- Los Angeles Film Critics Awards 2005: Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain named Best Film; Michael Haneke’s Caché / Hidden is the Best Foreign Language Film. Philip Seymour Hoffman wins Best Actor, while Vera Farmiga may turn out to be this awards season’s most surprising choice.
Los Angeles Film Critics Awards 2005: Ang Lee’s gay romantic Western Brokeback Mountain wins Best Film, Best Director
Ang Lee’s modestly budgeted (a reported $14 million), independently made gay romantic Western Brokeback Mountain was the top pick at the 2005 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards (LAFCA) announced on Dec. 10. (See further below the full list of this year’s LAFCA winners and runners-up.)
The mostly 1960s Wyoming-set story of the forbidden romance between two cowboys (Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal), Brokeback Mountain was named the year’s Best Film while Lee won Best Director.
Longtime collaborators Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana adapted (and vastly expanded) Annie Proulx’s 1997 short story. Also in the cast: Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway as, respectively, Ledger’s and Gyllenhaal’s wives.
Update: Brokeback Mountain has gone on to become U.S. film critics groups’ runaway favorite.
3 Capote wins
The 2005 Los Angeles Film Critics Awards’ other major winner was Bennett Miller’s narrative feature debut Capote, which revolves around another gay figure from the 1960s, author and gossip Truman Capote, then working on the nonfiction bestseller In Cold Blood.
Capote won/co-won three awards:
- Best Actor for Philip Seymour Hoffman for his performance as the flamboyantly effeminate title character.
- Best Screenplay, tied with director-screenwriter Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale.
- Best Supporting Actress for Catherine Kenner, in the role of To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee. Keener was also cited for The Ballad of Jack and Rose, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and The Interpreter.
Caché, William Hurt & surprising Vera Farmiga
The 2005 European Film Awards’ big winner, Michael Haneke’s violent psychological-political mystery thriller Caché / Hidden was the Los Angeles Film Critics’ Best Foreign Language Film. Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, and veteran Annie Girardot (Rocco and His Brothers, The Organizer) star.
Long gone from the awards season radar, veteran Oscar winner William Hurt (Kiss of the Spider Woman, 1985) won Best Supporting Actor for his humorously psychopathic turn as Viggo Mortensen’s mobster brother in David Cronenberg’s sociopolitical family drama A History of Violence. Director Cronenberg and the film itself were Los Angeles runners-up.
But the LAFCA’s most surprising choice was that of Best Actress Vera Farmiga for her portrayal of a working-class mom and hardcore drug addict in Debra Granik’s little-seen micro-budget drama Down to the Bone.
Bypassed movies
Noticeably absent from the Los Angeles Film Critics’ list of winners and runner-ups were Peter Jackson’s King Kong, Steven Spielberg’s Munich, Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, Terrence Malick’s The New World, Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha, and George Lucas’ Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.
“We really did end up not going with anything big,” remarked LAFCA President Henry Sheehan. “There was some support for King Kong for cinematography and production design, but there was almost nothing for Munich, maybe a couple of acting votes, but very scattered.”
Also missing from the roster were several well-regarded “smaller” titles like Woody Allen’s Match Point, Mike Binder’s The Upside of Anger, and Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now.
Richard Widmark, ‘Unseen Cinema’ honors
Well worth noting, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association will be handing out this year’s Career Achievement Award to veteran Richard Widmark, a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee for his star-making turn as a deranged murderer in Henry Hathaway’s 1947 film noir Kiss of Death, and the male lead/co-lead in numerous crime dramas, thrillers, and Westerns from the late 1940s to the late 1960s (e.g., Road House, No Way Out, Pickup on South Street, Two Rode Together).
Lastly, the Los Angeles Film Critics singled out the DVD collection “Unseen Cinema,” which includes efforts by Lois Weber (Suspense), Charles Vidor (The Bridge), and Fernand Léger (Ballet mécanique). David Shepard, Bruce Posner, and the Anthology Film Archive worked on the compilation.
The 31st LAFCA Awards ceremony is scheduled for Jan. 17 at the Park Hyatt in Century City.
Among the 2004 Los Angeles Film Critics Award winners were Best Film Sideways, Best Foreign Language Film House of Flying Daggers, Best Director Alexander Payne (Sideways), Best Actress Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake), and Best Actor Liam Neeson (Kinsey).
Immediately below is the full list of this year’s Los Angeles Film Critics winners and runners-up.
Los Angeles Film Critics Awards 2005: Winners & runners-up
Best Film: Brokeback Mountain
Runner-up: A History of Violence
Best Foreign Language Film: Caché
Runner-up: 2046 – Dir.: Wong Kar-Wai
Best Director: Ang Lee – Brokeback Mountain
Runner-up: David Cronenberg – A History of Violence
Best Actress: Vera Farmiga – Down to the Bone
Runner-up: Judi Dench – Mrs. Henderson Presents
Best Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman – Capote
Runner-up: Heath Ledger – Brokeback Mountain
Best Supporting Actress: Catherine Keener – Capote, The Ballad of Jack and Rose, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, The Interpreter
Runner-up: Amy Adams – Junebug
Best Supporting Actor: William Hurt – A History of Violence
Runner-up: Frank Langella – Good Night, and Good Luck.
Best Screenplay (tie): Capote – Dan Futterman; The Squid and the Whale – Noah Baumbach
Best Cinematography: Good Night, and Good Luck. – Robert Elswit
Runner-up: 2046 – Christopher Doyle, Kwan Pun-Leung & Lai Yiu-Fai
Best Music: Howl’s Moving Castle / Hauru no ugoku shiro – Joe Hisaishi & Yumi Kimura
Runner-up: Tony Takitani – Ryuichi Sakamoto
Best Production Design: 2046 – William Chang
Runner-up: Good Night, and Good Luck. – Jim Bissell
Best Documentary/Nonfiction Film: Grizzly Man – Dir.: Werner Herzog
Runner-up: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room – Dir.: Alex Gibney
Best Animation: Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit – Dir.: Nick Park & Steve Box
New Generation Award: Terrence Howard – Hustle & Flow
Independent/Experimental Film and Video Award: La Commune (Paris, 1871)
Career Achievement Award: Richard Widmark
Special Citations: David Shepard, Bruce Posner, and the Anthology Film Archive (“To honor ‘Unseen Cinema,’ an eight-disc set DVD collection of avant-garde, underground films from 1894–1941”); Kevin Thomas (“To the film critic for his contributions to film culture in Los Angeles”)
“Los Angeles Film Critics Awards 2005: Brokeback, Caché” notes
Los Angeles Film Critics Association website.
Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche Caché image: Les Films du Losange.
“Los Angeles Film Critics Awards 2005: Brokeback, Caché” last modified in November 2025.