Critics' choices: Oscar picks

OWEN GLEIBERMAN

BEST ACTOR — Javier Bardem. He plays the oppressed Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas as a Marxist naif, a literary romantic, a gay sex machine, but, mostly, as a staggeringly vulnerable and courageous man gasping for freedom. Bardem claimed that he watched Tom Hanks in Philadelphia before doing the scene in which Arenas, dying of AIDS, commits suicide. Hanks may now be watching him.

BEST ACTRESS — Julia Roberts Her giddy, furious, trash-dressing Erin Brockovich is the rare Hollywood star turn that's not merely radiant but defining. As embodied (pun intended) by Roberts, Erin doesn't just flaunt her sex appeal to connive her way into difficult places; it's the very plumage of her fearlessness.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR — Benicio Del Toro. Has there been an actor since James Dean with a squint this eloquent? Playing a Mexican cop whose priorities are as thorny and conflicted as the world that formed him, Del Toro is the haunted moral compass of Traffic.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS — Frances McDormand. As the brilliant, cranky, hilarious-despite-herself mom in Almost Famous, she stands in for a generation of '70s parents who never really got rock & roll but infused their children with the love to embrace it.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY — Almost Famous. Some call Cameron Crowe a sentimentalist, but the description better fits Kenneth Lonergan: The soft center of You Can Count on Me is his subtle sanctifying of the damage Mark Ruffalo's character causes. Crowe is a poet of American-youth conversation, his dialogue as free-flowing as the era it captures.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY — Traffic. Beyond the vast scale and balancing-act structure, every moment, every line, of Stephen Gaghan's script is alive with the addictive bristle of human ego.

BEST DIRECTOR — Steven Soderbergh. Wielding his camera like a psychological divining rod, Soderbergh penetrates the cast of Traffic as tellingly as a latter-day Altman. It's his broadest canvas but his nimblest film, with moments that linger beyond any ''message.''

BEST PICTURE — Traffic. Crouching Tiger is dazzling but remote. Traffic, by contrast, is a modern drug epic more haunting than the sum of its episodes. Watching it, we don't just grasp the vast logistical connections between supply and demand. We come to see how they're reflections of the same ruthless spirit.