As a movie critic, the months of June through August seem to disappear in a blink. In May, we’re eagerly awaiting the beginning of the blockbuster season; near the end of August, we’re starting to look ahead to Oscar prime time. And somehow the middle of the summer just goes by in a blip.

So rather than let us lose track of all the gems that have lined the earlier part of the year, I thought we’d start a tradition here in TimeOut of singling out the best titles from the first half of 2010 - the five movies you should catch up with ASAP before we lose track of them:

1. "Inception" (now in theaters) - I can’t think of a movie since "WALL-E" that I have pored over more in the days since I saw it. This captivating, mind-bending story of dreams, subconscious landscapes and the villains who try to dig deep into the minds of others so that they can steal or plant information is one of the most astonishing heist films ever created. It invents a new vocabulary to form familiar sentences and emerges as an utterly engrossing cinematic triumph.

2. "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" (now on DVD) - This is the year of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy about an enigmatic young woman with a troubled past who uses her tech smarts, and her fearless sense of courage, to fight back against evil people in this world. In this first chapter, it’s a killer that she helps a journalist track down. Forget Hollywood, this Swiss product is the best thriller of the year (thus far).

3. "Toy Story 3" (now in theaters) - Pixar has done it again with the most emotional chapter of the "Toy Story" trilogy. Andy is moving on to college, leaving his toys with the existential crisis of what they are worth if there’s no one left to play with them. As they try to break out of a day care, where they are accidentally donated, we see the universal struggle for a larger purpose.

4. "Solitary Man" (on DVD Sept. 7) - Michael Douglas gives one of the best performances of his career in this over-the-hill character study about a man who woos women as a way of diverting his mind from a sense of ennui and failure. It’s as poignant a movie about regret as I’ve seen in many years.

5. "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" (now in theaters) - Michael Cera plays a heartbroken, then lovelorn, teen boy, infatuated with his dream girl, Ramona, until he learns that to woo her, he must first fight to the death her seven evil ex-boyfriends. It’s an immature fantasia of a romantic comedy, complete with video game brawls that zip across the screening in lightning-fast fashion. It’s a swirling vortex of emotions - but anyone who remembers what it’s like to be a teenager will relate all too well.

Honorable mention: "The Book of Eli" (now on DVD) - A movie that was written off as a routine genre waste of time, I feel like I might be the only one who loved "The Book of Eli." A story about the world after some cataclysmic event, Denzel Washington plays Eli, a blind man carrying a powerful book across dangerous territory. Chased after by thugs who want to possess his book’s secrets, Eli uses all his skills to fight back and in the process, makes a powerful case for the value of knowledge, information and the printed word in the universe.

E-mail: snyderreviews@hotmail.com