Zero Dark Thirty

I'm not surprised this is the most hyped, overly exalted film of the year. The reasons are plentiful and don't really belong in this thread. Even without those considerations, this movie was not good. The script was bland and the character development was nonexistent. It wasn't really fiction, it wasn't really a documentary. It just felt like a disjointed collection of conference room meetings.

I wasn't expecting a Michael Bay type movie, obviously, but this film simply didn't engage me at all. Emotionally, dramatically, etc. I did my best to go in with an open mind, but within the first 5 minutes I began to realize my prior notions and impressions of the film's advertising were more or less spot on.

Can't really say more without going into all sorts of tangent discussions. Again, judging purely based on the merits of the story and its execution, Zero Dark Thirty was not a good movie (in my probably stupid opinion).

ZDT reminds me of The Amazing Spider-Man - empty and devoid of any emotion or engaging drama. But if one considers that the source material for ZDT demands emotional detachment, then that brings me to my other point. Both films felt unnecessary. One because the origin tale had been told too recently, and the other for reasons I can't really explain succinctly. But again, without digressing it's not hard to figure out why this movie was made. And while Bigelow was working on and researching an OBL movie before May 2011, the reason for making the movie is largely the same.