With great subtlety and knowing humor, Eat Drink Man Woman emerges as one of those unforeseen treats.

Preminger strips the musical of all excess and frills. He creates an austere, depoeticized, anti-lyrical world in which nothing obstructs his camera's detached recording of the action. The great themes of Preminger's oeuvre are obsession and the conflict between freedom and repression, themes which are central to Carmen Jones.

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.

With a plot hinging on twists and turns that might not have worked as well with less electricity than Turner and Garfield generate, Postman sizzles and flares with crackling tension.

Pulsing up and down the arterial route of the B train from Brooklyn to the Bronx, Caught Stealing is a portrait of NYC at its most grimily charming.

This seminal kids movie broke new ground in terms of its realistic portrait of young people and their use of foul language.

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.

The range of characters here is daringly broad, but Sayles is able to touch on the humanity of each (with considerable help from a gifted and eminently watchable cast), and the details of the region -- the heat, the beautiful but often unforgiving landscape, and especially the pride of the residents -- are vivid and 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.

With caustic wit and fantastic performances for all involved, the film is destined to be an anti-war classic.

God Help the Girl is not so perfectly crafted, but the promise – oh, the promise is irresistible.

It all comes back to the heart of the Spidey story, the old adage that "with great power comes great responsibility." It's tough doing the right thing, and sometimes it's thankless and can come with a lot of pain, but it's still the right thing, and that's why you do it. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse always comes out swinging.

It's an incisive, intriguing, and ultimately moving look at America's ongoing socioeconomic collapse: The whole "kids streaming their first slow dance" thing is just one aspect of this rich and nuanced drama.

Nick and Nora Charles are one of the screen's great couples.

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.

Among the many things that Baadasssss! is, it is also a movie about moviemaking. In fact, the film should be a primer for anyone about to make an independent film.

Visually inventive and offering up a complex view of family interaction, Kubo and the Two Strings is another feather in the cap for Laika, and a marvel to behold.

The Big Sick is as personal as it gets, but Gordon and Nanjiani pull no punches and steer well clear of preciousness. I laughed plenty at their film, cried my guts out, too, and went home elated.

At the very least, The Aristocrats provides a survey of some of the best comic minds in the business.

Daughters of Darkness is a superb, elegant, and sexy vampire movie; its deliberate pace only adds to its overall impact.

A moving tribute to this legendary artist's life and career.

Hearts of Darkness gives a privileged glimpse of the artist's hell, but it also says something about grace.

In the House, from the eclectic French filmmaker François Ozon (Under the Sand, 8 Women), is an almost perverse delight, an egghead thriller that slyly shell-games its truer purpose as an inquiry into the construction – and deconstruction – of fiction. Scratch deconstruction: Make that tear-the-house-down demolition.

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.

A riveting piece of cinema, successfully utilizing all the things that screenwriters are supposed to avoid: voiceovers, direct address, unreliable narrators. It also looks gorgeous, thanks to cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis and production designer Jade Healy.

This is one of the major delights of Hotel Artemis: a plot that posits a damaged, Medicare-aged woman as its central figure. And that the role is executed by a two-time Oscar-winning actress delivering her best work in many years makes this a rare treat.

Like Johnson’s Kerr, The Smashing Machine is a surprisingly gentle giant.