my week at the movies: ‘Defiance,’ ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,’ ‘The Reader,’ ‘Revolutionary Road,’ ‘Gran Torino’

Talk about being diverted by talent: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, and Tilda Swinton are starring in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (opens wide in the U.S. on December 25; opens in the U.K. on January 23, 2009). Plus, it’s directed by David Fincher -- you know, Fight Club, Zodiac... And it’s written by screenwriter Eric Roth, who has credits like Lucky You, The Good Shepherd, Munich, Ali, The Insider... Plus it’s based on a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. And that poster is really cool. (The titular character lives backwards -- he’s born an old man and dies young after a long life -- and so the poster is backwards. Cool.) It’s gotta be awesome, right?

Director Stephen Daldry hasn’t released a film since 2002’s The Hours... and before that was 2000’s Billy Elliot. Now he has The Reader (opens limited in the U.S. on December 10, wide on January 9, 2009; opens in the U.K. on January 2, 2009), starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes in -- yup -- another Nazi story. Or is it? (Daldry’s next film -- OMG! -- will be The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. There is a god...)

Winslet also stars in Revolutionary Road (opens limited in the U.S. on December 26; opens in the U.K. on January 30, 2009), directed by her husband, Sam Mendes, and notable for the first onscreen reunion of Winslet with Leonard DiCaprio since Titanic, a decade ago. This one’s about suburban angst in the 1950s. I’m guessing adultery is involved.

I have no idea what Gran Torino (opens limited in the U.S. on December 17, and wide on January 16, 2009; opens in the U.K. on February 20, 2009) is about. I only know that it’s Clint Eastwood’s second film as a director this year -- the first was Changeling -- which means he could, potentially, have two films up for Oscars come February 22, 2009...