Finally! It's been a long time coming and i wasn't sure it would happen but we finally have a big, brash, epic, wonderful Hollywood movie in the awards season.
So far it's been all big performances in little-feel movies and character pieces, but Benjamin Button is glorious. It shares a distrinctly Tim Burton-Jean Pierre Jeunet feeling with its odd-people populated world and its quirkiness, but has the feel-good elements of writer Eric Roth's Forrest Gump. "Aargh!" I hear you cry. Don't worry, because this is David Fincher, not Robert Zemeckis, and you can rest assured the saccharine has no place in Fincher's world.
Benjamin Button is a superbly realised film on every level. The performances are spot on, especially a truly memorable turn from Taraji P Henson as Benjamin's adoptive mother; the visual effects are excellent; the score is complementary and beautiful; the photography is luxurious. I really can't find significant fault with Benjamin Button and it is unlike the rest of this year's pack on so many levels it will be a hard one to call once the nominations start flying.
Rest assured though Fincher has to be a front runner because here he has brought together a collective of faultless element into a seemless and damn entertaining film, while making something wholly different from anything he's done before.
Awards chances: Pitt and Blanchett are good (as usual) but work within the film's world rather than stand out from it - good for the film but unlikely to gain them the necessary attention for awards. The film though is a shoe-in in both major (Picture, Director, Screenplay) and technical categories. And i'm planting my flag in Fincher for Best Director right now.
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