The Hurt Locker

Much like several other of this summer's films, The Hurt Locker opens on a robot in a dire landscape. Instead of battling the robots, here, the "bot" is moving forward to scope out a bomb before American soldiers move in to diffuse it. It's Iraq in 2004. Instead of a traditional narrative structure, this film follows one company of bomb diffusers as they finish out the last part of their tour. This is a really impressive film.


Instead of following a war-movie kind of arch rising and falling upon some critical battle or change, instead there is a situational consistence here in the fact that any given day can be life or death. These soldiers do not have one defining moment that changes their lives for better or worse. Each day is a battle, and their heroism is counting out their days trying to get the job done without dying. The film isn't political. It's not a commentary on the state of modern war or the particular conflict going on in Iraq. The point here is much more centered upon these men and their day to day lives at war.

Director Katheryn Bigelow masters a distinctive style without allowing the style to overwhelm the experience. The shaky camera will remind you of the urgency of the situation without giving you a headache because of the nonstop movement. The style suits, but does not overshadow, the story. Of course, "story" here is used loosely. I found myself sidetracked in the middle of the film trying to figure out where, if anywhere, the plot of this film was headed. I kept waiting for the moment when everything would click into focus around something. There is enough of the Hollywood war formula left in this film to expect that sort of resolution--like characters who show up for the clear purpose of dying. The structure wasn't what I initially wanted out of it, but I was plenty satisfied. The ending brings the film into focus just enough to leave me with something to think about.

This is one of the most unique and memorable war films I've ever seen. It's not uplifting. It's not life-changing. It just caught my attention.

A Beautiful Mind

Movies should have the power to make life more real. They should transport you to a different life. A Beautiful Mind is based on a true story, but only just, but I will allow it those digressions because of the story it creates.

We meet John Nash as he enters Princeton for his graduate study. Socially awkward, Nash avoids class and most other "normal" aspects of academic life and instead spends days on end writing on windows searching for his original idea. When a break trough of governing principles propels him into a successful career that involves some side work with government code breaking. He even falls in love.


John, however, is a paranoid schizophrenic. When his delusions are finally recognized he faces one of the worst living fates I can imagine. Friendships, purpose, memories, identity, and reality all slip away. How terrible to discover that so many important things in your life never even existed. Russell Crowe acts the part so well that the feeling of the world slipping away is terrifying and real. The emotions and uncertainty are so vivid that they are almost tangible. John's struggle then becomes separating the truth from the delusions and determining what his life can be either without the security of a drug induced grip on reality or without the ability to perform in the life he has always known.

What makes this movie so appealing is the way the intense pain and desperation play into what is ultimately a romance. Leave it to Ron Howard to invent some heartbreaking story to breathe new meaning into a boy meets girl story. By heightening the emotional content of the film Howard manages to bring out more intense emotions all across the board for this film. Sadness, trust, love, friendship, accomplishment, community, communism, mental illness--it's all there. More than being a good film, it is a consuming experience for two hours, and that goes a long way.

Terminator Salvation

The war between man and machine wages on and prophesied leader John Connor (Bale) is at the center of the resistance. The entire world seems to be a barren wasteland with pockets of humans surviving on who knows what as a fleet of different kinds of deadly machines hunt, capture, and kill. This is the future that John Connor must try to prevent by sending civilian Kyle Reese back to his mother to become his father (see the first Terminator movie). Time travel gets a bit confusing when you try to sit down and figure out the implications of the four movies connected, but Salvation is further confused by Marcus Wright, a criminal encouraged to donate his body to science just before taking the lethal injection. He discovers himself to be stuck between the two sides of the world as the audience is left to ponder what separates man from machine.

Unfortunately, all this set up comes to nothing. I don't want to watch Batman kill machines. I'm much more interested in people full of life and emotion resisting their control, but Bale's bat growl and motorcycle stunts only recall the cold, detached personna of Batman, which does not belong in a Terminator movie. I blame the filmmakers for this more than Bale, as his character was clearly written to be hard and unrelenting. The man/machine hybrid character was much more dynamic. I cared about the fate of Marcus, but in the end, none of the questions were really answered and it didn't really matter.

The film had all these huge questions and plot set-ups, but none of them delivered. The story just doesn't matter.

The action, on the other hand, looks incredible. I sat on the edge of my seat, flinching, gasping, holding my breath. The colorization is muted but clear, which lends itself well to the high-impact action of the film as well as the sharp contrast between the warm tones of humanity and the cold steel of machines. I enjoyed myself for those two hours, but took nothing away. It felt like playing a video game. The outcome didn't matter as much as the experience of playing. I'm glad I only paid a dollar for this one, though.

That Thing You Do!

Don't be thrown off by the title. That Thing You Do! is not just another run of the mill romantic comedy. It does have a love story, and I would call it a comedy, but it isn't just another chick flick. In the 1960s, when the drummer from a band breaks his arm Guy Patterson is brought in as a temporary substitute for a talent competition. When Guy speeds up the band's big ballad on the fly during the show it turns into a hit and the band suddenly finds themselves on a whirlwind to the top of the charts. Everyone deals with the fame and success differently and fractures between the members only deepen.

It's colorful. It's fun. It's really funny. The humor is sometimes subtle, sometimes classic, but never complicated. It's easy to be drawn into this film and forget about anything else. It sweeps you up. You'll find yourself repeating lines days later and humming "That Thing You Do" for weeks.

The movie actually has a lot in common with its title song. Poppy and catchy, it's clearly something special, but not for its greatness or originality. Somehow it manages to take all the expected elements and combine them in just the perfect way to create something wonderful instead of tired and cliche.

Minority Report

Spielberg and science fiction. Throw Tom Cruise into the mix and you've got everything you would expect.

John Anderton (Cruise) is a head officer of Washington D. C.'s precrime unit which has used a genetic mutation in three "precognitives" to predict and prevent murders for six successful years... until Anderton himself is named as the next killer. He rushed to discover who he is supposed to kill and how he could have possibly set up as the entire precrime division tries to capture him.


Good science fiction should combine technology with morality to force a present audience to examine how the moral question factors into the current world. Minority Report does this. Do we actually get to choose what our actions are? Where is the line between intent and action? How much can human flaws manipulate technology that we trust to be perfectly objective?

As a popcorn movie this one is pretty solid, but in the scheme of science fiction it lacks the tightness of its peers. Most science fiction films work to establish a futuristic world so believable that the audience can suspend disbelief enough not to ask too many questions. They must answer just enough questions that the audience trusts the plausibility of the environment and can connect the dots from now to then, but a good sci-fi will very carefully select the questions to answer that directly influence plot without giving away all the pieces of the puzzle too early. Minority Report seems to leave out things that I would have liked explained in favor of answering questions about obscure portions of the society that only raised more questions for me.

For example, most of the middle of the film is occupied by a large digression about Anderton switching eyes so that the scanners cannot recognize him. The importance of eyes and the black market of eye trading show up again and again so it is firmly established as a necessary part of Anderton's hiding, but ultimately it comes to nothing. There are so many connections between Anderton, the eyes, the dealer, precrime, etc... but only enough that it seems to all fit together just right. All the pieces fit together perfectly in a puzzle, but the completed puzzle doesn't make any kind of bigger picture. They just fit for the sake of fitting instead of being means to a larger end in the film. I find this inattention to story a significant weakness to the film--one that kept me from being able to just sit back and enjoy the explosions and fast paced mystery unfolding.