Brokeback - more than just nice scenery.

As with all great movies, it is the characters, not the scenery, cinematography, soundtrack or any of that peripheral bollocks that really make this film. A few people have commented on its 'breathtaking scenery'... but here's why I loved Brokeback Mountain:

Jake Gyllenhaal's Jack Twist was a flesh-on-bones (and what flesh! what bones!) human, whose hunger for his Ennis was larger than life, yet palpably, touchingly real.

Heath Ledger was a perfect foil as the lone wolf who tried to convince himself he didn't need that shit, but who bitterly yearned for it in those final, futile drafts of his beloved's shirt collar.

That shining button Michelle Williams was, unlike Johnny Cash's first wife in the inferior Walk the Line, a full blooded, sympathetic "wronged" wife. Their love wasn't her fault; and the film didn't try to blame her for it.

It made me blub like a bairn, which drew a shake of the head from our stoic Chrissy and a witheringly proffered tissue.