able to get it out of your head.