Even if you can't remember the last movie you saw, you don't have to miss out this Oscar season.  Yes, you can sound informed about the five flicks up for Best Picture this weekend at the 80th Annual Academy Awards thanks to a little help from our friend, People magazine movie critic Leah Rozen.  She gives us the download on the nominees and some savvy commentary to wow your friends.

ATONEMENT
This is the classy British romantic drama about gorgeous young lovers just before WWII who suffer, suffer and then suffer some more after a child tells a hurtful lie.
Impress your friends remark: "It's about the power of fiction to hurt, and to heal."

JUNO
This  little comedy has become a huge hit as moviegoers fall for its heroine, a smart-mouthed pregnant teen (Ellen Page) who decides to give her baby up for adoption.
Impress your friends remark: "Underneath all that cynical wise-cracking, Juno has a sweet,  marshmallow heart."

MICHAEL CLAYTON
It's an elegantly-constructed, tense corporate thriller with George Clooney playing a jaded New York City lawyer trying to remember whether he still even knows how to do the right thing.
Impress your friends remark: "This is the kind of slick but smart movie every Hollywood studio head secretly wishes he or she had made."

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
This is a contemporary western that is simultaneously scary and funny as it follows what happens to a ne'er-do-well after he finds a suitcase stuffed with cash in the Texas scrub.
Impress your friends remark: "The movie is easily the Coen Brothers'(that would be Joel and Ethan, the co-directors) most mature work."

THERE WILL BE BLOOD
Hard to get all warm and fuzzy about but impossible to forget, this bold, visionary epic by director Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights) is about a rapacious oilman (Daniel Day-Lewis) in California during the early part of the century.
Impress your friends remark:  "Daniel Day-Lewis is giving what just may be the performance of the decade in this movie."

People movie critic Leah Rozen

So which of these five is going to win? Leah says,  "Put your money on NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and, if you make a back-up bet, go for ATONEMENT for the upset."