The Hurt Locker

(This is what I thought/hoped District 9 would be. Namely, as remarkable as the effusive critics were claiming. )

From the start, this movie wholly engaged my attention. I feared every bystander, worried about what was behind every corner, who was just out of frame and what were they going to do. I was struck by how intentional this had to have been -- that the audience was supposed to experience the uncertainity that the soldiers did. Is this the moment where they die? You won't know until it happens. There is no swelling soundtrack, no solitary one-dimensional bad guy against which to rail and no doe-eyed rookie who bites it thus sending our hero into an adversary-murdering fury that buoys our own blood-thirsty revenge fantasies and upon reflection should shame us for wishing other human beings were lying in a pool of their own spilled blood. Characters, who you as a movie-goer assume are now going to become part of the story, die in an instant with no fanfare, no melodramatic angst and no particular spotlight shone on what just happened. The absence of scripted response to the death leaves us as the audience to more fully engage in our own response -- whatever that may be -- for ourselves.

The movie was clear its message was that war can be a drug, and it showed soldiers' perspectives without forcing a traditional story structure onto their experiences. When they clashed, it was organic and raw. When they connected, it was just as raw and natural. Which is how the whole movie seemed to be. This is what happens. That's just the way it's going to be. This made it compelling, distressing and indescribably poignant. Verdict: First Run Theatre - Go Now

District 9

I don't think I got this movie. I had heard it was supposed to be an analogy of apartheid. I don't know that I followed that train of thought. Maybe because I was never sold on the idea that apartheid needed an analogy. I think we're all kind of aware of what had gone on, and I think we're all kind of in agreement that it was horrific. Analogies are usually used to open our eyes to situations that we're blind to, by twisting it in a new direction that makes us see the truth. But does apartheid need to be twisted? Or is it pretty clearly reprehensible staring at it straight on? That aside: the movie almost had me. I was appreciating the mock-documentary style of much of it, and that it was changing my idea of the meaning of what I was seeing up to a point in time. But then I realized that there was just no sympathetic character on the screen except the aliens -- which could be appreciated if that was the intent, but I think instead I was supposed to be rooting for the bureaucrat by the end ... but I wasn't. He'd been self-serving in too many critical moments throughout the movie that when he did appear to be acting in a self-sacrificing manner, I just assumed he had determined that there was something in it for him. (And really, there was. Revenge. Hope of being able to reverse his physical predicament. I guess.) Not to give it away, but I tried to let the ending make up for the rest of it. The lack of clear-cut-good-overcomes-bad-and-the-world-is-safe-again usually impresses me. In this case though, it just clarified for me that: I don't think I got this movie. Verdict: Movie Rental If You Must

Julie & Julia

This was a rather endearing movie -- although the Julia part of it was far more interesting than Julie's bit. Actually, I'm not quite clear on the point of Julie's bit in this otherwise entertaining movie. Did I care if she succeeded? Not all that much. But did I count the minutes until the movie returned to Julia? No. Not really. So I guess just not adding to the movie is at least not as bad as Julie actually brought it down. Verdict: Movie Rental