Brian's Thoughts on Movies

A warning, the content below does contain spoilers. I saw the film Hurt Locker last night, one I had been hoping to get to for awhile. I remember first reading something about it when it was released back in the summer of 09 and thinking it would be an interesting film. The pedigree of Kathryn Bigelow, a very bold director who did a film I really liked called K-19, and the story focusing on an elite bomb squad during the last six weeks of their tour in Iraq was plenty to attract me. It received such a small release I decided to wait until DVD. Now I have finally gotten to it. For starters, let me say I have never been in combat nor would I likely have much to offer if I were in it. That being said, from a cinematic sense, if Platoon is the definitive film on the Vietnam War from the soldier's perspective, Hurt Locker will likely receive a similar distinction on the Iraq War. Many of the real threats in this war come from the bombs that outnumbered insurgents leave out, th...

I saw Up in the Air and was pretty impressed with it.  It had a similarity to director Jason Reitman’s Juno in that it a looks at an issue through the eyes of a fairly normal person during a period in his life that holds some extra drama which causes him to reevaluate some parts of it.  However (minor spoiler alert) his life does not change dramatically throughout the film, though his perspective does. George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a road warrior who flies to different cities around the country doing the incredibly unenviable job of firing people.  He handles it as well as can be by having genuine empathy for the people and giving them as positive a perspective on it as possible.  Reitman makes these scenes, which I feared would be very uncomfortable to watch, bearable because of the humanity, yet directness that Clooney brings to it.  He loves his job, nonetheless, in large part because it keeps him on the road.  He has a high frequent flier stat...

For my first blog entry I have chosen the film Avatar, written and directed by James Cameron, the auteur behind Pirana 2, not to mention Terminators 1 and 2, Aliens, True Lies, and Titanic .  For years I have heard about him planning a big sci-fi film about an interaction between aliens and humans on their planet.  But it seemed he was biding his time as Titanic came out 12 years ago.  In the meantime I saw his documentary Ghosts of the Abyss (and wondered, after making Titanic why he felt he had to do more on the subject?) and hoped at one time he would return to direct a feature again.  Cameron is known for being an egomaniac and a tyrant on the set, mostly due to his perfectionism.  Cameron's last four features have all been the most expensive films ever made at the time.  But his films deliver usually by having a fair amount of creative spectacle and suspense with well drawn characters, especially female ones.  His characters always have to strive ...