Holiday Weekend Movie Forecast: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Revolutionary Road

Based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button stars Brad Pitt as a man who is born in his eighties and ages backwards, growing ever younger as the film sweeps through time from the post-World War I era to the present day. Directed by David Fincher, the movie assiduously avoids the pitfall of cheap sentimentality, as Button's long love affair with a "childhood" friend (Cate Blanchett) blossoms, fractures, and disintegrates. It's a sad but ultimately affecting journey; Button's backward aging functions as a simple device to examine the bitterly transient nature of all our life's loves. Sure, the film's observations are as old as the hills, but as presented here they're still emotionally resonant, and Blanchett and Pitt deliver compelling, restrained performances.

David Ansen at Newsweek writes, "The overall impact of 'Benjamin Button' is greater than the sum of its parts. The metaphor of a life lived backward is strangely haunting. Benjamin's saga is singular yet universal: anyone who has contemplated his own mortality will find it hard not to be moved by Fincher's evocation of the fickleness of fate. Lyrical, original, misshapen and deeply felt, this is one flawed beauty of a movie."