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Andrew Sarris, New York Observer

1. Hunger 2009 A harrowing yet lyrical account of the fatal hunger strike of Irish Republican Army prisoner Bobby Sands in the Maze Prison, Northern Ireland, in 1981. full review
2. Diminished Capacity 2008 Diminished Capacity is blessed with a blue-ribbon cast. full review
3. Happy-Go-Lucky 2008 Mr. Leigh has executed a richly exuberant entertainment for our troubled times, and deserves still another of my honorary Oscars for his astoundingly skillful effort. full review
4. Boarding Gate 2007 If this is the effect Mr. Assayas wanted to achieve, he has succeeded admirably. full review
5. Chop Shop 2007 Chop Shop depicts a Third World existence in a land of supposedly unlimited opportunity. full review
6. Lars and the Real Girl 2007 Under Mr. Gillespie's admirably directed seriousness of tone, the performers, particularly Mr. Gosling, Ms. Mortimer, Mr. Schneider, Ms. Clarkson, Ms. Gardner and Mr. Reid, never miss a beat. full review
7. Puccini for Beginners 2007 A number of scenes in the film are charming and engaging, with a genuinely unforced lightheartedness, and that takes more than a little expertise on the part of Ms. Maggenti, as well as her cast and other collaborators.
8. Sangre De Mi Sangre 2007 Sangre de Mi Sangre stacks up as an original achievement in its own chosen genre, that of the troubled immigrant in a land of advertised promise, who too often is inflicted with pain and exploitation. full review
9. Trumbo 2007 Trumbo is well worth seeing for what it tells us about the age in which this irrepressible individualist lived, loved, suffered and finally triumphed. full review
10. You Kill Me 2007 Along with the splendid principals, [the secondary cast] round out an extraordinarily accomplished ensemble. full review
11. Maxed Out 2006 James Scurlock's Maxed Out takes a long-overdue swipe at the shamelessly predatory tactics of the credit-card and home-mortgage industries, which are feeding on the most economically vulnerable members of our society.
12. Mission: Impossible III 2006 My final reaction to Mission: Impossible III is one of bemused tolerance and even mild absorption in all the silliness. full review
13. Sherrybaby 2006 As an actress, Ms. Gyllenhaal seems to steer clear of any parts that seek to exploit an audience's weakness for conventionally happy endings. Her films are therefore always worth seeing. full review
14. Sixty Six 2006 Since Mr. Weiland himself had grown up in a Jewish section of North London, he was able to include many details of his own childhood. full review
15. The Treatment 2006 Oren Rudavsky's The Treatment features a gifted acting ensemble down to the smallest parts, a good mix of whimsy and intelligent discourse, with just a touch of fantasy that never engulfs the narrative. full review
16. United 93 2006 Even the undeniable heroism of the passengers on United 93 doesn't edify as it should. full review
17. World Trade Center 2006 [World Trade Center] doesn't pretend to encompass the entire catastrophe of 9/11, and that is its great negative virtue. full review
18. Bad News Bears 2005 There are many lingerings over communal feelings other directors might pass through more quickly to get to the next giggle or guffaw more efficiently. full review
19. Brokeback Mountain 2005 I was never moved or even overly excited by what I finally witnessed on the screen, though I have no quarrel with the superlatives heaped upon the film by most of my colleagues. full review
20. Broken Flowers 2005 It kept me absorbed all the way through, especially the collaboration between acting auteur Bill Murray and Mr. Jarmusch in virtually every frame of the film. full review
21. Casanova 2005 Overall, Casanova is silly but amusing.
22. Cowboy Del Amor 2005 Michele Ohayon's Cowboy del Amor turns out to be one of the sweetest, funniest and most enjoyable nonfiction films you are likely to see this year. full review
23. Factotum 2005 Factotum is right up there with Barfly as a distillation of Bukowskian badinage, despite the current film's sketchier provenance. full review
24. My Summer of Love 2005 Turns out to be a triumph of unexpectedness in its slimmed-down story of two teenage girls, one middle-to-lower-class, and the other upper-class. full review
25. Nine Lives 2005 The cumulative effect of the rigorously controlled and purposive camera style adds up in the end to a collective portrait of womankind that is greater than the sum of its parts. full review
26. Old Joy 2005 Let us say simply that Ms. Reichardt's brand of minimalism leaves me truly joyless.
27. Sophie Scholl: The Final Days 2005 This seeming psychological incongruity made Sophie more human and more heroic to me, as well as more worthy of the deep respect that George Bernard Shaw and Danish filmmaker Carl Dreyer expressed for Saint Joan. full review
28. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind 2004 There is little charm in the coupling and almost no erotic intimacy, just a series of nerve-racking conversational collisions. full review
29. Inside Deep Throat 2004 The absorption of Deep Throat into the political melodrama that was Watergate seems to have led to some grandiose statements in Messrs. Bailey and Barbato's documentary. full review
30. The Passion of the Christ 2004 Whereas the words say love, love, love, the sounds and images say hate, hate, hate. full review
31. Vanity Fair 2004 A less than absorbing adaptation of Thackeray's sprawling but sharp-witted classic. full review
32. Vera Drake 2004 Boo, hiss and all that -- but I can report that the film left me only vaguely depressed and nothing more. full review
33. The Good Thief 2003 Great fun despite its deficiency as a presumed thriller. full review
34. Hollywood Homicide 2003 The trouble is that Mr. Shelton and Mr. Souza don't do enough with the material to make it dramatically compelling. full review
35. In the Cut 2003 I found the movie reasonably absorbing from moment to moment. full review
36. The Missing 2003 Mr. Howard keeps the emotional temperature of the family reunion as chilly as possible, but it's clear that the father-daughter relationship is the core of the drama, and the rest is all time-consuming digressions. full review
37. Something's Gotta Give 2003 Ms. Keaton projects her wondrously warm personality, and the erstwhile Jake Gittes keeps us entertained with a sense of irony that keeps things from getting too sticky. full review
38. Swimming Pool 2003 Swimming Pool is more an exquisite art object than an involving movie. So be it. full review
39. Tears of the Sun 2003 Deserves the bad reviews and the lackluster earnings it has accumulated thus far. full review
40. Bowling for Columbine 2002 All in all, Mr. Moore has given us a lot to think about in Bowling for Columbine, and he has entertained us royally in the process. full review
41. Nicholas Nickleby 2002 The film is enriched by an imaginatively mixed cast of antic spirits, headed by Christopher Plummer as the subtlest and most complexly evil Uncle Ralph I've ever seen in the many film and stage adaptations of the work. full review
42. Punch-Drunk Love 2002 It is already apparent that Punch-Drunk Love will not be everyone's cup of tea, but nonetheless Mr. Anderson has found a way to fashion a passionate romance out of the materials of postmodern chaos. full review
43. Ram Dass: Fierce Grace 2002 full review
44. Secret Things 2002 A sweetly seductive entertainment. full review
45. Sex Is Comedy 2002 There are insightful moments about the delicate relationships between a director and her cast, and about the mind games that go on both behind the camera and in front of it. full review
46. We Were Soldiers 2002 As I settled into my World War II memories, I found myself strangely moved by even the corniest and most hackneyed contrivances. full review
47. America's Sweethearts 2001 Too cynically slick and emotionally shallow. full review
48. The Safety of Objects 2001 I had a hard time keeping track of the members of each family from one jagged scene to the next, especially since no one says or does anything particularly interesting. full review
49. Sexy Beast 2001 One of the more interesting efforts in its genre, though it has been somewhat overrated. full review
50. Gangster No. 1 2000 Seeks to transcend its genre with a curiously stylized, quasi-Shakespearean portrait of pure misogynist evil. full review
51. Hamlet 2000 The lines are read for the most part with more feeling for the angry-stepchild plot than for the iambic pentameter. full review
52. Happy Accidents 2000 A cleverly resourceful mixture of romantic comedy and sci-fi time travel. full review
53. The Man Who Cried 2000 full review
54. Memento 2000 I am neither upset nor disturbed by Memento , only vaguely dissatisfied. I simply don't buy Jonathan Nolan's thesis that audiences know all the tropes and tricks of crime thrillers backward and forward. full review
55. Merci Pour le Chocolat 2000 This is one of Mr. Chabrol's subtlest works, but also one of his most uncanny. full review
56. Mission: Impossible 2 2000 For all my profound reservations about the whole project, I wound up liking it more, or, at least disliking it less, than I had anticipated. Thandie Newton is the biggest reason. full review
57. Quills 2000 full review
58. Traffic 2000 The promise of Sex, Lies, and Videotape has been fulfilled. full review
59. Being John Malkovich 1999 By the time the tunnel worthy of the likes of Gulliver and Alice becomes a freeway clogged with bit players, a big chill has descended on all the characters. full review
60. eXistenZ 1999 I just don't happen to like puzzle films of any kind, but I must credit Mr. Cronenberg with more intellectual depth than most of his fellow pessimistic movie pranksters. full review
61. A Midsummer Night's Dream 1999 I remain skeptical about the ability of even the best American actors to read Shakespeare's lines without giving the impression that they are enduring very painful cultural root canal work. full review
62. The Muse 1999 full review
63. Another Day In Paradise 1998 full review
64. Don't Let Me Die On A Sunday 1998 full review
65. Mercury Rising 1998 full review
66. Eve's Bayou 1997 A sparkling directorial debut. full review
67. Good Will Hunting 1997 The film works as a character-driven narrative because Mr. Van Sant and his co-screenwriters are not afraid to unlock the psychological mysteries of their five major characters with clear and concise dialogue. full review
68. Jackie Brown 1997 full review
69. The Wings of the Dove 1997 full review
70. Walking and Talking 1996 full review
71. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes 1970 Wilder's second most underrated masterpiece. full review
72. Rosemary's Baby 1968 Having escaped the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust in Poland by the skin of his teeth, Mr. Polanski was well equipped psychologically to re-imagine what was, before Rosemary's Baby, a B-picture genre into an A-picture genre. full review