Juno

Juno MacGuff, played by Ellen Page in her first major role, is a very sarcastic highschool student. On a whim, she decides to have sex with her friend Paulie Bleeker. Juno turns up pregnant. Rainn Wilson has a hilarious cameo as the pharmacist where she buys her pregnancy test, as she attempts to shake away the positive result: "That ain't no etch-a-sketch. This is one doodle that can't be un-did, homeskillet."

Which brings me to the writing. The screenplay by Diablo Cody is simply brilliant. She captures not so much the actual language of teens - which, let's face it, I'm no expert at - but the cadence of it. Every other movie with teens in it sounds stilted now. Teens talk fast, overlapping, finishing each others' sentences, in fact speaking not in whole sentences most of the time. Diablo Cody caught that perfectly. I've read reviews that complained just the opposite, saying that Juno didn't talk like a real kid. For example, in one scene she calls an abortion clinic, saying "I'm calling to procure a hasty abortion." That's exactly what a teen like Juno would say. It's straightforward and sarcastic at the same time. It's her trying to sound adult without trying too hard. It's perfect. I find it incredibly ironic that the strike by the Writer's Guild may prevent the Academy Awards from airing this year, thereby preventing the amazing writing in this movie from being recognized.

The acting in the movie is top-notch all around. With so much attention paid to Ellen Page as Juno, it's easy to forget about other characters, but that would be a big mistake. Michael Cera as Paulie Bleeker, the father of Juno's baby, is achingly sweet, and does wonders with relatively few lines. The couple Juno arranges to adopt her baby, played by Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman, are fantastic as well. Garner is especially adept with her role, which could easily have become a cartoon of the shrewish wife but did not in her hands.

A+