Julia Ormond

In a Barbie world, American Girl Kit Kittredge is a hero, and Kit Kittredge: An American Girl is heroic.

With fine acting all around, and Fincher's typically meticulous filmmaking engagingly, if coldly, transportive above and beyond Roth's mediocre script, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button bears examining.

Skews to fantasy over fact, but when it blinks at you with those puppy-dog eyes, just see if you don't sniffle.

Williams is better than the picture, but within the screenplay's constraints, she nails every possible nuance of physical and emotional expression. It's dazzling work, and reason alone to spend ninety-nine minutes 'with Marilyn.'

Intrigues not with good guy-bad guy shtick, but with the conundrum of how to live morally in an inherently immoral West.