The Hurt Locker deserves the Oscars landslide Film

Historic impulse … Kathryn Bigelow celebrates her majority appropriate executive Oscar with Barbra Streisand, who was the initial womanlike film-maker to win a Golden Globe in the same category. Photograph: Matt Sayles/AP

As is so often, this year"s list of Oscar winners is exasperatingly churned and – right afar that the pre-Oscar duration is so hugely congested with opposition awards bonanzas, with the frontrunners exhaustively determined – these formula appear anticlimactic. It"s as if the awards deteriorate has scooped itself.

The Hurt Locker Production year: 2008 Country: USA Cert (UK): fifteen Runtime: 131 mins Directors: Kathryn Bigelow Cast: Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Christian Camargo, David Morse, Guy Pearce, Jeremy Renner, Ralph Fiennes More on this movie

But at slightest this time there is a resounding and gratifying publicity for a unequivocally glorious film: Kathryn Bigelow"s The Hurt Locker, a brutally absolute design about the endgame in Iraq, that done the comparatively medium entrance at the Venice movie legal holiday in 2008 but kept on growing. This, notably, was a movie whose standing was kept alive by critics. In a digital age when movie reviewers are ostensible to be losing their lustre, I am roughly tempted – roughly – to contend that this year"s Oscars was a bit of a pat on the behind for scribblers, and to lead a practical commission of pundits up on theatre to accept the Still Unexpectedly Important Taste-Maker award.

Except that we"re, erm, not. The vicious accord had additionally corroborated Michael Haneke"s The White Ribbon and Jacques Audiard"s A Prophet as complicated masterpieces that deserved to be nominated for majority appropriate film, majority appropriate director, etc, and not simply to be ghettoised in the unfamiliar denunciation movie section. As it is, the big hiss of the dusk came when these good drive-in theatre lost out anyway. Like my co-worker Xan Brooks, I contingency right afar declare that I have not nonetheless seen Juan José Campanella"s The Secret of Their Eyes – it is majority favourite and admired, but I can"t assistance feeling that this is a genuine banana-skin moment. It puts me in mind of Ronald Bergan"s online contention of how, in the story of universe cinema, the Oscar for majority appropriate unfamiliar denunciation movie is traditionally since to the wrong film.

When Mo"Nique came up to accept her entirely deserved majority appropriate ancillary singer Oscar for Precious, she referred to the story of African-Americans at the Academy Awards and alluded to Hattie McDaniel"s delight approach behind in 1939. As the leader of the majority appropriate executive award, Bigelow had no such story to pull upon: she is creation history. Incredibly, she is the initial lady to win a majority appropriate executive award, and it is unfortunately a magnitude of the infrequent sexism in the movie commercial operation and the awards industry that this repudiation has been all but neglected in the past, and not quite beheld now. But this was a shining movie that deserves the landslide.

As for Avatar, this was an engaging and in actuality engaging movie which, were it not for the large box bureau and hype, and James Cameron"s own 600lb-gorilla reputation, competence well have been praised for the musty offbeat weirdness. (A practical being "avatar" vital campaign? To instil the majestic victor in to the local village in sequence to feat vegetable resources? Stra-a-a-nge.) Perhaps this is the impulse at that Avatar"s repute will cocktail and the supporters will sheepishly slap their foreheads and ask: "What were we thinking?" Well, the large box-office recognition speaks for itself. But Cameron is not King of the World today. Many nominees have attested to the heartless letdown the crook feels rught afar after the Oscar has left to someone else: the sudden, traumatising invisibility and the disappearance of all that romantic hope. For an alpha player similar to Cameron, this will be galling.

Jeff Bridges is a hugely renouned leader of the majority appropriate singer prize. In any examination I have ever had about the good man, there is a limit 10-second check prior to someone intones the single, zealous syllable "dude". Bridges, to a conspicuous degree, never appears to action at all – his opening character has the majority healthy pitch to it, and yet, intriguingly, he never appears to be simply personification himself. Crazy Heart is a flattering hokey, sweetened movie in majority ways; it is not one for the ages, nor is it unfailing for cult status, similar to The Big Lebowski. But it is positively a showcase for this extensive actor, who could be unfailing for Jimmy Stewart status. It all depends on what purposes he gets offering from right afar on.

Sandra Bullock"s esteem for majority appropriate singer in The Blind Side, forward of Carey Mulligan, Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren and Gabourey Sidibe, will additionally be deliberate exasperating and even ridiculous. She won for her Palinesque purpose as a well off white mother who mentors a disadvantaged African-American child to turn a sports star. To a small it is heartwarming and inspirational, to others it is humourless and condescending. In a sort of quasi-Sally-Field moment, Bullock asked the fabricated assembly if she had simply "worn them down". But, in truth, Bullock has never been nominated prior to and has never only been an awards contender, but is instead important customarily for carrying garnered a rhythmical industry apply oneself for being a plain box-office pull outward the US. She has in actuality won a Razzie this year for the accursed All About Steve, apropos the initial actress to get an Oscar and a Razzie in the same year. Perhaps it won"t be prolonged prior to someone gets the Oscar and the Razzie for the same performance. Bullock is probably a divulgence e.g. of the "Raz-car" bent in Hollywood"s awards season: those big, showy, emoting performances and the massively prestigious drive-in theatre are only dual millimetres afar from removing Razzies, and there is a batsqueak Razzie note of awfulness in each tearful, back-slapping awards ceremony.

On right afar to the consummate of Christoph Waltz"s extraordinary year – it began with a majority appropriate singer endowment at the Cannes movie legal holiday in 2009 for his opening as the sinister Nazi "Jew-hunter" in Quentin Tarantino"s Inglourious Basterds, and right afar finishes with a majority appropriate ancillary singer Oscar. I was horribly unhappy with Inglourious Basterds, and carrying re-watched it, I have to contend I still am. It is Tarantino"s slightest engaging and majority frustrating film, dramatically tedious in the majority disconcerting way. My disastrous examination overnight lost me my standing as Tarantino"s greatest fanboy – until that point, I had been derisively well known between bloggers as the Taranteenie-in-chief. Well, with as small ill-grace as possible, I here concur that I could and should have been some-more inexhaustible about Waltz, who is in truth massively talented, though even right afar I can"t assistance indicating out that similar to Kate Winslet and majority alternative actors in the past at the Oscars, he is being rewarded for a gigantic opening as a Nazi. It will be erotically appealing to see what this extensive singer does next: an additional movie by Tarantino? Or maybe something by his associate Austrian Michael Haneke?