Posts Tagged ‘Kathryn Bigelow’

Top Ten Films of 2009

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

After much deliberation, here’s my favourite flicks of oh nine. It’s a bizarre mix of kids films and gut-punchers; arthouse and mainstream. Full contrast ahead.

10. The Hurt Locker

Too much shaky cam but still pulls off many a tense set piece of bomb disposal and the whole thing just feels hella authentic. Review here.

9. Where The Wild Things Are

The best movie without a plot all year. Jonze and Eggars have perfectly adapted a ten page childrens book into a feature length film without artificially adding some quest for treasure or some capitalist baddie who wants to knock down the hero’s neighbourhood. They’ve miraculously managed to just enlarge the essence of what was originally there, like some fractal experiment. And created their own individual work at the same time, something Watchmen perhaps should have strived for.

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Point Break 2: Surfing Insurgents

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

OK, there’s no actual surfing insurgents in The Hurt Locker but director Kathryn Bigelow’s masterpiece of action and bromance, Point Break, certainly sprang to mind whilst watching her latest effort. Here too we find a love/hate relationship between two diametrically opposed alphas – one playing by the rules, the other pissing on the book. Jeremy Renner, previously unknown to me, creates a complex and nuanced character in his role as the maverick US bomb diffusal officer in Iraq, at odds with his straight laced partner. And the character is revealed mainly through action, not through dialogue and backstory. The action/suspense sequences come thick and fast. This female director knows what makes guys tick. An artists gender really shouldn’t affect how you think of the work but the fact that Bigelow is the only female making action movies in Hollywood today really does make you sit up and shout ‘You go, girl!’, especially as she’s doing it better than any of the boys right now. She understands what Michael Bay and McG seem unable to grasp – we don’t give a toss about the explosions unless we care about the people getting blowed up, duh. And The Hurt Locker really does make us care about the people in the firing line.

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