March 'Nick's Pix:' ZERO DARK THIRTY & Book Signing!

It’s that time again. My favorite time of the month. The second Wednesday, when I get to take over the big house at the Classic Cinemas Lake Theater in Oak Park, pick a movie I love, put it on the biggest screen possible, introduce it, and watch it the way it deserves to be seen.

And now, on top of all that, these screenings have become book-signing nights too, which still kind of blows my mind.

So yes, you can come see the movie, you can come talk movies with me, and you can also pick up a copy of my new book 40 Years, 40 Films, and I’ll sign it for you right there in the lobby.

We can chat, take pictures, argue about movies, laugh about movies, do the whole thing. That’s the point. That’s why I love doing this.

So here’s the next one, and I could not be more thrilled about it.

Zero Dark Thirty....Wow....What a Movie

Wednesday, March 11th at 7:00 p.m. at the Lake Theater in Oak Park, I’m hosting a screening of Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, and it is one of the most intense, gripping, relentless, and flat-out compelling thrillers of the 2010s.

It’s also one of the gutsiest studio-era political action movies ever made, because it’s not built to make you comfortable. It doesn’t pat you on the head. It doesn’t hand you easy answers.

It drags you through the mud of the post-9/11 world like a procedural, like a police report that’s been turned into cinema, and it forces you to sit with the ugliness, the obsession, the moral compromises, and the sheer exhausting length of the hunt.

If you’ve never seen Zero Dark Thirty, here’s the basic plot setup, because the movie’s shape is pretty straightforward even though the experience of watching it is anything but.

The Story is Real, The Movie is Amazing

It dramatizes the nearly decade-long international manhunt for Osama bin Laden after 9/11, and it’s centered on Maya, a CIA analyst played by Jessica Chastain, who becomes completely consumed by this pursuit.

Early on, we see her in Pakistan, watching and participating in interrogations that are, to put it mildly, hard to watch. Information drips out, half-truths and dead ends pile up, and years pass in this fog of surveillance, politics, bureaucracy, and obsession.

People die. Leads collapse. Everyone gets worn down. Except Maya. Maya becomes the engine of the movie, this monomaniacal force who just will not let it go.

And eventually the trail leads to a courier, then to a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and then to the raid on May 2, 2011, the mission that ends it. We all know the outcome. This isn’t a mystery in that sense.

The suspense comes from the process, the details, the relentless accumulation of information, and the way Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal stage it like a procedural that slowly tightens into a vise.

Kathryn Bigelow: A Master

Now, I love Kathryn Bigelow. I really love her. She is one of my favorite directors of all time, and I don’t say that lightly. She has directed several movies I consider masterpieces. Near Dark is a masterpiece. Point Break is one of the great action movies ever made, and I will go to my grave defending that as not just a fun ride, but a flat-out great film.

Blue Steel is terrific and doesn’t get enough love. Strange Days is one of the best, most prophetic, most sweaty, panicked, wired-to-the-wall futuristic thrillers of the 1990s. She did big, tough studio work like K-19: The Widowmaker and made it feel like a human pressure cooker.

Then she comes along with The Hurt Locker and becomes the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director, which should have happened earlier in history for someone, but thank god it happened for her, because she earned it.

And what makes her so special is that she does this kind of material, the stuff that lazy people still label as “male territory,” the machismo action-thriller war zone material, and she directs it with more control, more intensity, and more clarity than most of the guys who built their entire careers on that exact style.

She belongs in the same conversation as the great tough filmmakers, the Peckinpahs and the Walter Hills, and she gets there without copying anybody. She has her own pulse. Her own rhythm. Her own eye.

And that’s what makes Zero Dark Thirty so powerful. She doesn’t glamorize the work, and she doesn’t turn it into an action movie until the last stretch, and even then it’s not “rah-rah.” It’s precise. It’s clinical. It’s scary. It’s quiet in the way that real danger is quiet.

Bigelow is the queen of intensity, and she proves it here, because she can take something that is basically phone calls, surveillance, meetings, intel, politics, waiting, waiting, waiting, and she makes it as gripping as a chase scene.

Jessica Chastain Leads a Remarkable Cast

And Jessica Chastain, man. What a performance. This is one of those performances where the actor has to carry obsession without turning it into melodrama. Maya isn’t given a personal life. She isn’t given cute little scenes to soften her.

She is defined by the mission, and Chastain plays her like a person who has burned away everything else, like someone who has turned herself into a weapon.

It’s fierce, it’s driven, it’s sometimes frightening, and it’s also quietly sad, especially by the end when the mission is over and she’s left with the question of who the hell she is without it.

And look at the cast around her. Jason Clarke is terrific. Joel Edgerton is rock solid. Mark Strong always brings that calm authority that can turn into menace at any second.

Kyle Chandler, Jeremy Strong, Mark Duplass, and the late great James Gandolfini as Leon Panetta, which still hits hard because Gandolfini brings gravity to everything.

And yes, you’ve got Chris Pratt in there, way before the Guardians of the Galaxy era, before anyone was thinking of him as an action guy, and Bigelow just slides him into the machine like it’s no big deal, because she knows how to cast for authenticity and texture, not for movie-star posing.

Complex Filmmaking That Makes You Think

This is one of those complex war movies that forces you to do the work. You have to decide what you think, and you have to sit with the discomfort of what you’re watching. Bigelow is brave that way. She trusts the audience. She’s not afraid of complicated reactions. And I love that.

I don’t always love what I’m feeling while I’m watching it, but I love that the movie makes me feel it and makes me think about it afterward.

That’s also why it plays so damn well in a theater. This is a big-screen movie, not because it’s loud and flashy, but because it’s immersive. It pulls you in. It locks you into its rhythm.

And over two and a half hours, it just takes over your body. You lean forward. You forget to breathe. You know the ending, and you’re still on the edge of your seat. That’s filmmaking.

So here’s the invitation, and I really hope you take me up on it.

The Event Details

• Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty

• Wednesday, March 11th

• 7:00 p.m., at Classic Cinemas Lake Theater in Oak Park

• Tickets are just $9 for adults, $7 for seniors

• Get them at classiccinemas.com/nick

I’ll introduce it, we’ll talk about it, we’ll dig into it, we’ll unpack it, and we’ll have some fun too. We’ll do trivia. I’ll give away some cool prizes, T-shirts, movie passes, that kind of stuff, and we will watch it together on the big screen.

It's a Book Signing Too

And before and after the movie, I’ll be in the lobby selling and signing copies of my book 40 Years, 40 Films, my autobiographical journey through my career as a film critic, one favorite movie per year since 1985.

I’m really proud of this book, and if you haven’t picked it up yet you can always get it online at www.eckhartzpress.com, but there’s something I love about doing it in person. Come out, grab a copy, let me sign it, and let’s talk movies.

If you want an intense night at the movies, if you want one of the best thrillers of the 2010s, if you want Kathryn Bigelow at the top of her game, and if you want a film that’s going to get your heart pounding and your brain spinning at the same time, come see Zero Dark Thirty with me on Wednesday, March 11th at 7:00pm at the Lake Theater in Oak Park

I’ll see you there!

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