The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

13 Oscar nominations. 13? THIRTEEN????

How is that possible?

Admittedly, some of these are deserved but others are most assuredly not. This is complete Oscar bait stuff - an adaptation of an F Scott Fitzgerald short story, it is lengthy, weighty and expensive. It runs the gamut of emotions - or at least tried to elicit these from the watching masses - tears, laughter, joy - you're supposed to fall in love Benjamin and Daisy and 1920s and 30s America. I genuinely had a sinking feeling within 30 seconds - I realised quickly that this was another Forest Gump/Big Fish style shaggy dog story, and that is historically not a type of film I've enjoyed at all. I'm afraid I didn't enjoy this either.

Nominations that are completely deserved:

Make-up & Special F/X - the only reason to stay with this interminable thing is to see whether the make-up crew and the special f/x department can make Brad Pitt look 20 again. Well, as it turns out, they can - and very convincing it is too. Kudos to them for that - have a well deserved Oscar nomination.

Best Score - Alexandre Desplat is a very talented composer and, while not his best work, it is of sufficient quality to merit awards notice. I probably wouldn't have had it in my top 5, but it would not have been a million miles away.

Art Direction - Probably just about deserved, although a win would be a real stretch when you have The Fall and Hellboy II: The Golden Army released in the same year.

Nominations that are probably undeserved but that I can handle:

Best Actor - Brad Pitt is not a particularly strong actor. The guy is incredibly good looking and I think this helps mask any deficiencies in charisma and screen presence. He is never the most nuanced of actors, and his only previous Oscar notice came for an exaggerated, tic-riddled mental patient where nuance went out the window. Well, to give him his dues, this is probably the best thing he has ever done - there's a subtlety and restraint (and he's not so restrained his comatose a la Jesse James) to his performance that makes it worth noticing and in many other years a nomination would have been deserved. Just not in a year when Rourke, Penn, Langella, DiCaprio and Jenkins gave far superior work though.

Cinematography - Seen better, seen worse. Presumably people remember the ballet scene where Daisy is silhouetted. At the time I was watching this I actually thought, maybe this could have been lit a little better. And in any case, The Fall is clearly the best cinematography of the year by something like a zillion miles.

Nominations that are completely undeserved but not catastrophically bad:

Costumes - Bleh. Who cares. Why is this even a category? Only 20% of the films made are even competing for this award. As if would ever go to something contemporary like American Beauty or The Departed or Crash (all of which won Best Pic.) They always lavish attention on period pieces and let's be honest, when was the last time you came out of a film and thought - "great costumes!"

Best Supporting Actress - What did Taraji P. Henson do that was noteworthy? Anything? Anything at all?

Astonishingly unfair, undeserved and embarrassing nominations that border on clinical insanity:

Best Picture: I detest pictures that for some reason decide they need to bookend and punctuate a story with a pointless modern day setting. Think Titanic or Saving Private Ryan. What's the point? It is always the weakest aspect of the film and serves no purpose. This one is punctuated by a masturbatory, death-bed, hurricane Katrina setting. I see no point to this other than to get Cate Blanchett and Oscar nom for playing a 90 year old and even that didn't work. And if there was some symbolic relevance to setting it the day before Katrina, then clearly it wasn't necessary since the original short was written in 1921, and I dare say was a much finer piece of work than this.

Best Editing - What editing? I dread to think how long the first cut ran but if this is a well edited film then I look like a 20 year old Brad Pitt. If it had been half the length, maybe there would have been an enjoyable film there, but at 166 minutes it is at least an hour too long. Any editor with balls would have told Fincher the whole Katrina thing was getting canned anyway.

Best Adapted Screenplay: - Take a novella and bloat it so immensely, you make Forest Gump look like a live action short. The aforementioned modern day setting is indulgent and completely ruinous.

Best Director - I am actually a huge David Fincher fan but this is so self-indulgent I cannot believe this is the guy that directed Se7en, The Game and Zodiac. Very disappointing stuff from someone I greatly admire. Even his previous misses like Panic Room and, dare I say, Fight Club, had a huge amount of directorial verve and originality. This is just Forest Gump lite.

Grade: D

Zodiac

It's rare that we agree, but, though I can't remember exactly what my colleague wrote, I think we're going to give this the same grade (unless I'm getting very confused, which frequently happens).

Zodiac follows a (loosely, at least) true story around a series of murders committed in the San Francisco area in the 1970's. It also takes a very clear position on who actually committed those murders, although (from the small amount of research I've done) it now appears that the man the film fingers has been cleared by DNA evidence. He's also been dead for a while, as the end of the film points out.

All in all it's a highly engaging, well-paced, thriller you can't take your eyes off. The mood and the pace are very well judged and the tension, while never aspiring to Silence of the Lambs like levels, builds nicely is overall pretty effective.
But, as with all films like this, the key lies in the performances. The film is full of interesting characters (with the exception of Anthony 'Dr Green' Edwards' dull detective) well played by the leads. My faith in Jake Gyllenhaal is restored after an unconvincing turn in Brokeback Mountain and Mark Ruffalo, an actor I had not consciously noticed or remembered before, is now on my radar.

The standout, however, is the comeback kid, Robert Downey Jr, whose eccentric, amusing and well-judged (sorry to repeat the phrase) journalist is the film's true highlight. It's a real shame that his character disappears in the last hour or so and somewhat unceremoniously. I don't know what that's about, perhaps they were just following the source material (the book written in real life by Robert Graysmith, Gyllenhaal's character) but that could have been got around and it is something of a disappointment. However, as things stand, all three will be shortlisted for my year-end top 5. There is also a nice little relationship between Graysmith and Melanie (Chloe Sevigny) which could have been developed more if it had been given more screen time.

Apparently, this story influenced Se7en, also directed by David Fincher. I'm not sure it's quite as good, but it certainly merits comparison.

A-