How to Spend $20
By Eric Hughes
January 12, 2010
Welcome to How to Spend $20, BOP's look at the latest Blu-ray discs and DVDs to hit stores nationwide. This week: 2009's most overlooked movie is now in stores. Also, The Matrix celebrates 10 – wait, shouldn't it be 11? – years. Pick of the Week
For people who want to know what Kate did while off the island: The Hurt Locker
My pick for best (and most overlooked) film of 2009 is The Hurt Locker, a horrific thriller about a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team in Iraq that defuses bombs in and around Baghdad while warding off dangerous insurgent attacks and the stress that mounts between them. Never in a million years did I think I would like a movie whose plot ties to the Iraq War – let alone see the thing – but The Hurt Locker is that rare war movie that transcends its basic story and truly sells a movie well worth your time and money. This isn't commercializing an ongoing war for profit; this is inspired content from first-time scribe Mark Boal, who spent time in Iraq as an embedded journalist with a real bomb squad.
What I liked most about The Hurt Locker is its dependence on the silences, the unsure moments, the unknown. Dialogue plays second fiddle to the war scenes that, sometimes quickly, oftentimes casually, unfold. So much of the movie is Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie, among others, waiting for action. Whether it's an insurgent hiding in the hills or an EOD team member defusing a bomb in the back of a car, the men are on the ready, in their positions, awaiting their next move.
Jeremy Renner is the film's best bet at locking at least an acting nod in this year's Oscar race. He was nearly perfect as the arrogant, know-it-all Staff Sergeant William James, who has an almost innate "responsibility" to stir up trouble – whether intentioned or not. I was surprised to see him missing from even the list of contenders for a Golden Globe.
Disc includes: Audio commentary, The Hurt Locker: Behind the Scenes featurette, image gallery
For people who would rather swallow both pills: The Matrix (10th Anniversary Edition)
There's a very good chance you own at least one movie in The Matrix trilogy. And if just one, it's likely the movie that started the phenomenon because A) owning the offspring, but not the parent, to just about any film franchise is nutty and B) let's be honest, The Matrix (sans Reloaded or Revolutions affixed at the end) is the best of the lot.
The Matrix is the movie The Wachowski brothers made before they knew what they had. Before The Matrix was The Matrix. Before, well, The Wachowski brothers became The Wachowski siblings. Sure, the Matrix has a complex mythology, but at the end of the day at least it all made sense and stood for something. We're coming up on the seventh anniversary of The Matrix Reloaded and I still have not a clue what The Architect was running his mouth about.
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