Frost/Nixon, Doubt and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

These three are the last I could see of the big Oscar nominated movies for this year. The day Frost/Nixon finished in MK, was also the final showing of Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist, Milk, Rachel Getting Married and The Good the Bad and the Weird, all of which I wanted to see. But I'm glad I settled for Frost/Nixon. Having seen the play at the Donmar Warehouse in London, I was in two minds whether I even wanted to see the film. It was so good on stage that I wondered how it would transfer to the big screen. I need not have been concerned. Ron Howard's use of locations was magic, and the closeups added to the tension. Brilliant.

Doubt was a disappointment. Here was a stage play that should have stayed in the theatre. OK, the performances and writing were top drawer, but the film seemed too claustrophobic, stuck as it was in the classroom and headmistresses study of a catholic school. Those wonderful odd occasions when the film moved into the church or on the street outside emphasised what was missing.

If ever a movie split the critics, it is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. With both of our papers, The Times and Sunday Times , giving poor reviews, I was in no rush to see it. However, I was pleasantly surprised and ended up being on the side of those who liked it. A long film, but the first hour and a half go so quickly and there is still much to see. If Slumdog Millionaire was, in my view a masterpiece, this is a flawed masterpiece. But given the subject matter, David Fincher has made a remarkable movie. Beautiful to watch, the locations are fabulous and the period settings have been wonderfully staged. The cost of production is right up there on the screen, and not just the special effects.

What made me uncomfortable was the muted performance of Brad Pitt, and that I was constantly trying to pin down his age at each sequence. When he and the terrific Cate Blanchett as Daisy crossover at the same age, he looks far younger than the 43 he is meant to be. And halfway through his life, we are suddenly in the final part of the film. There are times when the script falls into cliche, but it does have something to say about time, growing old and death.

There was one moment (and one that was even repeated later) that would have been enough to take from the movie, even if there was nothing else. Daisy's grandmother reads to her young granddaughter and Benjamin in his early years. The book is Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. This is the book that was given to me on my sixth birthday by my grandmother, that I still have, and the one my father used to read to me over and over as a child. The page shown and read in the film is the one below. The story is "The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo" and was one of my favourites, (that and "The Cat that Walked by Himself") especially the bits about "Dingo-Yellow Dog Dingo, always hungry, dusty in the sunshine". Thank you David Fincher.