Pure movie magic. I think it might be better than Forrest Gump. It's more subtle, less predictable and black-and-white. Here all characters are flawed, they're human, and they're simply beautiful. Every frame can be turned into a poster. Every line is one to remember. Every scene has a meaning. Not to mention the absolutely spectacular, flawless performances coming from every single actor. This may just edge out The Dark Knight for me as the best motion picture of 2008.

A+

I also have to add that I almost cried, which is extremely rare for me in a film, in the end. It wasn't a in-your-face sad event happening like someone dying or whatever, but the whole situation....the roles inversed....they loving each other but torn apart by something they cannot control and cannot stop no matter what they do....I love this film so much. And Taraji P. Henson completely deserves her nom.

7/10.

I've decided Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett should just stop making movies together

I'm drawing blank...what else did they make together?

Babull

Shot in the neck, hit by a car, she's having real issues.

I decided you should stop making film reviews, but like Brad and Cate, you just going to do it anyways.

Boy, the internet sure did turn against this one quickly. So maybe I should be relieved that I waited several weeks to see it - I was very impressed. I really don't have the time to go through all 19 pages of this thread (I'm up at this godawful hour because it's my birthday, and I'm way too excited for my own good.), but I hear so many criticisms that pick apart the film's rambling plot, and say how they would have done it instead. Were this not expected to be David Fincher's magnum opus, I think people would have had a very different view.
A friend made a strong observation - that 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' is a film without punctuation. Like life, it's long, inconsistent, and at times really beautiful.

This film will also deserve every technical award it's going to recieve. I think the most interesting individual Academy Award this year is Best Makeup. Hellboy 2, The Dark Knight, and Benjamin Button are three of the most creatively full films of the year, and three of my favorites. Beyond that, in each film the characters are defined by their makeup. In this case, the characters represent divergent age, and while more traditional character depth is rather non-existent, this is the framing device for Fincher to explore life, death and aging, the last two being certainties that not nearly enough new films properly explore. Well, except for Synecdoche, New York, which is probably my favorite film of the year.

Was Ledger defined by his makeup? It helped with the role, but I think there was so much more that defined it, if the performance could be defined.

I think life is full of consistencies and inconsistencies mixed together and the unpredictability and predictability is what can make it interesting. This film was sort of along those lines.


Oh, and because I remember that other thread comparing beauty to fingerprints, fingerprints tell you that they belong to an individual and hopefully which one. Beauty, by being beautiful, causes an impression. I would guess you could detect it even without knowing or having seen others like it. I think it's a process. I don't think of it in terms of 'beautiful or not', but always how or why is part of it.

I am incredibly disapointed with the film. I expected it to land at the top of my charts not near the bottom. The only good thing about the film were Pitt and his 'mother'. Other than that it was just a big bore from beginning to end, nothing interesting happened in the whole movie, the different stations of his life were soo extremely blah. Well, Button's definately not a Gump, not even close. And that scene when Blanchett get's hit by the car was almost laughable. I can't believe what I'm writing here but I almost hated the film. At worst I expected to just 'like' it but what I got didn't let me. D+

I sort of like that Benjamin Button was such as passive film

I did like how it let its events sort of go on as it showed its story. But intertwined there were certainly many things the film added or interjected that I liked. The first thing I can think of is the part when they were near the same age and decided to remember the moment.

I thought the most interesting aspects to the film can't be easily recognized, and even when recognizable it's difficult to fully explain.

8/10 -> B

It's a good movie. Not the best one Fincher made but I'm glad that Fincher is getting some award attention after being pretty much neglected.

From the technical aspect it rocks. But I don't think the script is very good. There was a lot more that could've been derived from basic idea. The short story was ideal for improvisation and adding different elements, but something went wrong. The ideas were good, but somewhat of the execution wasn't.

But overall it's a touching movie. With a really good love story, life experiences etc.

I wouldn't give all of the awards/noms it got so far (as far as the best picture/director/script goes) but I can definitely understand why it got them.

Beyond the original premise, the art direction, cinematography, and other impressive technicals, it's a very unmemorable and stale affair. The characters are very underdeveloped. There are no character arcs. And the story is utterly conventional excluding the fact that the main character ages backwards. It's a missed opportunity and a disappointment, sadly. There are a couple of inspired sequences such as the way the accident is presented(even though there are gaps in logic where that is concerned). Otherwise, I'd give it a C+.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON - 5/10 ( C )/6/10 (C+)

The last 40 minutes were very good, but everything before it (2 hours) was extremely dull and impossible to get into. Had I seen it in theaters I'd have wanted to die. I couldn't imagine ever sitting through this again.

On a sidenote, Cate Blanchett was really beautiful here. And speaking of beautiful, the movie is visually pretty stunning. Too bad the movie was such a chore to watch.

As much as I hated it in theaters, this has become one of my favorites on Blu-Ray. I've just watched it for the 7th time today and it's really wonderful in many parts. What still really bothers me is the constant cutting back to the hospital. Fincher does this WAY too much. Cutting out most of the hospital stuff and a few minutes here and there in the beginning and this could have been one of my all-time favorites.

Weird...if I hated a movie as much as you did the first time around, I probably wouldn't even have bothered returning to it.

Arguably Fincher's biggest problem as a director is tone. That's what Fight Club and TGWTDT suffered from. But neither nearly as much as Benjamin Button, which really didn't seem to know what the hell it was. But I guess I'm only four years late to the discussion.

When I am really anticipating a movie and get disapointed by it, I usually give it a second chance. Happened more than once that my opionion drastically changed after viewing a movie at home, knowing what to expect.

Has your opinion ever drastically changed in the opposite direction?

Good question.. Probably never that drastically. At least, none come to my mind right now.