Australia's at 69% now with 13 reviews.

Well, it's up to 71% now and I think it can keep climbing up to 80%.

I wish we didn't have to wait so long for Benjamin button reviews. I still say Australia, button, and Rev.Road are fighting for the last 2 spots. Milk, TDK, and Slumdog are pretty much in. I guess if I had top choose, I'd leave out Australia but I keep thinking of Atonement.

Frost/Nixon is at 92%. I contend that it is fully back in the game for now.

Atonement had great reviews right out of the gate, and actually reaffirmed its "in" status if I remember it correctly. It's only when the guilds started to ignore it left and right, people began scratching their heads. I just don't feel that sense of excitement for Australia at the moment. Cold Mountain could be a better comparison, but I also don't think it'll get as close to a BP nom as CM did. Maybe more like American Gangster? Not sure.

And this is the massive frustration of this film. It looks great. The performances, even with some reservations about Leo, are excellent. Kathy Bates does her best with some weak writing for her character, which makes it a caricature. David Harbour and Kathryn Hahn work it out as the couple next door… but again, get reduced to too broad strokes. And yes, there is Michael Shannon, who should sail to an Oscar nod in part because he does what he does so brilliantly… and in part because he is the only character in the movie who gets to deliver something that really grabs the audience.

Mendes remains on the great frustrators of this movie lover. He has such good taste and he gets a lot out of his actors. And he is drawn to such tough material… which I love. But he won’t pull the trigger. He wouldn’t force Tom Hanks to be a real killer or make his son a future priest, trying to find redemption for his father by working for God… and it killed Road To Perdition. And he never found the overt politics and personal politics inside of the great idea of Jarhead… and it killed that movie. Now he takes a novel said to rival the great works of the 60s, dealing with the conflict of repression in a society of ruthless ambition… and somehow, he just won’t get on with it. We don’t really get to spend time with any of his characters’ demons… just the often childish acting out that they force. I get plenty of that every day. Oprah goes deeper.

There will be plenty of fans of Revolutionary Road. It is a really good movie for the space that so many critics are in, preferring emotion that it explained to you rather than felt. For better or worse, the history of movies that do that is not one of great success pushing for Oscars. Going back five years, only Atonement, Finding Neverland, and on some level, The Hours, showed that restraint and got into the Best Picture race. But Atonement was the only romance last year, Neverland was driven by Depp fever and brilliant timing by Miramax, and The Hours was a rangey, smart drama with an actress pile-on in a year when the only other movie with women in it in a real way was Chicago, which was more flash than drama.

I don’t want to jinx the movie by going overboard and I don’t want to have the next few words haunt me for the next decade, nonetheless - if I had to name the film that would probably have the best shot at winning Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Costumes, Art Direction it would be this one.

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" represents a richly satisfying serving of deep-dish Hollywood storytelling. This odd, epic tale of a man who ages backwards is presented in an impeccable classical manner, every detail tended to with fastidious devotion. An example of the most advanced technology placed entirely at the service of story and character, this significant change-of-pace from director David Fincher poses some daunting marketing challenges, even with Brad Pitt atop the cast. Strong critical support will be needed to swell interest in this absorbing, even moving, but emotionally cool film, which is simultaneously accessible and distinctive enough to catch on with a large public if luck and the zeitgeist are with it.

In all his physical manifestations, Benjamin is a reactor, not a perpetrator, and Pitt inhabits the role genially, gently and sympathetically. Blanchett's Daisy is the more volatile and moody one and, after bluntly revealing the selfish impetuousness of Daisy's youthful self, the thesp fully registers both the passion and insecurity of the mature woman.

Henson, as Benjamin's surrogate mother, and Swinton as the calculating adulteress, are wonderful, and Harris and Mohadi etch particularly colorful supporting turns as two of Benjamin's rowdier cohorts.

Every scene is crammed with detail, from the nooks and crannies of the settings created by production designer Donald Graham Burt and the century-bridging costumes by Jacqueline West to the faces of the main cast and countless extras. Alexandre Desplat's score provides lovely and unobtrusive dramatic support. Fincher and lenser Claudio Miranda shoot mostly in deep focus images to maximize the information in every frame, and the depth of the blacks they achieve shooting on digital is extraordinary.

One of the most eagerly anticipated end-of-year studio films, David Fincher's The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button is a wildly ambitious fantasy which contains many intriguing elements and superb production values but ultimately fails to cohere as the epic tragedy it wants to be. Buoyed by Fincher's name and the star pairing of Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, the film will attract intense media and public interest at first, but the extended running time and convoluted story will prove problematic when it hits thousands of multiplexes around the world.

Benjamin Button is played by Pitt throughout, with the help of impressive prosthetic makeup and digitally imposing his head onto other actors' bodies. Pitt gives his best performance to date, capturing the weariness of old age as convincingly as the vigour of youth. Blanchett (who is also given a digital rejuvenation for her teenage years) is as superb as ever, although the chemistry between the two is muted to say the least.

The real star of the movie is Fincher, whose imagination has run wild here – from a bizarre prologue about a clockmaker who designs a railway clock that goes backwards, to a sequence of seven shots in which a man is hit by lightening in different circumstances, to a Jeunet-esque sequence of "what ifs" revolving around the events leading up to a tragic car accident.

The curious thing about Benjamin Button is the questionable profundity of this lengthy saga. Is it a meaningful parable about love and time or is it just a gigantic shaggy dog story? With that in mind, you can't help but look at your watch occasionally and wonder whether some plot meanderings, while always pleasant, have any bearing on the story whatsoever.

The real star of the movie is Fincher, whose imagination has run wild here – from a bizarre prologue about a clockmaker who designs a railway clock that goes backwards, to a sequence of seven shots in which a man is hit by lightening in different circumstances, to a Jeunet-esque sequence of "what ifs" revolving around the events leading up to a tragic car accident.