As surely as spring, but with only the good parts, the essential Village Voice critics’ choice series has arrived at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Like some automatic film-festival aggregator, the program spotlights last year’s undistributed masterpieces and vital peek-a-boo releases you might have missed. After opening tonight with the excoriating Japanese ostracism drama “Bashing,” the Best of 2005 edition is distinguished by its sumptuous feasts for the eyes by master visual storytellers from Claire Denis to Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Seijun Suzuki.

Ms. Denis’s “The Intruder” (April 8) and Alexander Sokurov’s “The Sun” (April 9) dominate the opening weekend of the series with their oneiric visions of powerful men in decline. Ms. Denis’s ethereal waking dream phases between reality and vision, following its ailing and wealthy recluse (Michel Subor) in pursuit of a black-market heart. A quest for a long, lost son soon follows. Pellucid cinematography by Agnes Godard traces and intertwines the psychological terrain of both the hulking Mr. Subor and the Arctic and tropical landscapes he traverses. If you’ve seen “Beau Travail,” you know there’s nothing quite like what Ms. Denis does.

Last glimpsed at the New York Film Festival, “The Sun” sits down with Emperor Hirohito at Armistice in the tomblike stillness of his chambers. He’s about to be divested of his royalty and, by official belief, his divinity. Japanese actor Issei Ogata (the lead in last summer’s “Tony Takitani”) gives a textured, tic-laden performance that supersatisfies the imagination with his unearthly presence. But what does the emperor do to pass the time before meeting with the U.S. occupying general? Why, flip through his fan-boy pho to album of American movie stars, of course.

Completing this trilogy of splendid contemplation is a Hou one-two: “Cafe Lumiere” (April 21) and “Three Times” (April 22), which also opens at the IFC Center the following week.The wistful urban lyricism of “Cafe” has outspoken fans, but I’m partial to “Three Times,” which presents the Taiwanese master a la carte, with three romances set in three different time periods.The first, a missed connection between young lovers in a ’60s pool room, belongs on a wall in the Met for its thousand-shade palette (patterned dresses down to the green felt). No. 2, about a lovelorn concubine circa 1911, slyly reworks silent cinema with subtle camera movement depicting a blackand-white poem of longing. The final, contemporary take distills modern love into cellphone-lit faces and partied-out tedium.

If you like a little more viscera in your spectacle, head for the outstretched arms of the zombies in “Land of the Dead” (April 13) and, showing with it, the searing “Homecoming” episode from the Showtime Masters of Horror series. George Romero’s boosters oversold his latest installment of flesh-eating and shotgun suey, but damned if you don’t see a little bit of yourself in the way the crowds of living dead are easily distracted by pretty fireworks against the vast screen of the sky. Pro or con, it’s a great excuse for bringing the more persuasive Joe Dante’s “Homecoming” to the big screen.This black satire about the war dead rising from their graves to vote out a president is horror doing one of its modern jobs – venting inexpressible fear, disgust, and anger, all at once, for fun.

The Best of 2005 also features the complete works of 20-something “mumblecore” chronicler Andrew Bujalski: “Funny Ha Ha” (tomorrow) and the yet undistributed “Mutual Appreciation” (April 14), featuring a question-and-answer session with the self-deprecating director. Mr. Bujalski’s post-collegiate material is as culturally specific as an 1930s Ozu chamber drama, but repeated viewings reveal the genius and emotional nuance in the films’ apparent simplicity. Marnie of “Funny Ha Ha” emerges as one of the great uncompromised female character studies, with Kate Dollenmayer’s unaffected, elegant performance one of the year’s strongest, professional or amateur. “Mutual Appreciation” revisits the milieu to somewhat narrower effect, coasting pleasantly on the charisma of its adorably shaggy, big-headed star, Justin Rice, a musician sketching out a space for his ideals in his life and in the city.

The series will also be showing a preview of the Nick Cave-penned Australian Western “The Proposition” (April 26, opening in May), the stolid, creeping Korean true-crime policier “Memories of Murder” (April 16), and the latest deadpan human-creature feature by that still-figure artist of Taiwanese anomie, Tsai Ming-liang, “The Wayward Cloud” (April 15).

But back to the spectacle: The mind-blowing Japanese fairy tale/musical conga line “Princess Raccoon” is fantastically fun. No one omits Mr. Suzuki’s age (82) simply because that and his cutting-edge candy-colored accomplishment make you feel too good to be alive. A shape-shifting princess (Zhang Ziyi – yes, really) falls in love with someone she shouldn’t, leaving you to drool over the paper-doll theatrical sets, playful digital landscapes, and, best of all, musical numbers ranging from salsa to big-band to flip-flop tap-dance to imperial hip-hop to amiable schmaltz. I saw it again on a foreign-region DVD without subtitles, and it didn’t matter one bit. Everyone calls it nuts, but if this is crazy, I don’t want to be sane. Goofy, glorious, and the perfect fusion of art and entertainment.

Until April 26 (Peter Jay Sharp Building, 30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, 718-636-4100).