Quite possibly, the finest movie ever made

Rating: 10/10 (30 June 2003)

With all due respect to the original Star Wars (which is the greatest movie of all time), this is a spectacular movie, that long after you see it, you still find yourself wondering about details. This was the first DVD I bought, and recently, TNT showed this on TV. Curious to see how this was edited for TV, I tivo'd it and was quite surprised to see additional narration and scenes, lines of dialogue were added here and there, and there was an additional ending of maybe 20-30 seconds that showed the smoke from the ruined compound and a dog once again running across the snow. The characters were all introduced at the beginning by a narrator, which while interesting to me, seemed distracting.
Why do I love this movie so much? For one thing, modern moviemakers could learn a thing or three from this, as the movie posits a number of questions that are open-ended. What happens in the end? Well, if you watch Contact, everything is explained to you, which ruins the movie really (why is there hours of static?) Why did they do this? Are we as an audience so jaded that we have to have every nuance explained to us?
I've seen this movie many many times, and here are some thoughts:
1) I'm still not sure how Mac's clothes get found ripped up here and there, but my feeling is that this is Blair's doing.
2) How the team decends into paranoia is enthralling. I've rivited to the screen everytime. When the corpse moves in the supply room with Bennings in the background...I get chills everytime.
3) The soundtrack...gotta love it, a true classic. Maybe 3 notes and it speaks volumes.
4) My feeling is that Childs was paranoid, but saw Blair towards the end and ran out into the snow after him. Childs never caught up to him and got disoriented in the storm.
5) Still not 100% on how Fuchs dies (burned up in the snow, but how?), but my feeling is this is Blair again.
Best scene? I have several candidates, such as when Norris' stomach implodes, when the Norwegian frantically digs in the snow and the grenade goes off, or when Blair appears behind Garry, but I really love when they find Mac holding the dynamite and the flare.
haven't seen it? you're in for a real treat.