Now that the curtain is drawn on this year's Academy Awards, it's time to take our minds off who wore the most gorgeous dress at the show and instead take a look at the five much-touted but little-seen films.

Yes, I agree that King Kong should have been nominated. But if you see the Oscars as a window of promotion, Kong did not need that extra push from the little gold-painted naked guy, even though it got three in the technical categories. So, don't cry for Peter Jackson. As for The Chronicles of Narnia, take your kids to see it, but for all its box-office triumph, it's not Oscar material. And Memoirs of a Geisha, honestly, had it been really successful, would have made the field more competitive for those with "yellow fever." Don't you wish it had been more titillating and naughty?

On a serious note, we have five message films that are designed to make a better person out of you, and in the process convert more conservatives to liberals, which is the unwritten mission of Hollywood. But you'd have to admit it, some of them have the potential for greatness.

Brokeback Mountain

Written by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana and directed by Ang Lee

By now you must have seen some of the spoofs and would agree that Top Gun is more innately gay or at least more erotically gay than Brokeback.

The great thing about this gay cowboy western is, you don't have to be gay to be moved by it. And even if the lovers were a man and a woman, it would still be a good love story.

The pace is measured, so don't expect dramatic outbursts every 10 minutes. Whatever Ang Lee brews is not for quenching thirst, but for savouring. You'd have to sip it and feel the aftertaste. It has Zen, it has Tao, it has a sadness beyond two guys cheating on their wives.

Religious and conservative folks should not be alarmed. It won't turn a single straight guy into gay as the emphasis is on the universality of love. But it has truly made cowboys less glamorous.

Crash

Written and directed by Paul Haggis

Love it or hate it. The Best Picture winner has polarized audiences everywhere. I first saw it on a palm-sized screen on a cross-Pacific flight, and it shook me and moved me to tears. Naturally I cannot understand why people hate it. I have lived in a multiethnic environment before, and from my experience the movie's depiction of racial tension is pretty accurate, albeit dramatized.

The most piercing insight from the movie: there's a racist in every one of us and we need to face the demon, not by the grand posturing of liberal thinking, but by taking a step back from certain situations and see the other side as simply another individual instead of a stereotype. The biggest revelation comes at moments when the movie's "bad cop" does something good and the "good cop" does something terrible, adding layers of complexity to human behaviour.

Technically, this ensemble piece is a brilliant tribute to Robert Altman, this year's Oscar winner of Lifetime Achievement Award and master of the ensemble film. The acting is uniformly luminous. The pacing is perfect for dramatic arch.

Good Night, and Good Luck

Written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov and directed by George Clooney

It's in black and white. It looks like a documentary. And it's very serious, more so than the other four nominees.

It's a wonder that, out of archival footages, Senator Joseph McCarthy still manages to be clownish, rather than a full-drawn character. They should have asked Philip Seymour Hoffman to play him.

Most powerful from this reminder of political repression of journalistic freedom is Edward R. Murrow's monologue. It's still valid in today's world, and may inject a dose of fighting spirit into a profession with so much compromise.

Well, if you feel it too sombre, you can always pop in a disk of King Kong and watch the giant gorilla wrestling with evil dinosaurs and man-eating worms.

Munich

Written by Tony Kushner and Eric Roth and directed by Steven Spielberg

When Spielberg puts aside his inner child and takes on a serious subject, you'll be either emotionally shaken, as in the case of Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, or turned off, as in the case of Amistad and The Color Purple. So, which effect did Munich have on you? It differs from person to person.

It's not the subject as much as Spielberg's treatment that has been contentious. He wants his movie to help heal the wounds between Israelis and Palestinians. But as they say in Hollywood, it's only a movie.

You cannot fault his sincerity or the message of "violence begetting violence,?but the way the movie comes to this conclusion is not quite convincing.

Capote

Written by Dan Futterman and directed by by Bennett Miller

Now, there is a homosexual guy who will make conservatives squirm.

Truman Capote had such a big ego that he would have made Mozart look like a humble person. As a matter of fact, had the inventor of the journalistic novel lived in an 18th-century European city, this dazzling character study would have been a serious contender for best picture.

The voice and the mannerisms of this scene-stealing writer of In Cold Blood are incandescently captured by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who deservedly got his Best Actor Award.

(China Daily 03/17/2006 page6)