The one movie so far this year that every filmgoer should see, if only to get a big dose of what we've been missing from Hollywood.

Whenever Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon resorts to flying fists or soaring sword battles, the Force is definitely with it.

No other movie released this year is as much of a filmgoing necessity as Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now Redux.

Witty portrait of a troubled community.

The ride is remarkable.

So intensely funny that the viewer must hang on every word: comic gems spill forth almost continuously.

Director Martin Scorsese's spectacular, irreverent picture.

See L.A. Confidential. Be astonished at discovering anew how very, very satisfying movies can still be. And how fine that can feel.

The characters are barely characters, the story barely a story, and the elliptical filmmaking style that so besots Denis' many fans could drive you to drink.

The results are both savagely funny and poignant for anyone who's ever had a friendship that felt like their only connection to the outside world.

No Hollywood film within recent memory has achieved such richness and originality of texture, such a compelling amalgam of passionate human drama and awesome technique.

Topsy-Turvy is flawless, borne along by a savagely witty screenplay that Leigh directs like the gears of a clock.

An ingenious, incredibly entertaining, Rorschach-blot meta-comedy based on a spec script (by first-timer Charlie Kaufman) that is completely unlike anything anyone has ever seen before.

Crowe's script is a thing of wonder, and he again proves himself to be an outstanding director of actors.

The Truman Show is one of the films for which the '90s will be remembered, and it is not to be missed.

Flock (don't walk) to the theater to see Chicken Run.

The Coens are masters at striking a tone and holding it.

A technologically marvelous animated movie that's just as funny and inventive as the first, but also more emotionally engaging than most live-action films. This is clearly a sequel in name only.

It's a film which aims to persuade us of its truth without props or signposts--and it does so with unforgettable beauty.

Her (Cheung) gorgeously sad face and slow, lithe frame are the movie's hammer and chisel. One shot of her walking away from a rented room down a hallway is, all by itself, twice the movie of anything else currently in theaters.

Amid the chaos of this marvelous, uncategorizable film squirms one of the year's best performances.

The result is a film that is as witty, astute, and romantic as its timeless subject.

The most heartfelt tribute to women -- specifically, actresses -- he's (Almodovar) ever made.

It's the funniest, saddest performance of the year in a film of uncompromising wit and heart.

The best film we'll see this year.

Astonishingly deep and moving.

Ozon -- has finally hit a home run, and Rampling is his most remarkable RBI.

42 Up is filled with truth and poignancy as these people reflect on their first half of their lives, their goals, ambitions, and how they, for the most part, succeeded in reinventing them.

That rarest of independent films -- it's risky and exciting.

Lynch's faith in the kindness of human nature has been renewed, yet thankfully he's never maudlin. Instead, he wins over our emotions with the film's understated beauty.

Traffic is a riveting, semi-documentary drama, and yet calling it that is a disservice to just how suspenseful and stylish an entertainment it is.

Though the film's subject matter is grisly, the electricity between Foster and Hopkins during their prison tête-à-têtes could power every maximum-security prison in this country.

A delicacy for mature filmgoers who are able to derive as much pleasure from a perfectly, sympathetically crafted essay as from a well-spun yarn.

It's such a sensory experience; in its best moments, the film washes over you like a fever dream.

Like being jacked directly into Linklater's alpha waves, and the experience is bracingly new to movies.

It's the sum of things not spoken, things too painful to express, that's the heart of this quietly moving drama.

Disturbing, powerful essay on one aspect of the rock and drug culture at the end of the 1960s.

What evolves among them is a kind of realistic fairy tale, sustained by the sweet gravity and guttural, deadpan minimalism of Thornton's performance.

For two hours and 35 minutes it is absolutely riveting.

Stomps the summer movie competition with heart and humor.

Bird's movie neither panders to children nor sneers at them, and it beautifully, lucidly captures the giddy adventurousness of childhood.

Naturalistic, gritty, and unrelenting.

Brilliant, mind-boggling.

A must-see for avid fans and a welcome primer for nascent hip-shakers everywhere.

What sells Shrek is ultimately the full-bodied personality of its characters.

So breathtakingly textural, so empathic in its images, that it transcends its context and achieves timelessness.

Together is unabashedly about people who need people. The film's satiric skewering of '70s liberalism works because it feels emotionally authentic.

It's a disturbing film in the best sense.

Though unflinching in its savagery, Amores Perros is always compulsive viewing.

Election is a bracingly intelligent adult comedy that shrewdly captures adolescence.

Nolan's engrossing, backwards-ticking noir will run you so thoroughly in circles that you'll need to see it at least twice for maximum enjoyment.

Leaving Las Vegas may not be a top choice for an upbeat outing, but there's something oddly poetic about the simplicity of Ben's mission and Sera's acceptance of it.

The film's technical brilliance and sentimental kick seduced many viewers unsuspecting of its polemical intent.

Not only one of the best films of the year, it's one of the best films of the decade.

For the discouraged filmgoer, Erice's tone poem will be a ray of hope itself.

Especially timely in light of the current escalation in Palestinian-Israeli aggressions, but this is one sad story that would pack a staggering punch in any political climate.

Russell has combined pathos, terror, and black comedy with a dollop of Hollywood feel-good patriotism to make one of the best studio efforts this year.

There are only a handful of great music documentaries ... but Temple's film deserves a place in the canon.

A smirky black comedy that, like its John Lurie score, is jazzy, dry, and light on its feet.

The summer's best cinematic equivalent to a lazy afternoon in the shade with a cool drink.

Surprisingly charming romantic comedy.

Cho is raw, uncensored, and side-splittingly hilarious.

It's an exhilarating display of filmic artistry.

Director Charles Crichton's hilarious romp.

It is one of the most beautifully staged American movies in a very long time.

Unapologetically sentimental, this movie is certain to melt all but the hardest of hearts.

It might be the scariest movie ever made.

Blessedly free of candy-box prettiness, cloying gentility, and anything else that might dishonor its deeply felt, sensitively observed memoir.

This isn't a crowd-pleaser in terms of subject matter -- you've got a convict and a nun, with no love scenes -- but Robbins keeps it interesting.

Most tenderly, the film deciphers the true meaning of its corporate-speak title in Franck and his father's impassioned struggle to ensure each other's welfare.

Maddin's movie is, frame for frame, the densest and most spectacular (albeit cardboard-cheap) film playing anywhere.

A sentimental slice of 1950s Italian-American life that doesn't soft-pedal its characters' simmering prejudices within their insulated community, or pander to their dreams of getting out.

It's a pleasure to watch these unhurried, character-driven vignettes when such great actors are anchoring them.

A funny, frenetic, and often quite touching microcosm of the Big Apple life itself, essayed by a pitch-perfect cast and boasting authentic urban flavors.

One of the year's best films, and certainly its most challenging so far: At more than three hours, watching it is less like consuming entertainment and more like living.

Proudly wears its heart on its sleeve, but it never becomes so swoony that you'll reach for your hanky.

Even if it sometimes skips, it's consistently wittier and more idiosyncratic that most studio movies.

Though frequently brutal and off-putting, Beautiful People is a must-see.

It's a satisfying swan song.

Confident, mature, deeply conceived, and convincingly inhabited, it's a surprisingly humane film -- despite the close-range shotgun spray.

High drama this ain't. And yet, anyone looking for a hearty banquet of gymnastic, kung-fu tomfoolery won't walk away hungry.

One of Australian director Peter Weir's most sensitive films.

Faithless, filmed mostly during Sweden's endless winter, will chill you to the bone.

A fitting tribute to these displaced children because it so simply and elegantly personalizes their place in the most horrific chapter of 20th-century history.

Praise will get under your skin.

The wrap-up's pretty charming, as are the performances, but the film's too heavy for its soufflé-ready ingredients.

How well you respond to this handsomely mounted, cold-blooded tragedy will depend on your feelings toward Gillian Anderson's highly theatrical lead performance.

Wacky, vividly conceived but mundanely executed cartoon fantasy.

Goran Visnjic is such a sensitive, non-menacing gentleman that any woman would want him as her own personal blackmailer.

This is what Woody Allen movies might be like if they were not ruled by narcissism, pretentious point-scoring, cheap observations, and Woody's peculiar speech patterns.

There's nothing more incendiary than the reopening of a forgotten chapter of history --nothing more incendiary than telling the truth.

It's the awesome, metaphysically charged spectacle of man doing terrible things to man within the multicolored and multifarious cathedral of Nature.

It's got enough hilarious moments that, all in all, the film's bite is as toothsome as its bark.

An exhilarating and at times operatic film.

Lacks scope and doesn't resonate grandly as a portrait of an American underbelly like Morris' earlier works do. But it still packs a wallop.

An intensely involving, Ibsen-esque human drama populated by complex, sympathetic heroes.

Unfolds like quietly engrossing short fiction, reminding us that there are few things more pleasurable than being in the hands of a good storyteller.

Easily the best directorial debut of the year, and possibly the most mature and haunting film to ever come out of Scotland, Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher is a throat-catching masterpiece of lyricism, observation, and stone-cold realism.