The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
A beautiful film. It will leave you feeling pretty melancholy, however. I was in kind of a post-holiday funk going in, and the bittersweet nature of the film only exacerbated that. But it really does take a throwaway concept by F. Scott Fitzgerald and flesh it out into a rich, multilayered story. And the makeup and CG effects are unbelievable, precisely because they are so subtle. The way they make Cate Blanchett look like a teenager early in the film and "youthen" Brad Pitt late in the film is pretty amazing.
[quote name='homeland']I' usually don't watch Woody Allen movies, last one I tried was Scoop and I turned that off after 35 minutes.[/quote]
You're watching the wrong Woody Allen movies. Scoop and ESILY are awful and very poor representations of his oeuvre (though, in fairness, the whole premise of the latter was a musical cast with people who could not sing or dance). See Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, or Crimes & Misdemeanors and then get back to me. For better examples among his more recent works, try Match Point or Vicky Cristina Barcelona.