The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2009)

Not so much a satisfying drama as a two-and-a-half-hour magic trick, director David Fincher's visually enchanting 
 adaptation of an early F. Scott Fitzgerald story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, follows a naïf (Pitt) aging backward, briefly meeting in the middle with the love of his life (Blanchett). The romance, which blossoms one hour in, when Pitt is at his ripest and hunkiest, is the weakest part of the film, as screenwriter Eric Roth dips into the same bag of fanciful plot contrivances he used in Forrest Gump. No, it's the F/X that dazzle here. When we first see Pitt's liver-spotted head seamlessly grafted onto an old man's rickety body, it's a moment of Houdini-like wonder. The EXTRAS, which include Fincher's commentary and a second disc of making-of features, so thoroughly explain the gee-whiz sight gags that they manage to ruin the illusion a bit. B