BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (R) -Here's something that rarely happens: The movie that received the most Oscar nominations - eight in all - actually deserved to receive the most Oscar nominations. Ang Lee's agonizingly fine romantic western makes the mystery and heartache of love come alive in ways you may have forgotten movies were capable of. Nominated for Best Picture, Director, Actor (Heath Ledger), Supporting Actor (Jake Gyllenhaal), Supporting Actress (Michelle Williams), Screenplay Adaptation, Cinematography, and Original Score ... and, to be honest, a few others - Best Film Editing, Art Direction, maybe even Best Supporting Actress for Anne Hathaway - wouldn't have been out of line. (Great Escape Theatre, Showcase 53)

GLORY ROAD

Is it just a coincidence, or do you think there's an annual meeting wherein Disney shareholders tell the studio's executives, "Bring us this year's feel-good, triumph-of-the-underdog sports flick, and if you can find one that's more formulaic, clichéd, and shameless than last year's, all the better!" A couple of years back, we endured Kurt Russell guiding a bunch of interchangeable skaters to Olympic victory in the hockey drama Miracle, and my head is still reeling from the moribund sentimentality - and beyond-obnoxious miniature caddie - of The Greatest Game Ever Played, which managed to make golf look about five times less exciting than the sport's reputation would suggest.

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

In Ang Lee's agonizingly fine romantic western Brokeback Mountain, two taciturn young men - Ennis del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) - are hired, in the summer of 1963, to tend flocks of sheep on a Wyoming expanse. During the early days of their tenure, the men barely speak. Yet as the months pass, they form a solid friendship, and on one particularly cold night atop the mountain, Ennis and Jack share a bottle of whiskey and a sleeping bag, and - experiencing wordless, nearly aggressive desire - have sex. Despite the inevitability of the encounter, the sheer, naked hunger of the scene is startling, but a greater surprise comes some 20 minutes (and four years of screen time) later, in a scene so powerfully, emotionally true that - like much of Lee's transcendently moving work - it hits like a slap in the face.

GRIZZLY MAN

When March of the Penguins became a sleeper sensation this past summer, I was pretty thrilled, and not merely because the film itself is wonderful. Documentary hounds like myself often spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to convince people that, strictly as an entertainment option, a well-made doc can be preferable - more surprising, more emotionally engaging - than most Hollywood releases, and so the emergence of this little-penguins-that-could tale as a box-office bonanza was, for many of us, cause for celebration.My hope is that those who missed March of the Penguins during its summer run will now be catching up with the film on DVD, and may even be moved to seek out other docs they'd heard of yet were unable to see theatrically. (And if this applies to you - and I promise to stop pressing this issue soon - get your hands on Murderball as soon as humanly possible.)