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If some of the screenwriters and directors in Hollywood are to be believed, computers are magical devices. Hook yours up to a wall socket, type really fast, and hey presto, the Pentagon’s your bitch. Some hackers out there are so good they can do this while being held at gunpoint, or shall we say ‘pleasured’ by a hot blonde or even both. Of course, computer networks really don’t work like that, especially high-profile governmental and military targets. It takes quite a few elements to breach the security of even pedestrian marks such as banks and research labs, from tapping phone lines to bluffing your way past the front desk. For a great cinematic example of how this sort of thing really works, as well as one that ages well, look no further than a little 1996 film called Sneakers.

When he was in college, Martin Brice and his buddy Cosmo played digital Robin Hoods, hacking into the financial resources of prominent jerkass politicians to redistribute their wealth to people who need it – the National Organization to Legalize Marijuana, for example. One of their attempted hacks gets Cosmo caught while Martin was able to flee the country, due to a rather serendipitous pizza run. Years later, Martin’s operating (under a nom de plume) a small group of misfits called a ‘tiger team’ which basically puts security systems through acid tests. The team consists of an ex-CIA operative, a conspiracy theorist technical adept, a blind man who’s a consummate phreak due to great hearing and a juvenile delinquent genius. Everything is going swell until a couple of shady NSA agents contact Marty, call him by his old name and tell him that he needs to steal something for them if he wants to stay out of jail. …And that’s all I’m gonna tell you.

Michael Weston was taking notes from these guys.

There are some specific dates given over the course of the film that would normally cause it to feel too dated. However, the charisma of the team’s members, the whip-smart writing and the very nature of the capers helps the story not only age well but remain grounded and therefore more interesting to watch. The quasi-magical nature of computers in, say, Hackers is replaced with practical and mostly realistic things such as directional microphones, motion sensors sensative to body temperature and careful planning. When computers and encryption do get involved, the underlying math is not only explained but shown, giving the elements weight and helping them serve the story rather than dazzling us from seeing story weaknesses with flashy graphics and ludicrous jargon.

“Check it out, Marty, it’s the latest in ‘I don’t want to get my head blown off when the mooks find me here’ fashion.”

While there are some weaknesses in the story – the way in which things appear after they’ve been hacked, for instance – they’re not bad enough to break the film’s flow. Rather, they’re smoothed over by some great performances. Robert Redford is one of the consummate leading men of both my generation and that of my parents. Sydney Poitier’s stoic, cautious nature is played beautifully against the manic mind of Dan Akroyd. The late River Phoenix aquits himself very well as the youngest member of the team, while David Straithairn convincingly shows how a blind man would operate in these situations and how valuable he is in spite of his disability. Mary McDonnell is remarkable as Marty’s Girl Friday and Ben Kingsley pulls off being both charming and menacing with ease. And all of these front-line well-rounded actors work with a script that never seems to fall flat or even miss more than one or two steps.

Okay, the film is a little dated. That mainframe behind those two could probably fit on an iPhone now.

If I were asked to describe Sneakers in one word, I’d likely have the same reaction I do when I see someone slapping an aribtrary numerical score onto a review (which involves some very unpleasant indigestion) but the word I’d end up using after downing some Pepto-Bismol is “intelligent.” The film’s premise, mechanics, relationships and even humor never feel dumbed down or half-assed. It’s not the kind of movie that talks down to its audience, which can be rare given some of the pedantic fare running around the local cinema. Still, this braininess means that it’s focused more on character development and concept exploration than sex and violence, which means that some of the twitchy attention-deficit action junkies might consider this film too ‘boring’ and file it away with Empire Strikes Back or Gattaca while they clamour for the Avatar sequel. If you want to watch a caper film that’s every bit as funny as any of the recent Ocean’s Insert Incremental Number Here films while being at least a few notches smarter, Sneakers is waiting for you on the Netflix streaming service, and I’m pretty sure you’re going to enjoy it. Otherwise, Halo:Reach still isn’t due out until autumn. Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, there.

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.

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Alfred Hitchcock once said that there’s a big difference between surprise and suspense. I hope he won’t mind if I paraphrase a little. If I were sitting here talking about movies, and my desk were to explode because someone planted a bomb here, that’d be a surprise. Now, if you as the audience knew there was a bomb under my desk, and I sat here for the next six minutes or so blathering on about a movie, only to get up and walk away without the bomb going off, that’s suspense. And we wouldn’t necessarily need jump-cut shots to a ticking timer or dramatic music playing. No, just an establishing shot of the bomb being placed, then me coming in and sitting down to do another one of these recordings, without any other trappings or clever gimmicks. That’s good storytelling, right? Right. The makers of The Hurt Locker know suspense from surprise, and have created one of the most suspenseful movies I have ever seen in my life. It stars Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Evangeline Lilly, David Morse, Ralph Finnes and Guy Pearce.

“…Oh boy.”

The Hurt Locker follows the Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit Bravo Company during the summer of 2004 in Iraq. Staff Sergeant Will James (Renner) is a soldier who defuses bombs. He’s one of the best, even if his methods can seem a trifle cavalier or even reckless to others, especially Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Mackie), who is charged with James’ safety during his operations. Yet this seeming bravado is just the first impression of a brilliant professional who understands his role in the grand scheme of modern warfare and also carries a great deal of compassion for those around him despite his outward appearances and behavior. As Bravo Company embarks on one potentially deadly mission after another, we are drawn into their lives and shown the environment in which these men toil, from the desolate wastes of the desert to the equally deadly streets of Baghdad.

There are some movies that, when a war is mentioned, I think of almost instantly. World War 2 brings Saving Private Ryan to mind. Discussions of Vietnam trigger memories of Full Metal Jacket. I spend just as much time remembering Jarhead as I do my own childhood experiences when the first Gulf War is mentioned. The current conflict in the Middle East remains a muddy, ill-defined struggle, but The Hurt Locker brings the lives of the participants into sharp relief. This film is every bit as intimate as it is intense. It never becomes political or preachy, focusing entirely on these men and the situations into which they put themselves day after day. Like the other films I’ve mentioned, we see these soldiers not so much as swaggering macho heroes but more as flawed, driven human beings who are all the more heroic because of their shortcomings.

“This one, I’m gonna disarm with the sheer power of my massive balls.”

This film is almost entirely without a musical score. The scenes involving the defusing of explosive devices and stalking an enemy sniper are possessed of a chilling stillness, which builds the tension with each passing, quiet moment. The shots are not cut short to try and jar us into a tense feeling artificially, but are left long on the faces and fingers of the protagonists, ensuring we understand who is doing what at which point in time and thus becoming more invested in the outcome of the scene. And in an odd yet telling juxtaposition, one of the film’s closing scenes that takes place in a suburban supermarket, far from the front or anything resembling danger, has an extremely similar stillness about it.

A lesser team of storytellers might pack a film like this with explosions from end to end. But considering this is a story about soldiers tasked with disarming ordnance, rather than setting it off, one of the many factors of The Hurt Locker that works so well is the fact that we are aware of the fact that any of the bombs we see might go off. Hitchcock would be proud, as writer Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow build layer upon layer in every scene to mount the tension to an explosive potential not unlike that possessed by the bombs themselves. It’s also established very early in the film that these are not the sort of explosions that our heroes can have much hope of outrunning. There are no rushing fireballs chasing our heroes down corridors here, no shiny CGI to make these explosions look larger than life. They don’t have to be larger than life: they are awesome, deadly and downright ugly just as they are. You don’t want to be anywhere near them, yet the men and women whose daily lives inspired the story of Bravo Company choose to get right next to them every single day.

“I popped that smoke myself. Why? Because covering fire is for pussies.”

This is one of those movies I’m sorry I missed in the theater. Not because I think it would be more impressive on a big screen, since it held me in rapt attention from start to finish on my television just as it would in a cinema. No, I would have liked to given these artists more monetary support. The talent on display in The Hurt Locker, from Jeremy Renner’s star-making performance to Katheryn Bigelow’s near-perfect direction to Mark Boal’s captivating screenplay, is a wonder to behold in a cinematic environment where gimmick is king and stories are often sacrificed on the altar of CGI and cheap adaptations. Whatever your feelings might be about the conflict in Iraq, the United States military or a movie that didn’t do all that well at the box office, you owe it to yourself to see this movie. I think it’s a strong contender for Best Picture at the Oscars, provided James Cameron doesn’t buy the committee five-star dinners and oral sex with his massive box office returns.

The bombs in the film are designed to blow up human targets. If you’re anything like me, you will agree The Hurt Locker is designed to blow your mind.

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.

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In the early days of science fiction, the aim of its creators was not to impress the audience with bombastic explosions or cutting-edge computer graphics. While the overall goal was to entertain and engage and thus earn a living, they didn’t have the aforementioned crutches upon which to lean. They had to rely solely on the power of their vision, their skills as storytellers and the ability of their ideas to engage. Gattaca has no ray guns, no explosions, no exotic alien creatures, none of the trappings of what really make something stand out as ’syfy’ fare – but when it comes to classic science fiction in theme, mood and execution, writer-director Andrew Niccol shows us how the likes of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne defined the genre. The film stars Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Jude Law, Alan Arkin, Tony Shaloub, Gore Vidal, Loren Dean, Xander Berkeley and Ernest Borgnine.

In the not-too-distant future, the study of genetics has grown to the point that children can be custom made through liberal eugenics, and that such children are favored over those conceived purely out of love. Vincent Freeman (Hawke) is one of the latter, and when his parents discover his 99% probability of death by heart failure around age 30 coupled with myopia which has all but been eradicated, they guarantee their next child will be more ‘perfect,’ or more ‘valid’. Valid is the term used for children created through the ‘proper’ eugenics, while those like Vincent are called ‘in-valid’. Despite this, however, Vincent is determined to achieve his goal of going into space. To do this he adopts the identity of recently crippled but brilliant Jerome Morrow (Law), and becomes employed by the space-exploring conglomerate called Gattaca. A year-long mission to Titan looms on the horizon, and Vincent’s first in line due to his fake genes and true desire, but the murder of the mission director could put an end to his dreams forever.

Taken on its own, Gattaca is a very smart drama. As a movie, it is well and tightly written with good performances from the actors. The art direction bears particular mention. The look and feel of the film is hauntingly postmodern, showing the use of electric cars and advanced gene scanning equipment against the backdrop of ‘brutalist’ architecture that was prevalent in the 1950s. It lends a familiarity to the story that draws the audience further into the nuanced and well-paced plot. But the virtues of Gattaca don’t stop there. This isn’t just a science fiction drama. It’s a science fiction drama about something.

The film is steeped in symbolism. It plays upon themes of discrimination, destiny, friendship, societal control and sibling rivalry. This is an examination of human nature, and the influences that define, drive and shape the human spirit. While the film is quite clear on the stance it takes with these issues, it never becomes completely overbearing in conveying its message. The story and themes are handled with elegance, downplaying most potential bombast with human emotions that feel real. This might make the film seem bland or lifeless to some viewers, but the plot, acting and thematic elements make Gattaca a taut, stunning dramatic thriller.

More than anything else, Gattaca reminds us that the only true obstacle an individual has to achieving their goals is themselves. It is far too easy for society or an employer or even one’s family to lay out boundaries for the individual, saying “This is where you belong, who you are and what we expect of you. Nice people do not deviate from their boundaries.” When politeness and conformity are the norm, an individual can feel compelled to swallow their dreams and follow procedure and protocol for the sake of avoiding confrontation. But the truth of the matter is that the dream of the individual is a precious thing, and as a society becomes more regimented and compartmentalized, those dreams are often casualties in the silent but deadly war for the human soul. We have to fight for our dreams, to keep them alive and bring them from our imaginations into reality, and there is going to be opposition every step of the way. Gattaca shows us that even the most imposing obstacles are surmountable, and as I have said on numerous occasions, we only truly fail in our struggle to be who we want to be if we quit and allow others to tell us who we are, rather than insisting on our right to exist, live and thrive on our own terms.

I apologize for the soapbox nature I just got into, but suffice it to say that Gattaca is more than just a good-looking science-fiction drama, and if you agree with any of the points I’ve just made, about storytelling or otherwise, it’s worth your time to watch this film. It’s available via Netflix’s instant queue, so even in this there’s truth to be found. In the end, the only thing truly stopping you… is you.

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.

I have fond memories of the days at university when the lights would go out, we’d sit on the couch or floor with our hastily-cooked meals and wait for The X-Files to come on. We drank in the ambiance, the supernatural nature of the weekly problems and the interplay between Mulder and Scully. Not to mention Scully herself. Since the show left the air, there have been some attempts to recapture that sort of eerie and disturbing storytelling magic. Treshold came close but was let down by a small audience, a bad time slot on Sci-Fi Channel (which has since renamed itself SyFy which should tell you something about the chimps running the joint) and a lack of mystery or real suspense. At least they had Carla Gugino, though.

And then Fringe came along.

J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman drew inspiration for their show not only from The X-Files but also The Twilight Zone (remember that one, kids?), the film Altered States and Michael Crichton’s novels, as well as mixing in the procedural atmosphere of Law & Order and the serial nature of Abrams’ previous major success, Lost. Unlike the writers of Threshold, which included Brannon Braga to nobody’s surprise, Abrams, Orci and Kurtzman quickly demonstrated their ability to build suspense, maintain mystery and create dramatic tension between interesting, multi-dimensional characters.

One of the first casting choices they made was John Noble as Dr. Walter Bishop. The thinking, it seems, was something along the lines of “What’s a show about mad science without a mad scientist?” But unlike the dour Dr. Frankenstein or the madcap Emmett Brown, Dr. Bishop has the somewhat doddering charm of an aging but beloved grandparent coupled with a scientific curiosity that supersedes what most people would consider sound ethics. The good doctor has the answers to the causes behind a string of inexplicable and deadly events being investigated by “Fringe Division,” a multi-agency task force. FBI agent Olivia Dunham, played by Anna Torv, is recruited for this top-secret operation following the mysterious death of an airliner full of passengers and mortal wounding of her partner and lover, John Scott. Her investigation leads her to Walter Bishop, who’s been institutionalized for almost two decades. To get him out, she needs to enlist Walter’s son, Peter Bishop. More than just a means to access Walter as both next of kin and a cypher, Peter is a genius in his own right, a master of several languages and has the sort of shady connections that allow Dunham to go just outside the law to get whatever she needs to solve her case. Peter is played by Joshua Jackson, who got the role after impressing Abrams in his audition for James T. Kirk.

The show is fresh and visceral without seeming hackneyed despite it’s inspirations. Characters develop gradually instead of in fits and starts, the science behind the odd events has some rooting in reality and is never a technobabble fix worthy of Star Trek. Unlike Lost, where the plot is obfuscatory at best, the procedural nature of Fringe keeps the events rooted and moving forward in spite of their supernatural aspects. Everything that happens in Fringe feels like it could happen, even when things like teleportation, pyrokinesis and interdimensional travel are introduced. The fact that these things are happening to and around people we actually care about helps make Fringe worth watching, as well.

The first season is available on DVD and the second season is well underway. Thursday nights in January will find me waiting for the innocuous piano music that introduces the show with hints at things like “Dark Matter,” “Suspended Animation” and “Telepathy.” Like those days gone by, I’ll be turning down the lights and wondering what sweet treat Walter’s obsessing over this week. He, after all, very eloquently described the simple appeal of a root beer float:

“It’s heavenly. And earthly, at the same time.”

The same, one might argue, could be said for Fringe itself.

The major networks – CBS, NBC and ABC in this country – seem to have cornered the market on procedurals. In fact, it could be argued that procedurals are overrated. However, occasionally a show will try to take the procedural formula and go in a different direction. Take a cop show, for example, and give it military trappings. Or take a medical show and make the principle an insufferable douchebag. And then you have some of the shows on USA, which look at procedurals from an entirely different perspective – I’m taking a long, lingering look at you, Burn Notice. Come back soon.

Anyway, what we have here is a show that deals with major crimes – multi-million dollar art forgeries etc. Law & Order Criminal Intent does this with the typical Law & Order tropes. That is to say, everything’s very serious, the subjects are RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES and nobody cracks a smile. It leans so heavily on the non-comedic side of drama it occasionally makes Greek tragedies look light-hearted.

On the other side of things, we have White Collar.

This isn’t to say that White Collar is madcap or slapstick. It’s not playing things deliberately for laughs. It is, however, intelligently written and well-paced. The premise of a gentleman thief coming over to the lawful side of things in order to secure their freedom isn’t really new, but one of the things that makes White Collar stand out is that the two leads are equally intelligent and even before their partnership begins, there’s a grudging admiration for each other. It’s like if Al Pacino & Robert DeNiro’s characters in Heat came up against a more violent gang of bank robbers and joined forces to take them down.

Neal Caffery, as a character, is especially interesting because he does use his intelligence and charm to get what he wants, yet isn’t willing to use violence to achieve his ends, nor is he completely happy-go-lucky. He does have desires that extend beyond creature comforts and fine clothing. The fact that Matt Bomer’s so easy on the eyes puts the whole character together in a shiny package that’s very, very difficult to ignore.

Tim DeKay’s FBI Agent Peter Burke isn’t a slouch either. He’s just as smart as Neal, being the only person ever to catch Neal after years of chasing him down. His suspicion isn’t completely unfounded, yet he respects and even likes Neal, especially because Neal is smart enough not to do something stupid that would blow a case on which they’re working.

For example, instead of just going through a plan by the seat of his pants, Neal is seen studying a book on warrant law before heading into the lion’s den of a particularly nasty art forger. Since Neal is wearing a GPS ankle bracelet that goes off if he leaves a 2-mile radius within New York City, the FBI is informed he’s flown the coup. When Burke and his men arrive, they see he’s come to the suspicious warehouse the two visited earlier for which Burke did not have enough evidence to secure a warrant. Since they are in the course of apprehending a fugitive, the FBI can execute a search legally, and they nab the bad guys by the book. They couldn’t have done it without Neal, and when Burke sees where Neal has brought him, he grins.

It’s up there with Burn Notice in terms of enjoyability, writing and character writing. Let’s hope it stays at this level. My wife, one of the most critical people I know, has dubbed it “fuckawesome.”

I couldn’t agree more.