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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The story of Benjamin (Brad Pitt), who is born old and gets progressively younger as he approaches his death, has an unusual perspective on how life is short and love is fleeting. Many of the characters have dreams — to have a baby, be an artist, swim the English Channel or become a great dancer — but Benjamin floats on the sea of life, catching golden moments and learning about others.
Quote "It's never too late or too early to be whoever you want to be."
Moral Wherever you go, there you are.
Frost/Nixon
Playboy English journalistic lightweight David Frost (Michael Sheen) invests his fortune to pay the wily Richard Nixon (Frank Langella) to go on camera, hoping the former president will finally admit to his culpability in the Watergate scandal. The screenplay portrays the interview as a boxing match between two men who are similar in that their self-esteem depends on the approval of others. Nixon's greater self-loathing is his downfall.
Quote "That's our tragedy, you and I, Mr. Frost. No matter how high we get, they still look down at us."
Moral Chequebook journalism is a highly underrated tool for inducing
confessions.
Milk
In the early 1970s, 40-year-old Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) leaves New York for San Francisco, where he becomes a central figure in the emerging gay-rights movement and antagonizes the political force of the Christian right.
Quote "I'm Harvey Milk and I'm here to recruit you."
Moral If Sean Penn plays gay, then gay is the new heroic.
The Reader
A college student, Michael (Ralph Fiennes), withholds information that might help Hanna (Kate Winslet), a war criminal, lighten her prison sentence, because he doesn't want to reveal his teenaged affair with her. She doesn't save herself because of her shame about her illiteracy. Michael's painful relationship with Hanna is intended as a metaphor for the guilt that a younger generation of Germans feel about the Holocaust.
Quote "It doesn't matter what I think. It doesn't matter what I feel. The dead are still dead."
Moral National guilt may be a sexually transmitted disease.
Slumdog Millionaire
This movie jumps among three key time frames. In part one, 18-year-old former "slumdog" Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) is on the television set of India's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. In part two, he is being interrogated by the police, who accuse him of cheating. And in the last part, we see flashbacks to his childhood, when he experienced various terrors and met the love of his life. The story has been called Dickensian, and true to Dickens, the film is opposed to abuse of power but is otherwise apolitical, focusing on the hero's good fortune.
Quote "A few hours ago, you were giving chai for the phone wallahs. And now you're richer than they will ever be. What a player!"
Moral Try to be good, but more important, make sure you're unbelievably lucky.