Whether or not The Magician rises to the level of its cinematic predecessors may be up for debate, but thanks to a smart, cleverly constructed screenplay and a compelling lead performance, Ryan’s film displays a flair for storytelling that’s notably lacking in many first-time features. It’s a great addition to the Blue Tongue catalogue, and it’ll be interesting to see where Ryan turns up next.

This film exists only for its glamorous visuals, gorgeous Gershwin music, and the dancing choreographed by Astaire and Eugene Loring.

Perhaps Kenji Mizoguchi's greatest achievement, SANSHO THE BAILIFF is a visually mesmerizing picture that pays great and careful attention to the smallest details of nature and environment, highlighted by Mizoguchi's use of the long take and deep-focus shots.

Excellent, but nasty stuff.

The film’s only flaw is a minor one: Some of the stylistic devices, such as the rapid-fire montages of vile and depraved images, have aged poorly. But that in no way detracts from the visceral power of the backslide into the abyss that we experience along with the central character.

Deliberately theatrical but nevertheless greatly indebted to French poetic realism, Children of Paradise is lovingly handled by director Carne. The entire film is crammed with incident and an intoxicating eye for detail.

Director Morita does an exemplary job of bringing a Japanese graphic novel to the screen.

The filmmaking is a bit crude at times but it packs an emotional wallop.

It's a defining true crime story for the Internet age.

The 'Burbs offers a delightfully complicated portrait of suburban voyeurism, a portrait taken to its absurd extreme by Dante's introduction of foreign elements among his xenophobic characters, in a devastating satire of suburban values.

The Innocents manipulates the viewer's imagination as few films can, with Kerr and Redgrave doing a masterful job of creating a sense of repressed hysteria.

This sequel may be a bit thin on plot, but who cares when Jackie Chan is at his daredevil best?

The result is a raucously funny and poignant love letter to standup comics.

The good news is that it comes closer than any of its predecessors, hitting the mark or coming close to it on almost all fronts. With "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" being split into two films, the final installment stands an excellent chance of getting it right.

With Bruno, Baron Cohen essentially turns a carnival mirror on society, and some people simply aren't going to like what they see. This is satire at its most confrontational and incisive.

The movie does open up a lot of heretofore vacuum-sealed cans of worms. Does sex represent a sort of grand completeness that men secretly yearn for in their friendships?

For people who loved "Heat," this is a tour de force.

If you enjoyed the robo-spastic ride the first time, then you should be happy with this movie, too. And if you complained that the first movie was trite and lacking in character development, then you probably shouldn’t even be reading this.

While director Tony Scott's brash and boisterous take on the material may lack that certain '70s quirkiness, it gets just about everything else exactly right.

By no means a landmark, but it is a remarkably pleasant surprise -- so few movies aimed for the whole family show an understanding of why it's actually healthy to pretend.

Moon is a small-scale film, but, thanks in no small part to Rockwell, its mix of thematic grandeur and human drama makes it a worthy successor to those 1970s science fiction films that inspired it.

So if you're looking for the next stop on the Shockingly Experimental Comedy train, don't get off here -- this ride is strictly for laughs.

Like "Juno" or "Little Miss Sunshine," Away We Go is a small film, the kind of gem that's easy to crush with hype or overpraise. But, the fact is that few movies deal with feelings this profound with as much restraint as Mendes and his crew display here.

You get the feeling that, had Pixar been in business 25 years ago, Steven Spielberg might have made this movie for them as a follow-up to "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

A popcorn film that aims to entertain -- nothing more, nothing less -- and it achieves that goal admirably.

Stands among the best of Soderbergh's many "little" films, where he recharges his artistic batteries and tries out new techniques before jumping back into the world of big budgets and superstars.

It fulfills its promise of rebooting the series while leaving us wanting more, and it does so with style and energy to spare. Now that's an origins tale that truly delivers.

The good news is that Battle for Terra's moments of unbalance ultimately right themselves into a surprisingly earnest, engaging film.