Brokeback Mountain is a movie about forbidden love that is the tear-jerker of the year--at least that's what everybody seems to be falling over each other to proclaim. Yeah, big deal. The truth is that Brokeback Mountain is here because someone has finally done a movie about gay cowboys that isn't just about being gay, and that is considered enough of an artistic achievement to vault it to postmodern superstardom. In reality, Brokeback Mountain minus the gayness of the cowboys is Memoirs of a Geisha, a good dramatic film with six nominations that nobody cares about since they are all for technical and editing achievements. Remember: no gay cowboys equals no best picture nomination squared. Next year, expect a best picture Oscar to be awarded to a group of feminist penguins who choose to stay home and cook.

Crash is this year's little movie that could, and over the last two weeks it has been huffing and puffing its way to a possible upset. Crash is a story about the intricacies of racism, and how they conspire to weave a tapestry of lives in Los Angeles. But beyond that the film is hard to describe. I saw it last summer, and it stunned me right from the beginning with its two black youth complaining about how they are always misunderstood and stereotyped, right before they pull out a gun and hold up the District Attorney. Raising its arguments like a signpost, Crash is full of memorable scenes, heartrending conflicts, great performances from a brilliant ensemble cast and a realistic portrayal of America's most challenging issue. Crash deserves to win.

Capote keeps getting better as more time passes from the day I saw it. Although I didn't think so at the time, it truly deserves to be in the running. I mean, everyone knew that Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance was going to be awesome, but who could have predicted that the film was going to be, too? Capote is the story of a self-centered writer who gets the opportunity of a lifetime to demonstrate his genius thanks to a family being massacred in Kansas. If that sounds callous, just watch Truman Capote exploit everybody in order to write one of the most important books of the century. See him manipulate the situation, lie repeatedly to the simple-minded killer, take advantage of the traumatized town and use all his friends. Where do the ethical limits of artistic creation lie? Where does an artist's responsibility to society begin and end? And all he can do at Harper Lee's triumphant movie premiere is complain about how the government is torturing him because they keep granting stays of execution to the murderers. You see, he can't finish his book until he has an account of the hangings to furnish his final pages. Why doesn't anyone seem to care about what he's going through?

What's so engaging about Munich are the moral compromises that the protagonists go through in killing eleven supposed terrorists in cold blood and trying to justify it to themselves. There are many opinions on this film, one of the most surprising of which is that it has apparently made more Israelis sign up for Mossad. I don't get it. The quote from the movie that stands out for me is when Avner's mother explains to him how proud she is of what he is doing since, "They aren't going to give us anything, so we must take it." And for some reason this is a popular view in Israel. Why is this something to be proud of? If this was a story about central Europe in the 1930s, fine, but it's not. As far as the film goes, it would have been better without so much violence, and minus the gratuitous sex scenes that are made up to be meaningful moments of self-discovery. And what would Spielberg be without something completely unbelievable? In this film it is the scene in the safe house when both our Mossad team and the PLO show up and stay together for a couple of days, giving Steven a nice, clean canvas for some political discussion. The thing is, the PLO think the Mossad are ETA, the Basque terrorist group. Wouldn't they have known that they were talking to Israelis and not Spaniards? Well, we love Spielberg, and you can't have one without the other.

Good Night, and Good Luck is the most unique film of the year not to have gay cowboys in it. George Clooney deserves the Oscar for Best Director, and only seeing Brokeback Mountain lose is closer to my heart than seeing George win. David Strathairn wins Best Actor in any year but this year. Filmed entirely in monochrome, it has virtually no score. Directing that kind of movie in our media saturated era of surround sound and immersive environments is no mean feat, let alone illuminating the complex relationships between fear, justice and freedom that Clooney does with insight and conviction.

Other than Syriana, Good Night, and Good Luck is my Best Picture choice.