Best Live Action Short Film of 2009

The Door is an Irish film about an incident that occurred in the former Soviet Union. I suppose by now most people have heard that the subject of the film is the aftermath of the accident at Chernobyl, but at the start of the film, we only know that an entire town is being evacuated. We are not explicitly told why. I first suspected that I was watching a Holocaust film, but the more contemporary clothing dissuaded me from that conclusion. We follow one family, primarily through a series of flashbacks, as they deal with the declining health of the daughter. When we see the end credits' reference to Chernobyl, the film makes sense in retrospect, but that doesn't make it any less bleak. It is a well-made film, certainly, but this is pretty dark material to watch.

Sweden's Instead of Abracadabra is the funniest of the nominated films. It's about a rather inept self-identified magician who still lives at home with his parents. He's really terrible at his craft, having seriously injured his mother in the famous trick of inserting a sword into a box containing a person. The magician's father wants him to take a more serious job, but the younger man knows that he can show everyone his talent and win the heart of a lovely nurse who's just moved in next door to his family's farm. There are many laughs to be had watching this film; it's the only one of the five that is primarily designed as a comic piece. After the screening I watched, almost everyone was repeating the magician's catch phrase of "Chimay!" (or something to that effect), suggesting that it was the one that stuck with people the longest.

Kavi is a co-production of India and the United States and deals with serious subject matter in a very restrained, adult way. The title character is an Indian boy whose family is forced to work at a brick factory in what amounts to slave labor. They are attempting to pay off a debt by making bricks, but we quickly get the sense that their debt will never be allowed to be paid in full. Despite efforts by government officials and activists to rescue the workers and despite attempts on Kavi's part to flee, the bosses always seem to succeed. This is not necessarily an easy film to watch, given how unflinchingly it depicts the forced labor that some in India must endure, but it is clear in its message and offers a sense of hope that young people like Kavi might be saved from a life of endless, brutal work. The writer-director, Gregg Helvey, graduated from one of my alma maters, the University of Southern California, but I was already impressed by this film (his master's thesis) before the end credits revealed that piece of information.

Miracle Fish is an Australian film about a little boy who, on his birthday, seeks refuge in the nurse's office at his school. He's been teased by some of the other boys at school for his lack of presents (save for the title fish, an odd piece of plastic that curves to tell your fortune or something—I never quite got a handle on this), and he just wants to get away from everyone for a while. When he wakes up from his nap, the school is empty. At first, the boy is very happy because it means he won't be teased any longer about being poor, but there are signs that something odd and dangerous has occurred. Much of the second half of the film is incredibly dark and rather frightening. Even though the subject of the film is a young boy, this is definitely not a movie for children.

The New Tenants is mostly just an actor's showcase, and as such, I found it to be a little dull. The title characters are a gay couple who have just moved into an apartment that was the site of a gruesome murder. We watch as one strange neighbor after another appears at their door, each one adding a little piece of information to the puzzle of what happened in the apartment. A couple of recognizable actors appear in this short, notably Vincent D'Onofrio and Kevin Corrigan, but the others (all character actors, unsurprisingly) are vaguely recognizable as well. The plausibility of the sequence of events was a bit much for me, and the ending is just a bit too bizarre. To be honest, I also didn't particularly enjoy the rather stereotypical depiction of gay characters either. At this point in our history, do we still need to be trafficking in stereotypes for the sake of overacting?

Oscar Winner: The New Tenants. I suspect that the quirkiness of the film coupled with the performances of actors many of the voters probably know personally was just too tempting to overlook. It is certainly an accomplished film, but I still feel unsatisfied with the ending, which seems to take the movie and its characters firmly out of the realm of the "real" where the film has (perhaps absurdly) kept them throughout the narrative.

My Choice: Kavi is the most accomplished of the five films. I admired it on almost every level: acting, directing, cinematography, you name it. It's also one of the most emotional films, and I think it earns the sympathy for its characters honestly. 

Best Animated Short Film of 2009

French Roast portrays the dilemma faced by a middle-to-upper class man sitting in a cafe who discovers that he has forgotten his wallet and cannot pay for his coffee. He's already been accosted by a homeless man begging for change—actually, he's accosted several times throughout the movie by this same man—when he finds himself without any cash to pay the bill. So he keeps ordering coffee, and a strange cast of characters comes and goes around him throughout a very long, odd day. It's a cute movie, a French import, with very little dialogue, so the characters have to convey the emotions they are feeling without getting to say much. The central character is particularly expressive, and there's a little old nun who's quite hilarious.

The title character of Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty is a very loud old woman who's retelling of the fairy tale quickly devolves into an obvious rehashing of her own grievances against those who are younger and have better "muscle tone." She's allegedly telling her granddaughter the story in order to help the young girl fall asleep, but the grandmother figure is so incredibly obnoxious and frightening, it would be tough to rest around her. And her Irish brogue is almost impenetrable at times, making the plot itself somewhat tough to follow. The film's creators have certainly done a consistent job with her characterization here, but I don't think I'd want to see an entire feature with her at its center.

The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte) is a Spanish tale about the struggle between the Grim Reaper and a "doctor" for the soul of an elderly woman. The doctor's task is, apparently, to rescue people as they are being taken away by Death; if he manages to revive the person, then Death has to wait for another chance at the body. The Reaper is, naturally, reluctant to lose out to the doctor. The funniest sequence in this film, to me, is a series of deaths and revivals as the body of the old woman is yanked back and forth between the two men, and there are chase scenes that rival those of the old Tom & Jerry cartoons. This film, like French Roast, relies on very little dialogue, but unlike that other film, The Lady and the Reaper is much more action-oriented.

Logorama has a very clever idea as its premise. The logos for various companies are the characters or places. It's a world of nothing but brand names and images, and part of the fun of watching the film is seeing how many of them you can recognize. The Michelin Man is, for example, a police officer. Actually, there are several Michelin Men here, all of them cops and all of them rather foul-mouthed. Ronald McDonald is a criminal trying to escape capture who takes Big Boy hostage outside a restaurant frequented by the Pringles faces. Visually, this film is quite stunning to watch. The plot, however, is rather flat and disjointed. I enjoyed seeing such icons as the AOL man walking or running around the city created by the use of large logos, but aside from the visual delights here, I don't think the film holds up very well.

A Matter of Loaf and Death is the latest adventure of Nick Park's famous duo of Wallace and Gromit. They're working as bakers, with Gromit (as usual) doing the bulk of the work and keeping Wallace out of trouble (or rescuing him when he does get into trouble). Wallace falls in love with Piella, a former Bake O Lite girl. It's up to Gromit to prove—in his silent, long-suffering way—to prove that Piella is the person responsible for the deaths of twelve bakers and is now looking to have Wallace complete her "baker's dozen." As with the other Wallace and Gromit films, A Matter of Loaf and Death has wonderful sight gags, such as the method Gromit has to use to wake up Wallace in the mornings. And the puns are delightful. A personal favorite of mine is the poster for Citizen Canine on Gromit's wall. This is the only one of the nominated films to use stop-motion animation, and it's as much of a gem as the other Wallace and Gromit films I've seen over the years.

Oscar Winner: Logorama had to have been a surprise choice in this category. It is certainly inventive in its use of different corporate logos, but its plot was merely a rehash of any typical cop show of the past thirty or more years.

My Choice: A Matter of Loaf and Death is such a charming, delightful fun. There's so much to admire here visually, and the storyline is just dark enough to keep an older viewer interested. However, if you also like tender romantic moments, you can't do much better than the gentleness with which Park handles the scenes between Gromit and Fluffles, Piella's very sensitive poodle. (Fluffles has some of the longest and most expressive eyelashes you'll ever see, by the way.) Gromit is one of my favorite animated characters of all time. No one does a slow burn better than he does.

Up in the Air (2009)

Up in the Air, one of ten nominees for Best Picture of 2009, is a melancholy little masterpiece of a film. It's a remarkably skilled movie about the economic conditions of our times, yet it also is an engrossing study of the consequences of choosing to be isolated from your fellow human beings. I found it to be a brilliant, insightful examination of how one man attempts to find a sense of meaning in a world that seemingly has little to offer him other than a chance to escape the mundane details of the day-to-day existence that most of us have to endure.

George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, who has the unenviable job of being one of the most successful members of a corporation whose job it is to fire people in large numbers. Bingham flies from city to city--we are always told on the screen which city he's in at the moment--dispensing bad news. He's actually, in an odd way, very successful and talented at his work. He manages to defuse some very difficult situations with employees who are, unsurprisingly, upset at learning that they will be unemployed. Bingham always seems to know just how to let people know what they need to be feeling or doing at particularly tense times.

He's also managed to rid himself of almost any sense of a personal existence. He has a tiny room that he rents, but he never sleeps there if he can avoid it. He's always in a hotel or on a plane or in some company's headquarters because of his job. And he loves it that way. He's managed to amass a huge number of frequent flyer miles, and he has set as a goal for himself the attainment of a magical number: ten million. If he reaches that goal, he will only be the seventh person in American Airlines history to do so, and he will receive some remarkable perks, including having his name on the side of an airplane.

You can't really be good at this type of job or manage to spend so much time away from home unless you've severed almost all personal connections, and Ryan has been especially good at that as well. He rarely talks to or sees members of his family. His younger sister is getting married, and he's reluctant to join in this little game she and her fiance have devised of having people taking pictures of a cardboard cutout of the two of them in "exotic" places throughout the country. Instead, he's busy giving motivational speeches about what we all pack into our backpacks. You see, he's trying to convince other people that we should travel through life much lighter than we do. We are, he seems to suggest, too bogged down by all of our commitments, particularly those links (it seems) to other people.

Into his life steps Alex (played by the enchanting Vera Farmigia). They meet at a bar, and it isn't long before they are comparing all of the cards for which they receive travel benefits. They have sex that night and even schedule their next encounter based upon where they will be traveling. They make for a charming couple together, and they seem to share many of the same ideas about life. She describes herself as a female version of him--well, those aren't her exact words, but it's the gist of what she says. He even invites her to join him for his sister's wedding, and they have a lot of fun walking around his old school.

Of course, while this budding romance is underway, Ryan's company decides that it is going to shift to a new form of business. Thanks to an idea by a young woman named Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), the company plans to begin firing people over the Internet, making a dehumanizing process even more remote and distant. Ryan successfully lobbies his boss (Jason Bateman) to have one last chance to prove that his methods are more successful than what Natalie has proposed, but his boss surprises him by having Natalie tag along as Ryan goes to several different companies to fire workers. Needless to say, Natalie is unprepared for what she encounters on the road, and the film clearly suggests that technology cannot replace the human element in an unpleasant business like the one these two are engaged in.

I like Kendrick as an actress. She was one of the best things about the charming little movie Camp a few years ago; I'll never listen to Stephen Sondheim's "The Ladies Who Lunch" the same way after her performance in that film. However, as good as she is, her character here is too narrowly written. When the most sophisticated way you have to show her adapting to a new situation is allowing her to take her hair out of its permanent ponytail, then you know you've got some work to do to flesh out the character more. Still, I can appreciate how hard Kendrick works to make a seemingly unsympathetic character into someone we actually want to see succeed.

Farmigia has played supporting parts in big movies for years, and she seems to be just on the cusp of breakout stardom. I thought she was terribly underused in The Departed a couple of years ago, but she has much more of an opportunity in Up in the Air to make an impression. She's warm and funny here, especially in the discussion she has with Natalie about how women's priorities have changed over the years. It's a knowing discussion between a more experienced and knowledgeable woman and a more naive, if intelligent young woman, and Farmigia makes it work. You can instantly see why Ryan would be so attracted to her that he would consider giving up his life on the road for someone like Alex.

Clooney has never been better than he is in this film. He allows us to see just how isolated Ryan has become and how much he seems to enjoy that sense of isolation. He makes all of the surface moves of being a part of society, but you get the feeling that he'd really rather be alone. He admits to avoiding emotional attachments, and even his phone calls and conversations with his sister reveal that he cannot make himself confront the pain that human connections sometimes bring. It's a gutsy move for someone as charming and handsome as Clooney to take on a part like this. It would be very easy to dislike Ryan Bingham because he seems like such a narcissist, yet when he takes the first steps to let Alex into his life, you also sense that he really does have the capacity to love someone else. He's just never felt comfortable about doing so.

I would like to mention how seamlessly the film's creators have incorporated actual people who have been fired from their jobs into the narrative. Yes, there are actors like the great J.K. Simmons and Zach Galifianakis who have more extended roles as workers being laid off, but the most emotional ones (for me, at least) are played by non-professionals. They bring a true sense of just how devastating such a change in one's life can be. You empathize with them because they are so open and honest about how much they've come to love or enjoy their jobs, and they just have no sense of how to carry on with their lives. More than even a television news report or newspaper article could do, Up in the Air captures in those moments that sense of loss so many people in this country are feeling now.

Much has and will be made of the ending and its ambiguity. And much will probably be made about the treatment of the female characters in the film, especially since there is a discussion about the different generations of feminists and feminism. However, at its heart, Up in the Air isn't about happy endings or the lack of them, and it certainly isn't about--not really--relationships between men and women. It's about a type of individual who has chosen for most of his life to concentrate upon his work and not his personal relationships, to spend much of his time away from close human contact so that he can avoid being hurt the way that he has to hurt other people thanks to his job. It's unsettling to watch parts of this film, but it's one of the most brilliant character analyses I've seen in years.

Avatar (2009)

Having worn glasses since I was 13 years old, I am not always comfortable going to see movies in 3-D. Putting the 3-D glasses over my own glasses makes for a difficult viewing experience most of the time. However, when I went to see Avatar, a nominee for Best Picture of 2009, I decided to check out the 3-D version because most of my friends told me it was the best way to see the film. After the film enters the world of the Na'vi, I forgot that I was wearing two pairs of glasses and became completely entranced by the world created by director James Cameron and his crew. If the future of film making is truly represented by what they have achieved in Avatar with motion-capture technology and other forms of animation and special effects, I am ready for the future. Avatar is likely to be the pinnacle in the use of this kind of technology, at least for a while, but it bodes well for the movie-going experience.

The story involves a disabled Marine, Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington), taking his dead twin's place in a scientific experiment on the planet of Pandora. A huge team of people from Earth are there, but they have different purposes in mind for this strange world. The military is there to assist in the corporate efforts to mine for something called--unironically, it seems--unobtainium. The soldiers, essentially, try to keep the native people and animals away from the people trying to locate this precious mineral. A group of scientists, led by Sigourney Weaver's Dr. Grace Augustine, are trying to learn as much about life on Pandora as possible before the military destroys the ecosystem, and she and her team are particularly interested in the unusual link that the native people have with the natural world. Several of the film's key moments are about the inevitable conflicts that must come when scientific interests are at odds with those of the private sector and the military.

Yet the most intriguing part of the film, to me, is not the overarching story about whether science or business will win this struggle. It's about the process of learning about the native people called the Na'vi that Jake and Grace and another scientist, Norm Spellman (Joel David Moore), undergo. Really, though, it's Jake we follow for much of the film. He's ideal for the project, which involves having a link to an artificially created Na'vi-human hybrid. Through his link to this avatar, Jake is able to walk again, and the joy he feels in being out in the world and having adventures is really the key to we as viewers having the same sense of amazement at this strange place and its inhabitants.

On his second day as an avatar, Jake is separated from Grace and Norm, thanks to an attack by a hideous looking beast. He spends the night in the jungle fending off creatures, and he has to be saved by a Na'vi woman named Neytiri (voiced by Zoe Saldana) when a group of dog-like creatures surround him. She despises him for interfering with the natural order; she calls him a "baby," suggesting his level of naivete about Pandora and its environment. Nevertheless, thanks to an intervention by Eywa, the deity for the Na'vi, she decides to take him to her tribe. There, her father and mother (voiced, respectively, by Wes Study and CCH Pounder) tell her that she must teach Jake the ways of the Na'vi. What follows are a series of spectacular adventures and, perhaps unsurprisingly, a growing affection between Jake and Neytiri.

The film is very eco-focused. There are many scenes where Neytiri tries to explain to Jake the connection between the Na'vi and their surroundings. The Hometree, for example, serves as a base for almost all activity, and the Na'vi seem to have almost a biochemical relationship with it and the other plants. It's this link that Grace is attempting to discern. However, the Na'vi are also capable of creating a connection between themselves and other animals, such as the horse-like creatures many of them ride. The long ponytails of the Na'vi somehow intertwine with appendages on these animals' heads, and suddenly Na'vi and creature are psychically linked. It's pretty intriguing stuff to watch, especially when Jake takes a few tries to perfect his talents at making the connection.

I suppose in a science fiction or fantasy film like this one, you don't expect the acting to be spectacular, but I was delighted to see Weaver in this film, reunited with her Aliens director after all these years. Even when she's in her avatar form, she retains a sense of the spunk that her character needs in order to confront the military and corporate types when they threaten the extinction of the Na'vi people's world. Giovanni Ribisi is a bit over-the-top as the executive in charge of the project; he seems so single-minded about getting the unobtainium that no reasonable explanation can penetrate into his consciousness. He's fun to watch, but the real scenery chewer, and the one you can't help but find fascinating, is Stephen Lang as Col. Miles Quaritch. He's there to play the gung-ho military officer who'd rather use firepower than negotiations to get what he wants. Everything about his character, from his speeches to the scars on his head, is designed to make him seem almost like a cartoon villain, which, in a way, he is.

Worthington is a relative newcomer to American film, and he is the focus of a great deal of the movie, both as Sully the Marine and as an avatar. We have to believe that he is capable of tremendous growth as he learns more about the Na'vi, that he isn't just another disillusioned Marine who's here to serve his commanders in order to "get his legs back." Worthington keeps a mostly blank expression when he is among the humans, but his avatar gets numerous chances to express joy at the life he's allowed to live. Perhaps it's the stark contrast between a world that sees him only as a guy in a wheelchair versus a world where he can still prove himself, where he can still be what he considers himself: "a warrior." I tend to prefer the avatar version myself, but Worthington acquits himself well here in both worlds.

If I have any complaint with the film, it's the dialogue. I wasn't at all surprised that the script was not included among the screenplay nominees. The overall story itself is certainly an interesting one, and we get to behave almost like anthropologists as we follow Jake's learning about the ways of Na'vi. But when Michelle Rodriguez's Trudy has to say, "I didn't sign up for this shit" in the middle of a battle between the humans and the Na'vi, you know you're going to be subjected to several more cliches. I thought the dialogue for Titanic was its weakest component, too, so it's obviously a consistent problem with a Cameron film. He even gets to recycle one of the more annoying lines from that earlier film--"What's happening?"--in a scene where it should be quite obvious to the speaker what's happening. It's a shame that the dialogue isn't up to the same level as the visuals for Avatar.

The planet, of course, is named Pandora as an homage to the mythical woman who opened a box filled with woes and problems for the world. I suppose we're supposed to make the parallel to having people from Earth try to overtake another planet; we'll just create more problems for ourselves, perhaps, in doing so. And the name of the precious metal, unobtainium, is a bit too literal when you think of all of the agony that the humans go through in order to locate more of it. Maybe that, too, is meant to suggest that we should leave alone that which seems unobtainable. If so, that's a bit like hitting someone in the face with a 2x4 in order to get their attention. And you really didn't need to have this much firepower involved to know that the military sometimes can get out of hand in its attempts to reach its goals. Likewise, you probably won't be too surprised to learn that most of the humans treat the Na'vi as if they are merely savages, little more than another set of animals standing in the way of getting the unobtainium. The ethnocentrism, if that's the right word for this, is pretty blatant.

Still, I don't think those kinds of small details detract too much from the overall experience of watching this movie. I won't soon forget the sequence where Jake meets and tames his iklan, a sort of flying dragon. He and Neytiri have some remarkable flights side by side, and they exchange glances that suggest how much excitement they feel in being able to share these moments. There's tremendous beauty in some of the night sequences, when the plants themselves light up, or when the Tree of Sorrow is shimmering above Jake and Neyriti on the night that they make love for the first time--yeah, we get to watch some animated creature sex. I also won't forget the sight of those floating mountains, suspected far above the ground and linked only by a series of vines. It's a remarkable world that Cameron and his collaborators have fashioned, and that makes Avatar a worthy nominee for Best Picture.

Oscar Wins: Art Direction, Cinematography, and Visual Effects

Other Oscar Nominations: Picture, Director, Film Editing, Original Score, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)

I'm not really sure why the creators of 2009 Oscar nominee Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire decided to give so much emphasis to the source material. The title would be much more effective, I think, if it had been shortened just to Precious. I'm not going to keep typing the full title over and over in this posting. Instead, I'll focus on the shortened version by which the film and its title character are better known. It's a remarkably ironic choice of name for her, a young girl saddled with more problems and issues than any movie protagonist in recent history. It's a name that suggests something rare and beautiful, something treasured. Clareece "Precious" Jones feels anything but loved or cherished, however, and that's what makes viewers empathetic to her plight.

Precious (played by newcomer Gabourey Sibide) has what seems like some pretty insurmountable odds stacked against her. She's 16 years old and almost illiterate. She's unlikely to learn how to read and write in her school, given how disruptive the environment is. She's pregnant with her second child, and the father of them both is her own father, who has been raping her for years. Her first child, cared for by her grandmother, has Down's syndrome. Precious is also cursed with the most monstrous of mothers ever committed to film, Mary, played with ferocity by Mo'Nique. You'd expect a movie about a character with all of those problems to be a downer, and Precious (the movie) pulls very few punches in depicting just how bad life is for this young woman.

It's only "cheat," really, is in the way that it depicts the physical violence to which Precious is subjected by her mother. Each time we see Mary mounting the stairs to her daughter's room, the screen fades to black before a new scene starts. I'm not suggesting that it would make a better movie if the film showed us just how horrific Mary's actions are; the suggestion of them is enough here. Besides, when your mother hurls as many insults as Mary does, you understand the toughness of the environment out of which Precious has to endure.

What saves her, at least at first, is her imagination. The film frequently interrupts some of the more painful disclosures by showing us what's going on inside Precious's mind. She dreams about being a star and walking the red carpet at the premiere of her movie. She imagines herself the focus of a music video. She even thinks of herself as a part of a gospel choir. In most of these moments, she's joined by her image of her ideal partner, a light-skinned black boy who seems to love only her, who wants to take her away from the desperate life she's living. Interesting, in one of her fantasies, the one where she sees an alternative version of herself in the mirror, she's a white girl with blond hair, quite a contrast from her own dark skin and black hair. The movie raises some issues about whiteness and its privileged position in society, but it doesn't address them fully.

Of course, it isn't just her imagination that saves Precious. She needs the help of others. Thanks to the intervention of her high school principal, Precious is sent to an alternative school where she meets her new teacher, Blu Rain (Paula Patton). Ms. Rain is the kind of teacher one only sees in the movies. She's completely dedicated to the students in her class and never seems to have a bad day. She's all good, a model teacher in ways that real teachers could never be. She even manages to have a fulfilling home life with her partner, so she has apparently learned how to achieve the perfect balance in life. Yes, she's a lesbian, and the revelation of that makes Precious rethink her own ideas, passed down from her mother, about gay people. When you have a teacher as giving and generous as Ms. Rain, you have to be just as open-hearted as she is.

I found the scenes in the classroom itself to be among the most interesting in the film. Each of the girls is there for a different reason, and they have differing abilities to express themselves. I particularly enjoyed watching the performance of Xosha Roquemore as Joann; she's hysterically funny. What occurs over time, slowly, is a bonding among these girls. They all seem to understand what the others are going through, and they become a pretty powerful support system for each other. The best example is when Precious is in the hospital to have her baby. The other girls visit her and bring her pictures and take her journals back to Ms. Rain. You'd expect far more tension between this group of people from disparate backgrounds, but Precious needs a "safe place" where she can express herself, and that's what the classroom provides for her.

The film's greatest strength is in the performances of its two leads, Sibide and Mo'Nique. Sibide has to convey a great range of emotion. She has to grow and evolve over the course of the narrative. She has to have ups and downs, good days and bad days. It's quite a remarkable performance. There are scenes where she unleashes the rage that Precious has been building inside of her, and they are shocking to watch. Then she has to show just how hurt she has been by Mary's constant barrage of negativity. Precious cowers in the kitchen, making dinner for her mother, never knowing when the next act of violence might occur. Sibide also gets to display some remarkable acts of tenderness with Precious's baby Abdul. It's quite a performance for someone who had never acted in a film before this one.

The real revelation, though, is the performance of Mo'Nique. Best known for her years as a stand-up comedian, Mo'Nique here is capable of portraying the essence of darkness. As a woman embittered by her husband's leaving her bed for their daughter instead, she spends a great deal of her time on screen revealing her hatred for Precious through her eyes. She also takes the simple props of a chair and TV tray and television set and uses them more effectively than most actresses could use an entire bag of tricks. And the way she smokes her cigarettes is like the unleashing of an inner poison. I don't think anyone who's seen this film can forget Mo'Nique's performance, especially after the revelations of her last moments on camera.

There are two other performances that are surprising too. Mariah Carey, best known to moviegoers for her infamous Glitter, plays Mrs. Weiss, a social worker who gradually starts to piece together what has been happening to Precious. She's almost unrecognizable at first, so plain has she made herself. I think that once the shock dissipates, though, you find her quite believable. The other supporting cast member who caught me off guard was Sherri Shepherd, perhaps most famous for being one of the hosts of The View. After I saw this film the first time, I read that Shepherd was in the film, but I couldn't remember seeing her. It was only after I discovered that she plays Cornrows, the receptionist at the alternative school, that I realized how much she, too, had de-glamorized herself to play the role.

I'd like to talk just a little bit about the ending without necessarily spoiling it for anyone who hasn't yet seen this amazing little film. There are more revelations about Precious's life than the ones I've mentioned above, and let's just say that knowing that the film is set in 1987 means that the future does not bode well for Precious. Some have suggested that the ending is an attempt to leave on an upbeat note, but I'm not sure that's what the film's creators have in mind. Too many bad things have happened to Precious, and while she may have made some changes in her life, the odds against her achieving all of the dreams she describes one day to her classmates and teacher seem overwhelming. I think the ending is ambiguous about what lies ahead, but I suppose some viewers need a bit of optimism after watching a couple of hours of such downbeat material.

The Hurt Locker (2009)

The Hurt Locker wastes no time putting us into the action of the war in Iraq. The opening sequence involves attempts by members of an Army bomb unit to locate and detonate an IED (improvised explosive device) that has been hidden in what appears to be a pile of refuse on the street. Guy Pearce's Sergeant Thompson takes command of the situation when the remote unit they've been using loses a wheel on its wagon. He dons a suit that allegedly offers protection during a blast and walks toward the bomb's location. However, as he approaches, a man emerges from a butcher shop and punches some numbers into a cell phone, exploding the bomb and killing Thompson. It's a real eye-opener of a beginning to a film, and after that sequence finishes, you're left in shock for a little while. After all, it isn't every film that kills off in the first few minutes a character being portrayed by a movie star with some name recognition.

What follows is a series of encounters with various bombs. We watch one incident after another as the soldiers respond to calls about potential threats and then attempt to eliminate or reduce the threat of harm. The unit is now under the leadership of Staff Sergeant William James (played with remarkable intensity by Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner), and he leads these men through some dangerous situations, such as a series of bombs that are linked to each other or to explosives that have been strapped to and then locked onto an Iraqi man. As the film progresses, we learn how many days remain in the unit's time in Iraq, how much more time they have to keep taking on these dangerous missions. They only have about a month left when the movie begins, and it's a tense countdown to see if the three men in the group will all survive until the last day of their duty.

The reason for that tension is, of course, SSgt. James himself. He's a rebel in a job that calls for people who are willing to live on the edge a little, but doing so can also put his fellow soldiers and the citizens of Iraq in danger. James doesn't like following orders or doing things the way that they've always been done. He has too much of a drive to figure out situations, and he's really very cocky about his abilities at times. When he's working on defusing a bomb, for example, he will throw off his headset if one of the other men is talking too much and distracting him from the task at hand. He even takes off the protective suit during one encounter, claiming, "If I'm gonna die, I want to die comfortable." It's little wonder that the other two men become very cautious around James.

We never truly find out what it is about defusing bombs that thrills James so much. He's an adrenaline junkie, to be sure, but the cause is never explained. We do get to see the stark contrast between his days in Iraq and his time back home with his (estranged?) wife, played by Lost's Evangeline Lilly, and his baby boy. There's little danger facing him as he goes grocery shopping or cleans the leaves out of the gutters. Perhaps the film is trying to suggest that some men—and it does really seem to be a movie about men—just can't be happy with a mundane existence. They need the constant possibility of danger, a thrill at all times.

The film raises some interesting questions about masculinity and what it takes to be a "real man." James and Sgt. Sanborn (the great Anthony Mackie) talk about having sons. James, of course, already has one, proving his cocksmanship, I suppose. He's not a particularly good father, though, especially considering the conversation he tries to have with his baby boy about the loss of expectations that you have when you grow up. All the little boy wants to do is play with his jack-in-the-box. Sanborn isn't ready for a child, he claims, although his girlfriend talks about wanting to have a baby. James suggests that Sanborn, in so many words, "give her your sperm," but Sanborn hesitates. At one point, a drunken Sanborn asks James if he (Sanborn) is ready to put on the bomb squad's protective suit and try to defuse a bomb himself. James, also drunk but still lucid, says no. Apparently, only "real men," makers of babies like James, can handle this kind of work. Maybe that explains James' impatience when he has to work with other people. They just don't live up to his standard of masculinity.

The Hurt Locker doesn't necessarily take sides in the debate over the war. Its politics, if it has any, are not readily apparent. At times, I think we are meant to pity James, but at other times, you have to admire the determination his job requires. He's a soldier doing his job, just like his two colleagues, and they all readily admit that there are always risks. This isn't a film, though, where the characters are always having debates about why they are fighting in this desert country (although our central characters sometimes express this dislike of it). It isn't meant to be a war film in the traditional sense. It chooses instead to focus on the different kinds of soldiers who go to war.

The film also doesn't make all of the Iraqi people out to be villains. Certainly, there are some bad guys in the movie, such as the snipers who attack the bomb unit while they are trying to help a group of English soldiers whose vehicle has a flat tire. And those who planted the IEDs, usually invisible people in the narrative anyway, are meant to be villainous. However, there's a genuine friendship that develops between James and a young Iraqi who calls himself Beckham after the English soccer player. It's that attachment to Beckham that causes James to do some of the most foolhardy of his actions, perhaps indicating the possible danger that arises when soldiers and civilians become friends, especially when you have someone like James who might be considered almost fanatical in his determination.

The film actually begins with a quote from journalist Chris Hedges: "The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug." We don't really understand the context for the quote until Renner's SSgt. James appears and starts approaching the job in such a radical way. James is obviously addicted to the danger that his kind of work presents. It's as if he wants to cheat death constantly, that he wants to put himself in the greatest danger possible, just to see if he can come back alive. There's an almost maniacal chuckle/laugh Renner has when James is particularly proud of some stunt he's pulled. It's a telling gesture about the kind of man James is portrayed to be.

I've spoken already about Renner and Mackie, but I'd also like to mention the third man in the unit, Specialist Owen Eldridge, played by Brian Geraghty. Geraghty has such a baby-faced innocence to him that we can't help but imagine that Eldridge is as naive as his appearance would lead us to believe. He lives in constant fear, expressed to the company's resident psychiatrist, that he will be killed in battle. It's a rather morbid obsession he has with dying during wartime, yet he's also the soldier who perhaps best represents the conflicting emotions held by most soldiers. While he wants to serve his country and perform his duties to the best of his ability, he also wants to return home safely and be able to reintegrate into mainstream American society, leaving Iraq behind. It's a challenging role, but Geraghty does a fine job as the character with whom we as an audience might empathize the most.

I'd also like to mention at least one technical aspect of the film, the use of slow motion at various times to depict an explosion. What could be a hokey device in lesser hands than director Kathryn Bigelow's is, instead, effective here at making the devastation even more dramatic. Watching the opening sequence, especially the rust vibrating off an abandoned car, is jaw-dropping. You can almost feel the shock waves in the theater itself. Bigelow and her crew use this device sparingly, but when it does appear, it's quite powerful in its impact on a viewer.

Oscar Wins: Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Achievement in Directing (Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman ever to win this honor in Oscar history), Best Original Screenplay, Best Achievement in Film Editing, Best Achievement in Sound Mixing, and Best Achievement in Sound Editing

Other Nominations: Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Jeremy Renner), Best Achievement in Cinematography, and Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures/Original Score