Stephen Cole

The best thriller of 2003 was made in 1979.

It is a work of great beauty that rewards continued visits.

A miraculous, American-made Hindi film that is every bit as tranquil as the blue-green reservoir that serves as its abiding metaphor.

A little bit of "Crime and Punishment" and a whole lot of "The Postman Always Rings Twice," Revanche, the Austrian candidate for last year's Best Foreign Language Film, is a surprisingly unruffled tale of love, thievery, murder and revenge.

It is filmmaker Assayas who is the star here. France's most important contemporary director has created a work of almost magisterial calm.

The most gripping war movie you'll see this year, We Were Here tells first-hand the story of how AIDS attacked San Francisco, killing more than 15,000. Whole peer groups were happy, healthy, and then dead in months.

Detective Dee is the action flick of the year, a two-hour epic that blows the "Pirates of the Caribbean" to the Bermuda Triangle.

Chandor's shrewdest bit of business is figuring out how to make an A-list movie with a $3.5-million budget. Solution: buy low, sell high. Hire last decade's A-list – Spacey, Irons and Demi Moore – and give them their best parts in years.

Few directors working today make films with the grace and magisterial power of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's best work.

An uncommonly tender and observant documentary on the phenomenon that is "A Chorus Line."

In classic B-movie style, The Dark Hours was created in a fever, written in two weeks and hurriedly shot in 16 mm (blown into a crisp 35 mm print). Nevertheless, the film provides evidence of talent everywhere.

Noir connoisseurs, however, will receive Moverman's latest like a double-bourbon from heaven. Rampart is the best crime-movie fix from Hollywood since "Gone Baby Gone."

It is our tour guide that makes Cave of Forgotten Dreams an often thrilling experience. His producer, Erik Nelson, has joked Herzog is the first filmmaker to use 3-D for good, instead of evil. There is no question that the technology enhances our visit, giving perspective and shape to the jagged Chauvet Cave – an open mouth the size of a football field.

As provocative as it is timely.

Another angry, searching document about pedophile priests, Deliver Us from Evil makes for unexpectedly gripping drama.

Nothing short of mesmerizing.

Guy and Madeline is a decidedly modern film, whose frightened, impulsive, charming characters could walk into our lives tomorrow.

An astonishing multimedia diary.

Palindromes is a cracked American picaresque.

For all its fuss and fury, Flight of the Red Balloon succeeds magnificently.

In art there are no rules, just stuff that works. And for the second film in a row, Marsh has created a movie we can't keep our eyes off.

An anthropological marvel and an animal-drive movie that belongs beside the classics of the genre - Red River and Lonesome Dove.

Though only 85 minutes, the film captures an entire, bewilderingly extended family and way of life inside a sturdy frame.

Von Trier's proficiency at the quicksilver business of comedy comes as a surprise, given the grinding seriousness of earlier films.

Anyone who likes pop music or wonders how bands like the Rolling Stones got rolling will enjoy the ride.

A welcome rarity: an amiable film comedy that leaves you feeling good as opposed to feeling for your wallet.

No matter who you side with here, Waste Land – the title should come with a question mark – is a fascinating adventure, populated by memorable characters.

We don't get a good look at a painting until 35 minutes into the film biography of Séraphine de Senlis, the early 20th-century French painter discovered by German art collector Wilhelm Uhde. The film Séraphine is not about paintings.