It’s been 12 years since I last watched Katherine Bigelow’s fantastic war film about the hunting and killing of Osama Bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty. The movie was released a mere 20 months after the raid on the Bin Laden compound by SEAL Team Six that took the terrorist out. That is a pretty remarkable turnaround time, and when I saw it, I really wondered how accurate the movie was. Recently, Netflix dropped an excellent docuseries in the 2025 TV schedule called American Manhunt: Osama Bin Laden, and so I decided to rewatch the Jessica Chastain-led film and see how accurate it really was.

The Answer Is Complicated, But Basically, The Movie Does A Great Job

I will admit I’m no expert on covert affairs or the details of the Bin Laden hunt, but I’m old enough to have followed all the news from 9/11 until that fateful day in May 2011 when then-President Obama made the announcement that Bin Laden had been located and killed. I knew the basics: the raid by SEAL Team Six occurred in a compound in a small town in Pakistan, and a number of people in Bin Laden’s family and some close associates were taken out. Beyond that, I didn't know much.

The first detailed account of the mission I ever really saw was, in fact, Zero Dark Thirty in 2013. I am a big fan of historical movies, and though this history was recent, it fell right into a genre I love, but also one of which I am inherently skeptical. Even the best movies based on real historical events often make a hash of the truth, or at least change enough to make the truth a little murkier for various reasons.

This was especially true of a movie like Zero Dark Thirty. How much info was really available to the public and the filmmakers so soon after the event that changed the world? This was a covert affair led mostly by the CIA. There must be some aspects they hadn’t discussed publicly yet, surely, I told myself. Well, after watching the Netflix series, and assuming the CIA agents interviewed in it aren’t lying (I know, I know, “assume” at my own risk), it turns out Zero Dark Thirty was pretty accurate.

There Are Some Changes, Of Course, But The Biggest Is Well Done

One of the biggest changes, and one that seems to have drawn the most ire from experts, is that Bigelow condensed a number of CIA analysts into one character, Maya, played by Jessica Chastain in one of her finest roles. Having the character played by a woman was no mistake, nor was it Bigelow pushing any kind of agenda; it was somewhat factually accurate.

One thing that really caught my attention in American Manhunt was just how many of the analysts who worked on the Bin Laden case, especially the ones who refused to let it go even when the Bush administration de-emphasized the search, were women. It makes total sense for a female character to represent those within the CIA who refused to give up the hunt and worked until he was found.

The Oscar-nominated Zero Dark Thirty is not perfect historically, especially the depiction of torture, but in a broad sense, the movie gets the story of the hunt correct. For that, I have a new respect for it beyond just my admiration for it being a great movie.

Movies and TV shows have been making drama out of historical events since the dawn of the business. Some of the best movies and TV shows of all time have focused on events that literally changed the world, like D-Day in Saving Private Ryan or the fall of the Roman Republic in Rome. This list is all about those projects and those important events. Take a read, you could even learn something like we did!

Braveheart

While Braveheart isn't the most historically accurate movie of all time, it does try to tell the true story of the Battle of Stirling Bridge. It was a huge turning point in the Scottish/English war. Ever since, many in Scotland have used it as a rallying point for independence.

Chernobyl

The 1986 nuclear meltdown of the power plant in Chernobyl, USSR (now Ukraine), was one of the most important and scariest events of the 1980s. There was already a fear of nuclear power, and the meltdown not only helped show just how technologically messed up the USSR was, but it was also used as a rallying cry by anti-nuke protestors in the West. The HBO miniseries from 2019 tells the amazing story in all its terrifying details and was pretty historically accurate.

Selma

It's hard to put into context just how important the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s in the US was historically, all over the world, not just in America. It's a movement that is impossible to tell the complete story of in one movie or TV show, but Selma does a great job in focusing on one of the most significant events of the movement.

The Passion of the Christ

Setting aside the politics of Mel Gibson's controversial The Passion of the Christ, there really isn't a more earth-shattering event than the crucifixion of Jesus. Even if you are a nonbeliever, there isn't a story ever told that has had such a profound effect on human history.

Oppenheimer

The winner of the 2024 Oscar for Best Picture (and a bunch more), Oppenheimer, tells the story of the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb and not only did it's terrifying effects help end World War II, but it cast a pall over the rest of the 20th Century as the USA and the USSR locked horns in the Cold War and an arms race that threatened to end the world.

Thirteen Days

During the Cold War, the closest it ever came to becoming a hot war was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was a harrowing time, and had cooler heads not prevailed, things on this planet might be very different. Thirteen Days tells the story from inside the White House during that history-changing event.

Zero Dark Thirty

The hunt for Osama Bin Laden after 9/11 affected every corner of the globe, and for almost a decade, it was front-page news. Zero Dark Thirty takes audiences behind the scenes in that hunt, leading to his death in 2011. It's a fantastic movie and one that tells the story in a pretty accurate way, though, like many of these movies, it shouldn't all be taken as fact.

Waterloo

The Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th Century reshaped politics all over the globe. Obviously, the most acute effects were felt in Europe, but without them, the US wouldn't have made the Louisiana Purchase, so the long-ranging effects were all over. It all ended with the Battle of Waterloo, where the English and other European powers finally ended Napoleon's campaign to rule the world. The movie Waterloo is one of the best war movies ever made and is a must-see for history buffs.

The Right Stuff

In the mid-20th Century, as a biproduct of the Cold War, the US and the USSR found themselves racing each other to space. The Soviets won the race, but it wasn't because the US didn't make a valiant effort. The story of the Mercury Seven, the first Americans in space, is told wonderfully in The Right Stuff, with an all-star cast and based on a book by Tom Wolfe.

The Big Short

The 2008 financial meltdown had ripple effects all over the world. The largest economies in the world were brought to their knees due to the wild speculation and lawlessness of the US housing and stock markets. It's a completed series of events that led to the meltdown, and The Big Short does an incredible job of uncomplicating it.

Saving Private Ryan

The main story of Saving Private Ryan, the rescue of one soldier among millions, isn't what changed the world, but let's be honest, what most people remember first about the movie, the storming of Normandy Beach on D-Day, did certainly change it. World War II was essentially won in those days, though it would take almost another year for the war to finally come to a close.

Schindler's List

Like other movies here, Schindler's List takes on one of the most complicated and enormous stories in the history of humankind. It is impossible to tell the whole story, but Steven Spielberg's masterpiece doesn't have to tell the whole story to find the emotion and horror of the holocaust in his story about Oskar Schindler. It's a movie many can't watch more than once, but it's a movie everyone should see.

World Trade Center

For anyone alive in the late '90s and early 2000s, there was before 9/11, and there was after. Everything changed on that day, everywhere. It started wars that lasted decades and forever changed the way countries, especially the United States, handled security. So much changed that day that it's hard to put it into words, and Oliver Stone's focus on the events of the day in World Trade Center reminds us all of the horrors and the aftermath.

Dunkirk

World War II had a profound effect on everything that has come since. From the Cold War to the decolonization of Africa and Asia, it upended the whole world order. It's important to remember that it might have ended much differently had the evacuation of the British Army at Dunkirk not been as successful as it was, and Christopher Nolan's brilliant and engaging Dunkirk does an incredible job telling the story.

Band Of Brothers

HBO's iconic miniseries Band Of Brothers is a little bit of a cheat on this list, as it tells the events of a few important moments in World War II, including D-Day, Operation Market Garden, and the Battle of The Bulge, but it belongs on this list as it does one of the best jobs of any movie or TV show telling the whole story of the last year of World War II.

Darkest Hour

Like Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, Darkest Hour tells the same story, or at least the same time, as the British evacuation from France at the beginning of World War II. Darkest Hour sees Churchill, played wonderfully by Gary Oldman, rallying the British public (and the politicians) to stay in the fight when the evacuation could've ended everything.

The Insider

This one might not seem so obvious, but the story told in The Insider changed a lot. Anyone who grew up in the 20th Century can tell you just how prevalent smoking cigarettes was. It was allowed everywhere and hardly discouraged by anyone. Jeffrey Wigand, played by Russell Crowe in the movie, blew the whistle on the whole tobacco industry and forever changed the public's perception of the habit, and that has changed everyday life for everyone.

Bridge Of Spies

Though it is just one story of many from the Cold War, Bridge of Spies, which is essentially about a prisoner exchange between East and West, does have a few moments in it that profoundly affected life in the world. Especially the scene when Tom Hanks' character travels from West Berlin to East and audiences see the early days of the Berlin Wall, and, in effect, the Iron Curtain in its most physical form.

All The President's Men

The Watergate Scandal might seem like a moment that only affected United States politics, but the ripple effects go much further. All The President's Men tells the story of the two reporters who broke the story and their work forever changed how politics are covered by the media not just in the US, but everywhere. It's one of the best movies about politics, covering a moment that changed the world.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Elizabeth: The Golden Age, the follow-up to Elizabeth, both starring Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth, is, honestly, a mess, historically. It's not a very good movie, either. However, it is one of the rare movies that depicts the Battle of Gravelines, when the English Navy defeated the Spanish Armada and the balance of power in Europe, and worldwide, changed forever.

From The Earth To The Moon

The exploration of space in the mid and late 20th Century affects everyone on earth. Where would we be without satellites, jet propulsion, or any of the other things we take for granted that are a result of the space race? The HBO miniseries From The Earth To The Moon is a great starting place to learn more about it.

JFK

Oliver Stone's conspiratorial JFK might not be the most historically accurate telling of the assassination of John F. Kennedy - or maybe it is, depending on your point of view - but it is the most in-depth discussion of one of the most consequential moments of the 20th Century.

Charlie Wilson's War

Like others on this list, Charlie Wilson's War doesn't seem like a movie portraying a moment that changed everything, but, of course, it did. The Tom Hanks movie shows the beginning of the USA's involvement with the Afghan mujahideen in their fight against the Soviets. There is a direct through-line from the collapse of the USSR, 9/11, and the USA's War on Terror that all began there.

The Death of Stalin

Sure, The Death of Stalin is a comedy, and a brilliant one at that, but the event it depicts, from the actual death of the brutal dictator Stalin to the internal battle for power it created, completely changed the direction of the Cold War, which would continue for another four decades after his death.

The Ten Commandments

It may be controversial to put Biblical movies on this list, depending on your belief system, but whether fable or true story, the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments has been something that changed the world more than maybe any other single story. Charlton Heston's starring role as Moses in The Ten Commandments is still one of the most beloved performances of all time in Hollywood.

The King's Speech

It's fair to say that this movie is a little heavy on World War II moments, but it's a war that has had a profound effect on everything that has come after it. The King's Speech isn't a war movie in a traditional sense, but it does tell a story that until it, was somewhat untold and that's how important King George VI's speech was for moral for the British and indeed, all the Allies in the war.

A Bridge Too Far

It's rare that a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster with a giant cast of legends like A Bridge Too Far tells the story of an infamous battle disaster like Operation Market Garden. Had the battle gone differently, as the British General Bernard Montgomery had intended with his plan, the war might have ended earlier, and who knows how that might have affected the rest of history.

Rome

The transition of Rome from a Republic led by its senate to an Empire led by a series of all-powerful emperors was a major turning point in Western culture and had profound effects on the historical development of Europe and, in effect, the world. That story, the rise of Caesar and the fall of the Republic, is told brilliantly in HBO's ill-fated, but still great, Rome.

Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi and his belief in non-violent opposition and protest brought the British Empire to its knees in India, just as is shown in the amazing movie simply Gandhi. Gandhi's approach has changed the way the world has tried to change the world and had a major influence on the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr., and many others.

Midway

The War in the Pacific in World War II is not told as often as the War in Europe, but Midway, while not the greatest movie of all time, accurately (mostly) depicts the most important battle of that theater. It's a battle that reversed the Japanese aggression and, ultimately, led to the Allied victory.

Downfall

In a war full of consequential moments, maybe the most important moment came in that bunker in Berlin when Hitler did what no one else had been able to do: kill Hitler. Downfall is simply an incredible look inside the bunker and the last days of the war.

300

The profound effects of Greek culture on the Western world are well understood by anyone who has ever taken even the most basic history class in junior high. While 300 is more fantasy than reality, it does (kind of) tell the story of how the Greek culture survived when under literal attack from the East.

For about as long as movies have been around, Hollywood has been churning out patriotic American movies that make the country, and some of its most notable figures, look like larger than life icons. Over the years, some of the best sports movies, a handful of quintessential ‘80s movies, and so many others have left audiences feeling all warm and fuzzy with patriotic themes or moments (for better or worse). 

Here are 32 of the most patriotic American movies of all time.

Patton (1970)

One of the great American icons of the 20th century, General George S. Patton was instrumental in the Allies winning World War II. The legendary military mind’s life and legacy are put on full display in Patton, a 1970 biopic starring George C. Scott in an Academy Award-winning performance. And it doesn’t get more patriotic than starting a movie with a decorated general standing in front of the biggest American flag in cinematic history.

Rocky IV (1985)

There are some who believe Rocky IV is responsible for thawing, and eventually ending, the Cold War. The fourth installment in the beloved franchise, the movie not only features a boxer covered head to toe with American flags, but it also shows that Soviet technology and doping schemes are no match for a boxer from the U.S. of A and his old school approach.

Red Dawn (1984)

Restart the “Days Without A John Milius Reference” board because we have to talk about the famed director’s 1984 classic, Red Dawn. This movie, which follows a group of Colorado teenagers as they take on invading communist forces, is one of those movies where you just want to throw your fist into the sky and yell “America!” 

Top Gun (1986)

Is Top Gun a movie or a really expensive promotional tool for the U.S. Navy, because Tony Scott’s 1986 action flick has all the latest and greatest tech and weaponery on display. Sure, most of the movie is about Tom Cruise’s Maverick trying to top his rivals in a not-so-friendly competition, but that final act where he takes on some MiGs screams “don’t mess with America.” 

Born On The Fourth Of July (1989)

Okay, Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July does paint the U.S. military (and politicians and certain civilians) in a rather bad light, but this iconic Tom Cruise movie is extremely patriotic, just not in the traditional sense. Veteran Ron Kovic (Cruise) goes through a lot over the course of the movie and becomes an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War and takes great lengths to make sure the country doesn’t forget those who sacrificed all.

Forrest Gump (1994)

Forrest Gump, one of Tom Hanks’ best movies, has a little bit of everything in it. There’s a tragic love story, there’s an epic tale of rags-to-riches, and there’s also a saga of an unassuming boy from Greenbow, Alabama becoming an American icon. If the war scenes weren’t enough, the awesome ping pong escapades of Hanks’ beloved character should do it.

Independence Day (1996)

On the surface, Independence Day looks like nothing more than an alien invasion movie. However, upon starting the movie it doesn’t take long to realize that this 1996 box office juggernaut is an extremely patriotic movie. Like, is there anything better than BIll Pullman’s iconic “this is our Independence Day” speech before the final battle?

The Patriot (2000)

Is The Patriot a good movie? No. Is it a ridiculous movie? Yes. And is it an overly patriotic movie? Dude, Mel Gibson’s character kills the British villain with an American flag. It doesn’t get more patriotic than that.

Miracle (2004)

One of the most inspiring sports underdog stories ever captured on film, Miracle follows the U.S. Hockey team as they pull off the seemingly impossible task of defeating the Soviet Union in the 1980 Winter Olympics. America beating the Russkis in the height of the Cold War? Don’t get much more patriotic than that.

Air Force One (1997)

Featuring one of Harrison Ford’s best characters, Air Force One follows the U.S. President as he attempts to take back his plane from a group of heavily-armed terrorists led by Gary Oldman and his absurd accent. They don’t make movies, or presidents, like this these days.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Before he turned against his country and became a more conscious hero, Steve Rogers became the Allies best hope in Captain America: The First Avenger. One of the best Marvel movies, this 2011 superhero flick follows Chris Evans’ titular hero as he goes from a tiny yet determined New Yorker wanting to fight in the war to one of the men responsible for bringing peace to the world. Sure, there’s some toxic patriotism in this, but we’ll let it slide.

Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)

Though it doesn’t focus on heroic military minds saving the day or teenagers rising up to defeat evil Commies, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a patriotic movie that shows the best of the American spirit. Centering on Jefferson Smith (James Stewart), a junior U.S. Senator upon his arrival to Capitol Hill, the movie explores the “rights” and “wrongs” of politics and standing up for your convictions.

1776 (1972)

A musical about the founding of America? Move over Hamilton, we’re talking about 1776, Peter H. Hunt’s historical drama that serves as a fictionalized account of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Where else are you going to see John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and John Hancock (not Herbie Hancock) singing and dancing like this?

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

There are war movies and then there is Saving Private Ryan. Steven Spielberg’s World War II drama is epic in both scope and scale with its story about a group of soldiers going to great lengths to protect a seemingly normal private and prevent his mother from losing all her boys in battle.

Sergeant York (1941)

Howard Hawks’ landmark World War I film, Sergeant York, features one of the best displays of heroism in the history of cinema. Gary Cooper portrays the titular pacifist as he goes against his beliefs to protect his fellow soldiers and the toll it takes on his mind and spirit. 

Apollo 13 (1995)

To prevent catastrophic failure from turning into a national tragedy, America’s greatest minds come together with some old-fashioned American ingenuity to bring a group of astronauts back home. Ron Howard’s Apollo 13, which nearly earned Tom Hanks his third-consecutive Oscar, isn’t overtly patriotic, but it does showcase the brilliance of the nation.

Bridge Of Spies (2015)

With Cold War tensions at a near-record high, a New York lawyer (played by Tom Hanks) plays a key role in a prison swap between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Much like other films set in the era, there are some heavy patriotic themes throughout Bridge of Spies.

Lincoln (2012)

Steven Spielberg pulled out all the stops for Lincoln, his 2012 historical drama about the 16th President of the United States’ (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) quest to end slavery once and for all, bring peace and save the Union during the American Civil War.

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

A movie about the operation to kill Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11th attacks? Yeah, there was no way Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty wasn’t going to be one of the most patriotic movies of the 2010s.

United 93 (2006)

One of the best movies of 2006, United 93 serves as a reenactment of the titular flight hijacked by terrorists on the morning of September 11, 2001, with a heavy focus on the passengers who fought for control of the plane to prevent it from reaching its target, presumably the U.S. Capitol.  

Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

Yankee Doodle Dandy tells the story of George M. Cohan (James Cagney), a retired entertainer who accepts the call of his nation in the early days of World War II to portray FDR, which eventually leads to him meeting the actual president and receiving the Congressional Gold Medal. 

All The President’s Men (1976)

Patriotism comes in all shapes and sizes, as shown in All the President’s Men. This 1976 retelling of Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) and Bob Woodward’s (Robert Redford) investigation into the Watergate Scandal is brilliant in just about every way.

Gettysburg (1993)

Released 130 years after the battle on which it was based, Ronald F. Maxwell’s Gettysburg spends several hours chronicling the heroics of several soldiers and generals during the height of the American Civil War. Though it does spend a lot of time on the traitors in the Confederate Army, its themes of love for country and a better tomorrow make it a worthy addition.

Hidden Figures (2016)

One of the most powerful black family movies of the past decade, Hidden Figures tells the story of the unlikely heroes who helped get man to the moon and help America win the Space Race. With incredibly moving messages of patriotism, representation, and making yourself heard, there’s a lot to love.

Armageddon (1998)

Though Armageddon is not very realistic and is a bit over the top, it’s one of those movies that makes you feel proud to be American. Yeah, it’s silly and has more inaccuracies than just about any other space movie ever made, but who saves the day in the end?

Argo (2012)

Ben Affleck’s Argo takes a great number of liberties with the source material and history of the Iran Hostage Crisis, but this Best Picture winner is a blast to watch. American ingenuity and Hollywood magic work hand-in-hand in this saga about the CIA saving a group of American hostages when no one else could get the job down. 

Flags Of Our Fathers (2006)

One of two World War II movies directed by Clint Eastwood in the mid-2000s, Flags of Our Fathers recounts the events that led to one of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century: the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima. Though a box office dud, this is one of the most powerful, impactful, and patriotic movies to hit the big screen in the past 20 years.

The Longest Day (1962)

One of the most epic war movies ever produced, The Longest Day (directed by Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, and Bernhard Wicki) takes an in-depth look at practically every aspect of the D-Day landings in Normandy, including the planning and aftermath. With a massive cast that includes the likes of John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Robert Mitchum, and Sean Connery, this is a military drama you don’t want to miss.

Glory (1989)

Edward Zwick’s Academy Award-winning military drama, Glory, tells the story of the first all-African American regiment to fight in the American Civil War. Emotional as it is epic, this transfixing, inspiring, and patriotic war film checks all the boxes and will leave you feeling moved, no matter what. Plus, the cast, which includes the likes of Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, Matthew Broderick, and Cary Elwes, is top-notch through and through.

The Right Stuff (1983)

A 1980s box office bomb that is actually great, The Right Stuff tells the story of the first 15 years of America’s space program. Following the lives of NASA astronauts John Glenn (Ed Harris), Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard), and Al Shepard (Scott Glenn), among others, Philip Kaufman’s epic biopic shows what can be achieved when a nation brings together its brightest minds and bravest pilots.

Thirteen Days (2000)

Released on Christmas Day 2000, Roger Donaldson’s Thirteen Days recounts the events of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, an event that nearly saw the Cold War between America and the Soviet Union get hot and bring an end to the world. Kevin Costner, Bruce Greenwood, and Steven Culp are all brilliant in their respective roles.

Pearl Harbor (2001)

Pearl Harbor is far from being one of Michael Bay’s best movies, but it’s probably the director’s most patriotic. Yeah, it’s long, has too many subplots, and the romance distracts from the story, but there’s no denying how great the actual Pearl Harbor sequence looks all these years later.

Whenever you need a patriotic movie, you can certainly turn to this list for inspiration!

Women have been part of the fighting forces in many roles since the dawn of time. It could be in a supporting role, like a nurse or doctor, it could be leading forces, like a queen or a prime minister, or it could be on the frontline as a soldier. Here are 32 times Hollywood depicted women in the military and how they contributed, including some of the best war movies ever made. 

Megan Leavey (2012)

Based on a true story, Megan Leavey, starring Kate Mara in the titular role, tells the story of a woman returning from the frontline in Iraq after serving as a K-9 Military Police officer. Upon return, she fights to bring home her dog, Rex, after he has retired from his military duties. It tackles some of the hardest things all soldiers face when they return, including PTSD and other health issues. 

Private Benjamin (1980)

On its surface, you might not think of Private Benjamin as a positive portrayal of a woman, in this case, a private in Basic Training played by Goldie Hawn, in the Army. But by showing the titular character conquering her fears and hang-ups, she eventually becomes a proud member of the U.S. Army. It's also hilarious, of course. 

A Few Good Men (1992)

The United States Navy has all kinds of jobs that aren't serving on a ship or submarine. One of the most important roles is of a JAG (Judge Advocate General), the lawyers who prosecute and defend members of Navy for crimes in the service. A Few Good Men is one of the best movies telling those stories, and while Tom Cruise is the hero of the movie, Demi Moore plays the most competent and experienced member of the team. 

Carve Her Name With Pride (1958)

Throughout history, women have often been spies in military conflicts. World War II was no exception and one of the best portrayals of that comes from the 1958 film Carve Her Name With Pride. Virginia McKenna plays a widowed mother who is recruited for her language skills to serve as a spy for the U.K. in France. It's a raw and brutal depiction that shows women have suffered every bit as horribly as men as POWs. 

Return (2011)

Over the 20 years that the United States fought the War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan, many women served on the front line. Some were killed or captured, and many suffered from the same traumas as their male counterparts. Return tells the story of a woman returning from war and struggling to connect with her old life, a story all too common to come out of that war. 

Captain Marvel (2019)

Sure, Captain Marvel is a superhero movie and the flawed Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) is a superhero, but she's also an Air Force aviator as depicted in the movie. She and Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch) are fine examples of women in the military even without the superpowers.  

Charlotte Gray (2001)

World War II saw contributions from people all over the world, in all walks of life. Charlotte Gray depicts one such example. Cate Blanchett plays a woman recruited to be a British spy and the story plays out as part war movie, part romance with a complicated love triangle created by the war. Charlotte's bravery is not to be discounted, either. 

G.I. Jane (1997)

In the wake of the first Gulf War, the idea of women in combat became a very hot political issue. Reflecting that discussion came G.I. Jane in 1997 starring Demi Moore as the first woman recruited into BUDs training to become a Navy SEAL. IF we're honest, it's not the best movie, but it did serve to help normalize the idea that women could serve on the front lines of the U.S. military, including in the most physically demanding positions. 

Aliens (1986)

In the future, it's easy to assume women will be just like men in combat and that was obvious even in 1986 when Aliens was released. Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein) is just "one of the guys," as part of the marine detachment assigned to search for life on LV-426. Not only is she an equal in every way, but she far exceeds most of her team with her skills. Women have played an important role throughout the entire Alien franchise.

Courage Under Fire (1996)

Dr. Mary Walker, a surgeon in the Civil War for the Union Army, is the only woman to win the Medal of Honor in real life. The 1996 film Courage Under Fire tells a fictional story of a soldier (Denzel Washington) investigating an incident that could award a woman (Meg Ryan) the highest honor in the United States Armed Forces. While the story is fictional, it is believable, and while it's kind of a forgotten movie, it's well worth a watch. 

Causeway (2022)

Jennifer Lawrence's performance as a returning soldier and mother suffering from PTSD and a traumatic brain injury is harrowing and excellent. It shows just how hard it can be for soldiers, men or women, to return to their previous lives. She still can't help but return to the war, as it is what she feels she was born to do. 

Golda (2023)

Women have been world leaders forever. As a leader, that often means overseeing military operations at the highest level. 2023's Golda shows just this, following Israeli Prime Minster Golda Meir's (Helen Mirren) leadership during the Yom Kippur War. Mirren's performance may have been a bit of Oscar bait, but it's still an interesting look into the halls of power during the war. 

The Woman King (2022)

Myths of all-women fighting forces go back to the Amazons in Greek Mythology. The Agojie, were not a myth, however. The Agojie were an all-female regiment that defended the Kingdom of Dahomey in West Africa at the height of European colonialism. The famous fighters were made even more famous by the 2022 film The Woman King starring Viola Davis as the leader of the force. 

Annihilation (2018)

Alex Garland's 2018 sci-fi mystery Annihilation is not easy to love at first, but eventually, it all comes together brilliantly. While it's technically a "scientific expedition" that the film portrays, it's really a military operation too, and the protagonist Lena (Natalie Portman) is former military, alongside the all-female team she's part of.  

The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999)

The most famous female warrior in Western Civilization is Joan of Arc. The patron saint of France, Joan defended her country to the death, inspiring centuries of French soldiers. The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc is a rare attempt to bring her story to the big screen and while not everything in the movie works, Milla Jovovich's performance is pretty rough, it does tell the story well. 

Testament of Youth (2014)

the medical corps of any conflict is every bit as important as the soldiers on the front line. Of course, women have long played their part in that aspect of war. Testament of Youth is about a woman, played by Alicia Vikander, who follows three men she is close with to war during the First World War. She serves as a nurse and feels the full tragedy that was The Great War. 

Mulan (1998)

Of course, throughout history, women have often been sidelined in war. Mulan is a version of that story but flipped on its head when the protagonist disguises herself as a man to fight alongside her father in ancient China. Of course, Mulan distinguishes herself in battle, but that isn't even to earn the respect of her fellow soldiers. Until it is. 

MASH (1970)

We're highlighting MASH here, not because it's a true representation of women in uniform, but because it inadvertently shows just how hard it can be for women in war. MASH is seen as pretty problematic these days and for good reason, the treatment of "Hot Lips" Houlihan (Sally Kellerman) is pretty despicable. 

Starship Troopers (1997)

It seems in the 23rd Century when the wild Starship Troopers takes place, women are common in the military. Sci-Fi has long put women on equal footing - or close to equal - with men and this wild Paul Verhoeven flick is no exception, with women in infantry and pilot roles.  

Stripes (1981)

The comedy Stripes may not be the first movie you think of when you think of when you think of women in the military, but it's important to remember that the two women in the movie, played by Sean Young and P. J. Soles are easily the most competent soldiers in the whole movie.

Wings (1927)

During World War I, women were not on the front lines as soldiers, but they did play a huge part in the war effort. This is reflected in one of the greatest early war movies, Wings. Clara Bow plays an American woman who enlists as an ambulance driver in Europe. While the character is not the main focus of the movie, Bow's performance stole the show. 

Women Of Valor (1986)

The made-for-TV movie Women Of Valor is a movie not a lot of people have seen, and it doesn't have the greatest production value, but it does tell an important story. It follows a group of female army nurses who, during World War II, are forced on the infamous Bataan Death March alongside the defeated American forces early in the war. 

She’s In The Army Now (1981)

If we're being honest here, 1981's She’s In The Army Now, which was really a long pilot for a potential show, isn't the best movie on this list. Sure, you've got Jamie Lee Curtis and Melanie Griffith in very early roles which makes it fun, but it's also a trope salad, built on the back of the success of Private Benjamin a year earlier. Still, it is also an early-ish portrayal of the trials and tribulations women dealt with when they joined the military at the time. 

Elizabeth (1998)

Sometimes great military leaders are born into the role. Queen Elizabeth I, who is played brilliantly by Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth, as Sovereign, was the leader of the mighty English military of the 16th Century. Surrounded by plotters looking to usurp her power and take her life, Queen Elizabeth overcomes early defeats on the battlefield to rise up and become one of England's greatest leaders. 

The Stopover (2016)

The 2016 French film The Stopover is not an easy movie to watch. Women, like men, suffer from the effects of PTSD, and The Stopover not only shows that in an unflinching manner, but goes further to show women can also fall victim to brutal horrors after returning from the battlefield. This one is not for the faint at heart. 

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

So, technically Zero Dark Thirty is really about a woman who works at CIA, played by Jessica Chastain in one of her best roles. Without her, as the movie claims, the US might not have located Osama Bin Laden and taken him out, using Navy SEALs. So while Chastain's character may not be in the military, exactly, it shows that the military relies on women like her. 

Eye in the Sky (2015)

Usually in war films, all the important leaders making the tough decisions are men. The generals and colonels are rarely ever female, but Eye In The Sky reverses that, putting a Colonel played by Helen Mirren at the head of an operation to take out a group of terrorists operating in Kenya after one of her men is killed while undercover. 

Edge Of Tomorrow (2014)

Edge Of Tomorrow, like a lot of sci-fi movies set in the future, features a woman in a prominent combat role. Emily Blunt not only plays a soldier, but she plays the most competent soldier in the movie, leading her male counterpart (Tom Cruise) on and off the battlefield. It's been widely praised for the reversal of traditional roles in war movies and as one of the best sci-fi movies of all time. 

Fort Bliss (2014)

Like a lot of movies that have been inspired by the seemingly endless War on Terror, Fort Bliss tells a powerful story of a soldier returning home and struggling to reconnect with her family, especially her son. It's a movie that flew under the radar when it was released, but is worth seeking out for the great performance by Michelle Monaghan.

The General's Daughter (1999)

One of the more common roles, it seems, for women in the military in the movies is that of  Military Police. The General's Daughter is one such example, with Madeline Stowe playing the partner of John Travolta's character, and in many ways, unsurprisingly, the voice of reason in the film. 

Enemy At The Gates (2001)

The Battle of Stalingrad in World War II was one of the bloodiest and most brutal battles in world history. There aren't a lot of heroes that came out of it, but one that did emerge was the real-life sniper Tania Chernova. She's played by Rachel Weisz in  Enemy At The Gates and while it's disputed just how true-to-life the movie is, the performance by Weisz is great. 

The Old Guard (2020)

The Old Guard is an often overlooked sci-fi flick that, like many movies of its genre, is not afraid to put women front and center of battlefields and other combat missions. A cast led by Charlize Theron and KiKi Layne, the movie follows a group of immortal soldiers as they battle their way through modern armies to find a lost comrade. 

Though the world mostly knows him as either Guardians of the Galaxy’s Star-Lord or Parks and Recreation’s Andy Dwyer, one of Chris Pratt’s other past resume experiences best prepared him for his new Amazon Prime show, called The Terminal List. Playing a Navy SEAL in director Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, Pratt not only got a feel for that very type of role that he’d revisit with his latest project, but he also made some really good friends. Friends, as it would turn out, who would introduce him to the very world of author Jack Carr’s own special operator. 

As a result of the press day for The Terminal List, I was able to speak with several cast and crew members who echoed Chris Pratt’s respect towards military professionals. Perhaps one of the most important people to fall into that category is former Navy SEAL Jared Shaw, who serves as a co-executive producer and co-star on Pratt's new series.  

The actor first met Shaw when shadowing him to prepare for arguably one of Chris Pratt’s best roles: SEAL Team Six member Justin Lenihan in Zero Dark Thirty. Eventually the two collaborators became friends, who would cross paths again through Jared Shaw’s stunt work on films like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and even as co-stars in the Prime Video streaming hit The Tomorrow War. 

However, as Chris Pratt told CinemaBlend, that connection ran much deeper when it came to The Terminal List. Shaw was actually the person who introduced his friend and co-star to Jack Carr’s first installment in the James Reese series, as Pratt said:

If you love a book that much, and you’re someone like Chris Pratt who can get a production deal in the works, obviously bringing The Terminal List to TV is a no-brainer. Having Jared Shaw along for the ride was also an easy choice, as the character of Ernest “Boozer” Vickers is somewhat of a conscience to James Reece during his journey. Friends and co-workers in bringing the realism of Navy SEALS to the screen before, this teamwork yielded another effort that Pratt feels cut the Hollywood BS from its making.

Speaking further about his experience, the Jurassic World star saw The Terminal List as a challenge that he’d never undertaken, but always wanted to. Getting the rights to the book, and then shepherding it through the production process, showed how hyped Chris Pratt was to get this underway. Though believe me when I tell you, his naming James Reece a “rowdy bad mother” is putting it lightly when it comes to his excitement. 

While searching for a copy of Jack Carr’s The Terminal List novel for sale on Amazon, you’ll discover an actual pull quote from the series’ executive producer/star that goes a bit further in hyping up the character. As you’ll read for yourself, Pratt pulled no punches on profanity when giving this glowing recommendation:

That rowdiness is tempered by vulnerability, as James Reece’s efforts to investigate a potential shadowy conspiracy also see him confronting ghosts of the past. The Terminal List starts with a mission gone horribly wrong, which sees Reece losing his team in the field. As he starts to look into the circumstances surrounding the differences in his account of events and the official report, what he uncovers could be absolutely mind-blowing. 

Embodying his affinity for Navy SEALS, as well as working with several of them in the production of the show, Chris Pratt’s friendship with Jared Shaw was key to making The Terminal List happen in the first place. Now that the first season has debuted, there are four more books that can inspire subsequent seasons; the most, called In The Blood, was published in May. 

If fans make it worth Prime Video’s while, Pratt could get even rowdier in the world of streaming thrillers. It’s certainly happened in the past, as The Tomorrow War scored a sequel after making a huge splash for Chris Pratt and Prime Video. 

To that effect, The Terminal List is currently streaming all eight episodes of Season 1 for Amazon Prime subscribers to enjoy. Also, if you’re a Pratt fan who’s been missing Star-Lord and the rest of the Guardians on the big screen, the upcoming Marvel movie Thor: Love and Thunder opens this weekend to scratch that very particular itch.

On a day of celebration and exciting festivities such as the Independence Day, the most common reason why one might stay inside is if it happened to be raining. However, if that is the case in your territory (or if you have your reasons to prefer staying indoors instead), there are plenty of great titles on the Netflix Top 10 today to check out. To witness the explosive displays on the lists of Netflix’s most popular movies and TV in the U.S., read on.

Top 10 Movies On Netflix In The U.S. - July 4, 2022

Because the Fourth of July is a time meant to be spent with family, it is not surprise that a fun animated family film like Sing 2 is, once again, Number One on Netflix’s Top 10 Movies in the U.S. with new action-comedy The Man from Toronto and 2015’s Jason Statham-led thriller Wild Card back in second and third place. However, they are now followed by the conclusion of Christopher Nolan’s live-action Batman movies - 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises - as it sits above director Todd Phillps’ 2003 comedy Old School, 2011’s Contraband with Mark Wahlberg, and Adam Sandler’s sports drama Hustle. New to the list is a Dave Bautista-led revenge flick from 2018 called Final Score in eighth place above the Oscar-winning Zero Dark Thirty and Frank Darabont’s heartbreaking Stephen King adaptation, The Mist.

• 1. Sing 2
• 2. The Man from Toronto
• 3. Wild Card
• 4. The Dark Knight Rises
• 5. Old School
• 6. Contraband
• 7. Hustle
• 8. Final Score
• 9. Zero Dark Thirty
• 10. The Mist

Top 10 TV Shows On Netflix In The U.S. - July 4, 2022

It is no surprise that Stranger Things is still reigning supreme on Netflix’s Top 10 TV Shows in the U.S. on the Fourth of July as Season 3 takes place around said holiday (or because the Season 4 finale dropped days earlier, probably). Back in second and third is inventive superhero TV show The Umbrella Academy and paranormal docuseries The UnXplained above treasure-hunting docuseries Pirate Gold of Adak Island switching places with hit sitcom The Upshaws as reality series Snowflake Mountain, coming-of-age fantasy Legacies, and fellow CW favorite All American have not budged since yesterday. Meanwhile, after making a surprise return to the list over the weekend, The Lincoln Lawyer has reached a new verdict, surpassing the long-running medical drama Grey’s Anatomy.

• 1. Stranger Things
• 2. The Umbrella Academy
• 3. The UnXplained
• 4. Pirate Gold Of Adak Island
• 5. The Upshaws
• 6. Snowflake Mountain
• 7. Legacies
• 8. All American
• 9. The Lincoln Lawyer
• 10. Grey’s Anatomy

Whether you are getting your entertainment from the sky watching your local fireworks display or from your own Netflix subscription, just remember that today is a day of great importance and great celebration that is mean to be honored with the people you love. Once your Fourth of July festivities have concluded, be sure to check back tomorrow for our next daily breakdown of what movies and TV shows people are watching the most on the streaming giant.

View the Netflix Top 10 lists for Sunday, July 3, 2022.

In an event that many would consider to be a long time coming, Jessica Chastain won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role at the 94th Annual Academy Awards. Her performance in 2021’s The Eyes of Tammy Faye earned her the nomination, which was also her third, having previously been nominated for Best Supporting Actress in 2012 for The Help, and for her leading role in Zero Dark Thirty the following year.

However, the California native - who is also known for superhero movies like X-Men: Dark Phoenix, horror movies like It: Chapter Two, and action thrillers like The 355 - has given plenty of other performances that critics and audiences alike would agree deserved similar accolades. Let’s revisit these performance by checking out Jessica Chastain’s best movies available now on streaming, for digital rental, or on physical media, starting with her best work in the eyes of the Academy.

The Eyes Of Tammy Faye (HBO Max)

Tammy Bakker (Jessica Chastain) and her husband, Jim (Andrew Garfield), build one of the largest empires in the history televangelism, until a series of shocking scandals are revealed, threatening to destroy their relationship and their reputation.

Why it’s one of the best Jessica Chastain movies: Jessica Chastain disappears into the role of the titular televangelist in The Eyes of Tammy Faye - a bold, revealing biopic from The Big Sick director, Michael Showalter, that is based on a 2000 documentary of the same name.

Stream The Eyes Of Tammy Faye on HBO Max.
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The Help (HBO Max)

A young, aspiring author (Emma Stone) interviews Black maids (Oscar winners Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer) for a book about their perspective on the White women who employ them in 1960s Mississippi.

Why it’s one of the best Jessica Chastain movies: Jessica Chastain received her first Academy Award nomination for playing good-hearted, ostracized socialite Celia Foote in The Help - writer and director Tate Taylor’s 2011 adaptation of the novel by Kathryn Stockett.

Stream The Help on HBO Max.
Buy/Rent The Help on Amazon.
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Zero Dark Thirty (Amazon Rental)

A CIA operative (Jessica Chastain) struggles to endure the moral inner conflict and emotional turmoil of carrying out heinous interrogation methods while spending several years searching for the whereabouts of wanted terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden.

Why it’s one of the best Jessica Chastain movies: Jessica Chastain received her second Academy Award nomination for her mesmerizing performance as the lead of Zero Dark Thirty - originally intended as a chronicle of the failed attempts to catch the orchestrator of the attack on September 11, 2001, before his capture ten years later - from Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow.

Buy/Rent Zero Dark Thirty on Amazon.
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Take Shelter (Tubi)

A construction worker (Michael Shannon) begins to question the safety of his family and his own sanity after he begins to experience a series of strange, foreboding visions of an oncoming apocalyptic event.

Why it’s one of the best Jessica Chastain movies: If you ask me, Jessica Chastain should have received an Academy Award nomination, as well as Michael Shannon, for their riveting portrayals of a husband and wife threatened by the dwindling mental health of one in Take Shelter - a masterful, heart-stopping family drama from writer and director Jeff Nichols.

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Jolene (Tubi, Pluto TV)

A young, orphaned woman (Jessica Chastain) sets off on her own at age 15 and spends the next several years traveling the country in search of some sort of normalcy, finding heartbreak and disappointment at every turn.

Why it’s one of the best Jessica Chastain movies: In 2008, after various appearances in TV shows such as ER, Jessica Chastain made her theatrically released, feature film debut as the title role of Jolene - director Dan Ireland’s harrowing adaptation of the story by award-winning author E.L. Doctorow.

Stream Jolene on Tubi.
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The Tree Of Life (Hulu)

A disillusioned, modern day man (two-time Academy Award winner Sean Penn) struggles with questions of existence, purpose, and faith as he recalls his complicated relationship with his father (Oscar winner Brad Pitt) while growing in Waco, Texas, in the 1950s.

Why it’s one of the best Jessica Chastain movies: The one film that Jessica Chastain has said had the most profound impact on her life and career and is most difficult to re-watch for how accurately it captures her “heart and soul” is 2011’s The Tree of Life - a bizarre, inventive, and thought-provoking existential analysis that only writer and director Terrence Malick could make.

Stream The Tree Of Life on Hulu.
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Lawless (Rental)

Three brothers (Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, and Jason Clarke) fight to keep a moonshine business afloat in the midst of unwanted offers of partnership and the arrival of a corrupt police officer (Guy Pearce) in Depression era Virginia.

Why it’s one of the best Jessica Chastain movies: Jessica Chastain steals the show as Maggie Beaufort, a waitress who falls in love with Hardy’s Forrest Bondurant, in Lawless - writer Nick Cave (yes, the musician) and director John Hilcoat’s 2012 adaptation of Matt Bondurant’s historical novel about his own family, The Wettest County in the World.

Buy/Rent Lawless on Amazon.
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Interstellar (Paramount+)

A former science engineer and pilot (Academy Award winner Matthew McConaughey) leads a team of explorers on an expedition through the unknown reaches of outer space in order to find a new home for mankind as the Earth rapidly grows unlivable.

Why it’s one of the best Jessica Chastain movies: Jessica Chastain is one of the three brilliant actresses from 2014’s Interstellar cast who play the role of McConaughey’s estranged, earthbound daughter, Murph, over the course of several decades, in co-writer and director Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-winning, visually stunning, mind-bending space odyssey.

Stream Interstellar on Paramount+.
Buy/Rent Interstellar on Amazon.
Get Interstellar on DVD/Blu-Ray on Amazon.

The Martian (Amazon Rental)

In the wake of a deadly storm, the botany expert (Matt Damon) of a space exploration mission is assumed dead and abandoned by his crew on Mars, where he struggles to survive as NASA struggles to figure out a way to bring him home.

Why it’s one of the best Jessica Chastain movies: While Jessica Chastain did not get to be the one to go into space or rescue Matt Damon in Interstellar, she got to do both the following year as the disco-loving Ares III commander, Melissa Lewis, in The Martian - one of the sharpest, most intense, funniest, and simply best space movies from director Ridley Scott which is based on Andy Weir’s acclaimed novel.

Buy/Rent The Martian on Amazon.
Get The Martian on DVD/Blu-Ray on Amazon.

Crimson Peak (Netflix)

A young writer (Mia Wasikowska) falls for a wealthy, English aristocrat (Tom Hiddleston) who invites her to live with him and his sister (Jessica Chastain) at their lavish family estate, unwitting to the shocking secrets and vengeful spirits that lurk within the walls.

Why it’s one of the best Jessica Chastain movies: Guillermo del Toro, who previously produced the Jessica Chastain-led horror film, Mama, in 2012, directs the actress in a sinister (and, apparently, emotionally draining) performance as Lady Lucille Sharpe in 2015’s Crimson Peak - a chilling ghost story in the style of traditional, gothic costume dramas with stunning production design.

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A Most Violent Year (Showtime)

An immigrant (Oscar Isaac) and his wife (Jessica Chastain) aspire to achieve the American dream by capitalizing on the crime and corruption surrounding them, which also threatens to destroy them, in 1981 New York City.

Why it’s one of the best Jessica Chastain movies: Before they both starred in X-Men movies and eventually reunited for HBO’s Scenes from a Marriage, Jessica Chastain gave an electrifying, femme fatale-inspired performance opposite her longtime friend Oscar Isaac as her onscreen husband in 2015's A Most Violent Year - a captivatingly dark period piece partially inspired by true events from writer and director J.C. Chandor.

Stream A Most Violent Year on Showtime.
Buy/Rent A Most Violent Year on Amazon.
Get A Most Violent Year on DVD/Blu-Ray on Amazon.

The Zookeeper’s Wife (Netflix)

A woman (Jessica Chastain) and her husband (Johan Heldenbergh) use their zoo in Warsaw, Poland, as a sanctuary for hundreds of Jewish refugees - and animals, too - in the wake of the Nazi invasion in 1939.

Why it’s one of the best Jessica Chastain movies: Jessica Chastain is a tour de force as one of the boldest and most heroic figures of World War II-era Europe, Antonina Zabinska, in The Zookeeper’s Wife - an inspiring 2017 drama based on the book by Diane Ackerman from acclaimed director Niki Caro. 

Stream The Zookeeper’s Wife on Netflix.
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Jessica Chastain will soon play another famous “Tammy” in George and Tammy - a Paramount+ original miniseries profiling the romance between country music star Tammy Wynette and George Jones, which will reunite her with Take Shelter’s Michael Shannon. She also will also star in the upcoming Netflix exclusive true crime story, The Good Nurse.

Chris Pratt rose up the ranks to leading man status with Guardians of the Galaxy, after years of playing supporting roles in some of the best movies of the 2000s and all-time great sitcoms. That MCU blockbuster then led to the actor becoming an A-list superstar at the forefront of a variety of big films throughout the last several years. 

While some might be quick to downplay his success, he has certainly proven himself in several roles. A dynamic actor who can bring an earnest, enjoyable giddiness to many parts, including his long-running work on NBC's Parks & Recreation, the star has given us a number of charming characters in many high-profile projects. 

Before we get ahead of ourselves, though, we should note a few honorable mentions. These include his brief-but-memorable role in Wanted, as well as his supporting turns in Jennifer's Body. Also, Everwood, where he appeared in nearly 100 episodes, as well as his work on The OC. Now, let's get into it!

10. The Magnificent Seven - Josh Faraday

Following the enormous success of 2014's Guardians of the Galaxy, Pratt found himself scoring a number of additional A-list gigs, including Jurassic World, Passengers, and an ever-growing presence in the MCU. Among those high-profile roles was 2016's The Magnificent Seven, based on the 1960 movie of the same name, which found him working alongside top talents like Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, and more in the starry ensemble. 

While this remake didn't reach the ranks of the original, nor does it even compare to Seven Samurai, one of the best samurai movies ever made, it was an enjoyable studio picture that saw the action star riding on his charisma and star power as John Faraday, one of the members of the titular crew. Will it be remembered among the great westerns of today and yesteryear? Likely not, but it proved he could hold his own in a high-profile ensemble.

9. Zero Dark Thirty - Justin

When it comes to the elite, now famous Navy task force, Seal Team Six, best known as the trained operatives who killed Osama Bin Laden, it can be easy to make it about the group's efforts and forget about the humanity found therein. In Zero Dark Thirty, the screenplay doesn't dive too deep into their personalities, as the focus is primarily on the task-at-hand. 

But, through the strong performances of the talented ensemble, we got a sense of who these men are — or, at least, how they were meant to be perceived. As Justin, Pratt doesn't get a lot of screen-time as the tough guy (though you can see more of him as a similar character in The Terminal List), but he makes the most of it in Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar-winning drama. He allows Justin to be seen as wise-cracking solider, even filled with moments of skepticism, before he helps pull off this brave, incredible operation with his five other Navy Seals.

8. Moneyball - Scott Hatteberg

One of the keys to a really solid Chris Pratt performance is a gentle, even vulnerable sincerity and a disarming Midwestern-esque charm. Certainly, as we will detail throughout this article, that's something that often stands out in his better performances, and that's notably the case with Moneyball. 

The excellent 2011 sports drama didn't give him a huge role, but it gave him a crucial one. As Scott Hatteberg, a middling baseball player who is still key to the Oakland Athletics' analytics-driven program, he plays up his humble sweetness to appropriately winning success, resulting in an underdog performance that helps to drive the film towards its rousing final moments. His performance really helps the film hit home.

7. The Five-Year Engagement - Alex Eilhauer

A few years after he became a dependable comedic actor, he earned one of his biggest, most prominent film roles in 2012's The Five-Year Engagement. As Alex Eilhauer, the romance-loving best friend of the lead (played by co-writer Jason Segel), Pratt's character finds himself quickly marrying his sweetheart, Suzie (Alison Brie), all while our lead protagonists (including Emily Blunt) find themselves in the extended engagement of the title. 

In a role that's not too dissimilar from Andy Dwyer, he didn't necessarily stretch himself here, knowing full well that he was there as the "best friend" character. Nevertheless, he made the part his own, stealing a few scenes throughout and providing a constant stream of laughs in the altogether pretty solid, subversive studio rom-com.

6. Her - Paul

Though Her is undoubtedly Joaquin Phoenix's movie, even though star Scarlett Johansson and her voice-only performance shouldn't be diminished, Pratt's fun, charming supporting turn as Paul (the mustachioed, good-natured co-worker of our lead character) can't be ignored. 

Though he only has a few scenes in the film — which could very well be one of the best he's been involved in to date, despite his limited screen-time — Her is, nevertheless, a fine showcase for how The Super Mario Bros. Movie lead can bring a lot of personality and warmth to even a minor role. It's another likable, enjoyable supporting turn from the comedic actor, one that brings levitate and good humor to this heartbreaking film about unrequited love.

5. Strangers With Candy - Brason

Before becoming a household name, Pratt made his way into the business by playing a variety of supporting roles. 2005's Strangers with Candy, based on the Comedy Central series of the same name starring Amy Sedaris and Stephen Colbert, is more of a cult classic, but it does have one of his earliest performances as Brason, a handsome student-athlete used to charm middle-aged prostitute-turned-high schooler Jerri (Sedaris) away from the science team. 

Though he's often left to play second-or-third-fiddle to the film's leads — some of whom, like Colbert, would also go on to become household names — his boyish charm is as apparent and winning here as it'd become in his beloved aforementioned future roles.

4. Onward - Barley Lightfoot

Away from his live action work, his talents as a voice actor can sometimes be undervalued. Though he is beginning to add an interesting variety of voice roles to his arsenal (like Mario, and Garfield), his boisterous, infectiously giddy vocal style plays well in the right role. That was certainly the case when Pratt became Barley Lightfoot as part of the Onward cast. 

As the lore-loving elf and the older brother of our main character, Ian (Tom Holland), who becomes a mentor when the two siblings go on a quest to fully revive their deceased father, his emotional, endearing performance was filled with bouts of heart and humor. His affection and admiration for his young brother was palpable and winning, with joyous enthusiasm and rousing pride at his magical accomplishments. Particularly as Onward reached its tearful finale, his voice work became a spellbinding success.

3. The LEGO Movie - Emmet Brickowski

Likewise, the actor's talent for providing a giddy, appropriately animated enthusiasm to cartoon characters was heard most prominently in The LEGO Movie and its sequel, The LEGO Movie: The Second Part.

He plays Emmet Brickowski, an average, naive, and completely bright-eyed construction worker in the town of Bricksburg who is believed to be The Special (i.e. the piece who will bring justice and order amid a prophecy of chaos). His ability to portray guileless, disarmingly sweet-natured man-children worked extremely well in this surprisingly poignant movie with winning performances, notably from him as our lead. Ultimately, it's Pratt's endearing performance that really makes this hit come together.

2. Parks And Recreation - Andy Dwyer

Before he became a major star through his leading man turn in the Guardians of the Galaxy blockbusters, the talent was best known as Andy Dwyer, the goofy, dim-witted but puppy-dog sweet guy who eventually works for Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), the Pawnee, Indiana parks department deputy director in NBC's fittingly-titled Parks and Recreation. 

The show didn't quite reach the cultural highs of The Office, but was eventually met with acclaim and a loving fanbase. It also boosted the careers of Nick Offerman, Aubrey Plaza, Rashida Jones, and Aziz Ansari, in addition to Pratt. Following a bumpy first season, it was retooled and celebrated for its strong writing, warm characters, and great performances from its hilarious ensemble. Often, though, it was Pratt who memorably stole scenes and won viewers' affections.

1. Guardians Of The Galaxy - Peter Quill/Star-Lord

In the role that turned this likable supporting actor into a major movie star, Peter Quill, i.e. Star-Lord, is by far his most recognizable role, and that's no accident. While it benefitted from being part of the MCU, Guardians of the Galaxy took a little-known comic book and turned it into one of the biggest blockbusters of the 2010s. 

That's thanks to many, but Pratt's performance can't be dismissed. As the rascal-with-a-heart-of-gold, Star-Lord is like Han Solo with a daddy complex, and more irreverent to boot, but Pratt's wide-eyed sincerity took what could've been an unlikable prick and turned him into an earnest space traveler who wants to be loved. By the end of Vol. 3, we'd seen way more of his emotional side, including how he finally started to come to terms with a big change in his personal life. Quill's new vulnerability added to one of the most emotional MCU installments.

Chris Pratt is still very much at the top of his game, and with the upcoming Super Mario Bros. 2 movie and other exciting projects in the works, we'll be talking about this MCU star for a very long time.

There are a lot of women in Hollywood. Women who do behind-the-scenes work like costume design. Women who are big name actresses on both the big screen. Women who work on the backend, editing pictures and doing other exciting work on the post-production end. While more and more women have gotten involved with moviemaking over the years, famous actress Jessica Chastain has still noticed there is too often a lack of women or at least fewer women on sets she has worked on. She recently revealed why she loves working with female directors, and on any crew that features a lot of women. Here's why.

According Jessica Chastain, working with female directors has been comforting to the actress, who has collaborated with the likes of The Zookeeper's Wife's Niki Caro, Zero Dark Thirty's Kathryn Bigelow, Miss Julie's Liv Ullmann and others. Insofar as female directors are concerned, her experiences were similar with that of working with male directors, and the actress said that even when she is with a male director she prefers a more female experience on set; for example, in Aaron Sorkin's Molly's Game, there are "no shots of the camera going up my leg."

Jessica Chastain has long been a proponent of including and inspiring more women to get involved in film. Although strides have been made in Hollywood to be more inclusive to women over time, a study that came out a few months ago revealed only 7.7% of directors are actually women. Only 29% of leading actors are women, as well. Including women, especially in prominent roles, is a concept a lot of fields have struggled with, but Hollywood is notable because entertainment has so many mediums and is so popular and relevant in society.

Speaking on Variety's Actors on Actors series alongside Holly Hunter, Jessica Chastain also said she believes sets as a whole benefit from having more ladies around. She noted:

So, if you are planning to try to sign on Jessica Chastain to your next movie project, you now know exactly what she's looking for. As noted prior, the actress can next be seen in Aaron Sorkin's Molly's Game, a movie that is considered to be an awards hopeful this season. The actress is also attached to a slew of upcoming movies, including X-Men: Dark Phoenix, another comics movie Painkiller Jane, The Death and Life of John F. Donovan, and Seducing Ingrid Bergman. To see what awards hopefuls are also coming up soon, take a look at our movie schedule.

Before we knew him as Chris Pratt: movie star, Pratt was just a likable, goofy and somewhat overweight side character on NBC's Parks and Recreation. It was during his time on the show that Chris Pratt was offered a role in Zero Dark Thirty playing a Navy SEAL who was a key part of the raid on Osama Bin Laden's hideaway. This gig required him to be in shape, and he's kept the weight off in the time since. Recently, the actor explained exactly why he stayed in shape after Zero Dark Thirty, and the answer definitely isn't for health reasons. Here's what Pratt had to say:

If you've been keeping tabs on Chris Pratt lately, you may already know that the actor has had to stay in peak shape, thanks to taking on roles in two upcoming action-oriented blockbusters Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Jurassic World 2. (He's also going to be in the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War.) If you look at all of these roles, the studios were looking for a fit and handsome dude who could not only look good on the big screen but could also handle the physicality of the gig. Pratt told Cigar Aficionado that looking good is just part of taking on jobs such as that, and who can really pass up the opportunity to take roles in giant franchises? The paycheck is certainly good and movies such as Guardians of the Galaxy can also make an actor a household name.

Of course, it takes hard work to stay in great shape. Chris Pratt has been spending plenty of time in recent months introducing us to the horrors of his diet through his "What's My Snack" social media segments. This includes some well-known snacks, like juices, but also stuff like "cacao baobab banana chia," which is both difficult to pronounce and not all that delectable sounding. Luckily, he seems to take the whole weight loss thing in stride, and has even joked around about how people have responded to his newer shape.

Earlier in Chris Pratt's career, he was known as a heartthrob on shows like The O.C. and especially Everwood. So it's not like all of this attention on his physique is a totally new concept for the actor. Regardless, we still sometimes miss the slightly more portly version of Pratt Pratt, and we're pretty darn sure he misses eating whatever he wants, at least on occasion.

Be sure to catch Chris Pratt in pretty darn good shape when Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 hits theaters on May 5. To learn more about the film, take a look at what we know. Or check out what other blockbusters are coming this summer with our full movies schedule.

It takes a lot of people to make a movie happen. It takes producers and directors and an entire cast and crew. However, sometimes they still require a little help from people who aren't even directly involved in the production. Such was apparently the case when it came to Academy Award nominee Zero Dark Thirty. Jessica Chastain was offered the lead in the film by director Kathryn Bigelow and Chastain really wanted to make the film. Unfortunately, she was already under contract to star alongside Tom Cruise in the science fiction film Oblivion. As it turns out, this wasn't the issue that it could have been, as Tom Cruise was willing to let Chastain out of the contract in order for her to make Zero Dark Thirty.

Jessica Chastain was originally cast in the role of Julia, which eventually was played by Olga Kurylenko when Oblivion finally made it to the screen. Chastain would go on to star as a CIA agent who has been working to track down Osama Bin Laden following the September 11 terrorist attacks. Chastain would be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for the role. Oblivion would go on to make nearly $300 million at the box office.

Scheduling conflicts are the single most used explanation for why a particular actor or director did not take on a particular film. While sometimes there's some question as to exactly how legit that explanation is, in this case, it certainly seems to have been the case. Jessica Chastain told The Hollywood Reporter that she really did want to make Oblivion as well, but that she just wanted to make Zero Dark Thirty that much more. Don't be surprised to see Tom Crusie and Jessica Chastain in a movie together at some point down the road. Chastain says she's still very interested in working with the Mission: Impossible actor, calling him "awesome" for being willing to let her out of her contract.

Movie making is a business and as such, sometimes decisions have to be made for business reasons. Movies have to be produced and released within certain timeframes because there's a studio that is expecting to see revenue coming in at certain times. This means that most of the time movies have to go with the actors that are available at the right time. It's not uncommon for a movie's schedule to be built around its lead actor, but the supporting cast rarely if ever has that luxury.

We'll always wonder how movies might have turned out with other actors in iconic roles, yet we can't really imagine anybody else but Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty. We can apparently all thank Tom Cruise for the opportunity.

As long as war exists, there will always be filmmakers who try to attempt to capture its horror, and its glory. As the years press on and wars come and go, different filmmakers have endeavored to craft different war films that represent the tone and thought process of a given era. All Quiet on the Western Front framed WWI as a time of lost innocence, while The Longest Day presented the Second World War as an hour of glory against the Nazis. This trend has persisted, from the way Platoon dealt with Vietnam, to Courage Under Fire’s take on the first Gulf War.

Michael Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi has been in theaters since this weekend, but represents only the latest in a long line of movies that have attempted to deal with the idea of war in a post 9/11 world. Some films about our most recent wars emphasize the personal effect it has on the men who fight it, while others focus on shaky politics and policies. All put together, these films coalesce into a narrative about the global warfare experience since the fall of the twin towers. Without further ado, here are the ten best films that have dealt with the concept of war and battle over the course of the last fifteen years. Let’s get going with number 10:

10. American Sniper

What happens when we examine the man behind a legend? That is exactly what Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper aims to do – pun completely intended. Focusing on the military career of Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper), the film portrays Kyle not just as an essential tool of the American war machine, but as a vulnerable man whose job slowly wears him down over time. Every time he pulls the trigger he saves a life, but he also chips away a little piece of his soul. It’s a film that honors the real life sniper’s legacy on the battlefield, but also draws attention to real issues faced by soldiers when they return home.

9. Beasts of No Nation

Unlike the other entries on this list, Beasts of No Nation has nothing to do with the western world, or the implications of 9/11. Set in a nondescript African civil war, the film follows a young boy named Agu (Abraham Attah) as he loses his command while fighting as a child soldier for a ruthless yet charismatic Commandant (Idris Elba). Beasts of No Nation remains important primarily because it's a reminder that many of the atrocities and horrors of the world are happening away from the public eye, and that areas of the world outside of the middle east are also engulfed in bloody conflict. No matter where you go, war remains the same.

8. Restrepo

While many films on this list can claim themselves as a "true story," none can even hold a candle to the genuine nature of Restrepo. A 2010 documentary, the film follows real filmmakers embedded with a platoon stationed in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan – the "deadliest place on earth." Restrepo strips away all of the gung-ho machismo one might expect from a Hollywood film and tells a real story about real Americans fighting for their lives in the closest thing to hell imaginable. Just be warned: it's not for the faint of heart.

7. Lone Survivor

Of all the films present on this list, Lone Survivor is the one that tells the most pure and noble tale of brotherhood on the battlefield. Concerned neither with politics nor policy, the films follows four-man team of Navy SEALs as they fight for their lives in the mountains of Afghanistan against an army of Taliban. Essentially one long firefight, the film's violence comes fast and gritty, with director Peter Berg pulling absolutely no punches. Based on a well-known true story penned by titular lone survivor Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg), the film honors the sacrifices made by these men in a grandiose manner without ever coming across as preachy.

6. Stop-Loss

Stop-Loss is an infuriating movie, and to know that it’s based upon real policies only amplifies that infuriation; it’s essentially the Big Short of war movies. Centering on war hero Brandon King (Ryan Philippe), the story struggles to fight back against the government and their unethical "stop-loss" policy, which allows them to enlistment contract and send them back to active duty involuntarily. As the walls close in around him, Brandon has no other choice but to try and leave his life behind in an effort to try and stay alive. Philippe – along with supporting actors Channing Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Levitt – does impeccable job of selling the effect that war can have on a soldier, but it’s the film’s subject matter that will get audiences fired up.

5. Green Zone

After so many years, it almost feels silly to think that the war in Iraq began due to a false narrative about the possibility of the country having weapons of mass destruction. Paul Greengrass’ Green Zone examines those ideas through the eyes of an American soldier named Miller (Matt Damon) who wants nothing more than the truth so he can understand why his brothers in arms are dying. Aside from possessing some solid action sequences, Green Zone continuously asks one very important question: why?

4. In The Valley of Elah

Although not directly concerned with politics or the war in Iraq, In the Valley of Elah is still a poignant movie about the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder. When retired military police officer Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones) starts looking into the disappearance of his veteran son Mike, he enlists the help of Detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron). As the case goes on, they begin to realize that Mike’s fellow soldiers may have something to do with his disappearance. In the Valley of Elah is a powerful war movie because it focuses less on the actual war, and instead highlights the darkly disturbing effects war can have on men who return home from the battlefield.

3. The Messenger

War is hell, and people die. We all know this grim fact, but no other post 9/11 war film has endeavored to explore the far-reaching impact of death quite like the 2009 film The Messenger. Starring Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster, The Messenger follows a pair of casualty notification officers as they deliver news to the loved ones of soldiers who died in battle in the Middle East. As the weight of the job begins to affect Will Montgomery (Foster), he soon finds solace in a widow whose husband died overseas. The Messenger is a powerful movie that reminds us that the effects of war resonate far beyond the battlefield.

2. Zero Dark Thirty

Kathryn Bigelow has a strong resume for tense, affecting films about the war in the Middle East. Her most recent war film, Zero Dark Thirty, deals with obsession of CIA analyst Maya (Jessica Chastain) as she hunts down Osama Bin Laden. The film spans years and highlights numerous real-world issues, such as American use of torture to extract information from prisoners, as well as the daring raid that finally took Bin Laden down. Pressure seemingly builds and builds as the story unfolds, unleashing all at once as Maya can finally sit down and rest when the 9/11 mastermind has been brought to justice. It's bittersweet as the audience begins to realize that her victory does not necessarily mean a happy ending for her character.

1. The Hurt Locker

If war truly is a drug, then no other film captures that theme better than Kathryn Bigelow’s 2008 thriller The Hurt Locker. Following a three-man explosive ordinance disposal team in Iraq, the film is a tense, two-hour, white-knuckle ride that tackles serious issues of death, camaraderie, and the thrill of battle. Perhaps the most poignant part of the movie comes during its final minutes, where we as an audience begin to understand how defusing bombs for years has warped Sergeant First Class William James’ (Jeremy Renner) mind. The Hurt Locker tells a heartbreaking yet exhilarating story that ultimately won Bigelow the Best Director and Best Picture Oscars in 2009 – and rightfully so.

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If you're going to bribe someone, the least you could do is bribe them right, that's only fair. This is something the screenwriter and director of Zero Dark Thirty should have kept in mind as they went about bribing CIA officers for information about the raid that cost Osama Bin Laden his life. If there's anything worse than bribing someone, it's bribing them with fake goods.

Vanity Fair ran a story about how Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow – the writer and director of Zero Dark Thirty respectively – reportedly used everything from big ticket meals to fancy trinkets and branded swag to convince CIA officers to divulge inside details of the most famous manhunt of our time. While it must be stressed that the materials provided were deemed "sensitive, unclassified" information, it is also equally important to mention that Boal and Bigelow did not have security clearance of any kind when they received the information. That still doesn't excuse the fact that part of the bribes mentioned in the Vanity Fair piece were an overvalued bottle of tequila and a fake pair of Tahitian pearl earrings.

While Zero Dark Thirty has been in the collective rearview for some time, the film and the mission it was based off of have been a consistent lightning rod for controversy. Though, to be fair, the controversy never really goes anywhere. Not only was any possible prosecution on the CIA's part dropped, but a congressional investigation that was launched around the time of the film lead to nowhere pretty fast as well. Perhaps part of the lack of punishment is the fact that some of the bribes that were issued weren't as fancy as they were made out to be. 

Interestingly enough, Zero Dark Thirty wasn't the only project based on the hunt for Osama Bin Laden that landed in hot water for its loose lips. Around the same time, the developers of Medal Of Honor: Warfighter sought out information from Navy SEALs, and seven SEALs ended up being disciplined for divulging information that they had no right to provide. At this point, don't be surprised of a future film reveals the actual location of Bin Laden's remains to be under Citi Field. 

As talented as Kathryn Bigelow is, she might want to ditch her partners and straighten up a bit. After all, she also happened to direct The Hurt Locker - which itself was at the center of a controversy, albeit that was over Oscar votes. Still, with no official project on her plate as a follow up, she'll have plenty of time to think over what she's done before she ventures back into the world of film. Whatever that next project may be, it'll be interesting to see if it's military related, and how much co-operation she'll receive in that arena.

At first glance, you might not think that the War on Terror drama Zero Dark Thirty and edgy HBO sitcom Girls have very much in common, aside from both centering on a female protagonists. But as both are also directed (predominantly) by women, and offer controversial portrayals of contemporary women and the worlds they live and work in, there are actually some unexpected areas of crossover. While Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty stirred controversy over its portrayal of torture, Lena Dunham's Girls has draw criticism and praise for everything from the its casting, to Dunham's frequent nudity, and the show's self-aware assertions about being "the voice of a generation."

Recently keen comedienne Chelsea Davison poked fun at the latter by imagining what it would look like if Dunham auditioned for Jessica Chastain's role in Zero Dark Thirty, a parody that Dunham herself declared "very funny." The impression went viral, demanding a follow-up, which Davison has kindly provided. This time it's "Jessica Chastain" auditioning for the Girls pilot, and it's pretty fantastic.

When she's not doing spot-on impersonations of controversial icons, Davison works as a copywriter. Looking over her online portfolio, she does a fine job there. But I'm hoping that some savvy casting agent takes notice of her deft abilities at building sharp parodies of public figures and gives her a chance at a better venue than youtube. Davison's got some serious skills, as she nails not only the particular vocal inflections of Chastain and Dunham, but also manages a mockery that's funny but not cheap or mean-spirited. That's mockery Maya Rudolph stye, and we love it.

Even if something like Saturday Night Live doesn’t come calling, we'll be watching and waiting from more from Davison. You can too by following her on Twitter.

There is no real reason to mesh HBO's Girls and Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty… or at least, I didn't think there was until I saw this video. Comedian Chelsea Davison has a pitch-perfect impression of Girls star Lena Dunham in her back pocket, and instead of using it to comment on the show itself-- there's more than enough of that going around the Internet as it is-- she uses it to record Dunham's so-called audition tape for the Jessica Chastain role in Zero Dark Thirty. It's kind of amazing. Take a look below.

Of course, this is more of an impression of Dunham's self-absorbed Girls character Hannah, but given how willfully Dunham blurs the line between the two it seems fair game. And in fact, Dunham is a fan of the video as well, having tweeted this last night:

Given how much criticism Girls has endured since it began airing on HBO, this video is probably the gentlest form of parody Dunham has encountered. And while the magic in this is mostly Davison's spot-on impression, there's something exceedingly brilliant about her pairing Dunham with Zero Dark Thirty-- two very polarizing stories about women, directed by women, that people can't seem to stop talking about. The joke, of course, is that Dunham is the exact opposite of Chastain's hard-nosed Maya, and would basically be the last person you'd want interrogating Al-Qaeda members. But to see two of the most fascinating women to be on our screens in the last few months is not only fascinating, but weirdly subversive somehow. I can't put my finger on it… but I will probably be watching this video many times. Mostly because it just makes me laugh.

From now until the Friday before the Oscars we'll be running daily pieces about why a film does or does not deserve Best Picture. We've analyzed reasons why Michael Haneke's Amour, Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild, and David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook all deserve the win. A pair of writers both attacked AND defended Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables. Ang Lee's Life of Pi was deemed thematically weak. Now, Kristy digs into Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty.

Let's just admit it: Zero Dark Thirty has about zero chance of winning Best Picture. Yes, it is one of the best films of the year, earning a spot on countless critics' top ten lists, including mine. But after the movie became a political football for politicians who unfairly declared it "pro-torture" to further their own agendas, its Oscar prospects sunk fast. But that doesn't really matter, because Zero Dark Thirty doesn't need your Oscar, and director Kathryn Bieglow doesn't care about its cachet. The movie itself tells us as much.

When I first saw Zero Dark Thirty, I was entranced by Jessica Chastain's hard-nosed performance as CIA officer Maya, whose dogged pursuit of Osama Bin Laden leads to his death via SEAL Team Six. She's a woman working in a male-dominated field. She's tireless and dedicated to her mission. She does it not for a promotion or acclaim, but because this is her job, her passion. Watching Maya refuse to be condescended to, patronized or treated differently than her male co-workers, I realized that Zero Dark Thirty is not just the story of the hunt for Bin Laden, it is also the story of Kathryn Bigelow. Though Maya is based on a real woman whose work was key to Bin Laden's end, Maya's journey in the film makes her a clear surrogate for Bigelow, who is also a standout and female in a field dominated by men.

Viewing Zero Dark Thirty I kept waiting for Maya's story to sideline into one of the subplots typically tacked onto a female professional protagonist. But no love interest turned up. No one questioned her about any maternal yearnings, and her "womanly" emotions never got in the way of her work. Because I find these are often dull and sometimes flat-out offensive, I was elated when I realized Bigelow had rejected these standard "women" stories. This reflects the way Bigelow rebuffed similar "women" stories when she was a frontrunner for the Best Director Oscar in 2010.

At the time, the media was saturated with proclamations about her win being historic (she'd be the first female to win the honor), and attempting to stir the pot over her contending for the award against her ex-husband James Cameron. But Bigelow solidly refused to play into these themes. She insisted she and Cameron were colleagues who respected each other. She refused to be made a novelty with the title "female director;" she didn't need a modifier to make her extraordinary. She is an excellent director period. She is also female. When she won Best Director for The Hurt Locker, she was clearly honored. But don't be fooled. She doesn't make her movies for the awards.

In Zero Dark Thirty, Maya works tirelessly to find bin Laden, even when her clean-cut suit of a boss (who is out of touch with being in the field of this work) urges her to some lesser goal that will help them score morale-boosting headlines and possibly earn her a promotion. She openly refuses. She fights fiercely for her mission with a steady and mesmerizing self-assurance. It's not ego, it's confidence, a confidence so strong that it inspires her team. Similarly, Bigelow is a fearless filmmaker who made a movie about a topic that could easily fall into audience-baiting jingoism and sensationalism, but chose to avoid both. She chose not to show us the horrific images from 9/11, instead playing audio that deftly took us all back to that atrocious day. She obscures the bus bombing in London, because this is not an explosion to relish. And she gives no ghoulish close-ups of the dead Bin Laden because that is not this movie's purpose.

Zero Dark Thirty is about a woman with a mission. The film starts with her first day on the job, and ends when she completes it. There's no scene of Maya meeting the president or receiving a medal because that's not what her journey was about. In the end, she gave everything she had to achieve her vision. For Maya, it was bringing Bin Laden to justice. For Bigelow, it was making the movie she made without compromise. She did that. In the long run, Zero Dark Thirty doesn't need an Oscar to cement it's place in cinema history. An Oscar's always nice of course, but Bigelow is not the kind of filmmaker that's working for the awards.

From now until the Friday before the Oscars we'll be running daily pieces about why a film does or does not deserve Best Picture. We've analyzed reasons why Michael Haneke's Amour, Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, Ang Lee's Life Of Pi, David O Russell's Silver Linings Playbook and Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild all deserve the win. Earlier, a pair of writers both attacked AND defended Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables. Now Mack's going to try and liven up the discussion with an argument for David O. Russell’s black comedy Zero Dark Thirty.

The world has always been a complicated place filled with moral conundrums, but in certain countries at certain times, those moral gray areas are a whole lot more apparent. People like to say 9/11 changed everything. For most of us who weren’t at Ground Zero and didn’t have close family members or friends who were, what 9/11 did, more than anything else, was strip us of our ability to see the world in black and white, much as the war did for many boys who went to Vietnam. It ushered in a new compromised reality in which all of us altered (at least slightly) our perceptions of what the government should and shouldn’t do in the name of protecting freedom. Contrary to what certain political pundits might tell you, Zero Dark Thirty does a brilliant job of getting across that change without advancing an agenda, and that’s why it deserves to take home Best Picture on Sunday.

The thesis of Zero Dark Thirty is not torture is a miracle drug. It’s also not torture is an abomination or the war in Afghanistan is right or the Pakistani government can’t be trusted or prisoners should be allowed immediate access to lawyers. The thesis of Zero Dark Thirty is the hunt for Osama Bin Laden was tedious, complicated, long, unseemly, sweaty, inhumane, vicious, creative, bloody, relentless and filled with a mountain of self-doubt. It was carried out by a large network of human beings with completely different opinions about how best to achieve the same goal. So, as the tide of the country ebbed and flowed toward and away from human rights, as the sums of available cash increased and decreased, different methods were tried and thousands of pieces of information were gathered, some legitimate and some not, until one woman used facts acquired over the years through a variety of methods to put together a theory even her biggest supporter was only sixty percent confident would work.

It’s extremely hard to make a film fraught with divisive political issues and remove all personal bias. In fact, somewhere deep inside Zero Dark Thirty, there are probably a few tiny moments in which director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal just couldn’t help themselves, but honestly, I don’t know where any of those are. The only thing the film tells me about Boal and Bigelow’s political views is that they’re not unreasonably right or left wing. They see the world in complicated hues and would rather let the outline of what happened speak for itself instead of demonizing any single group or viewpoint, which was much harder to do with this material than with a film like Argo.

Finding bin Laden and helping six American hostages to escape from Iran might both be goals audience members can be behind, but because the so-called Canadian Caper happened more than thirty years ago, people don’t approach it with political glasses. They see the successes and the failures absent donkeys and elephants, but Zero Dark Thirty’s material is so in the moment, people can’t help but think about Bush’s policies and Obama’s policies and what courses John Kerry or John McCain may have taken. They can’t help but view it from a current political lens, which is why it’s such an incredible achievement that a huge percentage of people on both sides of the aisle think the movie is great.

Most of us have contemplated and figured out where we stand on torture, but there are dozens of other questions the men and women on the ground argue over every day. Should we give already loaded informants unnecessarily nice cars for information? Should we abandon security protocols to make whistleblowers more comfortable? Should we spend months and untold amounts of money driving around a crowded market to try and find someone talking on a cellphone? Should we lie to prisoners about what’s going on in the outside world? Decent men and women who share the same intentions will answer each of those questions in different ways. And that’s okay because the world is really fucking complicated.

Zero Dark Thirty is a great reminder that we all share the same triumphs and failures, even if we disagree on the best path to get there. It understands how gray the world is without trying to push it one way or the other, and that’s why it alone deserves to be recognized as the best film of the year.

From the moment Kathryn Bigelow's follow-up to the Academy Award-winning Hurt Locker was announced, critics and the media were buzzing about its Oscar prospects. On paper it already seemed a winner, reteaming The Hurt Locker's Oscar-winning director (Bigelow) and its Oscar-winning screenwriter Mark Boal on a story about the search for Osama bin Laden. Once the notorious terrorist was tracked and killed in real-life, the filmmakers reworked their screenplay, then set to work shooting with a star-studded cast as secretly as they could.

This secrecy had us positively salivating to see the final film. And when it was at long last screened, we were blown away by Bigelow and Boal's daring yet never exploitative exploration of this hard-fought victory. But despite winning widespread critical praise, a slew of critic awards, and being deemed a decided frontrunner for Best Picture, Zero Dark Thirty lost momentum hard and fast. The LA Times explored why, speaking with many of the people behind the movie. And the answer essentially comes down to profits over accolades.

Trouble for the film started in December. As its limited release began, politicians and pundits—whether they had seen Zero Dark Thirty or not—began accusing it of being "pro-torture." December is primetime for Oscar promotion, so Sony (via Columbia Pictures) had a serious dilemma to face. Should they engage in the debate and risk giving the controversy staying power? Or should they keep quiet so as not to scare off moviegoers? They chose the latter asking the eager-to-respond filmmakers to say nothing in the film's defense until its nationwide release date on January 11th, 2013. From the standpoint of box office performance, this approach worked.

The $40 million dollar film has earned more $88 million domestically, and over $101 million worldwide. It's a flat-out box office success. But the cost of Sony's silence may well be the Oscar, since much of the most heated debates came right as Academy members were filling out nomination ballots. When the nominations were announced, Bigelow was a noticeable and shocking omission in the Best Director category. Bigelow has chosen not to go on the record for this story, but the decision to stay silent for so long has ultimately flustered Boal, who says:

Sony's silence allowed the film to become a political football, one that politicians gladly played with to grab headlines, while Hollywood shrunk to avoid them. At least one member of the Academy has flat out admitted the torture controversy negatively impacted his view of the film. "The [lawmakers] hijacked the marketing of the film, " Boal declares, "With what, to my mind, was an intellectually dishonest publicity ploy."

Right before the film's wide release both Boal and Bigelow spoke up, he at a talk at Loyola Marymount University, she in the LA Times and The Tonight Show. But it appears the damage was done. On Oscar night, Zero Dark Thirty is up for five nominations: Best Achievement in Editing, Best Achievement in Sound Editing, Best Performance for an Actress in a Leading role, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Picture. But those of us following the Oscars closely aren't optimistic for Zero Dark Thirty taking any of them.

In the end, it seems Zero Dark Thirty might have been too much for the Academy to handle. Speaking to the film's response, Boal has offered, "We made a serious, tough adult movie and we got a serious, tough adult response. Not all of it was honest and not all of it was fair and not all of it was correct. But at the end of the day it all comes with the territory."

The nature of the way movies work is that they can't just replicate reality - things have to be made cinematic. It's the reason why characters don't break away from an important conversations for three minute on-screen bathroom breaks. Somethings have to be changed to make them more exciting and fit the format. And that even extends to scenes where Navy SEALs are infiltrating Osama bin Laden's compound.

Esquire has published a new feature about the nameless soldier who shot and killed the world's most wanted man, and within the article - which details the shooter's life since Bin Laden's death - the magazine chronicles his reaction to Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty. Sitting in the theater the shooter's first reaction to the film was to laugh at the title card, "Based on firsthand accounts of actual events," and make a joke to his uncle, who asked him if he had already seen the movie. His response: "I saw the original."

His one major critique of the raid scene that he had was that the SEAL team was being too noisy. During the suspenseful third act sequence he even went as far as to shout ""Are you fucking kidding me? Shut up!" when a character screams out "Breacher" before an explosion. He also had problems with the tattoo scene, saying "Those guys had little skulls or something instead of having some real ink that goes up to [the shoulder blade]." As for his opinion of Maya, the character played by Jessica Chastain, the shooter said that she was "awesome" and acclaimed "They made her a tough woman, which she is."

He laughed with his mentor about some elements, like the high-tech "four-eye goggles" that the soldiers wore, but the conversation at the table got dark when it came to the subject of CIA operative Jennifer Matthews, played by Jennifer Ehle. Both the shooter and the mentor "knew at least one of the paramilitary contractors who perished with her" in the suicide bombing shown in the movie. Overall his opinion on the film was positive.

"It was fun to watch," the shooter said. "There was just little stuff. The helos turned the wrong way [toward the target], and they talked way, way too much [during the assault itself]. If someone was waiting for you, they could track your movements that way...They Hollywooded it up some."

Though it is a very long article, I highly recommend checking out the full article over at Esquire, which details all of the hardships that the hero has faced, including the fact that he has received "no pension, no health care, and no protection for himself or his family."

Normally we don't get too worked up over which person or group has stepped up to support a particular movie, especially a movie that's a hit with critics and audiences already. But from the moment Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal began making it, Zero Dark Thirty was not your usual movie. A detailed and lengthy recreation of the ten-year search for Osama bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty reveals all kinds of information that the general public previously didn't know, and steps right into the ongoing debate about torture by showing, practically in its first scene, a source being water boarded and abused right in front of our heroine Maya (Jessica Chastain).

A lot of very smart and plenty of very dumb things have been said about Zero Dark Thirty's torture already, to the point that Martin Sheen recently felt the need to apologize for signing a petition that asked the Academy not to award it. But now a group I pretty much never expected to hear from has stepped in. According to Deadline, the 9/11 Parents & Families Of Firefighters and WTC Victims has issued a statement supporting the film, saying "we find it deeply disturbing that some of our elected officials want to discourage other 9/11 families and the public from seeing this outstanding film."

You can read the full statement over there, which includes some oddities-- they misspell Bigelow's name and put "film critics" in scare quotes for some reason-- but also an inarguable statement at the end: "All citizens should see this film and make their own decisions about its value. This is what democracy is about." I know I'm not the only movie critic who goes crazy when a movie becomes such a big conversation piece that people start arguing about it without having seen it, and that happened in a big way with Zero Dark Thirty, which began attracting controversy well before most audiences had started to see it. The conversations around Zero Dark Thirty as a film has been interesting, but as a political football, it loses all its nuance and interest and becomes just another thing for people to scream about on CNN.

Sadly, this statement from the 9/11 victims families probably isn't going to help anything, since mentioning "9/11" is the surest way to make a political conversation even more insane and heated. But more power to them for sticking up for themselves, and forcing all these overheated pundits to recognize that, for some people, the death of Osama bin Laden was a whole lot more personal than for everyone else.

After three weeks building up buzz in small release, Zero Dark Thirty expanded to almost 3,000 locations this weekend, taking the number one spot with $24 million. Not bad for a heavy political drama arriving after the holidays, but perhaps not good enough for a movie made on a $40 million budget. If awards season is kind to the project, it may see enough continued sales to be as successful at the box office.

Spoof comedy A Haunted House debuted at second place with $18 million. It's not a remarkable sum but given it's very modest $2.5 million price tag, it's a financial coup for fledgling studio Open Road Films which was founded by the AMC and Regal theater companies in 2011.

Despite exciting trailers that heavily featured heartthrob Ryan Gosling, period crime drama Gangster Squad opened at third with $16 million. The movie marks the wides release ever for a movie starring Sean Penn and, but, given this start it's not likely to be one of his highest grossing appearances.

Two movies that have shown box office longevity ended up making more this weekend than last and moved up the chart. Now on its tenth weekend in release, Lincoln added another $6 million to its $152 million total and moved up to the seventh place spot from eighth last week. Silver Linings Playbook, which slipped out of the top ten to 12th place last week, snuck back up to tenth place with $5 million.

For the full weekend top ten, check out the chart below:

It's an interesting weekend at the box office, and it really doesn't have much to do with the big new releases Gangster Squad and A Haunted House. Both of those films did reasonably well on Friday, but they're likely to be topped by Zero Dark Thirty, finally expanding nationwide this weekend and clearly building off its Oscar buzz to take the #1 spot.

Based on Friday estimates, it's not even close-- Deadline has Zero Dark Thirty making $9.6 million on Friday, with Gangster Squad trailing behind it at $6.6 million and A Haunted House right there with $6.5 million. Most of the top 10 is made up with Oscar nominees experiencing their own bumps-- Django Unchained and Les Miserables are holding strong in fourth and fifth place, while down at #8 Lincoln made another $1.8 million yesterday, bringing its domestic gross total to an astonishing $152.6 million.

My friend Nathaniel at The FIlm Experience did the math after the Oscar nominations and found that the average gross of the Best Picture nominees is $69 million, a pretty impressive number considering that doesn't include behemoths like The Avengers or Skyfall. Lincoln is the biggest of the bunch by far, but Django Unchained, Argo and Les Miserables have all crossed $100 million, with Life of Pi not far behind, and Zero Dark Thirty potentially on its way there. Silver Linings Playbook has made just a modest $37 million, but that's likely to increase thanks to all the Oscar nominations. Beasts of the Southern Wild made a significant $11 million in its brief theatrical run, but the smallest of the group by far is Amour, which has yet to crack $1 million. Thanks to its surprise Best Picture nomination, though, we can probably expect that number to tick up a whole lot too.

Let us know in the comments what you're seeing this weekend, and if you think Zero Dark Thirty deserved to beat out the competition.

Newly minted Oscar nominee and Critics Choice Awards winner Jessica Chastain is winning accolades all over the place for her intense, focused performance as Maya in Zero Dark Thirty, the woman who led the search for Osama bin Laden even when the rest of the CIA seemed to have given up. It's a closed-off and unemotional performance, to the point that some say they don't see her acting at all. But when you meet Chastain in person, you realize just what a transformation it was. She's friendly and bright and seems eager to make you comfortable, even in the span of a four-minute interview she's conducting before a Broadway performance that night.

There are a million fascinating things about Zero Dark Thirty, which is finally opening in wide release this weekend, but I was especially interested in the way it dealt with Maya's gender, and how her femininity is never talked about out loud, but influences everything she does and the way her colleagues react to her. By the time she'd finished answering my question about it Chastain apologized for going on too long, explaining "I'm very passionate about this." See what she had to say, and also her knowledge about the real-life Maya, in our quick conversation below.

Zero Dark Thirty was not only considered one of the best films to be released in 2012, it also happens to be a pretty impressive showing of female power in Hollywood. Not only does the movie have Kathryn Bigelow at the helm, the first female filmmaker to ever win the Best Director award at the Oscars, but Jessica Chastain's performance as the strong-willed, determined Maya is considered by many to be one of the best performances of the year, by a man or a woman. And the Alliance of Women Film Journalists definitely agrees.

The critics organization has announced the winners of their annual EDA awards and, unsurprisingly, Zero Dark Thirty was the big winner. The film, which will be expanding to theaters nationwide this Friday, not only took home the top prize, voted the best movie of the year, but also won Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actress, and Best Editing as well as the Best Woman Director award in the EDA Female Focus Awards categories, the AWFJ Award For Humanitarian Activism - Female Icon Award (for Chastain) and the Unforgettable Moment Award (Chastain's "I'm the motherfucker who found this place" tying with Anne Hathaway's performance of "I Dreamed A Dream" in Les Miserables). You can scope out the full list of winners below and head over to the organization's official website to find out more about them.

Going to the movies on Christmas Day is usually thought of as a tradition for Jews, or anybody else not celebrating the holiday who's got the day off. But really, no matter how you're spending the holiday, there's probably going to be a time that you want to get out of the house and away from the family or friends you've gathered with-- or maybe you want to take them with you, but just get to a place where you don't have to talk to them much.

That's where movies come in handy, of course, and this Christmas season is as packed as ever with new releases that ought to appeal to everyone in your crowd. Some of them are holdovers from Thanksgiving, and you can consult our Thanksgiving movie guide for the rundown on those films like Life of Pi, Lincoln, Skyfall and all the rest. For the stuff that's new, read below as we let you know what they're all about (with links to our reviews were applicable), and who you should bring to see them. See you at the movies!

When everyone's ready for a good cry, but is also emotionally stable enough to handle it: Les Miserables

Week after week of "Will it win Best Picture? Is it worthy of Best Picture?" buzz has drowned out the fact that it's exactly as crowd-pleasing and epic as the musical it's based on, and if anyone in your family has even been caught humming "Master of the House" while doing their chores, they're probably already planning to drag you there.

Best for: Families with at least one theater geek passionate enough to convince everyone to see a musical, dammit.

Kind of like that time you all saw… The King's Speech in 2010, because you heard it had Oscar buzz and knew everyone would at least sort of like it.

[ OUR LES MISERABLES REVIEW ]

When you're all 100% in synch on most political issues and can handle a lot of blood: Django Unchained

Quentin Tarantino's new film is kind of a mysterious choice for a Christmas release, given its hard-R rating and gleeful stomping over many, many things considered within the realm of good taste. But for hardcore movie fans it's a must-see anyway, and so long as nobody at your holiday gathering is spoiling for a fight about gun control, it could be an interesting experiment for a group.

Best for: Actually, maybe it's best to just slip off and see this one by yourself.

Kind of like that time you all saw… Munich in 2005, and wanted a revenge tale with a little more blood and less historical accuracy.

[ OUR DJANGO REVIEW ]

When only the name of a very, very famous movie star will get anyone to go to the theater: Jack Reacher

Who would have guessed that Tom Cruise would be the option the entire family could agree on, but a year after Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol here we are, and Jack Reacher is the totally serviceable, straightforward drama that really could work with everyone you know.

Best for: That uncle, cousin, dad, or whoever is a big fan of the Lee Child books-- there's guaranteed to be at least one in your family. .

Kind of like that time you all saw… Vanilla Sky in 2001, and wished Cruise would just get on with it and kick some ass.

[ OUR JACK REACHER REVIEW ]

When everybody is either young enough not to relate or old enough not to worry: This is 40

Judd Apatow's latest uncomfortable comedy mines humor-- and endless awkwardness-- from his own home life, which makes the foibles and fights of This is 40 feel alarmingly real. It's not as funny as his most famous comedies, but not as depressing as Funny People, and might have the biggest famous-person quotient of any holiday release. That has to count for something!

Best for: Adults ready for some uncomfortable silences in the car ride home.

Kind of like that time you all saw… Spanglish in 2004, and mentally edited Adam Sandler out of it.

[ OUR THIS IS 40 REVIEW ]

When you really want to get in good with your mom: The Guilt Trip

It helps, of course, if your mom is a big Barbra Streisand fan, but this comedy about an adult son bringing his mom along with him on a road trip ought to work for any mothers who wish they saw more of their kids-- and who doesn't? Be prepared for some potential guilt trips of your own once you leave the theater.

Best for: Your mom. And maybe your siblings, if you can form a united front in not getting talked into a road trip of your own.

Kind of like that time you all saw… It's Complicated in 2010, but wished there were fewer awkward sex scenes involving Alec Baldwin.

[ OUR GUILT TRIP REVIEW ]

When you're in a major city and are ready to do a lot of thinking: Zero Dark Thirty

With the debates about its depictions of torture and all the awards buzz swirling around it, Zero Dark Thirty is clearly a must-see movie for many people-- but given that it will only be in a handful of cities until January, it's not exactly for everyone. Fans of All the President's Men and other slow-burn procedurals will dig it-- but at two and a half hours, it's a big commitment for even them.

Best for: Major government wonks who aren't going to go into it with a political agenda.

Kind of like that time you all saw… There Will Be Blood in 2007, and wanted the person who got killed at the end to be an actual person, and preferably a notorious terrorist.

[ OUR ZERO DARK THIRTY REVIEW ]

When you just don't think Les Miserables will be emotionally devastating enough: The Impossible

You have been warned: this movie begins with an incredibly realistic and graphic depiction of the tsunami that devastated much of the South Pacific in 2004. The story that follows from there is a fairly encouraging one, about a family attempting to be reunited in the aftermath, but seriously: that tsunami has the power to ruin your holiday. Go in expecting the worst.

Best for: People getting nowhere near an ocean any time soon.

Kind of like that time you all saw… Marley and Me in 2008, except instead of just one dog dying at the end, thousands of people die.

[ OUR THE IMPOSSIBLE REVIEW ]

When you've got kids to entertain at all costs: Monsters Inc. 3D

It's a weirdly fallow time for children's movies right now, and odds are most families already caught Rise of the Guardians if they were interested. So stick with a classic, and if you've got kids who have never seen 3D before, maybe they'll be dazzled by the upgrade.

Best for: Kids, and major Pixar fanatics.

Kind of like that time you all saw… Well, Monsters Inc., which opened in November of 2001.

When everyone else hasn't seen it yet: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The Hobbit is going into the Christmas season a huge hit already, so there's a decent chance everyone you know who's up for a trip to Middle-earth has already gone. But these movies are a little more accessible and more kid-friendly than the Lord of the Rings films, so with that in mind, you might be able to sway a few more for your own second viewing

Best for: Everyone who doesn't mind a little Elvish and talk of Orcrist the Goblin Cleaver.

Kind of like that time you all saw… Fellowship of the Ring in 2001, mostly, since the plots of the movies are essentially the same.

[ OUR HOBBIT REVIEW ]

With so many titles to choose from, Netflix Instant's library can be overwhelming. And so we offer this biweekly column as a tool to cut through the clutter by highlighting some now streaming titles that pair nicely with the latest theatrical releases.

This week we found inspiration from The Hobbit, This Is 40 and Zero Dark Thirty, so have provided a selection of family-friendly adaptations, raunchy R-rated comedies, and true and remarkable true tales for you to enjoy over the holiday.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Lord of the Rings' trilogy director Peter Jackson returns to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien with this spirited adventure set in Middle Earth. Martin Freeman stars as young Bilbo Baggins, a homebody Hobbit who dares to leave the Shire, setting out on a grand adventure where he'll meet a band of dwarves, a trio of trolls and a strange creature called Gollum. Ian McKellan and Andy Serkis co-star.

Based on the iconic children's book, Jackson's adaptation will bring to life a host of characters many have long loved. For more exhilarating adventures that were born from the pages of great kid-friendly books, we suggest this triple play of adventures the whole family can enjoy.

The Adventures of Tintin (2011) Steven Spielberg took motion-capture to new highs with his epic adaptation of Georges Remi's classic comic strip about a fearless young journalist named Tintin and his dedicated dog, Snowy. When a flea market purchase leads Tintin to a mystery, nothing can stop him from tracking down the truth behind a sunken treasure! Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis and Daniel Craig lend their voices; Peter Jackson produces.

Hugo (2011) Last winter, Martin Scorsese's ambitious adaptation of Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret was being heralded by critics, and delighting audiences with its captivating tale of a boy who lives in the walls of a Parisian train station. This holiday season, you can enjoy Hugo from the comfort of your couch, and revel in the film's quirky characters—including a snooty inspector played by Sacha Baron Cohen—and its wonder-filled world. This one will be especially engaging to cinephiles, though to avoid spoilers I won't say why. Asa Butterfield, Chloe Grace Moretz, and Ben Kingsley co-star.

Alice in Wonderland (1951) Netflix recently inked a deal with Disney that has unleashed a slew of tantalizing titles from the Disney vault. Among them is their colorful classic adapted from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The story centers on a British school girl who chases a frantic white rabbit, then stumbles into a wacky world where caterpillars smoke hookahs, walruses can't be trusted, and the queen has a rage that can make her lose her head…and could make you lose yours! Kathryn Beaumont and Ed Wynn lend their voices, Winston Hibler, Ted Sears, and Bill Peet direct.

This is 40

Described as a sort of sequel to Judd Apatow's comedy hit Knocked Up, this funny feature reteams Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann as frequently feuding married couple, Pete and Debbie, who try to make the best out of middle age. Jason Segel, Annie Mumolo, and Megan Fox co-star.

Sometimes there is nothing so satisfying as an R-rated comedy. Full of raunchiness, off-color jokes, and flat-out outrageous gags, this kind of movie can be just what the stress of the holiday season demands. So kick back, relax, and laugh your ass off at the wild misadventures of a anti-heroes who can't get a hang of what being a mature adult means. But it's cool, because we love them for it.

2 Days in New York (2012) A spirited sequel to Julie Delpy's offbeat rom-com 2 Days in Paris, this Big Apple-set romance centers on Marion (Delpy) and her latest lover Mingus (Chris Rock in his best role to date), a couple who seems to be in domestic bliss until her troublemaking French family comes to visit, and throws their lives into chaos. Cultures clash, sibling rivalry sparks, tempers flare, and it's hilarious every step of the way, leading up to one of the oddest (and sharpest) self-mocking cameos in film history. Albert Delpy and Alexia Landeau co-star; Julie Delpy directs.

Young Adult (2011) As follow-up to his Oscar-nominated Up in the Air, Jason Reitman helmed this fierce and funny comedy that goes to the jugular with bad behavior and a total bitch for a protagonist. Charlize Theron stars as Mavis Gary, an immature divorcee who is on the verge of losing her cushy job as a YA ghostwriter when she gets an e-mail from her high school sweetheart. Despite the fact that it's a birth announcement for his first child with his wife, Mavis believes this is a sign he wants to reunite, and so travels back to her old town to free him from the hell she assumes he lives in. Much awkwardness and hilarity ensue. Patrick Wilson and Patton Oswalt co-star.

Klown (2010) It's not every day a comedy can make me scream with laughter, but this fearless feature out of Denmark did just that! While American movies that past few years have been pushing the envelope when it comes to outrageous sexual humor, writer-actors Frank Hvam and Casper Christensen skipped all the foreplay and got straight to the WTF. The story centers on a canoe trip the two have planned that's meant to be a barrage of drunken, drug-fueled days and nights of concerts and casual sex, culminating in a visit to an almost mythic brothel. When Frank brings along his girlfriends nephew to prove he's ready to be a dad, even this turn in events cannot topple Casper's dedication to debauchery. Mikkel Nørgaard directs.

Zero Dark Thirty

The Hurt Locker's filmmaking team of screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow reunite for this harrowing historical drama which charts the U.S. forces' long journey to hunt down al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. Beginning with September 2001 attacks and moving through notorious figure's death at the hands of Navy S.E.A.L. Team 6 in May, 2011, this critically heralded film is as challenging as it is riveting.

Sometimes real world events can be so grand in scope, so emotionally charged it seems impossible to process them in full. In these instances, film can be a powerful tool to help us understand these events or work out our conflicted feelings about them. For more dramas that seek to investigate real world conflicts through personal stories, check out these three celebrated features.

Jarhead (2005) Based on the memoir of U.S. Marine Anthony Swofford, this biographical drama takes viewers deep into Operation Desert Shield as Swofford (played here by Jake Gyllenhaal) and his fellow snipers gear up for what they expect to be the fight of their life in the Persian Gulf. Peter Sarsgaard and Jamie Foxx co-star; Sam Mendes directs.

Hotel Rwanda (2004) This three-time Oscar nominated biopic centers on the incredible story of hotel owner Paul Rusesabagina, a native Rwandan who nobly worked to shield refugees from the genocide that burned through his nation. Don Cheadle portrays the extraordinary man whose sacrifice and efforts ultimately saved more than 1,000 lives, earning an Academy Award nod for his powerful performance. Terry George directs.

A Mighty Heart (2007) Based on the memoir of Mariane Pearl's heartbreaking memoir of the same name, this harrowing docudrama follows her impassioned search for her husband, Wall Street Journalist reporter Daniel Pearl, once he was kidnapped in Pakistan. If you remember the headlines this story grabbed back in 2002, you know this is a tale of tragedy. Yet it's inspiring to see Mariane's perseverance in the darkest hour of her life. Angelina Jolie earned much critical praise including a Golden Globe nod for her devastating portrayal of Mariane. Dan Futterman and Irrfan Khan co-star; Michael Winterbottom directs.

Creating this list has filled me with a dizzying amount of joy and dread. 2012 was a year that offered so many examples of daring and thrilling cinema that it was difficult to even determine what the criteria should be for a list of my personal ten favorites. In the end, I went with my gut, selecting those films that not only hit me hard in the theater, but also lingered with me for days, weeks, or months afterwards. All of which I can still vividly recall.

I focused on the films first, ignoring their periphery. But afterwards I was pleased to see films released from each season, as well as a mix of studio and indie features, made here and abroad (well, the U.K. and Canada.) And with so few female directors getting buzz this awards season, I was happy that three films helmed by women not only made my list, but moreover made my top five!

My only regret in this moment is that I couldn't include festival favorites, Sally Potter's Ginger & Rosa, as it won't get a domestic release until February of 2013, and the enigmatic yet haunting Indonesian drama Postcards from the Zoo, which shamefully hasn't gotten U.S. distribution. Still, I'm in love with this collection of movies, some of which messed with my head, others rattled my nerves, and the rest played with my heart, swelling it and breaking it in turn. Just reflecting back on them all was as exhausting as it was rewarding.

#10: Cosmopolis

I have to confess, ten minutes into David Cronenberg's deeply bizarre political thriller, I was slouched in my seat scowling and hating it. The performance style was so wooden it was grating. The lighting made everything look flat and ugly. The dialogue was stuffed with business talk I couldn't follow, so I gave up. I quit trying to understand Cosmopolis. Then, the rush of words and weird imagery, from riots with effigy rats, to a squirm-inducing proctology exam, and mountingly strange sexual encounters, washed over me. At some point along the world's most winding path to get a haircut, I found myself totally riveted. To get across a story of a man so wealthy he feels above everyone and everything, Cronenberg made his movie revolting, and in doing so delivered a more fascinating and bolder political message about the age of Operation Wall Street than any other filmmaker has yet dared.

#9: Lawless

Based on the local legends that brewed about bootlegging brothers and folk heroes the Bondurants, Lawless offers some of the most beautiful but overlooked performances in a year spoiled for choice. Tom Hardy and Jessica Chastain drew more attention for The Dark Knight Rises and Zero Dark Thirty respectively, but their chemistry and character work here is too haunting and scintillating to forget. He's the growling, cardigan-coated ringleader of the brawling Bondurants. She's a glamorous big city girl hiding from her past in his small town speakeasy. Their attraction is immediate, smoldering and deeply satisfying as its slow burn romance builds to a climax where Chastain's strong, sensual, and fully nude heroine crosses from her room to Hardy's bed with a confidence that is cool and hot all at once. But it's the pivotal moment where the two fight before a shootout showdown that is one of the best scenes of the year.

#8: The Cabin In the Woods

Leave it to Joss Whedon to bring horror out of the shadows! This year even critics who can't stand the genre rallied behind Whedon and co-writer/director Drew Goddard's inventive and disturbing commentary on modern horror. On its surface, it's a movie about twenty-somethings being tortured and slaughtered during a weekend excursion in the woods, a pretty common horror premise. But Goddard and Whedon built a world that goes far beyond (or beneath) this simple story to draw attention to the people who create such terror-filled tales, as well as the audience they are aiming to please. The Cabin In the Woods forces us re-evaluate horror iconography, while playfully calling out our love of carnage, and delivering a sick, entertaining and at times hilarious adventure. It was a badass accomplishment and one of the most fun viewing experiences of the year.

#7: The Imposter

The Texan family at the center of this documentary has suffered a great deal. In 1994, they lost their youngest member, 13-year-old Nicholas Barclay. Then, when it seemed he'd surfaced four years later in Spain, they rushed to retrieve him, only to find a young man who didn't look much like Nicholas and spoke English with a thick French accent. Still, why would someone lie about being the missing son of a lower-middle class American family? They took him in, but when the truth came out about identity thief Frédéric Bourdin, the press was cruel to the Barclays. How could this have happened, the media scoffed? Watching Bart Layton's shocking and stylish doc, it's easy to understand. Beyond giving the Barclays a chance to share their side of this bizarre story, Layton also offers insightful interviews with the arrogant and unrestrained Bourdin, a man savvy at manipulation, with a devilish smile and an inescapable charm. Even knowing all the crimes he's committed, and all the lies he's told, it's easy to be pulled into his scandalous stories, and wonder if they're true.

#6: Wreck-it Ralph

There have been several imaginative and exciting animated features in theaters this year, but only Wreck-it Ralph has made my top ten. I'm at best a casual gamer, yet found the interweaving worlds of Litwak's Arcades' video games completely absorbing. From Fix-it Felix Jr. to Hero's Duty and Sugar Rush, Disney's animation team built distinct and stimulating settings inhabited by characters that were fresh yet familiar. The voice cast of John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Jack McBrayer and Jane Lynch brought a vibrant life to its characters, who unravel a touching story about self-discovery, friendship and self-sacrifice. Sure, it's filled with clever allusions to real video games, but what makes Wreck-it Ralph a standout is how beautifully writer-director Rich Moore balanced his outlandish characters with a thought-provoking and heartwarming story of a bad guy who does good.

#5: Your Sister's Sister

Set predominantly in a remote cabin outside of Seattle and focusing on only three characters, Lynn Shelton's latest dramedy feels deeply intimate and tender. Its plotline is simple. A lonely man takes the advice of his best friend—who he secretly longs to love—and heads to her family's cabin for some solitude. There he meets her heartbroken sister, and after much booze and little thought they fall into bed together. The next morning the best friend pops by, and a heavy secret lies in the center of this tricky love triangle like a time bomb. A lesser director would oversell the drama with showy scenes of big tears and wailing, but Your Sister's Sister is so grounded in naturalistic dialogue (largely improvised) and the buzzing chemistry of its sharp stars (Mark Duplass, Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt) that it's easy to forget you're watching a movie. But what really makes this feature so unforgettable is how Shelton rejects judgment of her characters or their less noble actions. No one is good or bad, just flawed and trying. It's this that tangled me in their story and had me pining desperately for as happy an ending as these three flawed but fascinating characters could manage.

#4: Argo

In the cushy seats of an extravagant New York movie theater with impeccable surround sound, a grand balcony and thick velvet curtains that pull back to reveal a massive screen, you're just about as far away as could be from the cold and terrifying reality of being trapped in a hostile nation flush with enraged nationalists who want you dead. Nonetheless, Ben Affleck's Argo threw me into their plight with full force. An accomplishment made all the more impressive by the film's bounding from steely strategy meetings in Washington, D.C. to the schmoozing parties of Hollywood and dangerous protests in Iran without losing focus or momentum. Affleck not only makes history come alive, he makes it a totally enveloping ride with a sound design that swarms audiences and forces them to feel as if they are trapped inside the car being hammered on by angry men, or in the belly of a plane as it growls toward flight and freedom. When I saw Argo last fall, I suspected it would be on this list, and for a time, thought it would be my #1.

#3: Wuthering Heights

Because it is Andrea Arnold's follow-up to Fish Tank, that is the only reason I was interested in seeing this adaptation. I had read Emily Brontë's book in high school and loathed it. Heathcliff and Catherine were odious to me, and I couldn't comprehend how their grim story was a romance. Arnold changed my mind completely with her visceral take on Wuthering Heights that excises huge sections of the novel and centers itself firmly on the moods of Heathcliff, a foundling brought into a modestly affluent household, but loved by only one of its members, the fiery young Catherine. For the first half of the film, its protagonists barely speak. Their connection is formed by touch, both tough and tender, which Arnold's cinematography makes tangible with its pulsating close-ups of flesh, blood and hair. Their attraction and love is almost animalistic, and when society forces them into cages of civility and separation, we share in their pain and outrage. While others cheer the talent of Beasts of the Southern Wild's tiny ingénue Quvenzhané Wallis, I argue the performances of newcomers Solomon Glave and Shannon Beer deserve wild praise for their captivating blend of beastliness and vulnerability.

#2: Zero Dark Thirty

Since this movie hasn't yet opened in wide release, I'm going to avoid spoilers. But even avoiding specifics, there are so many things to admire in Kathryn Bigelow's follow-up to The Hurt Locker. There's the sprawling and fantastic cast that boasts Jessica Chastain, Kyle Chandler, Jennifer Ehle, Jason Clark, Chris Pratt and Joel Edgerton. There's the deft editing that makes a film that clocks in at over 2 ½ hours feel riveting and fast-paced. But what's most remarkable about Bigelow's drama about American forces' hunt for Osama bin Laden is its restraint and rejection of sensationalism. This is no rah-rah nationalistic tale of American power and pride, nor is it a damning criticism of the CIA's methods to extract information from terrorists and their accomplices. Instead Zero Dark Thirty offers a complicated portrait of a CIA agent (Chastain) who relentlessly seeks the man responsible for 9/11 without getting caught up in anguish, rage, or revenge. The film lays out the good and the bad of these events, leaving its audience to draw their own conclusions. It's a move that sets Bigelow apart and left me in awe.

#1: Anna Karenina

Overwhelming rapture. That is what I felt watching Joe Wright's breathtaking take on Leo Tolstoy's oft adapted romance novel. Last summer I had seen the six-minute clip that revealed the unconventional theatrical approach Wright was taking. He not only staged the film largely in a lavish theater, but also created a heightened performance style where high society literally bends over backwards to take in fireworks, handheld fans flap like agitated wings, and characters glide as if life were a dance number, gorgeously and boldly choreographed. By the time I went to see Anna Karenina, my hopes were so high that I worried no film could live up to them. But Wright's risks paid off.

Much like Anna was seduced by Vronsky, I was swept away by the film's dynamic staging, where sets and actors swirl through the frame with dazzling ease, its moody romances, and Anna's inescapable tragedy. As soon as the credits came up, I wanted to see it again. In IMAX. In 3D. I wanted to roll around in its lush art design, tangible emotions and probing heartbreak. I walked out of the theater intoxicated, and knew Anna Karenina was not just one of my favorite films of the year, it was now one of my favorite films, full stop.

Great Movies That Didn’t Make The Cut: The Avengers, Life of Pi, Two Days in New York, Silver Linings Playbook, Lincoln, The Raid: Redemption, Goon and Cloud Atlas.

We are officially in the onslaught part of the awards season, where every critic's group from New York and Los Angeles to Tulsa gathers together, picks their favorites, and announces their winners for the world to decide whether or not they're important. All these (occasionally) highbrow notices will be followed up by Thursday's Golden Globes nominations, which will also be parsed for their significance to the ongoing Oscar race, but will also inevitably nominate someone ridiculous like Seth MacFarlane as Best Supporting Actor for Ted.

But today we've got a lot of awards from three critic's groups who demand a certain level of respect: The Boston Society of Film Critics, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the New York Film Critics Online. I belong to the latter group and watched what I imagine was a similar situation in several other groups: there was a lot of support for a wide variety of films, but Zero Dark Thirty was liked by the most people, so it won out in the end. Kathryn Bigelow's CIA drama was named Best Picture by both NYFCO and the Boston group, while the Los Angeles critics went their own way, giving Michael Haneke's Amour their top prize. That film's star Emmanuelle Riva tied Jennifer Lawrence for Best Actress with that group, while winning Best Actress outright from both NYFCO and the BSFC.

It's always hard to know how to parse critic's groups in terms of general awards momentum-- there are so many groups, and so often contradicting each other-- but there's a clear narrative emerging that Zero Dark Thirty is the critical favorite, but also that underdogs like Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master (which won Best Actor, Director, Supporting Actress and production design from the LA critics) and Beasts of the Southern Wild are flaring back to life. But don't read too much into films that seem "snubbed"-- at least some of them. While Argo won just a single prize from NYFCO, for Best Ensemble, it had fierce support in several other categories, and was runner-up for Best Picture. To think that Argo's hopes are dashed based on its disappointing showing with critics so far is premature. Same for Lincoln, which has no Best Picture win to its name yet, but is strong enough in other categories to stay alive.

Below is the full rundown of all three groups' winners, with runners-up included for LAFCA and BSFC because, well, that's how they play it. We'll have more on these awards and their impact on the awards race as a whole in Tuesday's Oscar Eye column.

Best Film: Amour

(runner-up: The Master )

Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master

(runner-up: Kathryn Bigelow)

Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook

(runner-up: Emmanuelle Riva)

Best Actor: Joaquin Phoenix, The Master

(runner-up: Denis Lavant, Holy Motors

Best Supporting Actor: Dwight Henry, Beasts of the Southern Wild

(runner-up: Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained)

Best Supporting Actress: Amy Adams, The Master

(runner-up: Anne Hathaway, The Dark Knight Rises and Les Miserables)

Best Editing: Dylan Tichenor and William Goldenberg, Zero Dark Thirty

(runner-up: William Goldenberg, Argo)

Best Cinematography: Roger Deakins, Skyfall

(runner-up: Mihai Malaimare Jr., The Master)

Best Score: Benh Zeitlin & Dan Romer, Beasts of the Southern Wild

(runner-up: Jonny Greenwood, The Master)

Best Screenplay: Chris Terrio, Argo

(runner-up: David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook)

Best Production Design: Jack Fisk, The Master

(runner-up: Adam Stockhausen, Moonrise Kingdom)

Best Animated Film: Frankenweenie>

(runner-up: It’s Such a Beautiful Day)

Best Documentary: The Gatekeepers

(runner-up: Searching for Sugar Man)

Best Foreign Language Film: Holy Motors

(runner-up: Footnote)

Best Film: Zero Dark Thirty

(runners-up: Moonrise Kingdom and Amour)

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty

(runner-up: Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master)

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

(runner-up: Denis Lavant, Holy Motors)

Best Actress: Emmanuelle Riva , Amour

(runner-up: Deanie Yip, A Simple Life)

Best Supporting Actress: Sally Field, Lincoln

(runner-up: Emma Watson, Perks of Being a Wallflower)

Best Supporting Actor: Ezra Miller, Perks of Being a Wallflower

(runner-up: Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained)

Best Screenplay: Tony Kushner,Lincoln

(runner-up: Wes Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom)

Best Cinematography: Mihai Malaimare Jr, The Master

(tied for runner-up: Moonrise Kingdon, Life of Pi)

Best Editing: William Goldenberg, Dylan Tichenor, Zero Dark Thirty

(runner-up: Argo)

Best Use of Music: Moonrise Kingdom

(runner-up: Django Unchained)

Best New Filmmaker: David France, How to Survive a Plague

(runner-up: Benh Zeitlin for Beasts of the Southern Wild)

Best Documentary: How to Survive a Plague

(runner-up: Queen of Versailles)

Best Animated: Frankenweenie

(runner-up: ParaNorman)

Best Foreign Language Film: Amour

(runner-up: Holy Motors)

Best Picture: Zero Dark Thirty

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow – Zero Dark Thirty

Best Debut Director: Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Best Actress: Emmanuelle Riva – Amour

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis – Lincoln

Best Ensemble Cast: Argo

Best Supporting Actor:Tommy Lee Jones – Lincoln

Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway – Les Miserables

Best Cinematography: Life of Pi – Claudio Miranda

Best Screenplay: Zero Dark Thirty – Mark Boal

Best Use of Music: Django Unchained – Mary Ramos

Breakthrough Performance: Quvenzhane Wallis – Beasts of the Southern Wild

Best Animated Feature: Chico and Rita

Best Documentary: The Central Park Five

Best Foreign Language Film: Amour

For the first time in the last few years, there's no clear frontrunner for all awards as critics groups begin handing out their prizes-- unlike last year, when The Artist ran roughshod all over the season, or when The Social Network and The King's Speech duked it out two years ago, there are half a dozen films that could be legitimately considered Oscar frontrunners. Today the New York Film Critics Circle was the first critic's group to give some shape to the race, naming Zero Dark Thirty-- Kathryn Bigelow's masterfully tense drama about the hunt for Osama bin Laden-- their Best Picture of the Year.

They also tapped Bigelow as their Best Director, cutting off what had looked like a sweep for Lincoln, which won Best Screenplay for Tony Kushner, Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis, and Best Supporting Actress for Sally Field. Many of the group's other picks could be considered totally left-field. Rachel Weisz won Best Actress for her work in the little-seen The Deep Blue Sea, and Matthew McConaughey won Best Supporting Actor for his work in both Magic Mike and Bernie. For the first time in the group's history, the Best First Feature prize went to a documentary, David France's How To Survive A Plague-- a prize widely expected to go to Benh Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Along with the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, who vote for their awards on Friday, the New York critics are widely considered the most important group of the season, in terms of being able to garner attention for certain contenders. This is a huge boost for Zero Dark Thirty, which has earned rave reviews but won't open until later this month, as well as a strong sign of critical support for Lincoln.

You can see the full list of New York Film Critics Circle award winners here.

Zero Dark Thirty could be the most fascinating, or the most controversial, or the most kick-ass film of the holiday season-- given that it's about the Seal Team Six raid that killed Osama bin Laden, it could easily be all three of those things. But nobody really knows yet, since Zero Dark Thirty has yet to screen for any critics, and if anyone has seen it, they're not telling. That'll change soon, though. The review embargo for the new film from The Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow ends on Sunday, and we'l have our review posted soon after.

So in these last few days before the Zero Dark Thirty mystery is revealed, why not speculate about what might come after it? Bigelow and her screenwriter collaborator Mark Boal were working on a different bin Laden-focused project, about the failed effort to kill him in Tora Bora in 2001, when history caught up with them and bin Laden was killed in April of 2011. As they told Entertainment Weekly, they scrapped the Tora Bora project to make Zero Dark Thirty after the news broke, but they haven't ruled out returning to it. Asked if a Zero Dark Thirty prequel could happen, Boal said "Yeah, I think so. Why not? But I think the last thing [either of us] wants to do right now is talk about making another movie.”

That's pretty standard talk from someone who just wrapped up a film, and you can't blame them for wanting to focus on what they've just accomplished rather than moving on to what's next. But given that Bigelow and Boal last collaborated on The Hurt Locker, which seems to have a similar tough-guy military theme to Zero Dark Thirty, it wouldn't be totally beyond reason for them to tell another, very different story about Osama bin Laden. But would we rather see the two of them try something new instead? Sounds like both Bigelow and Boal would rather we see Zero Dark Thirty before applying the pressure about what happens next, so let's do them that favor for now.

Kathryn Bigelow's cast for Zero Dark Thirty is filled with some incredibly talented actors, but nobody should be surprised by that. After all, who would pass up the chance to work with an Academy Award winning director and screenwriter? The film has already been completed and features performances from Jessica Chastain, Joel Edgerton, Chris Pratt, Mark Strong, Jennifer Ehle, Jason Clark, Scott Adkins, Taylor Kinney, Harold Perrineau and Kyle Chandler among others. But apparently one bit of casting news has been kept off the radar and has finally been revealed.

Entertainment Weekly has learned that Sopranos star James Gandolfini is also in Zero Dark Thirty and will be playing Leon Panetta, one of the most important figures in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, as he was the head of the CIA when SEAL Team Six found and killed their target (he is currently the Secretary of Defense). In addition to learning information about the character, the magazine has also released the first image the character and you can check that out below.

This is shaping up to be a pretty big year for Gandolfini, even though he's yet to have a film out in 2012. Adding Zero Dark Thirty he now has three movies set to come out this fall, the other two being Killing Them Softly with Bradd Pitt and Not Fade Away, David Chase's feature directorial debut.

Zero Dark Thirty, due out December 19th, follows SEAL Team Six on the long hunt for Osama bin Laden following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Head over to our Blend Film Database to see more from the movie.

EA and Sony Pictures are teaming up to cross-promote Medal of Honor: Warfighter and the upcoming film Zero Dark Thirty. The Zero Dark Thirty Map Pack for Warfighter takes players to hotspots inspired by real-world locations.

The map pack contains two new locations for multiplayer battles. The first, Darra Gun Market, is an illegal arms market in Pakistan. Chitral is a rugged tribal area of Pakistan near the borders of Afghanistan and China.

The Zero Dark Thirty Map Pack, called the Hunt Map Pack in Europe, will be free with the Limited Edition of Warfighter. Players can get a Limited Edition by pre-ordering the game. The map pack will be sold separately after launch as well. For every copy of the map pack sold to players, EA will donate $1 to Project HONOR, its non-profit program designed to help nonprofit veteran organizations. I assume they're counting sales of the LE in that tally.

Zero Dark Thirty is a film by director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal, who previously teamed up for The Hurt Locker. The film depicts the efforts of military and intelligence services to hunt down Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden was ultimately found and killed in Pakistan after a decade of searching.

The map pack will be released on December 17th. Zero Dark Thirty will debut in theaters two days later.

Kathryn Bigelow was working on her follow-up to The Hurt Locker in the spring of last year, and happened to be right on the tail of history as her movie about the assassination of Osama bin Laden dovetailed with the Al-Qaeda leader's real-life death. We still don't really know the details of the film, Zero Dark Thirty, or how much it will reveal about the real SEAL Team Six mission to kill bin Laden, but with the film set for release this December, the first trailer has debuted. And since they can't tell us a whole lot, they may as well take advantage of it and make the entire trailer look redacted. You can see what I mean when you watch the trailer below.

In an accompanying interview at Entertainment Weekly, director Bigelow says she made the project because of fascination with people like SEAL Team Six, "who dedicate themselves to really difficult and dangerous things for the greater good […] I personally want to know how they caught bin Laden. All I can do is hope that it interests other people.” Like other real-life dramas Apollo 13 or United 93, everyone already knows the ending of Zero Dark Thirty, but the story will be about more than bin Laden's death, chronicling the decade-long mission to kill the man behind the 9/11 attacks, and the fearless people who pulled it off.

And even with a release date scheduled for well after the November Presidential elections, Bigelow and her screenwriter collaborator Mark Boal are eager to distance themselves from any political messages: "There’s no political agenda in the film. Full stop. Period," says Boal. “A lot of people are going to be surprised when they see the film. For example, the president is not depicted in the movie. He’s just not in the movie.”

There's much more in the EW interview where that came from, including how bin Laden's death affected the film. Take a look and join us in anticipating Zero Dark Thirty's December 19 release.

It’d be a good idea to learn the name Callan Mulvey. The Australian actor just locked up two roles in high-profile action thrillers that will be hitting U.S. soil soon.

According to the Web site IF.com.au, Mulvey landed a role in Kathryn Bigelow’s Osama Bin Laden hunt Zero Dark Thirty, where we assume he’ll play one of the Navy SEALs responsible for eliminating the terrorist threat. The site says Mulvey joins Mark Strong, Joel Edgerton and Jessica Chastain in a production that’s set to begin filming in India this April.

But that’s not all. Mulvey also will play a part in the Zack Snyder-produced 300 sequel, Battle of Artemisia. As we reported earlier, the sequel is going to shift its focus to the flamboyant villain Xerxes, and could even lure original actor Rodrigo Santoro back for the role. But it won’t exactly be a prequel. Just don’t get comfortable with these ideas, as the screenplay does appear to be in flux. There’s time, though. IF.com.au claims the blockbuster will be in theaters in August 2013.

We know very little about Mulvey. Born in New Zealand but raised in Australia, his credits include work on the television series Rush, Home and Away and Heartbreak High. But he appears poised to make the leap to high-profile feature films, and solid work in both Dark Thirty and Artemisia could propel him to Edgerton or Gerard Butler status.

We've known for months now that Kathryn Bigelow's next film will be about SEAL Team Six, the squadron that managed to find and kill Osama bin Laden. We've known that the project will reunite Bigelow with writer Mark Boal, who won an Oscar for his Hurt Locker script. We've known that the film will star Jessica Chastain, Chris Pratt, Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Ehle, Nash Edgerton, Jason Clarke, Mark Strong, Kyle Chandler and Fares Fares. We've known that the movie will be released on December 19th. Despite all of that, though, one key piece of the puzzle has been missing: the goddamn title. As the aforementioned information has leaked out we've called the movie things like Untitled Bin Laden Thriller or, more colloquially, Kill Bin Laden, but the actual title has been a mystery...one that has finally been solved.

According to Reuters, Bigelow's project, which has moved into the production phase, is using the title Zero Dark Thirty. While that kind of sounds like nonsense, in military-speak it's defined as "a very early starting time" or 30 minutes after midnight. But while having a title for the movie is nice, sadly the site also has some bad news. As first reported yesterday, the title is currently filming in India, but the new story says that the production has caused conflict in the country. In an act of protest, members of the right wing group Vishwa Hindu Parishad stormed the set in Chandigarh today. The reason for the protest is that they don't like India being used as a stand-in for Pakistan, which they see as their "sworn enemy."

When asked for comment, Vijay Bhardwaj, a leader of the radical Vishva Hindu Parishad, said "They have made Chandigarh like Pakistan, as if it is Pakistan. We strongly oppose this and we will not let them put Pakistani flags here and we will not let them shoot for the film." The article doesn't say how the production is handling the protest, though it does say that the police were brought in to intervene.

Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal have been tight-lipped on details about their collaborative follow-up to the Oscar-winning Iraqi War drama The Hurt Locker, but THR has uncovered that Bigelow's untitled thriller, which centers on the Navy SEAL Team Six operation that killed Osama bin Laden, is currently shooting on location in India. While Bigelow and her crew have been working hard to keep the mysterious feature under wraps, locals of Chandigarh's Sector 15 noticed set dressings that made over their neighborhood to resemble Pakistan, specifically, "Autorickshaws with Lahore number plates and signboards painted in Urdu caught the attention of passers-by.”

The Times of India newspaper broke the story and reported that Bigelow had arrived Tuesday to begin production the following day. After a five-day shoot in Chandigarh, Bigelow's crew will move south to the desert region of Rajasthan, which will likewise serve as a stand-in for Pakistan. Bigelow has often expressed her preference for shooting on location whenever possible, but obvious safety concerns barred her from shooting her latest feature in Pakistan. Notably, she pulled a similar setting swap for The Hurt Locker, shooting on location in Jordan—just miles from the Iraqi border--rather than Iraq proper. This was still considered a risky move, scaring off many mainstream investors and forcing Bigelow to independently produce the film. Of course, we all know how well that turned out.

Bigelow's bold determination in her vision made The Hurt Locker such a standout, apparent through the film's gritty realism, heart-stopping cinematography, and riveting performances. It's a mean feat and high standard she seems set to repeat between this location shooting and the incredible cast she's culled together, which includes such rising stars as Jessica Chastain, Chris Pratt, Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Ehle, and Fares Fares. At this rate it seems certain that as soon as this thriller gets a title, it'll be touted as one of 2013's major award contenders.

There were a lot of people sad to see Coach Taylor's run on the small screen end but Kyle Chandler shouldn't be too upset considering the recent string of roles in high-profile feature films filling up his free time. And don't worry fans, one of the projects includes a potential Friday Night Lights film that will focus on everyone's favorite 'clear eyed, full hearted, can't lose' Coach. However, before he returns to the sidelines, he will first apparently be reporting for duty on Kathryn Bigelow's SEAL Team 6 flick commonly referred to as Kill Bin Laden.

Deadline reports that Chandler has just signed on for the Mark Boal scripted film that follows the events leading up to the assassination of Al Queda leader Osama Bin Laden. The article states that Chandler will be playing a CIA agent in the fast-tracked factual account of the military operation but nothing has been confirmed. The Emmy winning Actor (taking home the Best Actor Drama statue) will join an incredible ensemble that includes Jessica Chastain, Joel Edgerton, Edgar Ramirez, Jason Clarke, Mark Strong and Chris Pratt. Yeah, amazing.

The article also mentions the recent legal troubles that the film has fallen prey to - even though Sony has smartly scheduled the release for December 19, well after the upcoming election (but the marketing will start to appear right in the heat of it all... oops) - as the Pentagon announced an investigating into the charges issued by Rep. Peter King that the Kill Bin Laden film somehow received access to inside information from the Obama administration while crafting the script. They better be prepared for much more of this as I imagine the film will face nothing but public scrutiny right up to and well after its release. Besides the controversy, I am really looking forward to seeing how The Hurt Locker creative team handles these recent true events, especially with such a wonderful cast on board.

The still untitled international thriller from Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal opens December 19, 2012. It stars Jessica Chastain, Joel Edgerton, Edgar Ramirez, Jason Clarke, Mark Strong, Chris Pratt and now Kyle Chandler. Chandler can be seen next in Ben Affleck's Argo and Allen Hughes' Broken City.

Fans of NBC's Parks and Recreation have come to know actor Chris Pratt as the lovable and dim-witted Andy Dwyer, but now he's apparently up for a role that would cast him in a very different light. Twitch is breaking the news that Pratt is in talks to play the lead role in Kathryn Bigelow's film about the death of Osama Bin Laden, unofficially referred to as Kill Bin Laden.

Pratt will join a cast that already includes Jason Clarke, and formerly included Joel Edgerton until he dropped out due to scheduling conflicts. It's unclear if Pratt is taking over the role formerly occupied by Edgerton, but both are described as "lead" roles, so that is most likely the case. Other actors rumored to be up for parts in the flick include Tom Hardy, Guy Pearce, and Idris Elba. Pratt most recently appeared in both Moneyball and What's Your Number? this fall.

The project was actually in the works before the notorious terrorist leader was killed last May, prompting a series of rewrites to bring the script in line with the new ending real life had dropped in their laps. Those rewrites, as well as a congressional investigation into whether the Obama administration was inappropriately providing the production with classified info about the operation, both likely combined to push the film's release back, likely until after the next presidential election.

Bigelow's film is just one of several projects focusing on Bin Laden and/or Navy SEALs. There's also Into the Blue, director John Stockwell's Code Name Geronimo, Peter Berg's Lone Survivor, and Christopher McQuarrie's multimedia project Rubicon.

So it’s Jason Clarke of TV’s The Chicago Code – and not Joel Edgerton, as was widely rumored – who’ll be the first man cast for Kathryn Bigelow’s as-yet-untitled Osama Bin Laden thriller. Deadline reports that the Hurt Locker director has tapped Clarke for her terrorist-hunting team, and is circling other high-profile actors and actresses to join the ranks of a feature she intends to film early next year.

Though Bigelow was one of the first filmmakers to announce a military drama surrounding the hunt for Bin Laden – getting on the proverbial board long before Bin Laden was captured and killed by U.S. forces – she’s now racing against competing projects trying to get a Bin Laden picture into theaters. She’ll reunite with Oscar-winning screenwriter Mark Boal to recount the efforts of SEAL Team Six, who tracked the Taliban leader to Pakistan and eliminated him in his private residence.

And who, according to Deadline, might join Clarke? While I’m not ready to count out Edgerton (who’d be ideal for a role based on his look alone), Bigelow reportedly is eyeing Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Rooney Mara and Edgerton’s Warrior co-star Tom Hardy for the film. That’s a mighty impressive wish list, though the site admits that scheduling could be an issue for a number of those castmembers. As for Clarke, audiences soon will be able to see him opposite Shia LaBeouf in The Wettest County in the World, which also happens to co-star Tom Hardy . He also has a part opposite Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, currently filming in Australia.

As I sit here typing this, the American economy is crumbling. Stocks are plummeting, America’s credit is terrible, and Europe seems to be in even worse shape. It’s at times like these that we turn to our leaders, looking for action. So of course Congress is investigating Kathryn Bigelow’s movie about killing Osama bin Laden instead.

Written by Mark Boal, the film is to be Bigelow’s first movie since winning Oscars with The Hurt Locker. It’s actually more about Seal Team Six, the guys who killed Osama and interestingly, was written before bin Laden was killed. It was later rewritten to include that happy, ding dong Osama’s dead, ending. Congress’s problem, or rather one Rep. Peter King’s problem with the movie, is that he’s worried the White House has granted Bigelow and Sony Pictures access to confidential information in order to help them with their project.

Or at least that’s what he cites as the reason for stirring up controversy while talking to the media. King is the chairman of the house committee on Homeland Security and Tuesday he sent a letter to the CIA and the Department of Defense asking them to mount an investigation. He says, “The procedures and operations that we used in this raid are very likely what we'll use in other raids. There’s no way a director would know what could be tipping off the enemy.”

First, I wasn’t aware that the United States was going to make a habit out of running around the world assassinating political figures. Or rather I wasn’t aware they were willing to admit that they’re doing that. By saying that the government will want to use this technique in other raids, isn’t King admitting as much? Who’s the guy who can’t keep a secret here? Quiet you.

Later on in the article he goes on to say, “The fact that the movie is going to be released three weeks before election day, the people at the CIA told me they had no idea that this was the plan… They were never told it was gonna come out so close to election day.” Wait, why does that matter? Actually I don’t think Mr. King gives a shit about any kind of national security risk. It seems more likely that the Republican congressman is concerned about the positive effect this movie could have on the public perception of President Obama and the Democratic party.

For their part the White House has rejected King’s claims that they’ve done anything improper. In a statement released today the White House confirmed, “The claims are ridiculous. We do not discuss classified information. And I would hope that as we face the continued threat from terrorism, the House Committee on Homeland Security would have more important topics to discuss than a movie.” You’d think so, wouldn’t you?

Meanwhile the film’s director Kathryn Bigelow seems to be wondering why in the world King assumes this is going to be a partisan film. She says, “This was an American triumph, both heroic and non-partisan, and there is no basis to suggest that our film will represent this enormous victory otherwise.”