The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

written by: Eric Roth (based of the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story)
directed by: David Fincher

I will try not to be biased seeing as i absolutely love Brad Pitt. ok here goes.

Somewhere as a kid you might have heard the story of Benjamin Button. He for some reason ages backwards when everyone else goes the regular way. Got that? Good.

The movie starts in New Orleans in the late summer of 2005. A terrible storm is coming and an old woman in a hospital bed asks her daughter to read to her this journal that was in her suitcase. It tells the story of Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt). He was abandoned on the doorsteps of an old folks home in 1918 because he was a wrinkly deformed looking baby riddled with cataracs and arthritis. There he was raised by Queenie (Taraji Henson), the black woman who ran the place. She cared for Benjamin because she didn't think he had long left on the earth and all of God's creatures deserve to be given a chance right? Right.

Benjamin grows up surrounded by the old, but that is no problem because he fits right in. At 7 he is still in a wheelchair but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a seven year olds curiosity. Eventually he gets bigger and a cane replaces his wheelchair. Queenie can't explain what's going on with Benjamin but she's plenty happy to have him around. The old people teach him about life and how to play the piano and he meets a little girl named Daisy (eventually played by Cate Blanchett) who is one of the residents' granddaughters. Daisy senses that Benjamin is a lot different than he seems and they become fast friends.

Daisy continues to visit and notices the changes in Benjamin. He walks a little better every time. Has a little more hair. He even goes off and fights in WWII all the while traveling the globe and sending Daisy postcards of his travels.

We eventually find out that the old woman in the bed is an old Daisy. Her daughter Caroline (Julia Ormond) becomes more and more intrigued in Benjamin's story. She also learns a lot that she didnt know about her mother.

At first I was kinda worried because Tim Burton wasn't directing this movie. I mean Tim Burton! come on, but David Fincher and Brad Pitt go way back (see: Seven, Fight Club) so I knew David would do a good job. My expectations were greatly exceeded.

First off I was worried that with it being set in New Orleans, everyone would have this horrible southern accents. As any Southerner knows, we all sound different, and nobody bothers to notify Hollywood of this fact. But they all sounded right!

And I dont know or care how they did it, but from the start you can tell that little Benjamin is Brad Pitt. Its the eyes. They never change. Pay attention. The makeup and CGI are flawless. And not even for Benjamin, for Daisy too. When Daisy is 20 she looks 20. Cate Blanchett aint 20!

And I knew that the movie was going to be lengthy but I didn't know 2:47 was the runtime until right before the movie started. I couldnt feel it! I was so drawn into the characters. Benjamin is a quiet, reserved character but that does not make him stupid. He doesn't say much but its because he was observing everything around him and made great deatils in his notes that Caroline is reading to her mother.

I'm not quite sure the significance of them making Caroline and Daisy talk about the journal during Katrina so that was my only beef with the movie. Other than that I wanna see it again, even though I was crying like a lil bitch. Go see it. The 3 hours is worth it.

Slumdog Millionaire

written by: Simon Beaufoy (novel by: Vikas Swarup)
directed by: Danny Boyle

Summer is for blockbusters, and winter is for award winners.

India has their own version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire". You win 20,000,000 rupees. Yay! Here we meet Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) who is an 18 year old kid from the slums. And somehow he has gotten one question away from winning the big bucks. Doctors and lawyers hadn't made it that far so is he drug in for questioning to see how exactly he has cheated to make it that far in the game. This is when Jamal tells his story. Every questino that was asked ties directly into his life growing up.

I dont even know how much of the story to go into because all of it is great. I mean thats basically the story right there. We watch Jamal and his brother Salim grow up in the slums. They meet a little girl named Latika, and Jamal spends the rest of his life trying to find her. Ok that's all I'm giving away.

Good lord this is a good movie. I don't know the last real "feel good" movie I've seen, but this is one of them. There aren't too many subtitles because most of the characters speak English. For some reason its rated R here, but i can't figure out why. But i definitely recommend this movie. When we went to see it nobody moved till the credits were over. Thanks too some good ol fashioned Bollywood dancing. Anyway, this is one of the best movies of 2008. Hands down. Go. Go see it.

Milk

written by: Dustin Lance Black
directed by: Gus Van Sant

Hollywood hasn't gotten off its kick of biographical movies. And why not? they seem to produce tons of nominations. Milk is no exception.

Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) is an older gay man in the early 60's in New York. He meets a young hottie Scott Smith (James Franco) on the night of his 40th birthday and they immediately hit it off and go home together. They make a few jokes together and get to know each other.
Cut to about a year later when they decide to pack up and head west. They settle in San Francisco in a gay-friendly-ish area called Castro. Harvey and Scott open up a film shop but they get a not-so friendly welcome by some of the local business owners.

The shop quickly becomes a rest stop for some of the local gay men in the area where they can sit around and talk about issues and help each other out. Harvey is soon known as the go to guy to get stuff done around the community. He organizes a gay and lesbian business owner coalition, he knows the cops and stops them from beating on gay men, he even gets with the teamsters to help with boycotts.

Eventually Harvey gets it in his head to run for city planner. After a few failed attempts at gaining office, Scott decides he can't take Harvey's time in the limelight and they break up. He hooks up with a little Latin dude named Jack (Diego Luna) who is completely nuts. But Harvey continues to press forward and get a seat on the city board.

Meanwhile in Florida a woman named Anita Bryant has formed a religious group that wants to outlaw being gay. The movement sweeps the nation and eventually comes to face California. They want to impose Proposition 6 which will terminate any gay teacher in the state or anyone who supports them.

Dan White (Josh Brolin) is another city planner who is wholesome and believes in a firm family life. He and Harvey dont necessarily see eye to eye but they do need each others support to get certain laws to pass. Eventually Dan thinks Harvey screws him over and looks to get even.

I didnt know a thing about Harvey Milk before I went to see this movie. I mean I figured San Francisco had always been pretty gay, but this movie really lets you know the struggle gay men had to go through to be themselves in the 60s. Gus Van Sant weaves in actual news footage into movie. If I hadn't seen it I would have thought the writers were exaggerating the Anita Bryant angle of the movie. Maybe being raised in this day and age makes me feel more enlightened and i dont see how people could have been so ignorant such a short time ago. Not saying that everyone is on board for people being gay but shit. It was also a coincidence that the movie was released right around the time California had to vote on Prop 8 which would overturn the right for gay people to get married.

Anyway, I'm quite sure that Sean Penn will get nominated for a best actor. James Franco was damn good but I think another nod will go to Emile Hirsch. He plays Cleve Jones who is a young dude from...Detroit i think...who becomes really good friends and basically a campaign manager for Harvey.

But its just a good story. It's not entirely political. It just goes through the struggle of hiding who you are from all the people around you. How friends get you through hard times. And a bit about how promisicous gay men can be.

And like most biopics, they go through what became of the people featured in the movie. I didn't become teary until one of the final scenes in the movie. So if youre a sap like I am, you might need tissues for that bit.

And if youre a tad squirmish about men on men scenes in movies, they do the love scenes pretty tastefully. So don't let that discourage you from seeing the movie. It's a great story.

Nobel Son

writen by: Jody Savin & Randall Miller
directed by: Randall Miller

i can't remember what exactly it was that made me want to see Nobel Son. cause i know the commercial was on maaaaybe for a week and it was just a short clip of what seemed to be a shady heist movie starring Alan Rickman and Eliza Dushku so i figured what the hell.

the movie starts with an ATM mugging and a graphic clip of someone getting a thumb chopped off. Cut to Eli Michaelson (Alan Rickman) in his super nerd biochemistry class when he find out that he has been selected for a nobel prize. His son Barkley (Bryan Greenberg) is a PhD candidate and is doing his thesis on...cannibalism...who is sitting in a coffee house when he hears the news. To say he is less than pleased is an understatement. The wife/mom Sarah (Mary Steenburgen) is an FBI profiler. At a dinner get together to celebrate Eli gets approached by one of many female students he has been sleeping with, she starts to cause a scene but he manages to shush her before people start to really notice. Barkley is ready to get out because he has the hots for this spoken word artist City Hall (Eliza Dushku). He watches her set at the coffee house (along with some other horrible hillarious artists) and they decide to go to her place for the night.

Barkley swears he's broke and she makes him stop at the ATM with a goofy mask on to prove just exactly how broke he is with an ATM slip. they go to her place and get it on on the roof. Eli and Sarah are at home anxiously awaiting his return but when they can't wait any longer, they ask the reformed passive agressive renter of their garage apartment (Danny Devito) to look out for Barkley. Barkley wakes up late and tries to rush to his parents house to catch the flight for the Nobel Prize ceremony but when he gets home, they are gone and BAM he gets got upside the back of the head. Thrown into the back of a MINI cooper, and taken to some abandonded shack where he then learns his kidnapper is Thaddeaus (Shawn Hatosy) and they have more in common than meets the eye.

From then the story gets more involved and Eli has to choose how important his son is to him and Sarah has to use her FBI skills to try and track her son. There's some double crossings, some family history, some horrible disguises, and a bad ass car scene in a mall.

This movie is one of the ones that you catch on cable in the middle of the night and get suckered into and can't stop watching. It's not a seamless story. There are plenty of plot holes and some unbelievable situations but the movie doesnt take itself that seriously so its great. Alan Rickman is always a great jerk. Mary Steenburgen is such a cute mom as usual. Shawn Hatosy was the bad guy in Alpha Dog that kidnaps the little boy and for some reason he is just a creepy kidnapper who gives me the willies.

Anyway, so look for the movie on Netflix or Redbox or wherever you go get rentals. Or wait for it to come on HBO late one night.