If the world were wiped out tomorrow, there is but one film that would have faithfully depicted not only the physical reality of human existence (past-tense), but also its philosophical place.

A war movie where political war is incidental, this Terrence Malick pinnacle confronts good and evil within nature, never overlooking the existence of God and never turning to combat as a process to entertain.

Much less a tragedy of capital punishment than a meditation on the mystical nature of music in nature, and the way that an innocent soul may hear it. Bjork brilliantly channeled the musique-concrete of her endemic composing style into a traditional dramatic context, and Lars von Trier's Dogme 95 process found a lush, romantic elegance in this pinnacle of his style.

If "The Last Temptation of Christ" was the consummation of what Martin Scorsese does, this is the pinnacle of what he can do as a traditional filmmaker. Every component of moviemaking is drawn to perfection here. My doubts are melancholy and earnest that Hollywood may never again create this kind of film on such a large budget and epic scale.

The stage director Gotz Friedrich took this opera to film with the artful understanding that it is a totally different medium than performance under the proscenium. It is the early, perfect archetype for how to film an opera.

Who could guess that a movie about ambulance drivers would solely be interested in divining issues of sanctification and grace within the Christian faith? Again, this is what Scorsese was born to do.

The only candy on this list; or to quote Madame Librarian, a "strawberry phosphate" of a movie. Somehow my walls crumble every time I watch this, and by the end I'm tearing up like a baby. Perhaps this is a mythical conglomerate of everything you could imagine is peculiar and great about America.

After "Salome," the second of the two filmed opera masterpieces by Gotz Friedrich, this one added a substantial set design, drenched in rain and mud as no stage production ever could afford. Opera on film perfected.

First of all, the optical special effects of this aging movie embarrass all the best-ranked CGI that studios have since pimped out (like the difference between grand opera and gay techno). More to the substance, "2001"'s patient and intelligent sense of wonder at the universe seems sadly extinct from the American psyche.

Punk rocker/murder balladier Nick Cave sent his characteristic obsessions with Old vs. New Testament, and blood-soaked redemption, straight into this beautifully shot genre Western.