At the movies: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

Not nearly as racist, sexist, or insulting as Transformers 2 (which seems to be the standard comparison being bandied about), the latest film sprung from a toy line is a bizarre collision between Reagan-80s nostalgia and contemporary bloodthirsty anomie. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra depicts an elite military force drawn from countless nations across the world, bound only to the idea of a common good and their unyielding love for Double Bubble bubble gum (easily the most harebrained product placement of the year, standing out from the rest of the film’s cacophony like sore thumbs.

Director Stephen Sommers has made a couple of films that I rather enjoyed (The Mummy, Deep Rising), but he also made Van Helsing, so all bets are off as to what we’re actually going to get with any of his films. This time, it’s the audience, rather than a conscientiously mute ninja who comes up snake eyes.

Christopher Eccleston (who’ll always be The Ninth Doctor) is the latest in a long line of Scottish war profiteers. We know this because the film opens with us being introduced to one of his ancestors in the fifteenth century. And is there anything more disheartening than an expository prologue set five hundred-plus years in the past at the beginning of your multimillion dollar toy/armed forces commercial?

So, elite force versus a loosely-knit terrorist organization led by Eccleston, with several notable lackeys: The Baroness (truly suffering via comparison with her butch goddess cartoon incarnation), Storm Shadow (evil ninja), and the mysterious Doctor, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Now if you’re one of those people (like me) who think that the presence of Joseph Gordon-Levitt is indicative of some quality and hidden depth in this production, you are wrong and should save yourself the time and money.

There’s an unbelievable amount of violent death (several impalings, lots of impact trauma, and five or six exploding heads- in a PG-13 film) and some ridiculous romantic subplots. As our ostensible lead, Channing Tatum (who was good in A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints and little else) comes off like a wannabe Jensen Ackles, and other than a nice cameo from Sommers regular Kevin J. O’Connor as Dr. Mindbender, everyone is pretty much flailing around in a sea of special effects.

Again, better than Transformers 2, but what does that really say?

At the movies: The Hurt Locker.

Prepare yourself for a new look at the Iraq War. In the hands of director Kathryn Bigelow (Near Dark, Strange Days, Blue Steel), we spend several missions among one of the elite squads of bomb and IED defusers, and it's a gathering of nailbitingly tense moments. Bravo Company gets called in to handle the big booms, and it's a rotating array of stunning performances (Jermey Renner and Anthony Mackie in particular) and big name chop suey.

Bigelow is frequently acclaimed as one of the most gifted female filmmakers in the world, as if that qualified epithet weren't incredibly insulting. She's one of the most gifted filmmakers working today, period. That she works primarily in the field of action and genre films makes her work harder to pin down and seemingly less respectable in the eyes of much of the critical establishment, but even that cannot diminish her rock-solid hand behind the viewfinder.

Built on a foundation of in-depth art, sculpture, and photography training, Bigelow's films put ninety percent of what passes for action cinema to shame just by being able to convey physical space in a manner that allows the viewer to understand the physical planes on which the film's action is unfolding. In The Hurt Locker, Bigelow emphasizes neither incomprehensible kinesis nor widescreen vistas to ground the viewer in the now of war.

She focuses on the routines of men at work; in that way, one could find a thematic throughline with both Claire Denis' Beau Travail and Michael Mann's recent (and sorely underrated) Public Enemies, though Bigelow's take is much more accessible and visceral than either of those films. It's the first cinematic representation of the Iraq War that doesn't feel tented up by a specific political agenda or ideology, rather an exploration of what a life under fire does to the human mind.