Alfred Kinsey liked counting things, beginning with Gall Wasps and ending with orgasms. Liam Neeson plays him (very well) as a hopeless '50s square scandalizing America with his censuses of human sexuality. In this new era of red-state censoriousness it is good to have him back, in writer-director Bill Condon's sober, modest movie, insisting that, statistically speaking, we're sexually wilder than we like to let on. And that there's nothing abnormal about our randiness. Laura Linney, incidentally, gives a lovely performance as Kinsey's patient, put-upon wife.
Come fly with us, and Leo, through the best (and worst) of 2004. Tops in the cinema this year include Scorsese's Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator. Elsewhere, Deadwood was good TV, and a Strange tale fascinated readers.