“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” represents a richly satisfying serving of deep-dish Hollywood storytelling. . .

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” represents a richly satisfying serving of deep-dish Hollywood storytelling.

Full review:

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117939098.html?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=2854

Full review:

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117939098.html?categoryid=31&cs=1&nid=2854

RAVE REVIEW

http://blogs.nypost.com/movies/archives/2008/11/oscar_watch_ben.html

Oscar Watch: ‘Benjamin Button,’ One Classy Movie, Takes the Lead

Oscar Watch: ‘Benjamin Button,’ One Classy Movie, Takes the Lead

If you subscribe to the theory that the film with the most potential Oscar nominations is the frontrunner, which I usually do, then “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” which I saw last night at MOMA, is the clear-cut leader for Best Picture. There are 10 or more possible nods here, including Best Actor for Brad Pitt and Best Actress for Cate Blanchett. Director David Fincher and screenwriter Eric Roth’s very free and very long (167 minutes) adaptation of a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a sweeping, decades-spanning romantic fantasy that I got totally caught up in. I just couldn’t wait to see what happened next. Aided by some astounding digital effects, Pitt — or in some cases actors on whom Pitt’s face, appropriately aged or de-aged, was digitally pasted — plays a man who is born in 1919 New Orleans, looking like an 85-year-old and ages backwards to infancy (it’s actually most creepy to see Pitt as a teenager). Benjamin meets Daisy (mostly Blanchett), the great love of his life, when he is chronologically seven years old — about the same as her — but appears to be in his late ’70s. They drift tantalizingly in and out of each others’ lives except for a period in the early ’60s when both are in physical sync, but tragically they can never grow old together.

I was skeptical about the premise going in, but this four-hankie movie totally won me over, even though too much time is devoted to flash-forwards of Blanchett’s dying aged character telling Benjamin’s story during Hurricane Katrina, not to mention another framing story around that one. There are, as noted previously, some resemblances to Roth’s Best Picture Winner “Forrest Gump” in the movie’s challenged, basically passive main character and his globe-trotting adventures. But Fincher has held Roth’s tendency to schmaltz in check far more than Robert Zemeckis ever did and added more visual grace notes than can be absorbed in a single viewing. This is a really classy, old-school movie movie at heart. It will be interesting to see if the public at large, particularly the under-25 crowd, connects with this challenging idea for a very expensive-looking flick, a love story very much obsessed with physical decay and death.

Domestic distributor Paramount (Warners has foreign) is planning to open “Benjamin Button” wide on Christmas Day, but I wouldn’t at all be surprised if they announced a limited opening in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, December 19, to take advantage of early critical enthusiasm. It’s already locked up a spot on this professional cynic’s 10 Best List.

Posted by Lou Lumenick on November 26, 2008 6:00 AM

RAVE Film Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Bottom Line: An intimate epic about love and loss that is pure cinema

Film Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Bottom Line: An intimate epic about love and loss that is pure cinema

By Kirk Honeycutt
Nov 24, 2008

The fantasy element in F. Scott Fitgerald’s 1922 short story, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” in which a man ages backwards, does not begin to suggest the urgent drama and romantic fatalism that director David Fincher and writers Eric Roth and Robin Swicord have so strikingly brought to the screen in the movie version. Fitzgerald’s story is little more than a plot gimmick. Yet the film transforms this gimmick into an epic tale that contemplates the wonders of life — of birth and death and, most of all, love.

Superbly made and winningly acted by Brad Pitt in his most impressive outing to date, the audience for this Paramount/Warner Bros. co-production is large. Strong boxoffice should ensue.

Although hard to pigeonhole, the picture comes closest to Latin American magic realism, which juxtaposes the fantastic with the realistic. The film shares elements with another Eric Roth-written film, “Forrest Gump,” wherein a most unusual man sets out on an odyssey through 20th century American history. But Fincher, an unusual but winning choice as director, makes certain that “Benjamin Button” has none of the whimsy or coy historical revisionism of “Forrest Gump.”

Even the framework for the story underscores that there are forces within nature that man cannot control. Daisy (Cate Blanchett), a dying woman in a New Orleans hospital, gives her daughter (Julia Ormond) a memoir to read as Hurricane Katrina bears down on the city. The memoirist is none other than Benjamin (Pitt), born on the day of victory in Europe in 1918.

He was, he writes, “born under unusual circumstances.” He’s a baby that looks like a failing man in his 80’s with poor eyesight, brittle bones and wrinkled flesh. His mother dies giving birth and his father (Jason Flemyng) abandons him, fittingly, at an old-age home. A maternal black woman, Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), who runs the place, takes him in and raises him in the one environment where he can pass unnoticed.

He truly fits in among African-Americans and people old and forgotten by time. Everyone is an outsider here. As a somewhat younger old man, he meets Daisy as a small girl (Elle Fanning) visiting an ancient relative. Their friendship will last both of their lifetimes — although ones moving in opposite directions — and will evolve into romance and passionate love.

Much keeps them apart though as Daisy pursues a career in ballet while Benjamin, once he gets a handle on what’s happening to him, is a man who will never feel comfortable in his own skin. The job on a tug boat with its hard-drinking pilot (Jared Harris) takes him to Russia and an affair with a British spy’s wife (Tilda Swinton) and then into naval action in World War II.

After the war, Daisy’s career takes off. Also she can’t quite make up her mind about involvement with a man growing younger each year. But when commitment comes, contentment, brief though it may be, ensues.

Benjamin’s story is preceded by Daisy’s recollection of a watch maker (Elias Koteas), who having lost his beloved son in World War I made a clock for the New Orleans train station that ran backwards so that time might move the same way and his boy would come back to him. Thus, narratively and thematically, the film positions time-running-backward as part of man’s enternal desire to cheat death and to clng to those closest to us.

Pitt’s Benjamin is a touching and poignant figure, a person often lost within his own life but with a comic spirit that allows him to accept his backward fate. Blanchett illuminates the screen with a beauty and intelligence that makes Benjami’s pursuit of Daisy as much a quest for life as for love. As the adoptive mother, Henson embodies the essence of a good woman who derives her strength from God and her instncts from common sense.

Fincher ’s direction is sure handed over the entire 166 minutes, which never feels long or pretentious. The film takes Donald Graham Burt’s brilliant period design in stride, never overemphasizing it nor lingering on an artifact. Claudio Miranda’s cinematography wonderfully marries a palette of subdued earthern colors with the necessary CGI and other visual effects that place one in a magical past.

I checked the official websites and the combined timeline for the Oscars, Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild Awards and the Independent Spirit Awards is:

Tues. Dec. 2, 2008 – Independent Spirit Awards Nominations announced.

Dec. 4, 2008- National Board of Review (announcing),

Dec. 8, 2008 – Washington Critics

Dec. 9, 2008 – Broadcast Film Critics Assn. (nominating),

Dec. 9, 2008 – Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. (voting)

Dec. 10, 2008 – New York Film Critics Circle (voting

December 11, 2008, Thursday, 5:00 a.m. – GOLDEN GLOBES Nominations announcement of “The 66th Annual Golden Globe Awards”

Dec. 14, 2008 – Boston Critics

Dec. 15, 2008 – San Francisco Critics

Dec. 15, 2008 –Toronto Critics

Thursday, December 18, 2008 – Screen Actors Guild Awards Nominations Announced at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood.

January 11, 2009, Sunday – Presentation of “The 66th Annual Golden Globe Awards” Live telecast on NBC Television at 8 p.m. EST

Thursday, January 22, 2009: Oscar nominations announced 5:30 a.m. PT, Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

Sunday, January 25, 2009 – 15th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards®

Monday, February 2, 2009: Oscar Nominees Luncheon

Saturday, February 7, 2009: Scientific and Technical Achievement Oscar Awards presentation

Sat. Feb. 21, 2009 – Film Independent`s Spirit Awards ceremony. Broadcast live on IFC with an edited re-broadcast on AMC.

Sunday, February 22, 2009: 81st Annual Academy Awards presentation.