How Zero Dark Thirty was the Most Oddly Inspiring Movie of the Year

Zero Dark Thirty (2012) / US / Out in cinemas now / Directed by Kathryn Bigelow / Written by Mark Boal / Starring Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Jennifer Ehle, Mark Strong, Kyle Chandler, Joel Edgerton, Mark Duplass, Chris Pratt, James Gandolfini, Edgar Ramirez / 157 mins.

Zero Dark Thirty is not a movie I went into expecting to feel uplifted. But uplifted was exactly how I felt as I made my way out of the cinema, slightly shaken by what I had just seen. It may sound silly to the Oscar haters or Avatar lovers, but when Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman in history to win an Oscar for Best Director, my life pretty much changed right there and then. I decided I wanted to become a director too, but that aspiration has had some fine tuning over the years and now I realise that it was because of that moment I have learned two very valuable things about myself: I always have wanted to be a leader and do things that not everyone else can do (in this case, Kathryn is a female director who makes 'male films'). In a way, I guess you could say that a very large reason behind the fact that I'm Head Girl at my school comes down to Kathryn Bigelow being a badass woman. While I didn't absolutely love The Hurt Locker (but I sure as hell love it more than most) - but I do quite love her 1995 cult hit Strange Days - Zero Dark Thirty presented something that was rather inspiring to me. It tracks the biggest manhunt of the century, and there was a woman at the centre of it all.

"I know that's your camera, sir, but technically that's my film."

Film: Super 8
Year: 2011
Writer/Director: J.J. Abrams
Starring: Joel Courtney, Riley Griffiths, Ryan Lee, Gabriel Basso, Zach Mills, Kyle Chandler, Elle Fanning, Noah Emmerich, Glynn Turman, AJ Michalka.
Running time: 112 min.

I often hear a lot of people getting all nostalgic about the movies they watched in their childhood, like E.T, or The Goonies, or Ghostbusters. Unfortunately, I missed the 70s/80s, when easy, breezy family entertainment was fun and fresh. Instead, I was born in 1995, which I suppose wasn't a great time for family entertainment compared to then. I didn't watch any movies either, because whenever a family movie came on at 12pm every Sunday, I would turn it off. If there was one thing I hated more than American sitcoms with canned laughter as a kid, it was corny 90s family movies. So when it came to see Super 8, a movie which I heard was extremely nostalgic and sort of a homage to sci-fi family movies from the 80s, I was a little worried that I wasn't educated enough to get it. Instead, J.J. Abrams' movie, with Steven Spielberg producing, is one that not only pays tribute to the movies that most of us/our parents grew up on, but also pays tribute to our childhood. The carefree days when we had imaginations that couldn't be reined in by cynicism or the harsh reality. The days when school didn't matter all that much. The days when everything seemed so much easier.