Ledger and Gyllenhaal deserve nothing but praise for their brave, sensitive portrayals of troubled souls...

| Jan 3, 2024

What is remarkable about the film is how it doesn't politicise the homosexuality theme, transcends it to become the story of two people in doomed love. The two lead characters are wonderfully delineated.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 10, 2019

Brokeback Mountain is in no rush. Its emotional impact builds slowly, its rhythms in tune with the countryside--the rugged grandeur of the mountains; the arid, bleak vistas of backwater Western towns.

| Jul 6, 2010

Arguably Ang Lee's best film, this swooning, achingly sad near-masterpiece offers a universal love story that lingers long in the mind.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 21, 2008

[A] powerful and moving film, a smart study of relationships that could but can't and never will be.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 1, 2006

The approach is dry as the Wyoming landscape, and while it occasionally threatens to pull the film out of shape, it's still the right one for these men.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Mar 8, 2006

A jaundiced portrait of maleness in crisis… extending not only to… the central characters, but also to the validity of manhood as exemplified by every other male character in the film.

| Original Score: F | Feb 11, 2006

Lee and his collaborators have tapped into Proulx's story and gathered it up without missing a single sad, delicate nuance.

| Jan 27, 2006

Ang Lee continues to astonish.

Full Review | Jan 9, 2006

The whole movie is a rich, spacious, passionate way of showing, not telling, feelings that dare not speak their name -- and doing so with superb intelligence and magnificent candour.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 7, 2006

Don't kid yourself; this is a movie about two gay cowboys, and if you are the type of person who feels you can't handle a subject like this without snickering then you're missing out on one of the best films of 2005.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 28, 2005

Everybody involved in Brokeback Mountain deserves credit for crafting a film strong enough to withstand all of the third-grade snickering that's attended it.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 27, 2005

Lee has taken a story of gay love and placed it where it should be -- in the mainstream. He's delivered a beautifully crafted film to boot.

| Dec 22, 2005

The story-telling is so plain and straightforward that, like the characters' feelings for one another, at first you do not realize how powerful it is.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Dec 21, 2005

A sweeping, solemn, self-serious chronicle of their relationship over several decades.

| Dec 20, 2005

It stays with you after you've seen it, like a haunting strain of music; both love song and elegy for what might have been.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 20, 2005

A film about love and the cost of lying that's exquisite in its beauty, painful in its truths.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 20, 2005

Like these indelible cowboys, you, too, may find it impossible not to succumb to the powerful, quiet greatness that is Brokeback Mountain.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 20, 2005

Brokeback Mountain the power to break your heart -- and, perhaps more important, to open it.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 20, 2005

With its measured pace and its sumptuous visuals, transforming a taboo into a romantic totem, this opening act is fascinating, like watching Red River with the subtext cranked way up.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 20, 2005