The movie is lugubrious, like a Chekhov play about comedians in Los Angeles, a Chekhov play with hundreds of dick jokes, in which Jimmy Fallon might show up in a cameo as himself

Whatever Works is a vituperative, hostile film that mellows after a great painful-looking shot of Larry David lying on top of a woman he’s landed on while trying to commit suicide by jumping out a window

Far from being nonideological or apolitical, The Hurt Locker is actually pro-war, and it’s not a contradiction that it’s the best American film made about the war in Iraq so far. Kathryn Bigelow’s film explicitly states that it is better to spend every day of your life risking getting blown to pieces defusing IEDs in Baghdad than it is to spend even one day in the US shopping for cereal at Costco with your family. While many films have tried to present the American family’s consumerist nightmare before, Bigelow’s film is one that really makes you feel it. She does not shy away from the lower-income status of her hero by ennobling it, nor does she make it shameful. It is stated as fact.