Five Graves To Cairo (1943, Billy Wilder)

Thank you Turner Classic Movies for showing this rare Wilder gem (and one of Tarantino's Favorite WW2 Films). Wilder's second feature as a director is an WW2 intrigue tale with all the Wilder prerequisites: colorful characters, social/political commentary, and inventive dialogue and set pieces.
In his book of interviews with Wilder, Cameron Crowe compliments the filmmaker by commenting that the opening of the film is like something out of Indiana Jones. And he's right! At the top of the film, we see a tank driving up the desert from the distance. A man hangs off the side. He wakes to find himself the only alive soldier amongst a renegade tankful of dead bodies. He jumps out and the tank drives off. He cant keep up and the tank drives into the distance. It's a great opening with my summary doing it no justice.
Classic bit of Wilder wit: The Field General Rommel (played by Erich von Stroheim) instructs his gopher that upon his return to Cairo he wants to see a specific opera, but "omitting the second act, because it is too long and not too good." Of course this happens during Five Graves' second act which was not too long and very very good.
This film has a great fight scene between the waiter/soldier and the German lieutenant takes place in the dark and we only see a dropped flashlight shining up at us from the floor. When it is picked up, we see who lost the fight.
This film needs to be released on disc.

The Hurt Locker (2009, Kathryn Bigelow)

Yeah. What a loser. I finally caught up with The Hurt Locker. A week after the Oscar. Blah blah blah. What can I say? I'm poor right now. And I tried real hard to watch it the night before the Oscars. No luck. But now I can say I saw the Best Picture of the year.
I loved it. The bomb-diffusing scenes, though almost repetitious, were very suspenseful. That repetition is intentional in the storytelling though, showing how these soldiers are faced with this drama day after day after day after day.
Jeremy Renner is really solid and deserves the attention he's receiving. This role reminds me of Colin Farrell's breakthrough role in Tigerland. The opening shot of the film is a POV shot of a bomb-diffusing robot and that perfectly describes Renner's character.
I noticed that the soldiers all end up inheriting/taking things from the dead around them. From the dead soldiers they take their juiceboxes, artillery, Renner's character takes the dead soldier's job, they take a bomb out of a dead child. I'm still working out what I think this means. If anyone has any ideas, comment away.
The ending was very solid as well. The shots back at home cleaning the gutters, at the grocery store shopping for cereal, the excitement wasn't there for the soldier. I was pissed that 60 Minutes' Bigelow Profile spoiled the ending/suspense for me while I was watching the piece. But when watching the movie, I forgot all about the ending while engaged in the suspenseful bomb diffusion set pieces. They are that well put together.