A silver-screen lining in a cloudy year

Ang Lee's film, starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in matching breakout performances, is the first major Hollywood movie about male homosexual love. But it is so deeply felt that to characterize it in such a way is to miss the point of the film: It's about the rarity of love, any love.

After seeing Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote, I'm prepared to say that he may be one of our greatest actors. What he does is so far beyond mere mimicry that you just sit there awestruck at the alchemy that allows for such a gift. Director Bennett Miller and screenwriter Dan Futterman delve into the psychology of what it means to be an artist - or at least this one.

Hayao Miyazaki's fantasia is almost as hard to follow as "Syriana," but infinitely more pleasurable. Miyazaki is one of the last champions of hand-drawn animation and is its finest living practitioner.

This film has been knocked by critics for being too well-made - as if such films were in large supply these days. It's a beautifully realized tragicomedy starring Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins and the blitz. What more is there to life? Stephen Frears is the director who stands accused of the crime of craftsmanship; his coconspirator in the docket is screenwriter Martin Sherman.

The most underrated film of the year. Roman Polanski is the first director to bring out the Dostoevskian depths in Dickens (who was much influenced by the Russian). It's a harrowing accomplishment with a near-great performance by Ben Kingsley as Fagin.

The people who complain that this movie isn't like the book haven't read the book. The spirited intelligence of this production, directed by Joe Wright, is very Jane Austen-like indeed, and I'll be hornswoggled if Keira Knightley doesn't fit herself right in.

Almost certainly Ingmar Bergman's last film, this sequel (of a sort) to his "Scenes From a Marriage" is so passionately focused that the misery of its characters comes through without the slightest adornment. Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson and the amazing Borje Ahlstedt head up the world-class ensemble.

If "Oliver Twist" was the most underrated great film of the year, this sad German comedy was the most underseen. Directed by Michael Schorr with an almost supernal grace, it's about an aging accordianist who becomes entranced with zydeco and ventures to America to get his fill.

Jia Zhang Ke has a mellifluous style that keeps everything in lyrical suspension. The friends and lovers who work in the international theme park that gives the film its name are brought to life with surpassing poignancy.

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