Zero Dark Thirty
Film Review by Kam Williams
After 9/11, the United States intensified its efforts in the international manhunt for Osama bin Laden (Ricky Sekhon). Nevertheless, the elusive mastermind of the terrorist attack continued to orchestrate mass murders in Bali, Istanbul, London, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere around the world.
Dismayed by the ever-mounting death toll, the authorities rationalized the use of rough interrogation tactics bordering on torture in the hope of expediting the capture, dead or alive, of the slippery al-Qaida leader. He was ultimately tracked down to a walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan where he died on May 2, 2011 during a daring, helicopter raid conducted by Navy SEAL Team Six,
Directed by two-time, Academy Award-winner Kathryn Bigelow (for The Hurt Locker), Zero Dark Thirty (military speak for 12:30 AM) is a riveting, super-realistic account of the decade-long search for bin Laden. Bigelow has again collaborated with Oscar-winning scriptwriter Mark Boal (also for The Hurt Locker), with the pair apparently gaining access to classified materials in preparing the project.
The film is structured as a tale of female empowerment revolving around Maya (Jessica Chastain), a cool, calm and collected CIA agent who manages to keep her head even when so many around her seem to be losing theirs, literally and/or figuratively. She also has an uncanny knack for deciphering which clues might be worth following, cutting a sharp contrast in this regard to bumbling colleagues who fritter away most of their time on wild goose chases.
At the point of departure, we find Maya finally getting her first taste of fieldwork after starting her career boning-up on bin Laden behind a desk in Washington, D.C. She's been reassigned to participate in the questioning of al-Qaida members and sympathizers being detained at secret sites located outside the U.S. where the Geneva Conventions provisions relating to torture presumably don't apply.
Soon, Maya's chasing clues from Pakistan to Kuwait to Afghanistan and back, alongside tone-deaf bosses (Jason Clarke and Kyle Chandler) who could crack the case quickly if they weren't such male chauvinists suffering from Persistent Disbelief Syndrome. That's the shopworn plot device which pits a frustrated, unappreciated protagonist against an army of stubbornly skeptical naysayers.
Whether a convenient, cinematic contrivance or an accurate portrayal of what transpired, Zero Dark Thirty's version of history certainly makes for a very convincing piece of patriotic storytelling. Credit Jessica Chastain for imbuing her character, Maya, with a compelling combination of vulnerability, sagacity and steely resolve in a memorable, Oscar-quality performance.
CIA Agent Strangelove, or how I learned to stop worrying and love waterboarding!
Excellent (4 stars)
Rated R for profanity, disturbing images and graphic violence.
Running time: 157 minutes
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
To see a trailer for Zero Dark Thirty, visit
Promised Land
Film Review by Kam Williams
In 2011, a disturbing documentary called Gasland was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary category. That eye-opening expose' chronicled how energy companies had duped landowners in Pennsylvania and Colorado into signing over the drilling rights on their property while downplaying the ecological risks.
For hydraulic fracturing, AKA fracking, the process employed to mine natural gas, has contaminated many a community's environment, thereby rendering homes virtually uninhabitable. In that movie, victims demonstrated with a match how their tap water had become flammable, and how their pets had inexplicably turned sickly and started shedding fur in patches.
Ostensibly inspired by Gasland, the Biblically-titled Promised Land is a cautionary tale tackling the same theme. This modern morality play reunites director Gus Van Sant with Matt Damon for their fourth collaboration which began back in 1997 with Good Will Hunting. The pair also worked together on Finding Forrester in 2000 and on Gerry a couple of years later.
Here, Damon stars as Steve Butler, a farm boy-turned-itinerant corporate pitchman employed by a gas conglomerate to fast-talk country folks into turning over their drilling rights. He and his partner's (Frances McDormand) latest assignment takes them to McKinley, a cash-strapped, if otherwise idyllic, rural community that stands to be polluted if tricked into signing on the dotted line.
Steve has a down-home way of insinuating himself with the locals which even turns the head of a pretty schoolmarm (Rosemarie DeWitt). Fortunately, a couple of gadflies in the ointment emerge in a skeptical science teacher (Hal Holbrook) and an outside agitator (John Krasinski) who urge everybody not to be blinded by dollar signs, but to do a little research into the potential fallout from fracking.
A transparent message movie which might deserve to be forgiven for moralizing and politicizing, given the urgency of the underlying environmental issue.
Very Good (3 Stars)
Rated R for profanity.
Running time: 106 minutes
Distributor: Focus Features
To see a trailer for Promised Land, visit
Django Unchained
Film Review by Kam Williams
There's a sensible reason why nobody ever wanted to be an Indian whenever we played Cowboys and Indians as kids. That's because the white man was invariably the hero of the Westerns on which we'd been weaned, while the red man had always been presented as a wild savage dismissed by the dehumanizing affirmation that, "The only good Injun is a dead Injun."
Sure, a few films, such as Apaches (1973), The Sons of Great Bear (1966) and Chingachgook: The Great Snake (1967), flipped the script by portraying Native Americans as the good guys and the European settlers as the bad guys. But those productions were few and far between.
Hollywood has also promoted a set of stereotypes when it comes to the depictions of black-white race relations during slavery, with classics like The Birth of the Nation (1915) and Gone with the Wind (1939) setting the tone. Consequently, most movies have by-and-large suggested that it was a benign institution under which docile African-Americans were well-treated by kindly masters, at least as long as they remained submissive and knew their place.
Leave it to Quentin Tarantino to put a fresh spin on the genre, much as he did in the World War II flick Inglourious Basterds (2009). With Django Unchained, the iconoclast writer/director again rattles the cinematic cage by virtue of an irreverent adventure that audaciously turns the conventional thinking on its head.
Set in the South in 1858, the picture is visually reminiscent of the Spaghetti Westerns popularized in the Sixties by Italian director Sergio Leone, being replete with both big sky panoramas and cartoonish, one-note villains who are the embodiment of evil. But instead of cattle rustlers, it's inveterate racists being slowly tortured or blown away to the delight of the audience.
The movie stars Jamie Foxx in the title role as a slave lucky enough to be liberated by a German dentist-turned-bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz). Abolitionist Dr. Schultz altruistically takes Django on as an apprentice, and proceeds to teach him how to ride a horse and handle a gun.
The grisly business of tracking down outlaws "Wanted Dead-or-Alive" conveniently affords the revenge-minded freedman many an opportunity to even the score with folks responsible for his misery, from the scars on his back, to the "R" for "Runaway" branded on his cheek, to being separated from his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). As you might guess, the action gets pretty gruesome, as is par for the course for any Tarantino vehicle.
Slavery reimagined as a messy splatterfest where massa gets exactly what he deserves, and then some!
Excellent (4 stars)
Rated R for profanity, nudity, ethnic slurs and graphic violence
Running time: 165 minutes
Distributor: The Weinstein Company
To see a trailer for Django Unchained, visit
The 10 Best, No, the 100 Best Films of 2012
by Kam Williams
It's impossible for me to limit my favorite films of 2012 to just 10 of the year's 1,000 or so releases After all, it feels unfair even to compare most of them to each other, since they represent so many different genres, countries and cultures, and enjoyed such a range in budgets.
Therefore, as per usual, this critic's annual list features 100 entries in order to honor as many of the best offerings as possible. And despite the cloud of controversy swirling around Kathryn's Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty for its depiction of torture and Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained for its violence and use of the N-word, both of these movies are nevertheless deserving of high accolades in my humble opinion.
10 Best Big Budget Films
1. Zero Dark Thirty
2. Silver Linings Playbook
3. Django Unchained
4. Looper
5. Argo
6. Life of Pi
7. 21 Jump Street
8. Cabin in the Woods
9. Flight
10. Magic Mike
Big Budgets Honorable Mention
11. The Hunger Games
12. Skyfall
13. The Amazing Spider-Man
14. Safe House
15. The Sessions
16. Savages
17. The Avengers
18. Think Like a Man
19. Hitchcock
20. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
21. Mirror Mirror
22. Anna Karenina
23. Lincoln
24. Sparkle
25. Promised Land
10 Best Foreign Films
1. Amour (France)
2. Turn Me on, Dammit! (Norway)
3. Nobody Else but You (France)
4. Let the Bullets Fly (China)
5. The Other Son (Israel)
6. Putin's Kiss (Russia)
7. Sound of Noise (Germany)
8. Attenberg (Greece)
9. I Wish (Japan)
10. The Fairy (Belgium)
Foreign Films Honorable Mention
11. The Well Digger's Daughter (France)
12. Jiro Dreams of Sushi (Japan)
13. Ikland (Uganda)
14. Elles (France)
15. Simon and the Oaks (Sweden)
16. The Intouchables (France)
17. Unforgivable (Italy)
18. Dolphin Boy
19. Oslo, August 31st (Norway)
20. A Royal Affair (Denmark)
21. Busong (Philippines)
22. Gerhard Richter Painting (Germany)
23. Somewhere Between (China)
24. Crazy Horse (France)
25. 360 (Brazil)
10 Best Independent Films
1. Beasts of the Southern Wild
2. The Deep Blue Sea
3. Quartet
4. Take This Waltz
5. Middle of Nowhere
6. Safety Not Guaranteed
7. Compliance
8. Restless City
9. Goon
10. Changing the Game
Independent Films Honorable Mention
11. God Bless America
12. Ginger & Rosa
13. Yelling to the Sky
14. Nobody Walks
15. V/H/S
16. Tim & Eric's Billion-Dollar Movie
17. Model Minority
18. The Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best
19. 28 Hotel Rooms
20. Velvet Elvis
21. Deadfall
22. Mosquita & Mari
23. Happy New Year
24. 96 Minutes
25. Jack & Diane
10 Best Documentaries
1. The Central Park Five
2. Head Games
3. Chasing Ice
4. Bully
5. The Loving Story
6. The Queen of Versailles
7. Hoodwinked
8. Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel
9. 65_RedRoses
10. Heist
Documentaries Honorable Mention
11. Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story
12. The Revisionaires
13. Six Million and One
14. Marley
15. High Ground
16. Bonsai People
17. Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story
18. Soul Food Junkies
19. Brooklyn Castle
20. Chimpanzee
21. Detropia
22. Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment
23. Never Stand Still
24. 5 Broken Cameras
25. Samsara
Quentin Tarantino
The "Django Unchained" Interview
with Kam Williams
With a vibrant imagination and dedication to rich, layered storytelling, Quentin Tarantino has established himself as one of the most celebrated filmmakers of his generation. His World War II epic, "Inglorious Basterds," was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Screenplay, and Best Achievement in Directing, and landed an Oscar for Christoph Waltz for his memorable portrayal of Colonel Hans Landa. .
Prior to "Inglorious Basterds," Tarantino thrilled audiences with "Death Proof," starring Kurt Russell and Zoë Bell. In "Kill Bill Vol. 1″ and "Kill Bill Vol. 2," Uma Thurman, as "The Bride," enacted a "roaring rampage of revenge" on her former lover and boss, played by David Carradine.
Quentin wrote and directed "Jackie Brown," a crime caper starring Pam Grier in the title role. Loosely based on Elmore Leonard's novel "Rum Punch," the picture netted Robert Forster an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
Tarantino co-wrote, directed and starred in "Pulp Fiction" which won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay. He wrote, directed and starred in "Reservoir Dogs," which marked the beginning of his career and made an auspicious debut at the Sundance Film Festival.
Here, he talks about his new movie, Django Unchained, a Western featuring Jamie Foxx in the title role as a slave-turned-bounty hunter, and co-starring Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kerry Washington.
Kam Williams: Hi Quentin, thanks for the interview.
Quentin Tarantino: Oh, it's my pleasure, Kam.
KW: The last time we spoke, the conversation went so well, the interview is going to be published in the new edition of Quentin Tarantino Interviews.
QT: Oh yeah! Edited by Gerald Peary! Volume 2. Cool!
KW: Let me start with a question from Larry Greenberg, a reader who also sent in a question for that interview: He says: When I got to ask Mr. Tarantino a question about Inglorious Basterds his answer changed my life and inspired me to go into filmmaking. It gave me permission to pursue my dream. If that had not happened, I doubt that I would be sitting here today with a script and an insane deadline. It was a key turning point in my life. This time, I'd like to know how you came up with the characters Django and Dr. Schultz [played by Christoph Waltz] and how did you dream up their relationship?
QT: Wow, Larry! That's great! As for the scriptwriting process, it was kind of funny. I always knew I wanted to do a Western. And trying to think of what that would be, I always figured that if I did a Western, it would have a lot of the aesthetics of Spaghetti Westerns, because I really like them. They're really brutal and operatic with a surreal quality to the violence. So, about eight years ago, I came up with the idea of a black man who was an ex-slave who had become a bounty hunter. And his job would be to track down white outlaws who were hiding out as overseers on Southern plantations. Now, that's not a story; that's just an idea. That was kicking around in the incubator for about eight years, waiting for its time. At the same time, I was writing a film criticism book on Sergio Corbucci, the director who did the original Django. So, I was kind of getting immersed in his world. Towards the end of the Inglourious Basterds press tour I was in Japan. Spaghetti Westerns are really popular there, so I picked up a bunch of soundtracks and spent my day off listening to all these scores. And all of a sudden the opening scene just came to me. It just came to me, and I knew I had to sit down and write it, even though I didn't even have my notepad with me. So, I was just writing it on the hotel stationery. During those previous eight years, I never had a German, dentist bounty hunter in mind for the character. [Chuckles] But during that time, I did get to direct Christoph Waltz who was one of the best actors I'd ever worked with. Nobody does my dialogue better than he and Sam Jackson do. They just sing it! And now I think it's going to be hard for me not to write for him. Anyway, I just started writing that scene, and this German bounty hunter shows up.
KW: What was the most challenging aspect of writing the script? Addressing racial issues? Historical accuracy? Did you feel any pressure to conform to political-correctness, or did you feel free to take poetic license, given the glowing reception of audiences to Hitler's dying in a movie theater in Inglorious Basterds?
QT: I felt no obligation to bow to any 21st Century political correctness. What I did feel an obligation to do was to take the 21st Century viewers and physically transport them back to the ante bellum South in 1858, in Mississippi, and have them look at America for what it was back then. And I wanted it to be shocking.
KW: Have you seen the film yet with a black audience?
QT: Yes I have!
KW: And what was their reaction? I know how an all-black audience feels comfortable enough to talk back to the screen and let you know exactly how they feel about what's happening.
QT: [Laughs] Let's put it like this: We screened it for heavily-black audiences quite a few times, where the audience was between 40 and 60 percent black. That's pretty black. We also screened it for a 100 percent black audience, and you would've thought it was 1973 and they were watching the end of Coffy [A blaxploitation era flick starring Pam Grier]. It's funny because I was sitting next to [executive producer] Harvey Weinstein and he turns to me and says, "I guess we know who we made this movie for." [LOL] But the film really has a lot of ups and downs, and taps into a lot of different emotions. To me, the trick was balancing all those emotions, so that I could get you where I wanted you to be by the very end. I wanted the audience cheering in triumph at the end. So, as rough as some of the things I show in the movie are, they couldn't be so rough that you're too traumatized to enjoy the movie any longer.
KW: Gil Cretney doesn't have a question, but he just wants to say thanks for not filming the movie in 3-D.
QT: [LOL] You're welcome, Gil!
KW: Irene Smalls: Why this film? Why now, in the Obama era?
QT: [Chuckles] I would've written this story if Obama were president or if he never existed. For one, I think it's time to tell a story that deals with this subject America has avoided for so long. Most countries have been forced to deal with the atrocities of their past that still affect them to this day. But America has been pretty slippery in the way that it has avoided looking slavery in the eye. I believe that's a problem. We should be talking about it to get past it and to get over it. Not only that, frankly, this is an American story that needs to be told, when you think of slavery existing in this country for 245 years. In slave narratives there were all types of tales and drama and heroism and pain and love that happened during that time. That's rich material for drama! Everyone complains that there are no new stories left to tell. Not true, there are a whole bunch of them, and they're all American with a capital A.
KW: Why do you think you're the first director to confront slavery in such a frank fashion?
QT: I hate to sound full of myself but maybe I just have the shoulders.
KW: Nick Antoine says: Westerns seem to have fallen out of favor in recent years. Even Rian Johnson's Looper, which was sort of a subtle homage to the genre, didn't enjoy as much success as I think it deserved. Why do you think Westerns are so unpopular? I think Westerns are the best!
QT: If you ask me, I'd say Westerns have been doing really well. True Grit did great, and 3:10 to Yuma did pretty well, too. I actually think there's something else going on. There was that last blast of Westerns that came out in the Seventies, those Vietnam/Watergate Westerns where everything was about demystification. And I like that about those movies. And there's another aspect about the Seventies. Blazing Saddles, as wonderful as it was, sort of hurt the Western. It made such fun of them, that you almost couldn't take them seriously from that point on. That's why only Westerns that had the stink of Watergate or Vietnam could be taken seriously. There were so few Westerns made since then, from the Eighties on, that the few directors who did were so pleased with themselves and so happy to have the opportunity that they got lost in visuals, they got lost in the vistas and the pretty scenery. Suddenly, Westerns, which were our action films and what the working man went to see to blow off steam and have a good time, became boring to most people growing up from the Eighties on, because they're kind of pastoral.
KW: Interesting. I never thought of them that way. Film student Jamaal Green asks: What are your three favorite Shaw Brothers films?
QT: Great question, Jamaal! My three favorite Shaw brothers films would be The Avenging Eagle directed by Chung Sun, King Boxer, AKA Five Fingers of Death, and the last would have to be one by Chang Cheh. So, I'm going to go with Five Element Ninja, AKA Chinese Super Ninjas.
KW: Harriet Pakula-Teweles: What would you say were the most essential components in a script you consider working on?
QT: That's kind of a tough question. Well, maybe not. The dialogue. But the dialogue and the characters would be wrapped up in each other, because if I'm doing my job right, then I'm not writing the dialogue; the characters are saying the dialogue, and I'm just jotting it down. So, it's all about me getting into the heads of the characters. I prop them up a little bit, and then they take over from there.
KW: Since you're also the director, do you ever have trouble adapting your vision to the screen?
QT: Sometimes. But usually the process is that it gets better, because when I'm writing in my bedroom, in a bar, at my kitchen table or wherever, I'm conjuring it all up on the page. That's all well and good, but it is going to be a limited perspective at that point and time. Occasionally, what I write might read really well initially, but then you change your mind while hunting for locations when you discover settings which offer even better opportunities for drama or dramatic staging.
KW: Keith Kremer asks: How do you feel about the end of the year award season? Is it too much? Are you honored when recognized or do you not even care?
QT: [Laughs] For some reason, everyone thinks I'm always too cool for school when it comes to competing for trophies. But I worked extremely hard on this movie all year long, so it's really nice to get recognized and be considered one of the best in the end. And it's nice to get invited to the parties and to be able to hobnob and celebrate a job well done with your colleagues. However, I have it all in perspective. If the film is nominated for awards, and even if it wins them, it doesn't make the movie any better, just as if it's ignored that doesn't make the movie any worse. A lot of the movies I love didn't get nominated the years they came out. The Wild Bunch didn't win best picture in 1969, Oliver did. [Laughs]
KW: When you look in the mirror, what do you see?
QT: So far, I see a happy guy doing what I'm supposed to be doing. So far, so good.
KW: The Ling-Ju Yen question: What is your earliest childhood memory?
QT: Frankly, my earliest childhood memories are of watching Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed. I remember not liking Frankenstein then and going, "Who is this bald guy?" But I love it now.
KW: Well, thanks again for the honor, Quentin, and best of luck with the film.
QT: I always look forward to talking to you, Kam. Good talking to you.
To see a trailer for Django Unchained, visit