Zero Dark Thirty

Thought this would be good but didn’t expect to like it so much.  As a big saw fan it was interesting to see torture played in a non horror way. And boy is it a lot less fun here. Without the really graphic sound design and moral (somewhat) ambiguity, it’s a whole lot sadder. Liked the theme there of all the means to an end, moral quandary, type stuff everyone was always doing. I split the run time up pretty equally so it kinda just felt like I watched two movies. The first half was chastain looking too good and running down leads on OBL (UBL?) and then the second half basically they find the house and then the invasion scene. Could be because of that but no portions really seemed to drag much and I was cool with the runtime. I thought performances were really good. So many big actor cameos and people I’d only seen on one thing was a little distracting. Seeing Chris Pratt in anything is an immersion breaker. Seeing James gandolfini was crazy. Everyone was good but it was like niche actors heaven in here.  Aside from weird guys popping up in every scene I was able to get really immersed too.  Some things I thought were really funny: - Not sure if they let each actor choose their own pronunciations or if it was different on purpose but we get every Al qaeda pronunciation.  Al K-duh Al Ky-duh Al ky-a-da - They did such a bad job of making Jessica chastain look tired. “You look worn down” and it’s just the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen with some makeup bags under her eyes  My only really sizable gripe is the home invasion scene is so so dark. Probably just my TV not being up to the challenge but it was definitely hard to see at point. Well that and the fact they did the thing where they have explosions way too loud and then dialogue is near unintelligible. Really great technical showcase. Aside from some sound design gripes, and a really dark end scene this was a real technical display, really interesting subject matter (probably gonna watch a documentary on this later or something), and a good watch. Deserving of whatever awards is won (best picture? I don’t remember I wasn’t sentient in 2012)