2005: The aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them.

I saw 41 theatrically released movies in 2005 (not all of them in the theater, my budget-watching friend). Here is the crème de la crème of individual performances. Full movie list tomorrow.

Best Performance:

1. Heath Ledger (Brokeback Mountain)
Ledger delivers on the promise and gives the swooning, hunky performance his clusters of female fans have been pining for. Wait, what’s that? Oh …
2. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Mysterious Skin)
Who knew the kid from 3rd Rock would make such a convincing street hustler? Director Gregg Araki, apparently.
3. Steve Carell (The 40-Year-Old Virgin)
Fresh off his loony performance comes another hilarious role, both warm and masochistic.
4. Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote)
Classic Oscar-bait – he cries! he lisps! he’s gay! – but in the best way. (And now that PSH has played Lester Bangs and Truman Capote, which legendary 20th century writer should he play next? My vote's for Gabriel Garcia Lorca. [Bonus: Did anyone else notice that this is the second movie where Chris Cooper played a character interviewed by a New Yorker writer? Two hugs to whomever can name the other.])
5. Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line)
In a year of weak female lead performances (and with apologies to Felicity Huffman), Witherspoon’s June Carter breathed life into the stuffy biopic genre.

Best Supporting Performance:

1. Maria Bello (A History of Violence)
One of the best one-scene transformations since Naomi Watts’ audition in Mulholland Drive.
2. Jeff Daniels (The Squid and the Whale)
Great in the role of me at 50.
3. Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener)
A real scene-stealer in a movie about how her husband just won’t stop gardening.
4. Levon Helm (The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada)
Without revealing too much, the scene where Helm – playing a blind old man who listens to Mexican radio despite knowing no Spanish – begs Tommy Lee Jones to do him a favor is heartbreaking. Bonus: A pretty mean drummer.
5. Peter Sarsgaard (Jarhead)
In a mess of a movie, he gives the one performance that makes a beeline to the movie’s point: War’s unique hell of waiting.
6. Jake Gyllenhaal’s mustache (Brokeback Mountain)
Self-explanatory.

Best Cinematography:

1. 2046
Wong Kar-Wai is a god among visual stylists.
2. Good Night, and Good Luck.
Robert Elswit’s smoky black-and-white brilliantly underscore a movie about the difficulty of choosing right over wrong.
3. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
You have to be doing something right to make me thirsty for a damned Tecate.
4. The New World
One shot as an example: You see the tops of trees, a forest. It is perfectly still. Until there is a ripple – it’s actually a reflection in the water. Amazing.
5. The Constant Gardener
The whole overexposed, white-out look is in danger of becoming a cliché. But this movie did it right.