This is one epic I will not soon forget, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford a meditative stunner I am certain to revisit many times in the not-so-distant future.

Eastern Promises is one of the year’s best motion pictures.

Once is a musical triumph I’ll be singing the praises of for decades to come.

Anders Thomas Jensen’s Adam’s Apples was one of the best films I saw during the 2006 Seattle International Film Festival.

The movie is a fearlessly unsettling descent into voyeuristic madness overflowing in comedy, drama, tension and insight. It obliterated all my expectations, The Lives of Others a stunning masterwork that marks the arrival of an important filmmaker worth keeping an eye on.

Few films are either as magical or as enchanting as Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth. At the same time, few fairy tales are as perverse, terrifying or as deeply disturbing.

Children of Men is a stunning powerhouse, and it is almost impossible to grasp all it is attempting to say in just a single viewing.

Almodóvar has crafted an instant classic. Volver is miraculous, a joyous enterprise running the emotional gauntlet like no other melodrama I’ve seen in ages.

In a year of so many retreads and also-rans, where much of what’s hit the multiplex looks exactly like what was there just a month ago, The Prestige offers entertainment and wonderment unlike anything else currently in theatres, and that might be Nolan’s greatest magic trick of them all.