I wonder whether or not posting my picks on the same day as the Oscars will become a tradition—this is the second year in a row that I've done it. This year it was only partially due to procrastination. As it turned out, 2005 was a difficult year for film. Box office returns were the lowest in recent history and most of what came out was crap. On the other hand, the few good films were really good. All of this made it difficult to make decisions in many of the categories—either because there were a few really great choices or because there were none. But anyway, on with the show.

Best Drama: Brokeback Mountain

I suppose my pick of Brokeback Mountain is probably not terribly surprising given how much buzz that film has generated this year. It's already won both the Best Drama and Best Director Golden Globes and in all likelihood it will easily win those categories at the Oscars. For me, though, it was actually a tough decision because Match Point was so good. In the end, though, I went with Brokeback because even though I think that Match Point was smarter and better written, and even though both films were technically excellent, Brokeback was more emotionally evocative for me. Though both films had wonderful acting, Brokeback's performances were deeper, and while both made excellent use of cinematography and setting to deliver their respective stories, Brokeback's majestic use of landscape made the setting take on a life of its own.

Runners-up: Match Point, Dear Frankie, Shopgirl, Jarhead, Serenity

Best Comedy: The 40 Year-Old Virgin

Here, again, I had a tough choice between two excellent candidates. I eventually went with The 40 Year-Old Virgin because I felt it was a better film all around. Kung Fu Hustle made me laugh harder and was brilliant in managing to both parody and represent the Hong Kong martial arts genre, but Virgin was one of those rare movies that manages to be both truly hilarious and truly touching. The idea of a sex farce with characters that you care about seems unlikely, but that's exactly what Virgin is.

Runners-up: Kung Fu Hustle, The Matador

Best Actor: Heath Ledger (Brokeback Mountain)

Despite the fact that Heath Ledger's performance runs afoul of my biggest acting pet peeve—don't screw up the accent—the fact is that he did some really amazing work with this role. His performance as the laconic Ennis Del Mar was so nuanced and so quietly passionate. Being able to pull so much emotion out of such a sparse script is really what acting is all about.

Runners-up: Joaquin Phoenix (Walk the Line), Pierce Brosnan (The Matador), Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Match Point), Steve Carell (The 40 Year-Old Virgin)

Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line)

This category was hard to pick, but for a completely different reason than the first two. There just weren't any female performances that really wowed me this year. Part of this is probably due to the choices we made in what movies to see—in particular I think having seen Transamerica might have made this easier. In any case, I chose Reese Witherspoon because, even though her performance didn't strike any major chords with me and it was completely overshadowed by what Joaquin Phoenix did in that movie, it was certainly the best work she's ever done.

Runners-up: Emily Mortimer (Dear Frankie), Claire Danes (Shopgirl)

Best Supporting Actor: Jason Schwartzman (Shopgirl)

Jason Schwartzman has this great quirkiness that he brings to all of his roles, from Max Fischer in Rushmore to Albert Markovski in I Heart Huckabees. I'm not sure exactly how to describe it—maybe a sort of awkward, geek-chic self-absorption—but whatever it is, I like it. His performance in Shopgirl was a lot of fun to watch, and provided a great comic counterpoint to the LA fable that forms the rest of the movie.

Runners-up: Jeremy Irons (Kingdom of Heaven), Jamie Foxx (Jarhead), Peter Sarsgaard (Jarhead), Michael Caine (The Weather Man)

Best Supporting Actress: Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain)

I wasn't too impressed with Michelle Williams at first but the more I think about it, the more I appreciate her performance. My attention in Brokeback Mountain was so focused on Ledger and Gyllenhaal that I hardly even noticed her, but having had time to reflect on it, I think that is really to her credit. A lesser actress would have seen the character's struggles as an opportunity to really act, and would consequently have overdone it. In fact, that's more or less what Anne Hathaway did in the same film. Williams, though, gave a much more subtle performance—you never see the actress in her thinking "OK I'M CONFLICTED RIGHT NOW"—which allowed her to play off of Ledger in a much more realistic way. It's a little ironic, really, that sacrificing the "spotlight" in that film is what brought her so much critical attention.

Runner-up: Emily Mortimer (Match Point)

I got the feeling while watching this movie that the filmmakers were doing something brilliant but that it was going over my head because—as is so often the case—I wasn't familiar with the source material. Having had a few days to do a little digging, I think I was right. What the writer and director has done here is take a book that is widely regarded to be unfilmable (Laurence Stern's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman) and restructured it in such a way that it works brilliantly on film. Rather than try to put the novel on film, what they've done is captured the spirit of the novel by making a movie about making a movie about the novel. (Is your head spinning yet?) The book is described as a self-reflexive, stream-of-consciousness satire full of both low-brow bawdy and more intellectual, meta-literary humor that still manages to ask some serious questions about the limits of self-knowledge and deliver some touching scenes of paternal love. And that's exactly what you get from the movie. The more I think about it, the more I like it. Now, to go get myself a copy of the book.

Viewed: 2006-02-25 | Released: 2006-01-26 | Score: B

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I think what keeps bringing me back to this series—aside from the fact that I already own it—is the characterization. Hornblower is keenly aware of himself and the events of his life so, rather than each story standing alone, the echoes of all of his past adventures continue to be heard as he matures. You get to see how he grows. It's really great writing. Plus, you get to read lots of cool nautical terms like "sternsheets" and "mizzentop."

Started: 2006-02-12 | Finished: 2006-02-22

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As you may know, Judi Dench was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her performance as the woman who first brought nudity to the West End stage. I'd say the nom is well deserved. Of course, Dench could do just about anything and it would be good, so it's not terribly surprising. Bob Hoskins and Christopher Guest were also quite good and between the three of them there were some truly hilarious scenes. Much of the film focuses on the shows themselves, nudity and all, and while a real show like that would come off today as hokey and gratuitous, in the context of the film it was kind of endearing—sort of a glimpse into a time that was more innocent despite the tragedies brought about by war.

Viewed: 2006-02-19 | Released: 2005-12-08 | Score: B

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I really hated the last two Woody Allen movies I saw in the theater. In fact, after we saw Anything Else, Juliette and I decided that was it, we weren't going to see any more Woody Allen movies. So when we heard about Match Point we were a little skeptical, despite the overwhelmingly good reviews it was getting. We were so wrong. It was easily one of the best films we've seen over the past year. The writing was excellent, the locations were beautiful, and the acting was, for the most part, brilliant. The story managed some of the most incredible tension I've ever seen in a movie and the resolution leaves you both satisfied and uncomfortable. Probably the lowest point of the film is Scarlett Johansen's acting, but even so this is probably her best work. In fact, I'm not even sure that the relative shallowness of her performance—relative to the other actors, that is—wasn't on purpose, because it works pretty well for the character. I wouldn't have thought I'd have so many good things to say about a movie by Woody Allen but this one was just amazing.

Viewed: 2006-02-11 | Released: 2005-12-27 | Score: A

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The 2006 update of The Pink Panther has been receiving generally bad reviews. This review will not break that streak. I think part of the problem for me was that I had reasonably high expectations based on the fact that I thought Steve Martin looked really funny in the previews. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie was only OK. In fact, the funniest part of the movie wasn't even Martin, it was Jean Reno. Reno's deadpan performance as Clouseau's sidekick, Ponton, was the highlight of the film, for me. And the low point? That would be Beyoncé. I honestly cannot figure out why she keeps getting cast in movies. Sure, she's good-looking, but not enough that it makes up for being completely terrible at acting.

Viewed: 2006-02-10 | Released: 2006-02-09 | Score: C

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Once, back in high school, my stepdad and I had a conversation about great American presidents. Like a lot of people, he thought quite a bit more of Thomas Jefferson than George Washington—in his words, Washington was "just a general." As much sense as that appraisal made at the time, it was ultimately unsatisfying because there must have been some reason that Washington was the first president instead of Jefferson, or other eminent politicians of the time like Madison or Adams. In fact, it is exactly this problem that is the central question of His Excellency. I found it to be an excellent read—informative and engaging while also being easy to absorb. Separating the man from the mythology that has grown up around him over the past two centuries is no mean feat, and Ellis does a good job of presenting him as a human figure. In addition to the subject of the book, I also found it interesting to see the biases that different historians have. Ellis presents Jefferson and John Adams and their respective parties in a very different light from the way Stephen Ambrose portrays them in Undaunted Courage and To America. Clearly, one writer can never give you a complete picture, but I'm starting to get to the point where I feel that the breadth of my reading is giving me a wide enough reference to read with a more critical eye.

Started: 2006-01-30 | Finished: 2006-02-07

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The eighth Hornblower book is a bit different from the others in that almost none of the story takes place on a ship. The book opens with Hornblower and his men in a French prison, and the bulk of the novel is concerned with his escape and his travels home. There's less action, but it turns out that instead of making the book boring this allows for a more character-driven story. I think by the end of Flying Colours I had a much clearer picture of Horatio Hornblower, the man, than ever before. I find that I feel toward him much the same way as one of the characters in this book—I can't help liking him, despite the fact that he's not very likeable. Three books are left and I'm looking forward to them.

Started: 2006-01-28 | Finished: 2006-01-29

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In case you haven't heard of it, The Matador is a comedy about a professional assassin, played by Pierce Brosnan, who gets burned out on his job and befriends a regular guy, played by Greg Kinnear, who he meets in a hotel bar in Mexico City. It's not being marketed very heavily so you may not have heard of it—Juliette and I only heard about it when Pierce Brosnan was nominated for a Golden Globe. It's a rather odd film. These days, comedies tend to beat you over the head with the humor but this one is quite a bit more subtle; the humor mostly springs from the ridiculousness of the situations, but the film never goes over the top. I liked it, and not just because it made me laugh—which it did—or because the actors did a good job—which they did. It was also really nice to see a movie that wasn't just the same old formula all over again. As Juliette pointed out about halfway through the film, it was really difficult to predict where the movie was going and I found that to be a welcome change of pace.

Viewed: 2006-01-27 | Released: 2005-12-29 | Score: A

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I'm feeling a little irritated with this book right now because I had intended on reading a biography of George Washington next, but because Ship of the Line ends with a cliffhanger I had to leave my copy of His Excellency on my nightstand and continue on with the next Hornblower novel. This one wasn't as good as the previous book, Beat to Quarters, but it managed to drag me in enough that I just had to know how things turned out after the events in the final scene.

Started: 2006-01-16 | Finished: 2006-01-28

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