Latest screening: Curious Case Of Benjamin Button

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.

Latest screening: Milk

Yet another case of performance over film here. Milk, like Doubt, is elevated as a film by uniformly excellent performances but the film itself is not great. Comparably to something like Monster or Capote, it is not that the film is bad per se, but that it is fairly forgettable. I challenge people that say it is a great film to remember much of the actual style and delivery of the film itself a month on. I'll bet they will remember little beyond the performances.

Of course such cases and dominating the awards season this year and an ensemble film like this could elevate it to best picture and best director status simply because there isn't a weak link in the actors on screen. See Crash for a recent example of this - the acting and the issue at its core drove its nominations and eventual win not it's actually being the best film of the year (which it plainly wasn't). With the recent hoopla over Prop 8 in California this is incredibly timely and so it does have the issue-ensemble angle that Crash had - it's also a better film.

It's not a great film though. The contrived way around of delivering narration Van Sant uses grated on me from the first instances and some of it was too laudatory i felt. I like me biopics with a sense of perspective and Milk was unashamedly in awe of its God-like (movie portrayal not opinion) subject. No doubt this will go down great in the US but i just didn't buy it, i wanted more from it.

Awards chances: It has the pedigree for Best Picture and Director noms in a slow year (which this is) but Sean Penn is electrifying and completely deserves the Best Actor nomination so is assured. It truly is a fantastic year for Best Actor possibilities this year (the one really hard to call category) and many deserving performances are going to miss out.

I am officially retracting my Josh Brolin prediction though. He's good here but he's just not in it enough. If he had already lost for a robbed central role (like Judi Dench) then it could happen, but his presence at the core of No Country and great turn in W. won't be enough for this.

Latest screening: Slumdog Millionaire

Now here's an interesting one. A film that truly has everything. It is funny and disturbing. It is emotionally charged and an easy watch. It has great performances but is never overwhelmed by any. It is, to say the least, memorable.

The winds seem to be suggesting Slumdog Millionaire could be a best picture contender this year and i have to agree. It is not that it is necessarily a film you watch thinking, "this is great, i must vote for it", nor just it entirely avoid cliche and predictability but it is a satisifying, well made watch and in this particular year that may be enough.

Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy and everyone involved has crafted an elegant, hard to dislike film. Can you find fault in it? Sure. But it lingers in the mind and scenes come back to disturb you, to make you laugh, to lift your spirit.

Where it stands such a good chance it that the film is one of the few this year where the film as 'package' is strong as opposed to one aspect. Most of the film's currently clamouring for awards voters' attentions (Doubt and Frost/Nixon - and i hear Milk - being prime examples) are cases where the performances are strong but not necessarily the film. Films that in most years would not see picture noms, just acting ones, are suddenly in contention. Slumdog Millionaire stands out because while Dev Patel and all the actors here are excellent it is not the performances that stand out, it is the film itself. It is uplifting but it gets (perhaps slightly eyebrow-raisingly melodramatically) there through a rollercoaster of shocks, laughs, violence and joy.

Added to this the fact that Fox Searchlight, the true masters of securing the "smaller indie slot" best picture nomination (Sideways, Little Miss Sunshine being just two recent examples) have the domestic rights.

Awards chances: A very good film that may not have been a best picture contender in many year's but may have found itself in the right place at the right time this year, where the overall 'package' really stands out. Expect Best Picture, maybe Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Cinematography nominations.