Kathryn Bigelow’s 1987 film Near Dark tells the story of Caleb, a naïve young man who falls for the winsome blonde vampire Mae and finds himself struggling to adjust to her nighttime world of murder and mayhem. Transformed by a bite from Mae, Caleb nevertheless struggles with the morality of feeding on humans. Bigelow’s vision of star-crossed love among bloodsuckers is at once wildly romantic and frankly gruesome. It offers a rare mix of beauty and ugliness – grace and brutality.
Tag: Kathryn Bigelow
The year of 1995 was esoteric for fans of genre cinema with a variety of sub-genres and trends brought to a boiling point: the buddy movie (Bad Boys, Money Train, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Tommy Boy, Friday, Top Dog), the revisionist western (The Quick and the Dead, Wild Bill, Dead Man), neo-noir (Se7en, Heat, Devil In a Blue Dress, Kiss of Death, Jade, Things to Do In Denver When You’re Dead) all got their due but the most singular, and eerily prescient, sub-genre trend was the cyber thriller.
“The ZERO DARK THIRTY raid is not so much a payoff for the events that have been building onscreen, but is a masterstroke of fate.” – from Roger Ebert’s review of ZERO DARK THIRTY
As a member of the audience for Kathryn Bigelow’s ZERO DARK THIRTY, you might be partial to dissecting the film on a human rights or political perspective. You can try to digest the torture scenes, but will likely end up clenching your arms around your torso in protest. You might growl at the deliberately misogynistic dialogues while empathizing with Maya as a stoic heroine. She is too often antagonized for being a proactive, strong woman, after all. You might scoff at some obscure historical inaccuracies, blatant hypocrisy, or roll your eyes at how some portion of the timeline has been glossed over. Either way, based on true facts, somewhere over the course of two and a half hours, you are appalled. Is it cathartic?