Coming Soon to a Theater Near You

I saw two GREAT movies this week I think you all will like. Except maybe Lauren. The first one was Mystery Team and I may have shown the preview to many of you. This is my favorite comedy group, Derrick Comedy's first feature (derrickcomedy.com has been pretty popular in college). I brought at least 4 of you to their balls-awesome improv show in NY and I think you all loved it. The film follows the exploits of a team of amateur detectives--18-year-olds who think they're still 12. Funny it's not as common a subgenre as you might think. The Judd Apatow machine has mostly been doing 27-35 year olds thinking they're somewhere in the 8-23 range of arrested development, which is starting to get old and sloppy real soon. In the rollickingly funny Mystery Team (like, miss the next joke you're laughing so hard funny) tightly wound comedy springs from the specific stunted growth of these boys in their last year before leaving home and being forced to grow up. That's what college does, right? Throughout the film, these guys rub the tip of puberty in the most precisely coined and unforced ways but nonetheless follow the satisfying arcs of character development, especially considering the audience (us).
Slapstick and gross out humor abounds, but in meeting and getting to know the Mystery Team, you're brought back to a time when everyone in your "crew" played an important role and displayed all the right checks and balances to your adolescent boys' club community. Jason, "the master of disguise", Duncan "the boy genius" and Charlie "the strongest kid in town!" play off each other with the most distinctly side-splitting timing and chemistry, it's no wonder the comedians playing these guys have been successfully ripping off each other for years during one of the most premiere time slots in one of the most premiere comedy clubs in New York City.
The dynamic between the characters are is successful that the mess of a plot moves along in a comfortable, organic way with few contrivances. "No case too small" is the motto of the Mystery Team, but when a buttery little blonde Briana, a 7-year-old pays them 10 cents and asks them to find out who killed her parents, the boy wonders are launched into messy action-packed conspiracy. The silly non-stop plot goes from the dirtiest strip club to the top offices of some evil corporation. Not that you care, as there is enough genuinely well-played suspense in the more action-packed 2nd half that it doesn't matter who's working for what union and what poison is in whose product.
Aside from the terrific elements mentioned above that keep this movie moving, you have incredible production values which really lock it down. Massive locations, sets, stunningly smooth cinematography and a bright clean look really helps to lock Mystery Team in as a surprisingly affable debut from this up-and-coming comedy team. One might go as far as to say the cherry-bomb finale is visually beautiful.
I saw the first preview screening of this film and I think they're pretty far from finding a distributor, although they did remarkeably well at sundance from what i've heard.
The second film I saw was closing at a small festival in NY and is slated for a June release. The Hurt Locker was the best war film I've seen since Jarhead and the best Iraq war film I've ever seen, hands-down. Recently, films on the subject of this mislead war have gotten terribly muddled down in the politics and ethics of (duh, what everyone's been saying), a war we shouldn't be fighting in the first place. This film is about an under-served unit--the bomb squad--and says, "Guess what, there are man out there doing their jobs and saving lives".
When Seargent Matt Thompson (Guy Pierce) loses his life in the terrifically paced opening sequence, he is replaced by the loose-cannon William James (the terrific and under-rated Jeremy Wrenner), a no-bullshit soldier who gets the job done with or without the help of his team or the rules. Sure, the lead character brings a hackneyed feeling, but first off, this is a war film and these are the characters who make this genre. Second, James' character arc, solo ventures and dynamic relationship with his team may send your expectations for a loop, although generally I felt like it didn't gel from beginning to end.
The bottom line is that James is the man in the 80 lb bomb suit in 130 degree weather swimming in the eyes of an occupied nation. Although this film stays pretty far from criticizing the Iraq War (one character blabbers inelegantly about how it's fucked up and everyone dies, but that happens in every war and every war film), the facet that keeps it unique is in the urban setting of an occupied country, one that never asked for US intervention and one that has shown it's discontent with internal violence.
But this isn't just red-wire, blue-wire suspense. In one of the first missions at an evacuated UN building, James strips from the suit, "If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die comfortable" and scurries around through a parked car with a massive set of explosives in the trunk. Meanwhile, Seargent JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) is keeping eyes out for a shooter on the roof and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) is dealing with the paranoia and pressure of an amateur cameraman taping the escapade and eyes all over, gesturing towards the spectacle of massacre.
It was Eldridge's fault that Thompson, a great team leader, died, and he spends much of the film dealing with the guilt of his hesitation and obsessing with death. Therefore with superego and id clearly locked up, Sanborn plays a terrific balance in keeping his team in touch, intact and alive.
As the missions move on and the countdown of the days brings them closer to home, they get much closer. One dry, quiet sniper shoot-out in the desert that will have your throat parched and your breath short (with a tasty cameo by Ralph Fiennes) brings about a terrific male bonding scene. Slugging whisky and each others' stomachs with breaks for sentimentality, girls back home and over-the-top machismo locks these guys into each other in a most definitely modern moment: this isn't philosophy by candle light in a half-shelled European church.
Obsession gets everyone into trouble through some confused investigations and a muted but seat-gripping climax, and when someone gets sent back home early (you knew it was gonna happen), it happens with a wide grin of originality. Not only does The Hurt Locker bring glory back to the battlefield, but it does so with gusto, buckets of black humor and a return to the war films that taught us all what it's like for some men out there. Except maybe Lauren.

After the film there was a Q+A with the director Kathryn Bigelow (a girl?!?!). Check out the resume, and yes--she totally directed point blank.