All of the great movies hold up to multiple viewings, but Christopher Nolan's The Prestige practically demands it. In fact, watching the film twice is like watching one performance each by its two principal characters. The first viewing is like an Angier performance—you groove on the showmanship and the presentation, but you're not sure how much substance is there. The second viewing, however, is pure Borden, in that you really see how intricate and thought-out the film is, which of course makes it all the more entertaining. In the end, The Prestige deals with men who would sacrifice everything (love, body parts, even their lives) for their passions, and more than that, the fallout that occurs when two of these men are at odds with each other—not just Borden vs. Angier, but also Nikola Tesla vs. Thomas Edison. Plus it's just a ripping yarn with the cleverest screenplay to come along since Nolan's breakout film, Memento. For my money, The Prestige is even better. —Paul Clark, Columbus, OH
Pan's Labyrinth: I have a general aversion to "grown up" fairy-tales, since what constitutes that is either postmodern posturing (I'm looking at you, Shrek) and/or obnoxious preciousness (the ouch-my-insulin Amelie). But Guillermo Del Toro puts the primal urgency back into fairy-tales, restoring to the genre the feral grisliness that has been sanitized and sublimated by 80 years of Walt Disney. Like the other great 21st-century fairy-tale, the woefully misunderstood A.I., Pan's Labyrinth takes the anxieties of children seriously. Both films are about a child's abandonment, loneliness, and exile in a less-than-kind world. And both recognize the deceptive comforts of fantasy. Those themes are universal, and Pan's head-on engagement with them make it one of the most genuine, emotionally intuitive lamentations of childhood innocence to grace the screen. —Jeremy Cohen
The Fountain: The only movie that I saw two times in theaters this year, and the one that prompted the most post-screening discussion among the people I saw it with, both times. I remain frustrated and saddened that this film received so little recognition and was unceromiously dismissed by most critics. There's so much to love about this film: its unbridled ambition, unique special effects, and the intentionally messy and overlapping narrative, which was vague enough (in a good way) to enable me and my boyfriend to reach completely different conclusions about the implications of the ending. Not since Capturing the Friedmans have I encountered a narrative that could yield such disparate interpretations. —Max Kamer, Providence, RI
The Fountain: Fuck all this fairy tale for grown-ups bullshit. We're all adults here, right? And as such I want a love story, dammit, one where my lady is beautiful, cancer-ridden, and turns into a tree. One where the man will fight off everything and everyone (including himself) for the woman he loves and float around inside a hermetic space bubble. I want a director who is in love with his picture (see every frame featuring his wife's face), one who doesn't shy away from including scenes everyone will think are overwrought or wince-inducing, and still manages to boil away everything superfluous to an essential 90 minutes. I loved every flaw and triumph of this film and will defend it to the death with a giant flaming sword. —Douglas, Chicago, IL
The Science of Sleep: I can't remember leaving a theater in such a state as I did at the end of this movie. I recall actually stopping to consider how safe I was driving home, as if I'd been out drinking or doing something else more elicit than sitting in stadium style seating for two hours. I think this film actually left the screen and came home with me that night, unlike the girl I went to see the movie with. It was all for the best, though, since Michel Gondry's dream-like imagery was likely better that night in bed than anything said girl could have offered. —David Hulford, Media, PA
The Science Of Sleep: Michel Gondry's films play like working experiments but are filled with so much inventiveness and child-like exuberance that you can't help but be drawn in and made a believer. For me, Gondry's crowning achievement as a writer and filmmaker is his ability to take these fantastic, dream and memory worlds and point them back to reality, furthering your understanding of human relationships. —Bryan Whitefield
The Science Of Sleep: Michel Gondry has an imagination like no one else on earth. Watching the stuff he comes up with in his movies gives me a goofy grin that lasts for weeks. His low-tech effects are charming, and the songs he picks fit the mood perfectly (which makes sense, since he has directed lots of music videos). This story of a guy who has trouble distinguishing dreams and reality is wonderful, and Gael García Bernal plays him perfectly. Bernal has been quickly becoming a favorite of mine, and he demonstrates a skill for comedy in this movie that I never realized he had. He's great, especially in crazy sequences when he has to act while wearing giant hands, walking around naked in his sleep, or building a cardboard city with his mind. I don't think I enjoyed any other film more this year. —Matt Brady, Plainfield, IL
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