From My Collection: 25th Hour Movie Review

In 2002, New York City lay beaten and bruised, injured and left for dead but not without some bite left in her. Certainly the city was ready and willing to dole out punishment to anyone who intended harm again. It’s a lot like the dog Doyle at the opening of Spike Lee’s 25^th Hour. Someone has abused him, but he lashes out at Monty Brogan (Edward Norton), who only wants to help. Monty takes Doyle in and when the story picks up a year later, the dog is reasonably normal while the city is still reeling from catastrophe.

Zero Dark Thirty Movie Review

I’m coming at my review of Zero Dark Thirty after it has become a lightning rod for criticism and charges that it depicts torture as having elicited a positive outcome in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, overplaying the role of “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” in tracking down the world’s most wanted terrorist. Director Kathryn Bigelow’s defense is as reasonable and accurate as you can get: depiction is not the same as support. But the specific charge is that the story, as laid out in Mark Boal’s screenplay, has the chain of information leading to bin Laden coming from facts gleaned through torture. I recognize this is problematic, made more complicated by the fact that Boal and Bigelow have touted the journalistic nature of the film.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Movie Review

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is one hundred percent Oscar bait and shamelessly so. It co-stars two Oscar-winning actors as the parents of a precocious child who sets out on a journey of discovery after the death of his father. There’s an international screen legend (once Oscar nominated) cast an elderly man who doesn’t speak. It’s penned by Eric Roth, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Forrest Gump, and directed by Stephen Daldry, the only person ever nominated for the Best Director Oscar for each of his first three feature films. To top it all off it’s a post 9/11 drama that centers on the breakdown of a family after a tragic loss on that day.