Detroit

This is a film that tests your patience, then rewards it. It's hard to know where it's going at first; the mixture of documentary style presentation along with dramatic scenes of the 1967 Detroit riots makes the direction of the work seem general and unfocused. Early sequences are more of a pastiche of scenes rather than a cohesive narrative--and yours truly has never been a fan of the pastiche approach. But stay with it: the very disparate threads eventually come together into a long examination of the events at the Algiers Motel, and that's where the unfocused film turns riveting. (Bigelow's strength as a director seems to be in presenting intense interactions.) Once the movie gets rolling there, it's an absorbing story all the way to the end. Definitely worth a look, and worth thinking about after the credits roll.

Zero Dark Thirty

Depending upon your politics, you may be predisposed to hate this movie before the first scene. But a more practical reason to hate this movie might be its simple banality. Certainly that’s true in the early torture scenes; it’s surprisingly easy to be blase about the evils men do, especially this many years down the line. There’s also a certain predictability--even beyond the already well-known endgame--that pervades much of this film’s story structure. I certainly wouldn’t call it a Best Picture worthy film, despite the nomination, but it’s probably worth your time, perhaps to be watched with a certain amount of clinical detachment. I guess that’s the cost of doing business within the notorious muddle this film seeks to depict.

The Hurt Locker

I need to be cautious here. This is a good movie. A good movie. But this is not a Best Picture movie. I suspect that award had much more to do with the politics of the award-givers, and what they wanted to say, versus the actual quality of this film. The performances ring true, the direction is well done, and the scenes look for all the world like they really were filmed in Iraq in 2004. But again, this film is less a narrative plot than a series of scenes/vignettes on the subject of war and what it does to people (a.k.a. the Saving Private Ryan effect). I'm starting to think that this represents a trend in moviemaking on the subject of war; why the reluctance to show a real war story, instead of just a pastiche representing feelings about the conflict? Is there something there that filmmakers are trying to hide? Avoid? What's going on here? Answering those questions might eventually yield some real Best Picture war movie material.

Strange Days

So-so sci-fi thriller. Ralph Finnes is good, and his performance keeps you interested. It could have said a little more about new technology's role in creating our emerging dystopia, but I guess you get what you get (which probably isn't enough, here).