2005 in Film

GREAT PERFORMANCES: Jeff Daniels in The Squid and the Whale; Daniel Auteuil in Caché; Naomi Watts in Ellie Parker and King Kong; Joan Allen and Kevin Costner in The Upside of Anger; Charlize Theron and Richard Jenkins in North Country; Natalie Press in My Summer of Love; Matt Dillon and Terrence Howard in Crash; Vera Farmiga in Down to the Bone; Emanuelle Devos in Kings & Queen; Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener in Capote; David Strathairn and Frank Langella in Good Night, and Good Luck; Michael Lonsdale in Munich; Felicity Huffman in Transamerica; Cillian Murphy in Breakfast on Pluto; Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams in Brokeback Mountain; Joseph Gordon Leavitt in Mysterious Skin; Tom Wilkinson in Separate Lies; Richard Gere in Bee Season; Georgie Henley in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Lior Ashkenazi in Walk on Water; Sibell Kekilli in Head-On; Maria Bello in A History of Violence; Lisa Kudrow in Happy Endings; and, of course, Gromit—dear, kind, strong, silent Gromit, unassuming hero of a world far better than the one we live in. Gromit for President!

MOVIE MOMENTS TO CHERISH:
Naomi Watts, juggling first for her life, then for the love of a great ape in King Kong.

Super-goy James Bond (Daniel Craig), coming on all Yiddish in Munich: "It's a shanda for the goyim!"

Two desolate penguin parents keening over the loss of their baby in March of the Penguins. Anthropomorphic? Maybe, but grief is grief even if you waddle on two flippers.