Some of the best bits from other reviews

ModFab On...Brokeback Mountain

"While many will talk about the universality of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, let me be the first to say: it simply isn't true. Oh, I'm sure heterosexuals will have a great time watching the film, but this isn't their story, and to water it down with claims of universality is to do it a great disservice. This particular tale could not have happened to anyone but two men...it is a hard, spare story, albeit one told with eloquence. (Their lovemaking is often undistinguishable from boys' roughousing, and occasionally ends in fistfights.) Ennis and Jack lack the vocabulary and the life experience to process their desires; brutality and roughness sit comfortably in their psyches alongside tenderness and gentility. Unlike any other film you can think of, BROKEBACK offers up a wholly masculine vision of homosexuality; these are men thousands of miles from any major urban center, who do not recognize themselves in the stereotype...who have never heard of Judy Garland, and don't want to."

Love, Actually.  Reviewed by Karen Durbin in Elle

"It's impossible to imagine these two country boys in the claustrophobic confines of a big city, where they could live together and be somewhat safe. With understated eloquence, Gyllenhaal and Ledger give Jack and Ennis such specific life that we understand not only how deeply they belong to the rural West but also how deeply they belong with each other."

Cowboys in Love... With Each Other.  Reviewed by Karen Durbin in the New York Times

"When Annie Proulx's short story about two cowboys in love appeared in The New Yorker nearly eight years ago, it was so startling and powerful that for many people, the experience of reading it remains a vivid, almost physical memory. As for those shirts, the image is unique and indelible: hidden years earlier in the back of a closet, they hang from a single nail, the outer, denim one, bloodied by an old blow, the second, a torn and dirty plaid, carefully tucked inside the first, its sleeves worked down into the other's sleeves, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one. It's an emblem of love so plain and homely that it could only be true."