All-American Clint Eastwood and foreign-language art cinema are not exactly the most congruent terms, and yet that's exactly what distinguishes “Letter from Iwo Jima,” his impressive companion piece to “Flags of Our Fathers,” which depicts the noted brutal battle from the Japanese perspective. The new picture displays other innovations: It's quiet, intimate, understated, and looks as if it were shot in black-white due to saturated colors.

The most significant American film of the year. Effective as epic war film that reconstructs the cruel battle of Iwo Jima, and a sharp, timely deconstruction of how the battle and the iconic photo it produced were used and abused by the power elite, news media, and public at large.