Schizophrenia never looked so good or so mesmerizing as it does here, and Paprika, while certainly not suitable for kids, manages to capture the childlike, helter-skelter chaos and curiosity of the human mind better than any other animated film.

In a finely realized and multi-layered first film, writer-director Peter Howitt treats us to a clever and urbane exploration of the monumental repercussions of tiny twists of fate.

Carter Burwell’s score is particularly thunderous, mirroring the onscreen action, and the 3-D really is – for once – superb, making for a rather breathtaking two hours. Well done.

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.

It takes a bit to get going, but once it does, Fresh never lets up.

This film is an example of a Western that ought to appeal to a healthy-sized contemporary audience, and is also a remake of the 1957 film of the same name, which is a hallmark of the type of psychological Western.

Even in its disassociation, The Great Beauty ingratiates itself as a witty and compelling companion – much like Jep Gambardella.

Anyone can come up with jokes about incestuous rednecks or pubic hair that "looks like Osama bin Laden's beard," but it takes guts to make a comedy in which the Indian-American hero accuses an African-American TSA agent of racial profiling, all so he won't get caught smuggling weed onto a plane.

Ron Howard has delivered a movie that’s a big departure from his previous film, "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas." We may not remember him for "The Alamo," but we're glad he kept the Stetson.

Spring Breakers is Korine’s most cogent take yet on society’s outsiders.

This is not your mother's murder mystery, unless your mother's maiden name is de Sade and she has an appallingly bleak vision of modern society that occasionally fixates on the historical misdeeds of the corporate/industrial world and the correction thereof.

While sturdily constructed, Simon Beaufoy’s upbeat screenplay spells almost everything out in capital letters, with little nuance. It seldom trusts you to make your own judgments about the diverse cast of players in this chapter of pop-culture history.

The documentary is as much a rallying cry for freedom of expression as it is a portrait in progress of an artist whose career is ongoing. Though we might wish for more insight or explanation, Klayman's film remains an incredible document of a courageous individual who the Chinese officials would prefer to make disappear.

Apocalypto is a dazzling achievement. Not only does it showcase a civilization little seen on the silver screen, the film (which opens with a quote from Will Duant) also advances larger questions about the natural and unnatural life cycles of civilizations.

Referencing everything from "Deliverance" to "The Evil Dead" to "Fargo" and nailing its central conceit dead-on (literally!), this is one of those rare genre comedies that near-perfectly balances its blend of grue, guffaws, and gag reflexes.

Like its protagonist, it never hands you explanations on a silver platter, and it makes you think a bit, something far too few thrillers do these days.

The best Scorsese we've seen in a decade.

The most memorable David vs. Goliath courtroom showdown in recent memory.

The movie is tightly wound and expertly unraveled, resulting in a thriller that you'll remember – unlike the hitman Ledda.

A pleasant, often beautiful, and surprisingly light-hearted film that affirms the human traits of resilience and intelligence while clearly denouncing the bellicose tendencies of nations and factions.

As overindulgent as it is, The Square is a darkly humorous and horrific mirror to our culture.

Absolutely delightful filmmaking, chock-full of gorgeously goofy animation and a storyline that cleverly echoes everything from "Stalag 17" to "Cool Hand Luke."

Mamet's dialogue is still on the mark, rapid-fire, and as cutting as an antique straight razor.

The studio’s 1967 version of Kipling’s classic tales (the current film qualifies as a remake of sorts) softened the source’s edges a bit, but it offered a New Orleans jazz-infused score unlike anything in the company’s previous animated features. The new Jungle Book retains the two best songs, although their inclusion may strike the unfamiliar as clunky and unexpected.

After it has ended, you may want to view it all over again, just to see if you can beat the odds and pick up on what you missed the first time around.

This is a film you skip seeing at your own risk.

Though the advertising plays up the film's Bush-bashing angle, it gives a false impression. This is really more of a backstage drama.

Moneyball is a smart, funny, and thoughtful baseball movie.

Stylistically, co-directors McLeary and Aldous were given complete access to the retreat and wield their cameras like voyeuristic lanterns in a tremendously dark place.

It's a thumping good adventure.

Rosewater, along with his nightly mockery of the news, shows that freedom of the press has no greater champion than Jon Stewart.

Origin doesn’t always get there, but the effort is exhilarating. It’s the contact high of an artist really going for it.

The filmmaker brings neither condescension nor moral outrage here. A father confessor to his benighted characters, von Trier may revel in the muck, but Nymphomaniac: Volume 1 is anything but a dirty movie.

What wicked good fun it is watching this bad girl do her worst.

For a comedy about an old weapon with a dulled blade, Sword of Truth is razor sharp in just about every way.

All of the major players turn in powerhouse performances, and Fishburne nails his best role yet as Furious.

Filmmaker Steve James is apparently incapable of making an uninteresting documentary, even when his subject matter might presumably be thoroughly played out.

Not since Mario Bava's "Hercules in the Haunted World" has Greco-Roman movie-house mythmaking been so thoroughly well-conceived and executed.

Unlike anything you've ever seen before, Final Fantasy is, finally, one for the history books, and tremendous fun to boot. It makes Lara Croft look like an old maid.

Mostly this is a tense, portentous, and provocative piece.

Taken moves so fast and with such single-minded, vindictive energy, there's no time for moral ambivalence.

There are no answers in her film, no intractable rights and wrongs. No characters are indicted for their mistakes or misjudgments, yet no one gets off scot-free either.

Surely the most unconventional romantic comedy of the summer, Results isn't anti-plot; it just moves in weird ways.

Generous and warm and howling funny, there is such a light touch to Babes, you might not even clock the depth of its observations – its inspections – of body and heart both.

When the gut-wrenching conclusion of A Hijacking comes in the form of a single, random act, it’s only then you realize how far you’ve been pulled into its emotional core. It’s a staggering moment, one for which you may not be fully prepared. It’s a moment that differentiates the merely good from the very good.

It’s an ambitious, sometimes too bitter, second feature, but Lee somewhat manages to corrode the too-often fetishized queer period drama into something much more modern than its setting suggests.

Paul Dano’s directorial debut is a visually stunning living portrait of a midcentury marriage falling apart at a time when that was sort of unthinkable, or so we think.

Director Nunez, whose previous films (Gal Young 'Un, A Flash of Green) are also set in Florida, has an ability to translate states of mind into their native environments and vice versa. In this instance, his regional realism combines with Judd's transfixing performance to create a movie that sticks to your ribs.

There's as much of Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru here as there is the rubber-suit genius of Godzilla creator Ishirō Honda (himself never shy of political subtext), and that's a pairing as powerful as any monster mash-up.

What's most fascinating is that there's no self-indulgence on Medak's behalf. It's a filmmaker coming to terms with a deep bruise in his life, and the realization that time may heal all wounds, but will still leave a scar.

One of the rare movies that communicates honestly and artfully about the real casualties of war: the surviving combatants.

What separates Blaze from its peers, however, is the obvious affection the filmmakers have for their assortment of damaged characters. In Ben Dickey, Hawke and company have found a remarkable physical and musical double for Foley.

It’s a slow document of stiff upper lips beginning to quiver, and while Knightley excels as the perfect Kensington upper-crust mummy, it’s Goode who personifies that desperate attempt to keep a veneer of control, even as his world is on the verge of devastation.

There's a deep, bone-weary melancholy to the proceedings, offset by the mad parties and vicious displays of machismo.

This is the best primer on political gerrymandering imaginable, and should be mandatory viewing in grad school public policy symposiums and high school civics classes alike. Slay the Dragon is simultaneously an education and an urgent wake-up call, and you better pay attention for both.

Cotillard doesn't look part Native American or sound like a Thirties Chicago moll, but damned if she isn't a sight and sound to behold. Whatever her technical limitations, she rises above them to breathe a flesh, blood, and battered verisimilitude into the part. You can't tear your eyes off her, any more than you can Mann's flawed but still engrossing picture.

Might also be the best date movie ever, depending on your idea of a good time.

There is a raw sexiness to Benedetta that’s deeply engaging and thrilling.

Freaky hilariously modernizes the high school bloodbath for laughs.

The fact that Troy Nixey's debut feature is one creepyass frightmare is what matters, and boy, does he put the nail in that metaphorical coffin the first time out. It's not perfect, but it's awfully close.

In its third act, Life, Above All takes a bit of a dip into la-la land, in terms of believability – how precisely is an impoverished family supposed to have afforded an ambulance and hospice care? – but that doesn't diminish the emotional impact of Manyaka's performance and the idea that courage can be infectious, too.

It makes virtually no sense, but the costumes are fetishistic gems and the set design trips the light fantastic. A camp classic.

In a time when happy endings seem in short supply, The Water Man's sense of heroic wonder is the kid-sized epic we need.

Though Cuaron slips a time or two during his stylistic highwire act, his refreshingly original movie, aided by Hawke's career-best acting in the lead role, is a joy to watch.

Dev Patel’s directorial debut Monkey Man is a gritty, nasty piece of work.

Sweet, wild, and openhearted, Diamantino is as charming as its muddle-headed protagonist. He may be football's version of a bear of very little brain, but he's the only one with a clear thought in his head.

As befits a comedy monolith based around a loose series of old Saturday Night Live skits, Blues Brothers 2000 is essentially a series of flamboyant comedy and musical set-pieces, some of which soar and some of which merely twitch, but all of which are infused with a ceaseless beat-your-head-in comic sturm und drang; if one gag doesn't do it for you, surely the next one will.

Columbus avoids a sense of film geekiness by keeping our attention on the plights of the two central characters. The city of Columbus may, indeed, be a locus for modernism, but the film named after it becomes a jumping-off point for postmodernism.

What Happened Was … dissects the interminable hopefulness of dating. Noonan, who also wrote the script, has an ear for believable dialogue, and Sillas (Simple Men, Risk) allows every conceivable emotion to ripple across her face, which is a landscape unto itself.

This romance isn't a sunshine-dappled meadow, it's a thicket of thorny rosebushes atop a rocky precipice. Both actors are alarmingly natural in their roles and Ade's direction is a model of subtly shifting tones and tempers.

Boden and Fleck's unabashedly warmhearted film is a sensitively wrought but also very funny portrait of the way we respond to pressure.

While We’re Young struggles to reconcile its protagonists’ rival impulses to either welcome an unexpected source of youthful vitality with open arms or embrace such an individual so as to better displace them from one’s lawn.

The Lunchbox offers us a naturalistic glimpse of middle-class life in modern Mumbai.

Thankfully, The Nomi Song should go a long way toward re-cementing this striking creature's legendary status.

Despite these biases, the movie helps the average American understand the nature of the shell games perpetuated by Enron and how "synergistic corruptions" can corrupt absolutely.

Ultimately, it asks the one vital question: Was Wallace worth his cost?

While In This Corner of the World is bracingly honest in depicting the hardships and tragedies Japanese civilians endured during World War II, it steadfastly remains Suzu’s story all the way through to its – dare I say it? – hopeful conclusion.

What it lacks in charm, it compensates for with audacity and single-mindedness of vision.

What the series means in the long run is anybody's guess; I just know I sleep better at night knowing it's out there.

It's an uncomfortable, distressing, and altogether provocative take on the global culture of media violence that not only draws in hapless viewers, but also forces them into fait-accompli acceptance, like it or not.

Blending political allegory with the tropes of teen coming-of-age films, White God begins as a tale about a girl separated from her dog, and ends up being the Battleship Potemkin of canine mutiny.

Take out the masked menace, this is still tense: Add them in, and it's stomach-churning. Brutal, smart, wild and mean, The Rental savagely reinvents the summer camp slasher for the vacation rental generation, and delivers a punchline payoff that will leave you reeling.

Funny, bewildering, giddy spectacle.

For a while, you wonder whether the movie will become a thriller about the perils of solo travel, particularly for single females. But the intimacy of director Kuosmanen’s Dogme 95-inspired camerawork hints that something more is happening here.

Backed by a soundtrack of hip-hop and edited to within an inch of its life, Kennedy’s film has sleek gutter charm to spare.

The Wretched may be guilty of stealing shamelessly from "Rear Window," "Disturbia," and the best summercamp slasher and small-town supernatural chillers, but none of those were exactly raw innovators, either.

Mention must be made of James’ guileless turn as Cinderella. Like the beautiful crystalline-blue ballgown worn in the film’s centerpiece section (you can’t take your eyes off it; it literally dazzles), she looks as if she’s lit from within.

This tear-jerkiest of rom-coms about a couple struggling through fundamental differences will hit you right in the feels.

Egoyan's greatest strength as a filmmaker may be his ability to create and sustain particular moods and atmospheres. In that sense, Exotica lives up to its name.

A triumph of style over logic. Although this is not necessarily a good thing, it works spectacularly in this instance.

An arresting feature debut from director Mariama Diallo, Master gingerly walks the tightrope between outright supernatural horror and a criticism of the enduring power of monied white privilege.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve seen every episode of all 12 seasons of the show or if you’ve never watched the Animation Domination mainstay on Fox in your life. The Bob’s Burgers Movie is a summer fun carnival ride through the Belcher universe.

The story is much less about its resolution than the experience along the way. At its best, Central Station is a movie of small textures and fleeting moments, the intangibles that pass between people.

A zippy, energetic, automotive free-for-all, a caper extravaganza minus the bleak overtones that have come to figure in so many 9mm movies these days.

The upshot to a ticking bomb is that it only explodes the once, but Rachel's sister, Kym (Hathaway), goes off again and again.

A persistent narrative thread that pits Flemish-speaking Belgians against French-speaking Belgians will whiz past most American viewers, but hopefully not distract from its overall impact because this movie grabs the bull by the horns and takes viewers on a surprising ride.

A wacky joyride.

The Current War is a remarkable period piece, one that evokes the transition from the era of soot and gaslights to the electrical age. The script by Michael Mitnick does not take sides, instead letting the two forefathers of the age of amperes jostle for a multitude of reasons: commerce, ambition, greed, intellectual drive, hubris, and a genuine aim to make the world a better place.