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This sobering Japanese fantasy has a delicate veneer, but beneath that lies an extraordinary power.

Taking place in a kind of subway stop between life and the afterlife, the movie charts the efforts of a crew of technicians who attempt to faithfully reproduce the one memory that the recently deceased wish to take with them into forever. That's all they will have with them. Gently but with great confidence, the movie slowly examines the interactions between the workers, the guests, and their own miniature conflicts in choosing those memories with exquisite tact but honesty, as well. Listen to the man who does not know if he has had any memorable moments in his life.

A rapturous film, and a life-changer.

Not only is this Buster Keaton's best film, but it is among the greatest achievements in the history of cinema, period. While it is not a feature-length film--and thus barred from most critics' lists of great films--it invented just about every single basic special effect known to movies (except for morphing). The story itself, about a film projectionist who desires to become part of the movies, and then does, by walking right onto the screen, made palpable the desire that we all have to be in the movies: To get the girl, to be an action hero, to outsmart the bad guys. Keaton invented meta-cinema before anyone even had a phrase for it.

This movie has entered our dreams.

Brokeback Mountain is almost like "Boys Don't Cry" with the genders reversed. Both movies demonstrate, beautifully, the irony of a land in which the most sociologically restricting of areas are often the ones with the most wide open of spaces. Here is the love story of two men who cannot be in love with each other, and not just because society doesn't allow it; they can barely say aloud what they are. The second half of the film slows down the momentum and gets a tad episodic, but the overall effect is extraordinary. Ang Lee has been cinema's foremost chronicler of repressed emotions for the past decade, but never before has he allowed those emotions to explode and resonate with the clarity and force that they do here.