Kathryn Bigelow

Consistently stylish, dumb, and entertaining.

With the help of a well-informed screenplay by journalist Mark Boal, Bigelow dispenses with the red-wire/blue-wire lies Hollywood told you and replaces them with a heady brew of documentary realism and action poetry.

By most cinematic measures, Zero Dark Thirty is one of the best-made films of 2012. It also probably shouldn't exist.