01) The Reader
02) Frost/Nixon
03) Milk
04) The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
05) Slumdog Millionaire
I actually really like both The Reader and Frost/Nixon, and as you'll see, The Reader makes my top twelve (although the hyperbole that I heaped upon the film upon my initial viewing has been stripped of my memory and I'm left with a film I really like yet don't call a masterpiece any longer). Still, this lineup is somewhat shallow when you consider the poll Oscar could have dipped into. The devestating train of domination by Slumdog Millionaire was particularly disappointing, and the fact that Fincher was finally embraced for his least impressive feature (well, it was better than The Game, I guess) was heartbreaking. While there is a lot about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button I did like (as you'll see when more of the categories are announced), the film as a whole was VERY cold and just could not deliver the emotional core that was created in Fitzgerald created in his short story.
Milk is a very good film, but it is also embarassingly one sided at times and doesn't really delve as deeply as it needed to in order to depict Harvey Milk as anything more than a fictionalized martyr. I mean, he never once felt like a real human being, although the supporting characters were laced with considerable depth.
Hate Ron Howard all you want, but Frost/Nixon was a surprising triumph of bottled intensity.
Alas, none of these films touch my ballot, so give it a look and let me know what you think!
