Don't hesitate because it's B&W or silent. It's also a very lovely film!

Rating: 8/10 (17 December 2013)

So it's black & white and silent. Silent?!? Yes. It has music to accentuate the scenes, and the sparse dialog that is essential is shown in text frames between the shots. Just like old times! It made me hesitate for months before I got to watching it. That was a mistake!
The Artist is certainly different, and it takes a few minutes to get used to, but with 'losing' sound it hasn't lost any of its potential to grab the audience and pull it into a true cinematic story from the old days. Rather, while the story is quite simple the lack of dialogue forces you to actively 'see' what's going on, which engages the audience (us!) much more, and much more intimately. You don't need to be a die- hard 1920s fan to be entertained by this film!
The film itself is a simple love-story between a proud actor (obviously modeled after Douglas Fairbanks, I thought) who falls hard when Hollywood switches from silent to 'talkies', and the upcoming actress he discovered who shines in the new, talking, cinema.
So if you hesitate because it's a silent B&W (or because you, rightfully, think 5 Oscars out of 10 nominations was a bit of an overreaction): don't, you won't regret seeing it!