Movie and Television Reviews

Sometimes I marvel at how Lost has uncoiled from a Survivor-like adventure drama to a horror movie to an archetypal myth and sometimes I wonder if the writers are just making it up as they go along, complicating things to hide their own lack of cohesion. Did they really intend the smoke monster to turn into Locke? Why introduce the temple at this late date? Indeed, the piling-on of subplot after subplot is both interesting and tiresome.

I don't even know how to end this post. I'm so confused.

I've seen most of the movies nominated for an Oscar. Avatar is probably the favorite. It deserves to win some kind of technical award. Without it's fancy 3-D cameras, it's as trite as Pocahontas. Inglorious Bastards is another technically- from a film-making point of view- brilliant movie that lingers in one's consciousness as long as the last Red Vine hangs around one's stomach. Blind Side is fine and more affecting than the previous two, but it's too close to a movie of the week. The first half of Up is all-time great. Unfortunately, the second half is just very good.

My choice would be Hurt Locker. My case:

1. Hurt Locker explores a theme not touched upon by standard war movies, which either focus on the absurdity of war, the righteousness of a particular cause, or individual character (bravery, etc.). War is only Hurt Locker's backdrop. The subject matter is a person's desire to engage in the popularly bad or undesirable. In this case, war.

The main character, William James, is a man who needs war. Indeed, he loves war. He's not a sadist or evil, however, like the colonel in Avatar. Perhaps James sees war as a realistic video game or maybe he's addicted to war adrenaline the way a rock climber seeks a rush from heights.

James never discusses the morality of either the Iraq war or of war itself. Frankly, he doesn't care: if the U.S. were at peace, James would be a mercenary.

The Hurt Locker subtly, brilliantly contrasts James with his team-mates, one of whom is obsessed with questions of morality and mortality and the other who's practical and conventional- he just wants to go home and raise a son.

2. Acting, brilliant.

3. The structure of the story is interesting as well. The Hurt Locker isn't a mission or defense or re-telling of history. The on-screen reminders of the remaining time in the soldiers' tour suggest that the antagonist is the war itself. James, Sanborn, and Eldridge just need to get to the end. Yet, the war can't be the heavy in this film because James seeks it. Hurt Locker is that deep.

The Hurt Locker is a series of engagements, each with its own climax, the longest and most fascinating of which is a desert sniper battle, followed closely by an unsuccessful search for the murderer of the only human part of the war for James, his friendship with a boy who sells pirated DVDs to the American soldiers.

4. Not that this should matter, but Hurt Locker shows that hundreds of millions of dollars can't make up for vision.

5. Like any good war movie, it makes you want to be in the military.

Overall, a brilliant movie.

Up (Four-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo + BD Live) [Blu-ray]

The Hurt Locker [Blu-ray]

Inglourious Basterds (2-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray]

The Blind Side [Blu-ray]

Pocahontas (10th Anniversary Edition)