Would you believe desperate housewife Felicity Huffman as a man? After seeing this wow of an actress play Stanley Osborne, just a few weeks away from the operation that will turn him into a her, you'll believe Huffman in anything. Writer-director Duncan Tucker lays many a plot contrivance in Huffman's path, but her Oscar-bait performance handles every curve he throws. That includes a road trip from New York to Los Angeles with Stanley — now Bree — pretending to be a Christian missionary so Toby (Kevin Zegers), the teen son he sired from a brief encounter, won't know his real identity. The comic highlight is a stopover in Phoenix to meet Stanley's parents — studies in denial as played by Burt Young and a flat-out hilarious Fionnula Flanagan. But the movie's soul is with Huffman. Speaking in a low voice, her posture as stiff as her vocabulary, her eyes a pool of sadness and hope, she turns this small, resonant film into a cry from the heart.

“Youth Knows No Pain”

“Like on 'Youth Knows No Pain' — we are the ones that should demonstrate, because we can take it,” Likke Li said. “We can pierce ourselves, take Ecstasy, dance all night and still go to work at our McDonald's jobs.” Despite the hedonistic sentiment in the song, the Swedish singer also admitted in hindsight her youth had repercussions. “I remember when I was 18-19 and feeling that I know it all,” Li said. “I always feel that I know it all. But that song is about realizing you don’t, and reflecting, ‘Boy, if I only knew what would follow.’”