Wesley Fenlon | Not with a bang but a whimper.

Before Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer teamed up to direct and produce one of the most overshot, masturbatory action films of all time (Bad Boys II), they created an action flick with a clear 90s feel that nonetheless retained a hint of violent 80s grit (Bad Boys The First).

Released in 1995, Bad Boys was the first step in Will Smith’s transition from Fresh Prince to, well, Hollywood God.  The 1995-1996-1997 progression from Bad Boys narcotic cop Mike Lowery to Independence Day’s alien face-punching pilot to Men in Black’s look-h0w-fast-I-can-run Agent Jay secured Will Smith as an honest-to-God superstar.

Martin Lawrence has not risen as far, nor did he attain his fame as quickly.  But he’s done all right for himself, moving from a sitcom career into action-comedies just like Will Smith.  Granted, for the past decade he’s largely been starring in shallow buddy movies far worse than Bad Boys, or going the Eddie Murphy route with by co-starring with Martin Lawrence, Martin Lawrence and Martin Lawrence in modern cross-dressing classics.  But at least, with Marcus Burnett in Bad Boys and Bad Boys II, he found a buddy cop team-up that really jived.  Lawrence is the perfect foil to Will Smith’s ultrasmooth, ultrabadass Mike Lowery, and he strikes a great balance between comic incompetent bumbling and serious action star territory.  Which is probably what makes the climax of Bad Boys so great; when Marcus’ whiny, mumbling persona is stripped away to reveal his grim-faced fuck-the-rules mentality, the energy is palpable.

Will Smith’s character is mostly flat (his duty: look cool, talk cool, act cool, be cool), but obviously entertaining.  So overall, Bad Boys is fun, the action is solid, the bad guy appropriately eastern European, and it holds onto just enough of that 80s action grunge to feel a little dangerous (it’s no Last Boy Scout, but, then, what is?).  But that energy Martin Lawrence brings at the end somehow grabs everything good about the film and condenses it into one moment, when the writing is quick and perfect, the acting serious, and the sound and cinematography mesh to project the raw power of the Porsche’s engine and the overwhelming need for speed.

I could watch all of Bad Boys again, waiting in anticipation of that one line.  And I probably will.  Because when Martin Lawrence starts mirandizing bitches from afar, you know it’s on.

Yoon Tae-goo races cheerily across the rocky hills of an endless Manchurian desert, his dead World War II-era motorcyle fading to his back. Further behind him lie the Japanese army, a gang of treasure hungry misfits, a vicious assassin, and an unrelenting bounty hunter. Tae-goo patters on, never stopping, never slowing, cackling with glee — and just like Tae-goo, the movie he stars in is an exhilerating high-energy adventure, stuffed with dazzling setpieces and thrilling cinematography that rivals any Western western from the past 20 years.

The Good The Bad The Weird wears its spaghetti western influence on its sleeve, drawing both name and plot points from Sergio Leone’s landmark conclusion to the Man With No Name trilogy. Writer/director Ji-woon Kim is clearly a student of Leone’s work, but he tempers his appreciation of the classic style with a remarkably original Eastern western. The Good The Bad The Weird is almost constantly upbeat, delicately balancing its gun battles between graphic violence and lighthearted action-comedy.

This is mostly thanks to Yoon Tae-goo (The Weird), a petty thief whose remarkable luck and survival skills take center stage throughout the film. His antics range from entertaining to knee-slapping hilarious, and as he continues to escape one outrageous situation after another, his own stature in the film’s world is slowly revealed. By film’s end, the character we once assumed to be a clumsy fool turns out to be…well, the best clumsy fool in all of Manchuria.

The Weird crashes a train heist planned by The Bad, who sports a giggle-inducing emo haircut and enough stereotypical asian bad guy mannerisms to make him the perfect villain. He looks out of place, which is partially the point; he’s too cool for all that cowboy shit, but he’ll still walk the walk and slice you up good with a knife or two. Tae-goo makes off from the train robbery with a treasure map in hand but soon crosses paths with Park Do-won (The Good), a valiant bounty hunter out to collect on both The Bad and The Weird. Even The Good, who hunts down nefarious bounties to satisfy his own sense of justice, can’t completely resist the treasure’s allure.

The Good may skirt closest to his analogue in The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly. Actor Woo-sung Jung plays the quiet badass, the lone gunman. He’s not Clint Eastwood…but he’s not trying to be, either. Rather than try to capture the grit and unmatchable screen presence of a grizzled, cigar-biting Eastwood, he plays The Good with an understated charm. He just assumes he’s awesome, and merely has to wait for us to catch on.

The Good dazzles, The Bad Sneers, and The Weird keeps us riveted, but all three are shown up by the you-gotta-see-it-to-believe-it dynamic camera work. The zoom — a somewhat taboo technique in cinema — is put to brilliant use here. The camera sometimes tracks around and zooms in and out in one single long take, switching focus from an individual character to a bustling set. When you pair some of the best western action scenes ever imagined with audacious cinematography, the result is a film brimming with explosive excitement.

The Good The Bad The Weird definitely has its own Eastern flavor, set in a Japan-occupied Manchuria that encompasses the typical arid deserts of westerns and the decidedly untypical Chinese villages and bazaars. But Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns marched to a different beat than American cinema, while still retaining that western essence. Very few westerns since 1968 have lived up to Once Upon a Time in the West, and over the years spaghetti westerns have become almost synonymous with the best the genre has to offer. If another film like The Good The Bad The Weird comes out of Korean cinema, noodle westerns may well be the future. And if you’ve seen this movie, that’s a future you’ll be as excited for as I am.

“Date Night” is the kind of lighthearted comedy that panders to its audience. The kind of inoffensive PG-13 comedy that mild-mannered suburbanites can enjoy, thanks to the perfect blend of raciness and family values. The kind of comedy that, frankly, should be utterly mediocre.

And yet, with the comedic talents of Steve Carell and Tina Fey in the starring roles, “Date Night” admirably exceeds expectations.

The names of the writer and director don’t do much to inspire confidence. Helmed by Shawn Levy, whose previous directing efforts include the (not so) thrilling “Night at the Museum” and (yawn) “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian,” and written by “Shrek the Third” contributor John Klausner, it’s hard to believe “Date Night” is anything but kitschy family fare. But with the exception of a few weak moments, the script is surprisingly funny, and the action well-filmed.

At times, “Date Night” reaches a bit too hard for its laughs. It relies on familiar, exaggerated characters — dirty cops, sassy maître d’s — to keep the audience on familiar ground. I found the crazy, fast-talking black cabdriver to be particularly cringe-inducing, the kind of “clever” character who’s not actually the least bit original — or welcome.

Just as unnecessary are the film’s callbacks to previous jokes. The self-referential, remember-this-funny-thing-we-did technique is hard to pull off well, and “Date Night” can’t pull it off. The dialogue, too, occasionally tries harder than it should to be funny, and can end up feeling forced as a result.
Thankfully, for every line of dialogue that overextends itself to grab desperately for an unconvincing chuckle, Carrell and Fey deliver another with enough zeal to keep the laughs coming. They play Phil and Claire Foster, an average married couple whose lives are consumed by the day-in, day-out struggles of juggling marriage, jobs, and kids. When they head into the Big Apple for a special date night at a fancy restaurant, they do something a little out of character — steal another couple’s dinner reservation, since they didn’t make one of their own.

An increasingly ridiculous comedy of errors ensues, as the Fosters are mistaken for blackmailers in possession of some very lucrative information. For the most part, they react like normal people would: with panicky, incoherent babbling and a whole lot of freaking out.

Fey’s and Carell’s comedic styles perfectly suit “Date Night” — their experience playing awkward personalities (Fey in “30 Rock,” Carell in “The Office” and “The 40 Year Old Virgin”) lends the Fosters an air of credibility as normal people stuck in a screwball comedy. Their excellent on-screen rapport keeps each scene moving at a brisk pace and quickly makes them a likeable leading couple.

The biggest surprise of “Date Night’s” hour and a half adventure is its hilarious, tightly choreographed chase scene, starring a souped-up Ferrari and a beat-up taxi cab, front bumpers intertwined, careening through the streets of LA at breakneck speeds. When Carell climbs onto the hood of the careening Ferrari and inches his way across to the taxi, we know it’s ridiculous — but so do the characters, and their own bafflement makes the situation all the funnier.

For a comedy that relies mostly on the witty banter of its stars, the few sight gags “Date Night” employs are, amazingly, pretty much guaranteed to elicit laughs. Though the car chase stands out, a short scene slow-moving motorboat delivers one of the film’s best moments, and Holbrook’s (Mark Wahlberg) six-pack abs dominate the frame every time they’re in sight, to Phil Foster’s dismay (and Claire Foster’s delight).

“Date Night” isn’t a perfect film; the screenplay could’ve been something great with a bit more work, and some of the funniest lines of dialogue show up in the end credits in the form of outtakes. More improvisation from Tina Fey could’ve provided laughs in the few scenes that just aren’t that funny. James Franco is also tragically underutilized, showing up for about five minutes of screen time. Still, despite its flaws, “Date Night” defies the odds by being better than most family-friendly romantic comedies. If you’re looking for a date movie, you could do much worse.

At some point amidst the flamboyant violence, amusing dialogue and stereotypical high school trappings of “Kick-Ass,” I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Director Matthew Vaughan’s interpretation of the comic book “Kick-Ass” channels the graphic nature of Quentin Tarantino; gleaming swords dance deadly across the screen, bullets fly, bodies crumple and explode, and all the nihilistic action plays out against a pitch-perfect pop rock soundtrack.

Why, then, does “Kick-Ass” fall short of its lofty potential? When the action is on, it’s a well-greased machine of cinematic violence. But the story seems to slide into place a little too perfectly, a little too conveniently. And what was originally meant to be an homage to superhero comics that revealed their absurdity has, instead, become a flashy film that doesn’t quite ram home the fact that its characters are, in fact, quite deranged.

Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is a normal teenager who makes a very abnormal decision. After one too many muggings for petty cash, Dave buys a comically ugly scuba suit off the Internet and decides to live out his superhero fantasies in real life. Fueled by adrenaline and stupidity, Dave’s fun pastime quickly leads to him being beaten, stabbed, and hit by a car.

He lives — barely. Undeterred, Dave keeps at it, prowling the streets in search of good deeds to be done. And when he saves a man from a gang beating, he becomes an overnight Youtube sensation.

Dave saunters around New York like he owns the place, and unwittingly becomes embroiled in a dangerous criminal underworld. His masked superhero antics inspire the film’s other principal players, father-daughter team Damon (Nicholas Cage) and Mindy (Chloë Grace Moretz) Macready, to don costumes of their own and assume the identities of Big Daddy and Hit Girl.

And this is where “Kick-Ass” begins to go astray. In Mark Millar’s comic, Big Daddy is nothing but a comic book geek, a maniac self-taught in the arts of murder and decked out with a massive arsenal of weaponry. In the film, Big Daddy is a former police officer, and his systematic destruction of mobster’s Frank D’Amico is driven entirely by revenge.

Big Daddy’s backstory may not seem like a significant change, but it’s only one instance of a tonal disconnection between the two versions of “Kick-Ass.” In the comic, there are no heroes, no supermen; only insane killers and a boy in way too deep. The pen-and-ink version is a more realistic tale, and the gouts of blood that jet from eviscerated bodies become a little sickening. And that’s entirely the point. If superheroes were real, if they were fighting criminals, they’d be insane vigilantes enacting brutal justice, not candy-colored boy scouts a la Superman.

“Kick-Ass” the film tells a different story; violent as it is, it doesn’t evoke the spirit of the comic, and the action scenes are mindless, cartoony eye-candy. Granted, they are tons of fun, and Hit Girl absolutely lights up the screen every second she has a camera pointed her way. She’s at once endearing and foul, charming and savage. If “Kick-Ass” were nothing but Hit Girl bouncing around the screen knifing drug dealers for two hours, I may have left the theater with a grin permanently stuck on my face.

Unfortunately, there’s a little too much downtime with Dave’s teenage life, and it rejects the sharper depiction of high school society Millar wrote into his comic. In Vaughan’s film, Dave gets the girl of his dreams, doesn’t take nearly as much abuse at the hands of criminals, and plays a gung-ho role in the shoot-em-up finale in mobster D’Amico’s penthouse apartment.

Overall, “Kick-Ass” is simply a cheerier, more lighthearted story than its comic counterpart. Sure, it makes for a fun night at the movies. But when the cheeriness goes hand-in-hand with graphic violence the characters shrug off like it ain’t no thang, “Kick-Ass” misses out on a chance to pack some moral depth in with its visceral action scenes.

While the Hollywood of the 1930s is hardly known for its raunch or bawdry, literature of the early 20th century is an altogether different animal. The rise of pulp fiction and the hardboiled genre in the 1920s meant popular literature was poking against the boundaries of polite society. And while the 1934 film adaptation of Dashiell Hammet’s classic murder mystery The Thin Man tones down on some of the novel’s more indecent and suggestive dialogue, it perfectly captures the playful chemistry between the story’s leading couple.

Nick and Nora Charles, played by William Powell (in a Best Actor-nominated performance) and Myrna Loy, became one of the screen’s most successful couples after The Thin Man’s release. A few minutes into the film, and it’s easy to see why. Nick, a former private investigator, becomes embroiled in a murder mystery thanks to past associations, but he doesn’t tackle the caper with the tough guy mentality Humphrey Bogart would later popularize in the 1940s. Powell energetically bounces between flippancy, nonchalance and sharp wit, playing Nick as a devilish gentleman who has far more interest in drinking liquor and teasing his young wife than solving a murder. Loy does just as much to hold up her end of the couple, going toe-to-toe against her on-screen husband with comical facial expressions and banter aplenty.

In fact, the entire production of The Thin Man plays up Hammett’s underappreciated talent for comedy, resulting in an amusing twist on the typically serious detective genre. The film skews more on the side of entertainment than complex mystery, making a few minor adjustments to Hammett’s novel to for the benefit of the Hollywood presentation. Clyde Wynant (the titular thin man) actually makes an appearance at the beginning of the film, while he is only spoken of but never actually encountered in the novel. The first scene establishes Wynant’s character and his relationship with his daughter Dorothy, which ultimately leads to the girl meeting Nick and pleading with him to find her missing father.

In the novel, things aren’t packaged quite so neatly — Dorothy hasn’t seen her father since childhood, nor is she the pure-hearted innocent she appears in the film. Her brother receives similar treatment, having his role marginalized in favor of a one-dimensional, goofy persona purely in place for the laughs. Even so, once the film establishes its story to simplify things for viewers the plot moves along at Hammett’s brisk pace. Several portions of the backstory are excised for the sake of time, but everything comes together in the final moments in classic form, as Nick lays out the tangled, murderous details at a delightful dinner party packed with nearly the entire cast.

Hammett’s complex plot hardly seems to matter next to the electric relationship between Powell and Loy, who went on to star in five more Thin Man capers as the flirtatious husband-and-wife team. If the series had been established after John Huston’s genre-defining film noir treatment of The Maltese Falcon, Hammett’s penchant for devious mysteries may have taken on a more serious role in the film.

Thankfully, the Hollywood of the 30s took the laughs and ran with them, resulting in a rare balance between crime and comedy. In fact, any film made since 1934 combining the two genres may owe The Thin Man for writing the recipe of a perfect murder-comedy cocktail.

Every so often, a story manages to brook the transition from written form to television to the silver screen.  Batman and Superman both began life as comic book characters, starred in a number of live-action and animated television shows, and eventually achieved success in Hollywood.  Masters of the Universe is not one of those stories.

In 1987, the popularity of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe had reached its fever pitch — the cartoon show and its spin-off She-Ra had just concluded, and the toy line from which the series was first born was still going strong.  It was time to take the muscle-bound, uncomfortably homoerotic hero to the big leagues.  Though this decision undoubtedly thrilled legions of 10 year-olds around the world, the resulting film was, not-so-surprisingly, a mess of bad acting, an utterly asinine script, and a hodgepodge of movie clichés.

The opening titles of Masters of the Universe look and sound as if they were ripped straight from 1978’s Superman, and the legions of ineffectual soldiers are dead-ringers for the black-helmeted crewmembers of the Death Star.  Even borrowing heavily from its betters, Masters of the Universe may have been a salvageable effort if it took place in the creative sci-fi/medieval fantasy world of Eternia.  Instead, everyone involved decided it would be much more fun to throw the heroes through a wormhole, drop them in New Jersey, and pair them up with a couple troubled teenagers (including a pre-Friends Courteney Cox).

If the relocation to Jersey wasn’t a clear indication, practically nothing in Masters of the Universe corresponds to the original He-Man comics.  Most of the major characters are represented, but other heroes like Stratos are nowhere to be seen.  And Orko, He-Man’s floating sidekick whose blunderings once served as comic relief in the animated series, is replaced by the film’s ugly Hobbit/troll mashup Gwildor.

Though Dolph Lundgren would’ve been a far better He-Man without ever opening his mouth, Frank Langella’s Skeletor may be the highlight of the film, simply because his make-up looks a little cool.  Considering how limited his facial expressions are behind Skeletor’s yellow-white skull exterior, Langella’s voicework outpaces the rest of the cringe-inducing cast…until the finale, anyway, when Skeletor transforms himself into some sort of Golden God and utterly ruins everything.

Kids may blissfully overlook the terrible acting and moronic plot, delight in Skeletor’s cliché blundering henchmen and be thrilled by the clumsy choreography of each painful fight scene.  They’ll even get a kick out of the real-world setting and the infusion of distraught teenagers, who rise to the challenge of helping a mostly naked man save his home planet and are rewarded with true love forever. For everyone else, Masters of the Universe is a textbook on how to make a bad children’s movie — take a terrible story, cast bad actors, and try to make it look as cheap as possible.  New Jersey seems to boast a population of about twelve people, but maybe that’s understandable — nobody else wanted anything to do with Masters of the Universe.

“Ordinary people caught up in extraordinary situations” — John Wagner’s foundation for the graphic novel A History of Violence, the story of a normal man caught up in a frighteningly real kill-or-be-killed world.  David Cronenberg’s film adaptation depicts the same extraordinary situation, but alters or cuts most of the extraneous plot points, resulting in a leaner film that is both more believable and intense than the original comic.

A History of Violence begins with a lengthy, continuous tracking shot, seemingly easing into the story with a relaxed nonchalance.  The same casual air continues for the first twenty minutes of the film’s running time, introducing us to Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) and his wife (Mario Bello) and children, a seemingly perfect family in an idyllic small town.

That all comes crumbling down when Tom kills two vicious robbers in self-defense, exposing his long-hidden identity to the demons of his past.  When those demons manifest in the form of the menacing Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris), the Stalls are tossed into an incredibly tense battle for survival and sanity.  The slow build-up of the first half of A History of Violence introduces a cast of realistic, human characters, and the slowly-mounting tension continuously heightens the suspense.  The film gives us just enough information to understand each scene as it unfolds, keeping us guessing all the way through—is Tom really an experienced killer with a history of violence, or is he simply an ordinary man caught up in an extraordinary situation?

Cronenberg’s film deftly maintains a level of balanced believability that makes its story so gripping — despite the insanity of the circumstances, each character reacts like a real person, and it’s that subtle storytelling that elevates A History of Violence well past its comic book roots.  Wagner’s story possesses none of the subtlety of the film, immediately beginning with a random murder and delving straight into Tom’s fight in his diner.

From that point forward, it’s obvious that Tom’s hiding dark secrets, and the eventual revelation leads into a long backstory substantially different than the brief glimpse of Tom’s past we get in the film.  We discover Tom committed all his misdeeds as a teenager, alongside his friend Richie; in the movie, Richie (William Hurt) is a mobster, Tom’s brother, and the evil Tom must ultimately confront to end his cycle of violence.

Despite the Tom of Wagner’s graphic novel seeming like a more normal everyman than Mortensen’s character, the comic strings together explosions, shootouts, and insanely evil forces.  Even the film’s fantastic characterization is nowhere to be found — Tom’s son “Buzz” throws out lame catchphrases, and his wife’s quick acceptance of his bloody past is almost laughably simplistic contrasted with the emotionally-wrenching fracture that comes between Mortensen and Maria Bello.

Vince Locke’s rough art continuously felt like the bare minimum of functionality needed to convey Wagner’s story — only a few rare scenes stood out or managed to exaggerate the horror of Tom’s ordeal.  The black-and-white sketchbook ugliness may be in keeping with the story’s tone, but with Cronenberg at the reins, A History of Violence tells a better story and wraps it in a superior package of haunting cinematography and an understated score.   Where Wagner’s comic tells a contained story that leaves little to the imagination, the film’s ending can only leave us yearning for more, as if A History of Violence was a glimpse into the lives of real people that’s over far too soon.

Cinema as a form of entertainment has been around for about a century, now, though its constant evolution has ensured that the films of 2010 don’t look or work much like the films of 1950. The way movies convey drama, for instance, has evolved considerably in the past fifty years, thanks in large part to the changes in camera technology.

Take Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, for example. The film derives its absolutely incredible intensity from hand-held camerawork, moving in so close to the characters that its impossible not to feel tightly linked to every moment that plays out on the screen. Scenes filmed in the cramped confines of compact cars never betray the fact that a camera is in the midst of actors ducking in and out of shots with precise timing, and as a result it’s one of the most immersive examples of cinematography in movie history. By being invisible, the camera performs miracles.

Which brings us to Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, a game that hews closer to the realm of Hollywood high adventure than perhaps any video game since the medium was born. Nathan Drake’s globe-spanning, Indiana Jonesian adventure comes alive with beautiful, immaculately-detailed environments, delightful character interaction, and one unbelievable set piece after another. But like Cuarón’s Children of Men, the real marvel is at work behind the scenes — Uncharted 2 is such a perfectly designed video game, it comes closer to achieving the storytelling power of the movies than I could have possibly expected.

Despite the limited speed of the Playstation 3’s Blu-Ray drive, Uncharted 2 continuously streams its lush world with nary a hitch, and loading screens only show up between clearly defined sections or episodes of the game.  Even the most exciting moments of powerfully cinematic games like Mass Effect 2 take a break to load with some frequency; not Uncharted 2.  Among Thieves’ train section illustrates Naughty Dog’s development chops, standing out as the most breathtaking moment of a game filled with unbelievable spectacles; the jungle streams in seamlessly, the train jerks and groans along its track, the enemies advance through boxcars to close in on Drake’s position — and it never once stutters.

Essentially, what we’re talking about is momentum, and a lot of it.  And while the train chapter of the game is probably the most obviously wowing, I found myself more impressed by the environmental changes Naughty Dog could pull off while still leaving Drake’s actions completely in the hands of the player.  Last generation, fluidly animated cinematic cutscenes in games were the method of choice to convey over-the-top dramatic moments, and they were often aided by quick time events to keep the player involved.  Just think of God of War II’s intense final battle against Zeus, or Resident Evil 4’s knife fight against Krauser.  Both used cinematics to do things with camera angles and character animation you wouldn’t usually see in the directly controllable portions of the game.  But in Uncharted 2, Naughty Dog affects massive changes to their environments without a single second of hesitation.  One second Drake is hiding behind a desk in an office building, firing at a crew of mercenaries — the next second he’s staggering to retain his balance as the building begins to crumble and tip over.  Full player control?  Still there.

Every second is made all the more impressive by the character animation, no doubt bolstered by a fantastic motion capture crew.  When Uncharted 2 does transition to cutscenes, it happens so instantly they retain that essence of seamlessness — it feels like the camera has just taken control for a moment.  Other games employ much more obvious triggers for cutscenes that suddenly find your character in a different position than you’d been just moments before, when in control.  But Uncharted 2 makes it all seem natural and authentic, a testament to the balance between storytelling and interactivity Naughty Dog has created.  Games in the future may trend closer to being movies with bits and pieces of interactivity (Heavy Rain springs to mind), but if anything finds a better mesh of cinema and game, it’ll likely be Uncharted 3.  Naughty Dog has taken the best pieces of bombastic high adventure film and incorporated it into a compelling video game experience, without sacrificing the power of player control.  It’s like being guided through the coolest movie ever.  And that is good game design.

I’ve never been to war.  I’ve never been shot at, never had my life seriously threatened.  I’ve never killed another human being, or seen one die.

It is impossible for the reality of any of those sensations to be fully conveyed to someone who has never experienced them.  No film, no matter how powerful or insightful, could truly encapsulate those feelings.  But as Tim O’Brien wrote in “How to Tell a True War Story,”

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things they have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.

The Hurt Locker is a true war story.  It may be impossible to understand war without living it, but the film captures the essence of that experience.  Through remarkable cinematography and utterly convincing  performances, it communicates the intensity, the fear, the confusion of desert warfare with a calm sense of authority.  If it wasn’t such good filmmaking, it would be all too easy to believe the events were completely real.

Instead of the traditional angle of battle-hardened footsoldiers on the front lines of combat, The Hurt Locker focuses on a small Army bomb squad, a group of men faced with the most unpredictable and fearsome element of guerrilla warfare.  It is the threat of the unknowable that lends The Hurt Locker its incredible sense of tension; even with its protagonist bulked up in protective bomb gear, the omnipresent danger makes him and his squad seem naked and exposed in the wide open streets of Baghdad.

Nearly every scene in the film is intense and riveting, but it never cashes in its audience’s emotional investment with cheap tricks.  There are no shocking plot twists — in fact, The Hurt Locker does a remarkable job portraying the lives of three soldiers and their experiences in war without trying to tie them into a more grandiose plot.  There is no storyline here, no villain — just the day in, day out threat of death.  There are no random explosions, no contrived conversations.  Even the tenuous camaraderie James and Sanborn develop is strained, natural.

The long moments of eerie stillness in The Hurt Locker become its most compelling because the potential for death always lingers, always hangs in the air (the sparing use of music also highlights the emptiness of many a scene).  The cinematography bolsters the tense atmosphere with tight shots and expert hand-held camera work.  Even though the shaky cameras depict the action from close-up like authentic war time documentaries, plenty of shots still convey the scope of the desert and the rubble-strewn city hiding homemade bombs under plastic bags and broken concrete.

Despite how accurately The Hurt Locker depicts the middle east, perhaps the most powerful shot in the film comes when James returns homes.  A wide shot of cereal boxes in an empty Publix, seemingly stretching across both ends of the screen and into infinity, cause a man who once risked his life on a daily basis to look hopelessly lost.

It is rare for a war movie, especially one about bombs, to be so captivating when no explosions are erupting on the screen.  No doubt writer Mark Boal basing the script on real experiences made The Hurt Locker the powerful film it is, but the work is subtle.  Since there’s no flashy dialogue, the actors all but assume the identities of the characters.  Watching each of them grapple with the war in their own way begs the question: how many true war stories from Iraq are out there even now, just waiting to be told?

Most of them never will be, but The Hurt Locker tells their essence.  No moral.  No rectitude.  Just people.

Hayao Miyazaki is, undeniably, one of the most talented and celebrated filmmakers in the history of Japan.  Not that his ability need only be measured against that of his countrymen; short of Walt Disney and the rising star of Pixar, no other animation company in the world exists to match Miyazki’s own Studio Ghibli. My first exposure to his work was Princess Mononoke, and I instantly latched onto it as the best animated film I’d ever seen.  It was visually stunning and thematically complex, altogether different from anything I’d seen before.

And it remained my favorite for at least half a decade, even as I’ve journeyed back through Ghibli’s productions.  Now, I haven’t yet seen them all — there’s something intensely frightening about the prospect of there being no more Miyazaki for me to experience for the very first time.  After watching absolutely wonderful films such as Spirited Away and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, I was just as enraptured by Miyazaki’s creative talent, but growing more secure in the notion that Princess Mononoke was the height of his craft.

Then I saw Lupin.  And, a couple weeks later, I saw it again.  And again, after a few months.  With the exception of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (a hopelessly addicting and energizing work of animation), no other movie or television series has penetrated my mind so thoroughly as to be an evening’s entertainment three times in less than a year.  Now, when I think of Princess Mononoke, I still see it as Miyazaki’s grandest vision, examining the spirit of mankind, celebrating the mysticism of nature, and questioning the interaction of those two worlds, that’s not really what he does best.  His skill, reduced to its purest form, is instilling an incomparable sense of life, soul, and adventure into two dimensional drawings.  My Neighbor Totoro and Lupin III show that Miyazaki is at his best on the smaller scale, and The Castle of Cagliostro is quite possibly the most hilarious, heartwarming, and fun heist film ever made.  Maybe it’s not quite a heist movie, in classic Lupin form, but it is an exercise in pure adventure, with the charismatic thief at the top of his form and at a pinnacle of lovability that he’d never quite reach again.

Unlike his heavily fantasy-laden works, Lupin is a movie more or less grounded in reality.  There are no mystical forest creatures, no airships or magical powers.  Yet somehow, Miyazaki manages to perfectly balance the real-world setting with Lupin’s absurd antics without ruining the believability of the film.  In one of the movie’s greatest — and most ridiculous — moments, Lupin bungles his meticulous plan to use a rope to get from one steep roof precipice of Cagliostro’s castle to another, and ends up leaping the distance in great cartoony bounds, bear hugging the sheer wall and holding on for dear life.  It’s entirely impossible, but by subverting our expectations and showing Lupin succeed in a wholly unexpected way, the warm appeal of Miyazaki’s presentation makes the scene a laugh-out-loud good time rather than an oh, please cringe-inducer.

The Castle of Cagliostro immortalized Lupin and no doubt helped the obscenely popular franchise continue for a solid three decades.  It’s almost a shame that Miyazaki’s work with the character is so brilliantly perfect and charming; when protagonist and director both shine so brightly, you know later efforts may never be able to capture that same quintessence of movie magic.  Of course, Miyazaki has continued to direct incredible works of animation, but with Lupin stealing the favorite slot in my heart, I wish the pair could be reunited once again, just to see what would happen.