CHLOE

The Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan ranges from mysterious and tantalizing entertainments to polemics that are laborious and impenetrable, but with Chloe he has simply made the most entertaining film of his career. If sex, deception, paranoia and the forbidden are objects of cinematic interest, then here’s a movie that is good enough to have come out in the Fall instead of in Spring.

This is a film that announces the setting of the rich and privileged within the opening scenes, with Julianne Moore as Catherine, a gynecologist and Liam Neeson as, David, a professor of music as owners of a post-modern glass house with plush beds and fireplaces and marble in every room. Invading their affluent lifestyle is high-paid escort Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) who sleeps with men for money but comes onto Moore at the ladies’ room of a posh upscale restaurant. David never seems as interested in his wife Catherine who ingratiates dinner guests but doesn’t bother a nod to his wife.

Further suspect of David’s disinterest is that on the night of his birthday he misses his flight back home which causes eyebrows to raise from all Catherine’s friends and associates who have attended a surprise birthday smash. David’s lack of apology is further troubling to Catherine. And then there is 17-year old Michael (Max Thieriot) who is sneaking a girl into his bedroom at night.

It is Catherine who is on the verge of a midlife crisis, ahem, this is a different take than putting a man on the spot every time. But shouldn’t she get some proof that her husband is cheating on her? In another incidental meeting with Chloe the idea of entrapment crosses Catherine’s mind. Catherine hires Chloe to meet David by chance in public, flirt with him, talk naughty with him… the ground rules are never specifically set, at least, not according to Chloe.

So Chloe is hired to go find David to see if he does anything bored married men with their heads down their pants do. But Chloe goes beyond the flirting by seducing him, groping him, taking him on a ride first at a menagerie and that at a hotel. Catherine angrily scalds Chloe for not following directions, but alas, she wants to hear more. And insidiously and ingeniously the film wraps us up in its decadent journey which is all the tastier once Catherine and Chloe begin a heated affair.

Egoyan is the director of such swanky sex-art movies as “Exotica” and “Where the Truth Lies” which dealt with obsession to the breaking point. With his new film he seems to be asking, “How deep and tangibly real is the actual obsession?” and he keeps us guessing with how mischievous David is, how reliable Chloe to sticking to her employer’s requests, and just how credible it would be to really analyze Catherine’s fears and insecurities. The outcome is sublime in its unpredictability, although the end result is more of a captivating entertainment than of a masterpiece of human dissection and dissertation.

What happens is certainly off the deep end from where it started, but Egoyan does fit in an erotic lesbian sex scene that’s too leering to resist. At his most contentious, Egoyan works too hard to put his characters in isolated corners in the final scene to underline their separation and detachment. So the film is not perfect. But the film keeps you buzzed in anticipation.

But it works at times nearly as good as the best scenes of “Eyes Wide Shut” and the films of Roman Polanski such as “Frantic” and “Bitter Moon.” The suspense of the film gets you lusting and the actors are so pitch-perfect in their tremulousness that you can practically feel their pulse.

Go to the official site at http://www.sonyclassics.com/chloe/

Grade: B+

HOT TUB TIME MACHINE

The gags splash left and right non-stop in Hot Tub Time Machine, but the gags do just that – they make you gag. Low brow humor is expected when you have such a knowingly cheesy title with the aspirations of a Farrelly Brothers’ brain fart. But instead of something fresh and newly imagined, the movie starts with vomit and dog poo depravity, then aims lower.


Three men and a barely post-teen virgin hit the slopes at a mountain resort and end up vacuumed into the time travel whirlpool that is their hot tub, sending them back to 1986 as their young selves, albeit, they only see their young selves when they look into a mirror.

The moments of trapped in the past recognition is, ah, tubular. The movie’s relish in bad taste is likeable for a few moments. The T&A shots are in full schwing. But the movie trades cool scores for blow chunks.

Eleven years after “American Pie” we have now arrived at what I think is the all-time grossest visual joke. (Spoiler alert) It involves a bet where the time travelers use their knowledge of sports history to their advantage, and the stakes are fellatio. If the time travelers win, a dude’s wife has to perform. If the time travelers lose (how could they?), they have to perform on each other. Let’s just say the butterfly effect (nods to the Ashton Kutcher flick “Butterfly Effect”), has changed the course of history.

The filmmakers didn’t forget the money shot, but one wishes they would have, and this being a turn of the 21st century comedy, of course there is going to be a nasty shouldn’t-have-gone-there money shot. Anyway, intermittently there are some laughs that are created out of that thing called witty dialogue. Not that it was likely that the script was sold on that virtue.

This doesn’t feel like a written screenplay although it is credited to three writers. It feels like a compendium of lewd jokes and pranks that the writers might have put together after crashing some fraternity parties. Perhaps the writers did most of their work during a 4 a.m. bender while “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder” was playing in the background.

On board in front of the camera are John Cusack, Craig Robinson and Rob Corddry who play three middle-aged friends all screwed up in their own formula-sealed ways. Right away, one notices that Cusack, with his low-key mood caught between hipster and neurotic, has the cleanest role in the movie. He is involved in less puke hi-jinks than anyone else. With titles like “Must Love Dogs” and “2012” on his recent filmography it is time for Cusack to get back to being a serious actor again.

As the gentle bear type, Robinson (TV’s “The Office”) is dealing with having become a cuckold, as in, his wife recently slept with another guy. When he blasts to the past, he feels guilty about cheating on his wife even though he has been the schlep. In an uproarious middle aged man whining episode, he calls his future wife (who is only 9-years old) and scolds the Dickens out of her. I also really liked another moment when Robinson channels the Black Eyed Peas on stage and the crowd gradually learns to pump to his (futuristic) jive.

The third guy, the loud mouth, belongs to Corddry (I enjoyed his intolerant government agent in “Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay”) whose sliminess practically drools out of the corners of his mouth. He’s less propelled by the promise of returning to the present time than he is with tracking down sluts. Corddry would have a chance to be funny if he wasn’t so lecherously creepy minute-to-minute. I almost forgot the dork (Clark Duke) who plays Cusack’s nephew who is the butt of all of Corddry’s jokes.

Stealing scenes as the bellhop is Crispin Glover (remember George McFly?), whose predicaments cross silent film era shenanigans of Buster Keaton and a post-modern Asian Extreme movie – we keep waiting for him to literally lose his arm. Chevy Chase is in this too, but has no funny lines. With or without these guys I’d still have the same reaction to the movie: I can’t recommend “Hot Tub Time Machine” not because I was bored but because I was grossed out unwillingly too many times.

Go to the official site at http://hottubtimemachinemovie.com/

Grade: C+

THE BOUNTY HUNTER

The word staggering is an odd double-sided one that can be used in two ways. The first way reminds me of when I discovered the mind-expanding films of Oliver Stone in my youth, or what I felt like after Darren Aronofsky’s first couple of pictures that I found so visually sensational that experiencing them became an out of body experience. It’s also a word that can be used disparagingly. Indeed I found the new Gerard Butler/Jennifer Aniston comedy The Bounty Hunter to be staggering, as in staggeringly awful. After it was over, I felt more than askew but actually frazzled – in an intensely agitated sort of way.


The genre is romantic comedy but the effect is feel bad, arghh, so many negative emotions are conveyed in this movie. Butler (“The Ugly Truth” rings a bell) and Aniston (“Management” rings a bell) are divorcees that find themselves cuffed to each other in a plot that could be solved in fifteen minutes before being squeezed out into one hundred and eleven minutes. Butler, as ex-cop Milo Boyd, is now a bounty hunter assigned to track down his ex-wife Aniston, as Daily News reporter Nicole Hurley, who has jumped bail.

The plot takes place up and around New Jersey and New York, and not cross-country, like that DeNiro bounty hunter classic “Midnight Run” (1988). So it should be a rather short escort job but instead it is stretched-out to gratuitous lengths (shouldn’t the car ride be less than an hour to police headquarters?). But instead of reaching destination, they throw the dice at an Atlantic City casino and also get shot at by goons on the highway. All this and ugly banter and not to mention proposed tattoo chair torture is what protracts the length.

What also rings a bell is the act of violence towards women, but also in store is persistent violence against wimpy, horny men. Jason Sudeikis (“SNL” current cast member) comes close to making the wimpy, horny and desperate guy almost funny but doesn’t quite pull it off even though his nerdy mustache is promising. But didn’t we come to the movie for a dose of machismo?

The real man of the movie, the marquee pull, is Butler with his buff meatloaf charisma. To his credit, Butler seems to have taken the cotton balls out of his mouth and talks more normal in this movie. He still has problems as an actor with conveying concern for anybody on the screen other than himself.

Aniston, with her meticulous suntan and sleeveless tops and skirts attire, is a generally attractive actress who is playing yet another woman who doesn’t play victim so easily. Although he-man Butler is the one who immediately locks her into a truck within minutes of meeting up with her in the movie. In a calmer mode, before bedtime, he handcuffs her to the least comfortable spot on the bedpost.

Now there are some people who wouldn’t recognize the violence towards women is perpetrated in this movie because they have become way too desensitized to see (generic) violence when it happens, and those are probably the same people who saw “Alice in Wonderland” and thought it was “beautiful.” We live in a pop culture zeitgeist right now when mean and malicious is what prevails as hip, and in a time when most people have never seen what a nice movie looks like.

All of this must sound like I objected to “The Bounty Hunter” because it is offensive in its objectivity of women, random violence, and violence against horny nerds. No, I object because the film is so idiotic that it makes “Ms. Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous” look crime-smart and savvy in comparison. Cathy Moriarty and Peter Greene look lost and disinterested as the bad guys navigating a non-sensical plot that has something to do with a key figure whose fake suicide was actually a murder.

What is supposed to happen at a romantic comedy is feel-good, as if you need to be reminded. And in this tale of ex-spouses who scuffle with each other, and spit insults, and then find commonality, rebirth and renewed love in their relationship, is not feel-good. I imagine it is enough to make you want to fall out of love with the person next to you at the theater, in resentment of that person for dragging you to this staggeringly awful movie.

Go to the official site at: http://www.thepursuitbegins.com/?hs308=BHR102
 
Grade: D-

GREENBERG

Greenberg is a movie about repellant people that just so happens to be fascinating, but only if you are into movies about extreme head cases. “I am really trying to do nothing for awhile,” Roger says, “I am doing nothing deliberately.” Stiller, as the title character Roger Greenberg, hasn’t been doing anything for years. He’s in his forties now, and hasn’t been on the verge of success since he was 25, when he almost signed a record deal but refused to cave in on the label’s compromises. The movie isn’t about his music.


Dare we say aloud what “Greenberg” is about or what Noah Baumbach’s last movie “Margot at the Wedding” was about? Hmm, no it takes too much nerve off the bat to say what it is really about. But I’ll offer my two cents later. Let’s first say that Roger’s aforementioned key quote, as implemented in the trailer, could be the attraction for audiences. Coming out of Stiller’s mouth, it sounds like a funny idea for a movie.

This is not a typical Ben Stiller movie (think 180 degrees opposite of “Zoolander.”) It is funny, but understand, it is mordantly funny. Most obviously is when Roger drafts letters to Starbucks and American Airlines as to why their superficial trendiness or small oversights in customer satisfaction merits renovation. The rest of the film’s humor is not so obvious, nor would some audiences find it funny at all. Not unless one has a taste for mordant humor.

Roger has just flown in from New York to housesit for his brother Phillip in the Hollywood Hills while he and his wife vacation in Vietnam for six weeks. The regular caretaker is the attractive and slightly plump blonde Florence (Greta Gerwig), nearly twenty years younger, whom Roger immediately leeches on. They are close to sharing intimate relations on a first and then second occasion, but then after Roger tells her “that is the dumbest story I’ve ever heard…” and “why tell me that?” he walks out on her with extremely bitter body language.

Other attempts in connection include former band mate Ivan (Rhys Ifans), the cool guy who might just be a little too beaten down by the man for Roger’s sake, and Beth (Jennifer Jason Leigh) whom while on a lunch date makes the insinuation that it certainly will not be followed by a future dinner date. The body language she exhibits, panting the restaurant staff for the check, is priceless. She’s trying not to be rude to Roger, but she is, but it is for her better self-preservation.

The house dog Mahler gets sick, perhaps from rat poison that the gardener’s laid out on the grass. You can sense the large panic and distress in Phillip over the phone (you forget what Phillip looks like in the movie since the camera views only one side of the conversation). But Roger insists that Mahler will be okay, that he can handle the vet, and the animal hospital and that nothing will happen to Mahler. But Roger doesn’t drive. This means he has to call and rely upon Florence.

What a lovely, kind and attractive girl Florence happens to be. Roger keeps coming onto her, pressing onto her, then cruelly stepping away with a caustic insult. Florence is way too good for Roger, or for any of the Rogers in the world. Mordantly funny, in a way, that she is just too good of a person to ever say “no” to somebody. In a way, she is one to get stepped on and stepped on but always apologizes but never receives an apology. She is four years out of college, she explains, and feels that she is of no value in the world.

From a wider perspective all Roger has to do is to be a responsible housesitter for six weeks, watch the dog, and not cause any harm to anybody. But he can’t handle that little, as he causes much harm to others and to himself. This is the kind of harm that is less visibly apparent. When a couple of visitors throw a house party blowup regardless to permission, instead of Roger shooing people away he joins in on the drug usage, and other carnivalesque acts. Then he hurts his friends feelings, callously and cowardly, before retreating to his own self-loathing.

What is similar to Baumbach’s lead protagonist Roger as to Nicole Kidman as Margot in his last picture, is that both of them seek love and then engender cruel rejection of the people they sought love from. Similar also is their willingness to show sensitivity and tenderness for the sake of appearing as if they have those qualities, and then turning off those qualities when it doesn’t directly benefit them. These are the definitions of borderline personality disorder, a mental disorder that is not mentioned out loud and clear in Baumbach’s films, and yet this is what he has been exploring thematically within his films.

Then again I am not a head doctor, only a film critic. So I may have misspoken. It is not conventional for a film critic to make a diagnosis on mental disorders. I looked up dozens of reviews on the web however on “Margot at the Wedding” (more insufferable, less engaging than this new film) and a small percentage of reviews willingly marked Kidman’s character as a borderline personality disorder case.

I do however want to quote the long deceased Francois Truffaut. “I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema.” With “Greenberg” Baumbach somehow gets you to laugh at the agony. Roger is a neurotic raging bull.

Go to the official site at http://www.filminfocus.com/focusfeatures/film/greenberg/

Grade: B+

GREEN ZONE

The unstable region of Baghdad following March 19, 2003 is the subject of Green Zone, the new Iraq military drama which has an action movie pulse and the presence of stalwart Matt Damon, playing Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller who is a man of sweat and non-stopping motion. Following the initial military strikes of Iraq of the invasion date, Miller’s team is unable to find any weapons of mass destruction (WMD) on mission searches. This quickly prompts skepticism in Miller’s perspective on Pentagon intelligence.


Frenetic action cameras make the promise that this is going to be a desert war movie, but let’s not mince words, we’re talking about Iraq here. No war movies set in Iraq have done bang-up business at the box office (Best Picture Oscar winner “The Hurt Locker” will make more dough in DVD sales than it did in its theatrical run), and the public has fastidiously avoided documentaries like “No End in Sight” and “Taxi to the Dark Side.”

Exception might be made for this Paul Greengrass (“The Bourne Ultimatum”) movie which has the charge of an action thriller. But when you take out all the noise it is more of a drama of a military squad at work (conducting routine field work and trying not to kill), and of course, the idea of defiance. Miller stops listening to the brass and begins consulting with CIA man Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson) and enlists a born Iraqi who calls himself Freddy (Khalid Abdalla) to guide him on his own expeditions of the truth.

The idea of Matt Damon gone rogue is a recipe for successful box office formula, as proven by the Jason Bourne series. As for Hollywood movies putting together a mainstream simplified idea of what went wrong in the early days of Iraq, as starvation and destitution ravaged the people and government anarchy wreaked vast, “Green Zone” is not entirely reliable but it is nevertheless entertaining and gives us a broad overview picture on the subject.

Other than a television clip of the real George W. on CNN, most of the characters are composites of numerous individuals. The most clear-cut wormy official is Greg Kinnear as Clark Poundstone, who is a Defense Intelligence specialist who also does the backwards job of manipulating American public opinion. Amy Ryan is the Wall Street Journalist who is deemed responsible for inaccurate press feedings to American media.

Out to find the definitive truth is Miller, whom at first tracks down various leads through Baghdad for the search of WMD’s and then figuring out no matter where he looks he is not going to find any. Instead, he goes on the hunt for one of Saddam Hussein’s men who is referred to as “the Jack of Clubs.” What doesn’t make sense if Miller’s over-reliance on Freddy, who can barely get around on his prosthetic leg yet seems to be there every time Miller needs him.

If there are any clips to be made famous from this movie it will be Damon bellowing “Put your game face on” and “Unacceptable” which he invokes with mean but sincere contempt. But the end chase sequence, as excitingly staged as it is and captured by endless multiple angles by Greengrass, becomes dramatically unacceptable – it is simplification and contrivance met at one intersection. Lest be reminded that this is a mainstream entertainment.

What makes “Green Zone” stand out is its amazing location work with its messy and jagged surroundings. Immersed into these locales makes every beat of the film palpitate with high tension. You may not believe five or six scenes (maybe more, depending on how knowledge-detail you are about the Iraq invasion) but you are never bored. Greengrass’ frenzied, fast-cutting isn’t for all audience digestive systems, but if you enjoy the Bourne’s series immediate-to-the-max urgency, then this film will draw you in as well even if you do have a contempt for composites and convenient plot structures.

Go to the official site at http://www.greenzonemovie.com/

Grade: B

SHE'S OUT OF MY LEAGUE

She’s Out of My League is an adorable sad puppy of a movie, something that keeps you laughing and sighing in disbelief. Jay Baruchel, as über-dork Kirk, is the hero with the sad eyes who doesn’t have much experience but he does have a monster ex-girlfriend that he is trying to get back with. The ex-girlfriend isn’t exactly a monster, but she’s definitely less than 7.


Kirk’s friends are generous enough to rate him a 5. He would get a 6 if he didn’t get subtraction points for having no ambition and driving a crappy car. Then he meets Molly (Alice Eve), a classified 10, who is not even aware that he is out on a date with her when they’re at a hockey game. How did this happen?

In what is a better than average script for a geek meets babe comedy, the dialogue eventually gives supporting reasons as to why Molly, an event planner, would be interested in giving Kirk, a TSA security guard, a more than fair shot. In the stretched past realistic conventions of this scenario, Molly isn’t exactly a real girl but a fantasy girl who meets all the qualified insecurities you find in a movie like this.

What’s not so surprising is that Molly’s friends are way bitchier than she is, particularly Krysten Ritter who is ready to pounce the line to Kirk’s friend, “I’m so not into you.” When Kirk and Molly are actually out on dates none of their friends matter, and the dialogue has a cute-polite and dorky-polite polish. It’s so embarrassing watching Kirk make a move on Molly that it’s a relief to see her get on top in the make-out scene. Which ends in a spill.

To be honest, I’ve been wanting to know for the past two years what it would have looked like for Kevin Sandusky to get it on with Jennifer Love Hewitt in “Tropic Thunder,” one of my favorite repeat viewings comedies along with “Hot Rod” with Andy Samberg and “Hamlet 2” with Steve Coogan. We never saw Sandusky win a Teen Choice award, but his date at the Oscars at the end of “Thunder” was with little dimples Hewitt. But in the back of my mind I wondered, can Baruchel with the right movie role put the cool in nerd again?

In this out-and-out first big movie lead role, Baruchel is a fumbling and inept neurotic that makes Woody Allen in his heyday seem more attractive in comparison. As it turns out, Kirk is such low self-esteem droop that he is hoping that Molly has a really bad defect that can bring her down more to his level. On a bell curve, Sandusky gets like a rate of 8 on the cool scale and Kirk gets about a 2.

Broad as formula, the flick sinks down to bathroom humor just like any other comedy has been compelled to do since “American Pie.” Except this time the bathroom humor can at least be given credit for shear originality, thus construed by the shaving of Kirk’s nutsack. This leads to a visual joke in the final moments that will prompt the use of those gag reflexes of yours.

To its credit there are plenty of feel-good laughs in “League,” and if there’s anything that goes sour, it’s the third act that comes on too much as a strained heart-tugger, but it’s encouraging to watch Kirk grow a pair. This is not a bonafide classic entry in the geeks comedy canon, but if anything, this is a cool hangout movie. The hangout movie only amounts to a good time though if you have a bunch of friends to watch it with you – it helps if somebody is there to take the task as commentator to make fun of Kirk non-stop.

So this makes for a minor hangout movie recommendation that could be worth one more additional viewing on DVD in the supposed future. It helps that Alice Eve, on the cover of this month’s Maxim Magazine issue, is perky and sweet on top of being a blonde bombshell. I almost want to give it one letter-grade subtraction for having us gaze at Baruchel’s hideous body for long stretches. But it does keep in common to what the movie is striving to achieve in the first place: Embarrassing laughs.

Go to the official site at http://www.getyourrating.com/

Grade: B-

ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Extravagant but missing that precious quality that connotes that thing called enjoyment. That’s the gut reaction to Alice in Wonderland. Then again, it’s dicey to call this expensive 3D film “extravagant” because the visuals are dreck. But that is what happens when you try to turn a classic into something hip and contemporary for a new generation.


For reasons that are never explained to good purpose, the world is now called Underland and not Wonderland, although Alice (Mia Wasikowska, acting with her heavy and tense brow) has returned for the second time. She cannot remember the first time she was down there. But the creatures remember her, and the White Rabbitt (voiced by Michael Seen) and Cheshire Cat (voiced by Stephen Fry) act as her most obliging aides.

Alice is 19, and she has been thrown a garden party so a nerdy suitor can propose to her. Alice is no longer a girl but not quite a woman, and she excuses herself into a hedge maze before falling down a rabbit hole. These are the few fleeting enchanting scenes in the entire film. Although Fry as the Cheshire Cat manages to deliver lines that make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Much dialogue is spent with Alice convinced that it is just a very deep dream, and something will spark to wake her up. In her entire visit in Underland, she is looking to get out. In earlier incarnations of “Wonderland” the rabbit hole was a wonderful place to get lost in. Now in director Tim Burton’s muddy fantasia the return to the real world isn’t soon enough.

Movie buffs will look back at this in twenty years and observe this as the weakest use of 3D (if you happen to see it in 3D IMAX). After the dazzling depth of field of “Avatar,” the 3D experience of Burton’s “Wonderland” is seriously lackadaisical. Magical dragonfly organisms are lacking texture and look airy. Tweedledee and Tweedledum look like a couple of synthetic mushrooms with the authenticity of an old Nintendo game. Where’s the magic? The grubby plains and dead trees certainly don’t add up to a soothing sight either.

Liberal acts of creativity are demonstrated by punching up the Mad Hatter as a bigger character than in the Lewis Carroll books. The Mad Hatter, whose verbal patter is all razzmatazz, has to be rescued from the Red Queen before she commands execution (“Off with his head” is repeated endlessly), but you feel like they’re bigger players only so Burton (“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Sweeney Todd”) can spend more time with his favorite actors Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.

Adventure builds to a climactic showdown between Alice and a Jabberwocky beast, and it is by this time that Burton’s entire visual palette for this film seems inspired by the work of Zack Snyder (“300”) and the videogame “Shadows of the Colossus.” Burton, in his newfound obsession for playing Frankenstein on beloved light-hearted classics, is the wrong director.

Isn’t the world hungry for “The Wizard of Oz” like beauty again? Another “Alice in Wonderland” adaptation could have facilitated that kind of movie lover’s craving, that craving for candyland fantasia. I would have chosen Tarsem Singh (“The Fall”) to direct. Burton is wrong, dead wrong, in his methodology and approach because his head seems stuck in the swamp.

I look forward to a new adaptation even though it would be a couple of decades before anybody tries this again. For the meantime, I’ll take the 1951 animated film of the same title, or Hiyao Miyazaki’s 2002 animated film “Spirited Away” which is as enchanting as any fantasy, and seeming closest cousin to Lewis Carroll, as any film in say the last twenty years. Take a look, Burton, wake the child inside again. File this “Alice” under biggest blunders of all time.

Go to the offical site at http://adisney.go.com/disneypictures/aliceinwonderland/

Grade: C-

"THE HURT LOCKER VERSUS AVATAR: HISTORIC OSCAR CHOICE"

The 82nd Annual Academy Awards this Sunday, March 7th, will be a watershed moment in Oscar history. Will the Academy celebrate “The Hurt Locker” or will it celebrate “Avatar?” I don’t think any of the other nominees have a chance except “Inglorious Basterds” which has a longshot. But bottom line it is not a realistic contender.


James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow used to be married, from 1989 to 1991, which would consist of Cameron’s “The Abyss” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” years. Now they are competing for Best Director and Best Picture.

These two strong contenders have nothing to fear against the other nominees, although two months ago I thought “Up in the Air” was the strongest candidate. Tarantino’s “Basterds” has the most solid craftsmanship of any nominee but its’ circle of fans are narrower. Other nominees include “The Blind Side,” “District 9,” “An Education,” “Precious,” “A Serious Man” and “Up.”

In any given year, a couple of the other nominees could have been the leading horse. But the alchemy this year favored “The Hurt Locker” and “Avatar” and so it is futile to look beyond those two before the crucial countdown to the Oscars.

When “The Hurt Locker” was released on June 26th last year, nobody went. It was an acclaimed juggernaut, but the box office receipts got trampled on by a certain Michael Bay picture – something about metal clashing robots called, hmm, I think it was called “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.” It was more about metal clashing.

Bigelow made an exceptional war picture about soldiers trying to kill less people than usual for a war zone setting, focusing in on an Explosives Ordinance Disposal (EOD) team that defuses bombs in Baghdad. Let’s not blow anything up, is the attitude. At its center is a completely enigmatic protagonist, Jeremy Renner as Staff Sergeant William James. When the movie isn’t out on field, you wonder at the back-at-base scenes on what’s making this guy tick?

Now we have “Avatar,” which opened on December 18th and has since become the biggest film in the world with over $1.8 billion dollars. Theaters probably made more money at the snack bars for “Avatar,” since I’d like to assume that the few people who saw “The Hurt Locker” in theaters were too riveted to leave their seats.

“Avatar” is a superior popcorn picture that happens to be about more than just metal clashing. It has environmental and imperialism themes. But it is also an overloaded extravaganza that patches together prosaic episodes so Cameron can have an excuse to let his visual imagination go wild.

That’s not to take anything away from Cameron’s talent. His 3D world has astonishing depth, with jungles more colorful – and vast – than any Rudyard Kipling book. While critics have taken a smack at the flawed cast of characters, I actually want to praise Sam Worthington – he is like the tougher meathead version of Ewan McGregor.

Obviously one reason “Avatar” has grossed nearly $2 billion worldwide is the repeat business. Movies that have become smash hits historically have gotten there because junior enthusiastic movie fans went twice.

But in the future, one I can clearly foresee, I imagine that “The Hurt Locker” will be met with endless repeat DVD viewings. This repeat viewing phenomenon happens, whether fans are conscious or not, because of the innumerable nuances and surprises that can be discovered and analyzed within the film.

How do Staff Sergeant’s squad members feel towards him within different parts of the film? Would they hang out if they ever make it back to the States? Does his heart race faster when he is trying to save lives or when he is trying to chase and shoot down terrorists? Who are the background people of “The Hurt Locker,” the Iraqis? There are different shades and different stories to all of them, while Cameron’s take on the Navi are mostly two-dimensional – his characters may be blue but they are square and conventional.

“Avatar” is more mainstream and worldwide friendly than “The Hurt Locker.” But the industry loves “The Hurt Locker” because it was a film that frankly surprised them. In its thrilling, but lack of firepower as its method of suspense way, “The Hurt Locker” gets audiences adrenaline going, but fans of the film are sensing that it is a different type of adrenaline. It draws you into its breathlessness, and yes, suspense. “Avatar” flabbergasts your senses.

That is what makes “Avatar” an ephemeral experience as opposed to “The Hurt Locker” which is built to last. Bigelow’s achievement is that she made a non-preachy Iraq war movie that exists entirely in scenes that encompass potential danger, with layers upon layers that fascinate you in repeat viewings.

But if “Avatar” does win it will accomplish what “Star Wars” didn’t in 1977 which is that a slambang adventure blockbuster can have the right to be worthy of gold sealed Best Picture status. This could also make up for the fact that “The Dark Knight,” the truly great blockbuster of our time, wasn’t even nominated in 2008.

By “The Hurt Locker” sealing a win it proves that an underperforming movie at the box office can make a phenomenal turnaround and take the gold. Let’s recall that “The Shawshank Redemption” was not a smash when it opened in 1994 but still captured seven Oscar nominations.

A victory for either “The Hurt Locker” or “Avatar” will make this a watershed victory for Oscar history. On a personal level, who knows what travails took place in the Cameron/Bigelow divorce some twenty years ago, but a victory for Bigelow could be sweet revenge. By the way, the Academy sees this as an opportunity to award the first woman ever with the Best Director prize. But by awarding Bigelow, they are also awarding genuine substance.