The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - It's the damnedest thing. You look into the elderly man's blue eyes behind a pair of old-fashioned spectacles, look at the sweet smile ringed by wrinkles, and you know that's Brad Pitt under there. But the special effects are so dazzling, and Pitt's performance is so gracefully convincing, that you can't help but be repeatedly wowed.

Director David Fincher has always proven himself a virtuoso visual stylist - to the point of seeming like a shameless showoff at times - with films like "Fight Club," "Panic Room" and "Zodiac." But here, he's truly outdone himself: He's made a grand, old-fashioned epic that takes mind-boggling advantage of the most modern moviemaking technology. Fincher's film, based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story about a man who ages in reverse, is rambling and gorgeous - perhaps a bit overlong and gooey in the midsection - but still, one that leaves you with a lingering wistfulness. Pitt, as the title character, travels the world and lives a life that's adventurous and full, but he can never truly be with the woman he loves, Daisy (Cate Blanchett), whom he met when she was just a little girl and he was a boy trapped in an old man's body. Eric Roth's script may seem naggingly similar to that of "Forrest Gump" - which he also happened to write - but it seems more concerned with the transformational power of true love than the gimmickry of an unusual existence. Drama, PG-13.
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Mini movie reviews - December 12, 2008

Twilight - Teenage girls will surely squeal with delight throughout this feverishly awaited adaptation of the hugely selling vampire novel. Just the very sight of the word "Twilight" on screen inspired piercing screeches of glee at a recent screening. And the arrival of our tormented monster-hero Edward Cullen is certain to send another wave of shivers, and that's before he ever sinks his teeth into anything - or anyone.

Director Catherine Hardwicke was also clearly taken by the character, and by the actor playing him, Robert Pattinson: She shoots him as if he were the featured model in an Abercrombie & Fitch ad, adoringly highlighting his angular cheekbones, his amber eyes (with the help of color contacts), those pouty red lips and that lanky frame. He might be too pretty - and perhaps that's a crucial key to the character's popularity among girls and young women. He's a non-threatening, almost asexual vampire. But much of what made the relationship between Edward and the smitten Bella Swan work in Stephenie Meyer's breezy book is stripped away on screen. The lively banter - the way in which Edward and Bella teased and toyed with one another about their respective immortality and humanity _ is pretty much completely gone, and all that's left is one-note, adolescent angst. It doesn't help that, as Bella, Kristen Stewart looks singularly sullen the entire time. She's supposed to be enraptured by the thrills of her first love. Instead, she merely appears to be in the throes of pain. Bella's story, for the uninitiated: The quiet, awkward girl moves from Phoenix to rainy Forks, Wash., to live with her police-chief dad (Billy Burke in a bad cop mustache) and quickly finds herself entranced by her mysterious, ethereal classmate Edward. At first, Edward fights his all-consuming attraction to Bella but eventually finds he can't stay away. Good thing, too, because she'll need him to protect her from even greater dangers than the one he potentially presents - and that's where "Twilight" really collapses in a heap of cheesy visual effects. Drama, PG-13.
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Here, he focuses his considerable talents on a more traditional genre: the big, old-fashioned, wartime romance. The result is grandiose and dazzling, repetitive and predictable. Set in pre-World War II, "Australia" stars Nicole Kidman as the British aristocrat Lady Sarah Ashley, who travels to the Northern Territory ranch of Faraway Downs to confront the absent husband she suspects of philandering. She immediately clashes with the roguishly charming Drover (Hugh Jackman in full-on Sexiest-Man-Alive mode), who works on the ranch, and Luhrmann is clearly aiming to replicate the kind of chemistry Bogart and Hepburn enjoyed in "The African Queen" with their antagonistically flirty banter. Once Lady Ashley discovers her husband is dead, it's no big shocker that she finds herself falling in love with the place, and with the Drover (and really, how could she resist?). It also comes as no surprise that, after expressing zero fondness for children, she experiences maternal instincts for the impish Aboriginal boy Nullah (Brandon Walters), who's adorable but also an unfortunate racial stereotype. Drama, PG-13.

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Mini movie reviews - Nov. 21, 2008

Along the way, Bond hooks up with the mysterious and dangerous Camille (Ukrainian model Olga Kurylenko), who's on her own revenge mission. Craig is, of course, sexy and masculine and formidable as always, and he plays beautifully off of Judi Dench as M, the head of the British secret service. They share scenes that are both teasing and meaty, and their exchanges provide the movie with some much-needed substance. Action, PG-13.
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