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"I'm so awesome. Wait..who invited the director of TWILIGHT?!"

A beautiful thing happened at The Arclight today. As I stood drooling over the bomb suit from The Hurt Locker, I looked over at the showtimes from the films playing tonight. Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen had not sold out a single showing today to which some surprise came over me. Even more jumped in my body when I looked at the showtimes for Kathryn Bigelow’s opus. The 7:40 showing read “SOLD OUT” and for the first time since who knows when, a sense of faith was restored in movie watchers. Let’s forget that Jeremy Renner was doing a Q and A or that Transformers 2 was showing on a couple of screens. The fact is I saw that audiences still had a little bit of sense left in them.

The Hurt Locker is very easily one of this year’s best, if not THE best film of the year and largely that’s due to Kathryn Bigelow’s talent as a director. The woman just knows how to construct a film and hasn’t been a one-hit wonder like many female directors. Need an example of her talent? Point Break. What should by all means be a terrible movie is elevated to a great, entertaining film mostly because of her. With The Hurt Locker she’s given a much better screenplay by Mark Boal and showcases her talents wonderfully.

Nobuhiro Hosoki has an interview with Bigelow and writer Boal over at his website that you can listen to here. Just listening to this gives you a sense that Bigelow isn’t “just another pretty face” and can actually direct better than a good chunk of a male dominated field. Mark gets a few words in, but the entire thing is mostly Kathryn sprouting out her knowledge and genius with us.

Those lucky enough to be in L.A. and New York can bask in The Hurt Locker‘s awesomeness now. Everyone else has two more weeks to go for July 10th.