Posts tagged confusing
“Zero Dark Thirty” Deserves All the Awards It Receives
Jan 19th
“All the Awards It Receives”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Zero Dark Thirty is the fascinating story of the hunt for Osama bin Laden by the C.I.A. and the attack by SEAL Team 6 on his compound in Pakistan which ended with his death.
It was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who previously directed the 2009 The Hurt Locker, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and for which Bigelow won the Academy Award for Best Director, the first time a woman had ever won that award.
That feat could easily be duplicated with this outstanding film.
The title refers to 30 minutes after midnight, and Jessica Chastain stars as Maya, based on the real C.I.A. agent who was most responsible for the work it took to track down and locate where bin Laden was hiding almost 10 years after the attack and destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City.
Chastain has already won an award for this role and most likely will win many more awards for her outstanding acting in this film.
We see Maya at a so-called “black site,” where she is observing the “enhanced interrogation” of a detainee, which is being conducted by Dan, a fellow agent.
Dan tells the detainee, “When you lie to me, I hurt you.”
And Dan does, which is a bit ingenuous, because how can you tell that a person is lying when such interrogation tactics are being used on him?
Maya is based in Pakistan, and we learn that she didn’t volunteer for this assignment to track down bin Laden, but she was appointed to it because Washington believes she is a “killer” at her job.
While we watch Maya and her colleagues gather the evidence they need in order to uncover the whereabouts of their target, we also see the terrorist attacks around the world that occurred during those years, which were attributed to al Qaida, if not to bin Laden himself.
Maya concentrates her search on one man, Abu Ahmed, whom she believes to be the courier for bin Laden, and time is lost over a confusion brought about by his name.
In fact, Arab names are confusing and hard to understand by westerners, including those in the audience.
Familiar actors also appear in the film, but Chastain stands out.
Zero Dark Thirty deserves all the awards it receives.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Lincoln” about Our Greatest President
Nov 25th
“Our Greatest President”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Lincoln is an excellent film about the last few months of the life of our 16th president when he was faced with an almost impossible task: Get the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution passed by a lame-duck congress before the Civil War ends.
The 13th Amendment states simply, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitute, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
The time was January 1865, Lincoln had just been reelected to his second term, the resolution had been passed the previous year by the Senate, but defeated by the House, and Lincoln was trying to get it passed by the House so that it would become law before the Civil War ended and the Southern representatives rejoined Congress, in which case it would never be passed.
So, the film is about the wheeling and dealing in Washington in order to get something achieved, which makes it as timely as today’s Washington.
Daniel Day-Lewis plays Lincoln, and at one point he tells his cabinet of officers, “As the preacher said, I could write shorter sermons, but once I start, I get too lazy to stop.”
We are told that it is not illegal to bribe Congressmen, because they starve otherwise, which may or may not be true, and we see many of the influences being peddled by the men who are working to get the amendment passed, which becomes complex and confusing, but don’t try to follow and understand everything. Just let the story and its details wash over you and admire them.
Especially admire the work of Day-Lewis as Lincoln, as well as the outstanding work of Sally Field, James Spader, and Tommy Lee Jones, among many others.
Also admire the directing of Steven Spielberg, although you might be distracted by the opening scene and think that it is too much of a reminder of the opening of the 1998 Saving Private Ryan.
In fact, there are many parallels in this film that are intended to make a point and a reference to our modern times, and that is perfectly acceptable.
Lincoln is a great film about whom many claim to be our greatest president.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“End of Watch” a Buddy-Cop Movie with a Twist
Sep 29th
“Buddy-Cop Movie With a Twist”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
End of Watch is a powerful, almost traditional buddy-cop movie, but the language is raw, the action is violent, and it has an ending with an unexpected twist to it.
Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena play officers Brian Taylor and Mike Zavala, who work in the Los Angeles Police Department as partners ane whose area that they patrol is the rough arena of South Central Los Angeles, which Taylor says has three major food groups: drugs, money, and guns.
When the movie opens, it is the first day back on the job for Taylor and Zavala after they were cleared by an investigation into a shooting they were involved in, and once they are out in their patrol car, Zavala says, “Dude, it’s good to be back, Man.”
Taylor has a recording device in his uniform for a class project he is working on, and so a lot of the footage we see is from the point of view of that device, which is called “found footage” these days, but don’t worry. The whole movie isn’t from that POV, but enough is so that at times the movie gets confusing.
So, we watch and listen to the good-natured banter between these two friends as they drive around the city between calls, we learn about their personal lives as they talk and even see some aspects of them at various points in the movie, and we witness many of the calls they go on and see just how rough and dangerous being a policeman in today’s Los Angeles can be, both for them and other police officers who are called in to help.
In addition to the commonplace calls that Taylor and Zavala make, the main story point is a turf war between two rival gangs, one composed of black people and the other composed of Latinos, who have connections with drug cartels operating out of Mexico and who are also involved with the trafficking of illegals being brought up from Mexico and kept in terrifying and dangerous conditions.
In fact, Taylor and Zavala stumble into the ramifications of the main story more than anything else, and once again we see how in movies situations can go from bad to the worst you can imagine.
End of Watch is terrific and get ready for the twist at the end.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.