It’s an absolutely crazed fever dream of a film, and like a febrile infant it begins with a few odd notes and barely heard, often off-camera sounds, and then proceeds to build those seemingly minor instances of weird until it crescendos into an ear-piercing, panic-inducing visual and aural shriek.

Virtually flawless performances and directorial execution render The Fighter one of the most thrilling movies of 2010.

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

This is the way this ground-breaking monument was meant to be seen: in mind-boggling 70mm.

What sets Phantom Thread apart is that it isn’t an apologia, or an exorcism. It’s a Valentine. The heart, after all, is our strongest muscle.

This essential Billy Wilder film smoothly combines trenchant social observation with hilarious comedy.

Kurosawa's international breakthrough is a masterstroke in unreliable narration.

Do we ever get the whole truth? Only this: The past is never the past. In Farhadi’s wounding worldview, the past is the present and, most certainly, the future, too.

A meditation on survival, The Searchers is about the loss of faith and the death of heroes.

It was written by military-horror storyteller David Rabe (Sticks and Bones, Streamers), and features outstanding performances by this ensemble ñ especially Fox and Penn.

For in relating the true story of Conlon's wrongful conviction and 15-year imprisonment, Sheridan has used the tools of the filmmaker to evoke a visceral echo of Conlon's waking nightmare.

Unlike other filmmakers in the autumn or winter of their careers, Eastwood doesn't seem content to rest on his laurels and give his audiences the tried and the true. For that reason, among many others, he and Million Dollar Baby are true champions.

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is as real as it gets, a snapshot stolen from the very year everything turned to sh-t. It’s a masterpiece.

Boasts a smart screenplay by Robert Benton and David and Leslie Newman, striking cinematography by Geoffrey Unsworth (especially in the Smallville sequence), bright comic turns by Margot Kidder and Gene Hackman, and of course, that winning performance by Christopher Reeve in the title role. Believe a man can fly? You bet!

The camera tracks, cranes, and dollies through the dance space, anticipating with the boldness of the greatest director working at MGM in 1951, that the New Wave is, indeed, not so very far away. Finally, like all of Minnelli's collaborations with Lerner (Brigadoon, Gigi, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever), An American in Paris is a paradox - a musical that embraces solitude and romantic despair. It is a resplendent motion picture.

Given its nonlinear structure, Your Name requires your trust, but once you place your faith in screenwriter/director Shinkai’s expert hands, the reward will come. (Not surprisingly, the film is the fourth-highest-grossing film in Japan’s history.)

It is not a failed love story, but it is a lost love story, as its characters fall victim to the realities of time and circumstance and are left wondering what may have been if either of those things had been different.

Funny, vibrant, insightful, tragic, achingly timely, and yet with an underlying message about empathy that is timeless, Blindspotting may be the summer's most essential movie.

Not entirely without some laughable or dated scenes, Halloween remains an original that continues to inspire a genre and probe middle America's fears about what's really lurking in the laundry room after midnight.

Across the Spider-Verse isn't just mind-bending spectacle – although it definitely dazzles in every frame. It's mind-bending spectacle in service of a thrilling story about a teenager facing the horrifying possibility that he can't fix everything.

As for words? The script gives Stuhlbarg – a character actor who elevates everything he’s in – the monologue of a lifetime, which he delivers sotto voce, all kindness. And that is perhaps the prevailing note of Call Me by Your Name – of kindness, of tenderness.

Disturbing and grim in its portraits, Wise Blood is nevertheless marvelous storytelling and its performances are virtually divine.

When you see a great Peckinpah film like his second feature, Ride the High Country (1962), you feel that the director has found a way to tell a story that lays his own soul across the screen. This movie celebrates a hero of self-control. But each frame is energized with a sense of what that self-control has cost the man in love, friendship, and glory.

Although made in 1969, this French masterpiece is receiving its first stateside release with a new print struck for the occasion.

“Subtle” is the watchword for this kind of arthouse film. That can be a backhanded compliment, a buyer-beware to attention-deficit audiences, but Haigh is really quite plain with his preoccupations: the constant tick-tock of time, and the illusion that in marriage two are melded into one.

Hamaguchi has a beautiful outlook on mistakes and the complex emotions that make up humanity, and his tenderness toward each character he brings to life makes him one of the best storytellers working today.

In the end, The Fog of War offers a couple of hours of brilliant clarity amid the noise and chaos.

The film's sense of family values will make your head hurt and the chase scenes will set your noggin spinning.