The Hurt Locker (B) Kathyrn Bigelow, to her credit, has stopped trying to be the tough girl on the playground. That is, while she understands all the tropes and idioms of action and violence, she's developed a sense of proportion in their use. In this case, the story of a bomb disposal tech in Iraq, her skills let her give the feeling of randomness that a job in that field has over one's destiny. (The opening scene gives us a careful, by-the-book disposal expert who dies in spite of his caution, and the rest of the movie's about another disposal expert whose recklessness seems to work in his favor.)
World's Greatest Dad (C+) A 'Heathers' like satire where Robin Williams plays a failing teacher saddled with a hateful little homunculus of a son. The son's death, (from accidental auto-erotic asphyxiation-ew.) leads to a chain of events where the boy gets credited with a depth of spirit he never really had. It loses it's nerve near the end, but if Robin Williams' character had played his cards through, the movie would've been veering into even darker waters than it was already.
Big Fan (B-) It's a throwback to movies of the 70's, where the lead didn't have a character arc. What I mean is, in the process of the story unfolding, the lead actor doesn't grow from his experiences. So the story is about why the character is what he is instead of taking him from point a to point b. I refer, of course, to Bob Rafelson's excellent 'Five Easy Pieces', where Jack Nicholson plays the estranged son of a family of wealthy over-achievers.
In the case of 'Big Fan', Patton Oswalt (yep, him again.) plays a lumpen sad-sack who's only joy in life is following the fortunes of his favorite football team, and specifically, its star quarterback. Because his life is so narrow in it's focus, a chance meeting with his beloved player leads to a tragic outcome. Oswalt's character takes a course of action that leads him into serious legal trouble at the movie's end.
The whole tone of the movie is more than a little sad, and I suspect anyone who's a big sports fan (or, um, comic book fan, or tabletop RPG fan...) will feel a painful twinge of recognition of Oswalt's progress.
Moon (B+) Speaking of 70's movies, David Bowie's son Duncan Jones makes a bang-up debut in this feature. I'm reminded of 'Silent Running', special-effects whiz Douglas Trumbull's directorial debut. The art direction makes more than a nod to Kubrick's '2001', and covers up the low budget. Sam Rockwell is turning out to be one of my favorite actors these days, and extra bonus: Kevin Spacey's nod to 'HAL' turns out to be a good guy after all. I wonder how Jones' next film will turn out, assuming that he's getting a bigger budget...
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