Who is on your list of greatest working film directors?

If she isn't already, Catherine Bigelow should be.

Take a look at her film resume and it's clear she's assembled a body of work that is deserving of such consideration.

But great director is maybe the only category that Bigelow fits neatly within because her films cross genres and tones in such a way that

it's incredibly difficult to characterize what a Catherine Bigelow film is.

Tell someone you're going to see a Catherine Bigelow film and they could assume it's got

something to do with Iraq or Afghanistan. The main character is broken in some

profound way that there will be a generalized intensity that she's known for stoking,

but her filmography is not predictable, except in one crucial way.

Pressure. The characters in a Catherine Bigelow film are under extraordinary pressure.

Professional pressure from those above them.

Pressure from within to succeed in their goals. The pressure of a life-threatening situation? Pressure is amorphous, it can envelop or it can be surgical.

Its source can be specific or generalized, and it is genreless.

Zero Dark 30 has every kind of pressure there is and CIA operative Maya is

under a ton of it to do maybe the hardest thing a spy has ever been tasked with

finding Osama bin Laden post 9-11 and casting Jessica Chastane in this

role is a stroke of genius because few actors embody the kind of toughness that

she can command that's why when you see Maya absorb her

complicity in the horrors of torture or the death of a co-worker or even a boss that

underestimates her. We are put on alert. You aren't supposed to be able to

rattle Jessica Chastane. She'll kick your ass. So when we see her off balance we are

made to understand the growing desperation Maya feels. Whether it's getting a bite to eat at a hotel

...