Reviews

Don't be fooled. Many critics have gone on record calling David Fincher's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" the year's best film. It's attracting tons of Oscar buzz as this review is being written. I walked into Fincher's film with high expectations, but I was let down. NOTHING about this movie screams "Best Picture". With a recycled screenplay, too many misfired metaphors and a generally gimmicky, confused premise, no amount of brilliant acting or technology can save Ben Button.

The premise is clever. Primarily based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the film chronicles the life of Benjamin Button, played by Brad Pitt, who's mother dies during child birth, and who's father abandons him on the doorsteps of an old-folks home when he is born with the appearance of an elderly man. The home, run by a black maid named Queenie, takes him in as a son, and people begin to see that he is in fact aging backwards, from old to young. Its a premise that, in the right hands, could have been expanded brilliantly to reveal poetic ideas life and death, but, starting with the screenplay, a series of mistakes cause the film to sink.

People need to accept that Benjamin Button and Forrest Gump, both written by the talented Eric Roth, are fundamentally the same movie. There must be at lease 30 similarities. Both men are southern gentlemen, both have a miracle moment walking for the first time, both spend time on a boat, both spend time fighting a war. Additionally, both films involve a female love interest who ventures out of her home for several years to pursue a dream, while on a rocky road to find herself. These 2 movies are identical, and the film's biggest defenders will have a hard time arguing against that fact.

But I'll ignore those similarities for minute, because I should assess this movie as its own work. And when looked at that way, I'll say the first word that comes to mind is preachy. Every 7 minutes, Benjamin, narrating the film, gives us a brand new metaphor about life and how its just so "un-predictable". There's also some completely pathetic visual poetry with a hummingbird, whose significance in the film's message I'm still unsure of.

But you wanna know what's funny? For all its preaching about unpredictable events, Benjamin button lives a pretty normal life. He works on a boat, he serves in the navy in WWII, he co-owns a dance studio with his romantic interest Daisy, played by Cate Blanchett, and then he operates a toll booth. That sounds pretty average to me, and I found personally that Benjamin Button is, himself, more of a bizarre science-fiction character than a human being we could all relate to. The fact that he spends his whole life seeing his friends die off is interesting, but it seems repetitive and gimmicky by the middle of the movie.

I must concede though, this film has its strengths. Technologically, the make-up and height adjustments made to Brad Pitt are astonishing, and the way that he looks like an old man getting younger and younger progressively is extraordinary. Additionally, the performances, including Pitt and Blanchett, but also Tilda Swinton as a spy's wife staying in the same motel Benjamin is, were good, although I noticed Cate Blanchett struggled horribly with a Cajun accent.

I just don't get it. In a year filled with multiple competitive Oscar contenders, like The Dark Knight, Frost/Nixon, Milk, Slumdog Millionaire and Changeling, it is astonishing to me that this is the stand-out for Best Picture. Surely, Benjamin Button's technology is worthy of awards buzz. But little else is.

I feel like this picture thinks itself to be better than it actually is. Why else would the structure of the story by so explicit, the production so high quality, the acting, as a whole, so good? I don't know, and come Oscar time we will see if any members of the Academy saw what I saw in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." I hope they do.

Wall-e is Pixar Animation Studios' 9th feature film under the Disney name and it takes a different approach than any film preceding it to telling it's story.

The movie's story revolves and Wall-e, a garbage clean-up robot who, after cleaning up the human's trash on earth for 700 years, is joined on the desolate planet by a new robot named EVE, who arrives on earth to search for sustained life, which is the signal for humans to come home. While EVE stays on Earth, with Wall-e giving her a tour, the two form a very Disney, romantic relationship.

Much has been made of Wall-e's dialog free execution of this romance, and it is true that the first 35 minutes of the picture is relatively dialog free. But there several brilliant techniques Pixar uses to communicate their relationship, such as their love of "Hello Dolly", and EVE's enjoyment in seeing Wall-e getting hurt.

The film uses humor and simplicity to attract younger viewers, but I wonder if "Wall-e" is too simple. Much of the humor in the film is slapstick of Wall-e getting attacked, hit on the head or nearly getting destroyed, and it gets repetitive eventually.

Also, for a film with a "G" rating, aimed at kids, I don't know if kids will understand the Eco-friendly message the movie ultimately provides.

But still, its a satisfying, visually unbelievable film, and with fewer and fewer pictures these days made appropriate for all ages, it must see for families this summer.

I could easily write for more than 1,000 words about Annie Hall, because the film is of such a high standard of quality that it deserves to be written about. The film is simply amazing. The dialogue between Alvy (Woody Allen) and all of the other characters, portrays what a relationship really is, not just between a man and a woman, but between a man and his family, his in-laws, his co-workers and his audience. The film is filled with comedy from start to finish as well, from the scene where Alvy complains about how a fellow movie-goer shouts his opinions too loud, to when Christopher Walken's character explains how his mind works, this is the funniest film I've ever seen. It's amazing what Allen managed to do with such a small budget. He made a film filled with all the wonder you could ask from a big-budget high profile comedy, but used dialogue that matters instead of gross-out humor.

Bottom line: This is the best romantic comedy that will ever be and is one of the most entertaining experiences of my lifetime.