A chronicle of the decade-long hunt for al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden after the September 2001 attacks, and his death at the hands of the Navy S.E.A.L. Team 6 in May 2011.
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When a gigantic great white shark begins to menace the small island community of Amity, a police chief, a marine scientist and grizzled fisherman set out to stop it.
Director:
Steven Spielberg
Stars:
Roy Scheider,
Robert Shaw,
Richard Dreyfuss
A sixteen-year-old boy insinuates himself into the house of a fellow student from his literature class and writes about it in essays for his French teacher. Faced with this gifted and ... See full summary »
Director:
François Ozon
Stars:
Fabrice Luchini,
Ernst Umhauer,
Kristin Scott Thomas
As a police psychologist works to talk down an ex-con who is threatening to jump from a Manhattan hotel rooftop, the biggest diamond heist ever committed is in motion.
Director:
Asger Leth
Stars:
Sam Worthington,
Mandy Gonzalez,
Jamie Bell
A woman is kidnapped by a stranger on a routine flight. Threatened by the potential murder of her father, she is pulled into a plot to assist her captor in offing a politician.
Maya is a CIA operative whose first experience is in the interrogation of prisoners following the Al Qaeda attacks against the U.S. on the 11th September 2001. She is a reluctant participant in extreme duress applied to the detainees, but believes that the truth may only be obtained through such tactics. For several years, she is single-minded in her pursuit of leads to uncover the whereabouts of Al Qaeda's leader, Osama Bin Laden. Finally, in 2011, it appears that her work will pay off, and a U.S. Navy SEAL team is sent to kill or capture Bin Laden. But only Maya is confident Bin Laden is where she says he is. Written by
Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>
In the Kuwait Lamborghini showroom scene, Dan asks if one of the cars is a Balboni. This refers to the Gallardo LP 550-2 Valentino Balboni, a limited-production variant of the Gallardo named after a Lamborghini test driver. It is the car with the stripe along its centerline. See more »
Goofs
When Faraj is being arrested by the men wearing black Burqas, two of them are shown walking on a small bridge as they approach him. In the following wide shot, there's only one on the bridge. See more »
Knowing this movie was nominated for best picture, I was afraid that I was losing my mind after seeing it, since what I saw in the theater was: one dimensional characters being frustrated about not being able to do anything, inter-cut with a newsreel about current events, followed a ridiculously overdone operation to kill a couple people in a house.
No doubt this is a difficult story to tell dramatically, since it's about people who are doing a job that is passive by nature. But what was striking is how completely devoid it was of character. Courtroom dramas trade in the same stock, but even the most pedestrian episode of Boston Legal or LA Law contain more compelling characters than anyone in this movie.
And most movies about real events overcome the inherent story problems by provoking thought in the audience about the events themselves. What they lack in dramatic momentum, they make up for in unsettling questions. But it was amazing how completely empty this film was of anything resembling a question about what was going on. It was as if Kathryn Bigelow thought she was just "presenting reality" to the audience.
In 50 years, people are going to look back at this movie in the same way that we look at the jingoistic WWII Hollywood features now - as empty fare designed to prop up our fragile national psyche. Maybe that's what people need right now. But let's not pretend it's a quality film.
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Knowing this movie was nominated for best picture, I was afraid that I was losing my mind after seeing it, since what I saw in the theater was: one dimensional characters being frustrated about not being able to do anything, inter-cut with a newsreel about current events, followed a ridiculously overdone operation to kill a couple people in a house.
No doubt this is a difficult story to tell dramatically, since it's about people who are doing a job that is passive by nature. But what was striking is how completely devoid it was of character. Courtroom dramas trade in the same stock, but even the most pedestrian episode of Boston Legal or LA Law contain more compelling characters than anyone in this movie.
And most movies about real events overcome the inherent story problems by provoking thought in the audience about the events themselves. What they lack in dramatic momentum, they make up for in unsettling questions. But it was amazing how completely empty this film was of anything resembling a question about what was going on. It was as if Kathryn Bigelow thought she was just "presenting reality" to the audience.
In 50 years, people are going to look back at this movie in the same way that we look at the jingoistic WWII Hollywood features now - as empty fare designed to prop up our fragile national psyche. Maybe that's what people need right now. But let's not pretend it's a quality film.