Everybody Breaks, Bro: Zero Dark Thirty

Let's start with torture, in part because Zero Dark Thirty's depiction of torture inspired controversy even before the movie was released, but mostly because that's where Zero Dark Thirty begins, and in a way it's where it ends, too. After a brief sequence in which the horrors of 9/11 are conjured through overlapping audio clips from that tragic and chaotic day, the movie opens at a secret military base at which an al-Qaeda terrorist is being "harshly interrogated." First we see the detainee waterboarded, and later he's stripped naked, dog-collared and stuffed inside a wooden box just big enough for him to fold into — all in an effort to get him to talk. None of this is brief. Director Kathryn Bigelow doesn't exactly ogle the brutality, but she doesn't shy away from it either. The first 30 minutes of the movie, scripted by Mark Boal and inspired by insider accounts, are dominated by the physical and psychological punishment of this beaten terrorist at the hands of the CIA. That Zero Dark Thirty spends so much time here confirms that Bigelow and Boal believe these interrogations to be historically significant, one way or another. And that torture is demonstrated to be a dehumanizing experience for both sides confirms that that Bigelow gets it right.

Did controversial interrogation techniques like waterboarding lead to intelligence that led to the discovery of Osama bin Laden? It seems silly to argue otherwise. The link might not have been direct, but the nasty reality is that these techniques were used and intelligence was gathered, and it seems reasonable to assume that some prisoners cooperated purely to avoid torture in the first place, which isn't possible if the potential for torture isn't on the table. Whether torture, as an actual technique or merely as a looming threat, is effective enough to justify its use is a different matter, and not one that Zero Dark Thirty cares to examine. So what does the film "say" about torture? Mostly that we did it, for better or worse. It's part of the history of that larger event. World War II had the beaches of Normandy and Higgins boats. The "war on terror" had undisclosed locations and pitchers of water. That's the way it was.

Skateboarding Cinema to the Future: QUIK

When I was a kid, I wanted to make movies. Well, specifically, I wanted to make Return of the Jedi. Not instead of George Lucas. Immediately after him.

In first, second and third grade, I was mesmerized by the Star Wars trilogy not just as escapist adventure but also as an act of creation. As often as I watched the movies themselves, I watched my TV-recorded VHS copy of the 1983 documentary about their development. (I had a book, too.)

The Star Wars trilogy was full of moviemaking "stuff" that went beyond the usual. Instead of just actors, costumes and sets, there were models, robots and puppets — and things like Jabba the Hutt that seemed to be a combination of all three — not to mention an abundance of rubber and fur that appealed to the Muppet fan in me.

In my not-entirely-thought-through efforts to someday make a Star Wars movie of my own, I focused my initial energy on those smaller creations — even going so far as to beg my mom to buy me some furry fabric so that I could take a shot at making my own Ewok suit — in part because I was fascinated by that stuff, and in part because I knew I couldn't shoot an Ewok scene without an Ewok costume, but mostly because, at the time, owning my own movie camera seemed only slightly more realistic than owning my own Millennium Falcon.

Times have changed.

Bests of 2012

Happy New Year!

There are still a few items on my 2012-viewing short list that I expect to see in the next week or two, most notably Zero Dark Thirty, Rust and Bone and Amour.

In addition, at some point I need to track down several films that never seemed to come my way, like This Is Not a Film, The Turin Horse and The Color Wheel.

And then there are movies that I let slip by but still hope to catch up with, like The Imposter, End of Watch and The Loneliest Planet.

All of that said, here's my look back at the year in film, which included viewings of about 60 new releases, most of which are included below, in some fashion or another.