A smart, sensuous and sensory mind trip that caroms around a universe of thought.

Unstoppable fun.

Although not blessed with a cinematic eye, Yates, a sensitive director of actors, structures his movie like the final movement of a symphony. He reprises themes and characters from the previous films that swell in the epochal siege of Hogwarts and ends his films with an almost wordless coda that will wring tears even from Harry haters.

Take Shelter, which, it should be said, boasts haunting but seamless visual effects, is a movie for this moment in time, this moment in our lives.

A small but moving film that gets the details right (life in a sleepy burg, sidewalk chats between old high school pals) and gets at the heart of human longing for family, for love.

To the extent that movies bear the residue of their filmmakers' autobiographies, I found The Pianist particularly compelling.

Chuan's unsettlingly beautiful black-and-white, wide-screen account of those nightmare six weeks, re-creates that horror in ways that are at once allusive and lucid, mixing cinematic impressionism with documentary-like detail.

A transcendent work from Ireland's Cartoon Saloon studio that's almost wasted on kids.

Asif Kapadia's extraordinary documentary, Amy, is filled with similarly soul-stirring, heartbreaking moments.

The movie is near-perfect, suspenseful, heart-breaking, profound.

A movie of absurdist humor, brutal realism and dementia.

Disarming and unexpectedly poignant, An Education contrasts the knowledge learned in school with that learned from life.

Offers a view of war that is anything but epic. Instead of sweeping battles and swooping fighter planes, in Lebanon we are brought into the impossibly claustrophobic world of a lone tank crew.

Makes for the most thrilling action movie of the year.

A beguiling and subversively funny entertainment that considers art's worth from many angles, including that of guerrilla painters, gallerists, and seasoned collectors.

Kings and Queen, full of passion and humor, madness and grief, is close to a masterpiece. It's like life: messy, impossible, elating, unavoidable.

Baker's life, like his music, was as sad as it was beautiful. And Weber's movie - obsessed with Baker's image as much as with his songs - hits all the right notes.

Exhilarating, exuberant and drolly funny.

Heigl, a double-dip of praline with caramel, is so beautiful that initially you don't notice her comic chops.

Offers a sometimes lyrical, sometimes gut-turning portrait of war seen through the eyes of children.

It's a movie with a pulse. Sometimes, it flies off the chart.

Proves that the most local story is sometimes the most universal, the simplest tale sometimes the most complex.

Both a concert film and a more intimate thing: a fascinating, fly-on-the-wall (or fly-in-the-dining-car) glimpse of some clearly blotto rock legends talking, singing, hanging out. The fact that a good number of them are now dead makes it doubly memorable.

The animated French family film April and the Extraordinary World will have your imagination doing somersaults and cartwheels.

Even if you get lost - in the spyspeak, in the codes, in the comings and goings of grim-faced men with satchels full of documents they should not have - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is worth getting lost in.

It's a performance that will make you cringe - with despair, with empathy - as Gosling's Dan takes one self-destructive step after another.

A gorgeous operatic tale of obsession and madness.

Few American directors drive this wedge between mind and gut as masterfully as Michael Mann.