The Congress: I liked the first part

Robin Wright in THE CONGRESS
Robin Wright in THE CONGRESS

The Congress is really two movies – a live action fable and an animated sci fi story.  In the opening part, Robin Wright plays an actress in her mid-forties named Robin Wright who followed a star-making performance in The Princess Bride with a series of disastrous career choices driven by her own bad instincts and her need to care for her special needs son.  That son is now 13, her daughter is 17 and they are living in a hangar at a Mojave Desert airfield.  Her agent (Harvey Keitel) approached with a deal from a smarmy studio exec (Danny Huston).  That deal is a Faustian one – she will get a one-time payment in return for having herself scanned so her the studio can use her image in 100% CGI movies; if she accepts the offer, she cannot ever act again – on-screen or in the flesh.

I liked this first part, which is a smart exploration of the issues of art vs. commerce, the ethical limits of using CGI in filmmaking and the rights of individuals over use of their images.  The set-up is very well done, the desert airfield is cool and Wright, Keitel, Huston and the kid actors deliver fine performances.

Then the story takes the Robin Wright character – twenty years later – into an alternative universe for animated characters who have had their humanity scanned away.  She embarks on a desperate search to find out what has happened to her son and whether her daughter is now leading a revolt.  This animated half of The Congress is visually arresting and shows off the talent of writer-director Ari Folman, who made the superb animated film Waltz with Bashir (about Folman’s fellow Israeli army veterans in the invasion of Lebanon).  At this time, I lost interest in the tale.  Now  I’m not a big sci fi fan, though, and someone who DOES appreciate the genre might well enjoy it.  The visuals do sparkle.

The Congress is available streaming on iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

DVD of the Week: Rampart

In a sizzling performance, Woody Harrelson plays a corrupt and brutal LA cop trying to stay alive and out of jail.  Woody’s Dave Brown is always seeking control.  He manipulates his superiors.  From behind his badge, he unleashes sadistic brute force on every other unfortunate within his sight.  Yet he is a man out of control, whose impulses to bully,  to drink and to seduce increasingly endanger his job security, his finances and what is left of his relationship with his family.  He is already skating on the edge of self-destruction when one brutal incident is caught on video and goes viral a la Rodney King.

Rampart benefits from the one of the best large supporting casts – less an ensemble than a series of great single performances as individual characters tangle with Dave Brown.  Ben Foster (The Messenger) is brilliant as a homeless man with too many drugs and not enough meds.  Robin Wright is also superb as an emotionally damaged lawyer who sleeps with Dave until his paranoia takes over.   Sigourney Weaver and Ice Cube are two LA officials who see Dave as a walking, talking threat to public order and the City treasury.  Ned Beatty is the retired cop who has kept his finger in the police corruption racket. The Broadway star Audra McDonald plays a cop groupie that Dave meets in a bar.   As one would expect, Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon are excellent as Dave’s two amiable but bullshit-proof ex-wives.  Brie Larson and Sammy Boyarsky are especially effective as the daughters, who figure in Rampart‘s most breathtaking scenes.

Rampart is a singularly visual film – we always know that we are in the sunwashed, diverse, sometimes explosive anarchy that is LA.  The movie is structured and shot to heighten the experience of both the chaos that Dave causes and that the chaos that he feels.  This is Oren Moverman’s second effort as writer-director, the first being the searing The Messenger, also starring Harrelson and Foster.  Moverman keeps Rampart spinning along wildly as we wonder what will happen next to unravel Dave Brown’s life.

If you need some redemption to leaven a very dark story, this is not the movie for you.  Rampart reminds us that not everyone finds redemption.  It made my list of the Best Movies of 2012 – So Far.

DVD of the Week: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I loved the 2010 Swedish version (it was #8 on my list of the year’s best) and had very high hopes for this film by David Fincher (The Social Network, Zodiac, Fight Club).  Those hopes have been fulfilled and Dragon Tattoo made it on my list of Best Movies of 2011.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo tells the first part of journalist-turned-novelist Stieg Larsson’s Milenium trilogy.  The stories are centered on Larsson’s muckraker alter ego Mikael Blomkvist and the damaged and driven Goth hacker Lisbeth Salander.  Lisbeth is only 90 pounds, so she will lose a fistfight with a man; but she prevails with her smarts, resourcefulness and machine-like  relentlessness.  Lisbeth is always mad AND always gets even.

In top rate performances, Daniel Craig plays Blomkvist and Rooney Mara plays Lisbeth. Lisbeth is the key to the movie, and Mara comes through with a compelling portrayal – stone faced until she explodes into a cyclone of wrath.  The other characters are played superbly by Stellan Skarsgard, Christopher Plummer, Robin Wright and Stephen Berkoff.

Fincher is still operating at his best.   Remember – The Social Network is essentially about some annoying, immature geeks writing computer code and getting financing for a company – but Fincher made it rock!  Fight Club‘s desperate violence and Zodiac‘s whodunit relentlessness translated directly to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. So there couldn’t be a better director for this project than Fincher.  I’m looking forward to his versions of the next two chapters in the saga.

Fincher shot the film in Sweden and had made the country look and feel unrelentingly frigid.

The score by Nine Inch Nails founder Trent Reznor is award-worthy and is a major contribution to the story.

Rampart: a sizzling portrait of a man spinning out of control

In a sizzling performance, Woody Harrelson plays a corrupt and brutal LA cop trying to stay alive and out of jail.  Woody’s Dave Brown is always seeking control.  He manipulates his superiors.  From behind his badge, he unleashes sadistic brute force on every other unfortunate within his sight.  Yet he is a man out of control, whose impulses to bully,  to drink and to seduce increasingly endanger his job security, his finances and what is left of his relationship with his family.  He is already skating on the edge of self-destruction when one brutal incident is caught on video and goes viral a la Rodney King.

Rampart benefits from the one of the best large supporting casts – less an ensemble than a series of great single performances as individual characters tangle with Dave Brown.  Ben Foster (The Messenger) is brilliant as a homeless man with too many drugs and not enough meds.  Robin Wright is also superb as an emotionally damaged lawyer who sleeps with Dave until his paranoia takes over.   Sigourney Weaver and Ice Cube are two LA officials who see Dave as a walking, talking threat to public order and the City treasury.  Ned Beatty is the retired cop who has kept his finger in the police corruption racket. The Broadway star Audra McDonald plays a cop groupie that Dave meets in a bar.   As one would expect, Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon are excellent as Dave’s two amiable but bullshit-proof ex-wives.  Brie Larson and Sammy Boyarsky are especially effective as the daughters, who figure in Rampart‘s most breathtaking scenes.

Rampart is a singularly visual film – we always know that we are in the sunwashed, diverse, sometimes explosive anarchy that is LA.  The movie is structured and shot to heighten the experience of both the chaos that Dave causes and that the chaos that he feels.  This is Oren Moverman’s second effort as writer-director, the first being the searing The Messenger, also starring Harrelson and Foster.  Moverman keeps Rampart spinning along wildly as we wonder what will happen next to unravel Dave Brown’s life.

If you need some redemption to leaven a very dark story, this is not the movie for you.  Rampart reminds us that not everyone finds redemption.

Spoiler Alert: comparing the two Dragon Tattoos

Stellan Skarsgard in THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

Again – this post contains spoilers.

I liked both versions of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – the 2010 Swedish and the 2011 American.  Both made my top ten lists at the end of the year.  Still, they are distinctly different movies.

The best thing about the Swedish movie was Noomi Rapace’s full throttle performance as Lisbeth.  Rooney Mara’s Lisbeth is different, but just as good.   Rapace modulated her performance between sheer rage and full-out fury, and her signature was the always whirring motor.  Mara’s Lisbeth has a more stone-faced affect until the moments that she explodes into a cyclone of wrath.

The rest of the performances are far superior in the American version.  Daniel Craig is a much better Blomkvist; Craig has already played James Bond, so he is liberated here to play Blomkvist as a weary and defeated hang-dog whose confidence has been completely deflated.  The other key characters are brilliantly played by Stellan Skarsgard, Stephen Berkoff, Robin Wright and Christopher Plummer.

In both versions, Lisbeth goes to her guardian’s house, puts down her bag and is victimized.  In the Swedish version, he see her stumble home completely traumatized, wash herself and then watch the video of her own rape – OMG! She taped it! And she has it all on digital!  This discovery is a huge moment in the film (for those of us who hadn’t read the book).  But in the American version, when she puts down the bag, anyone who has seen a spy movie can tell that she’s got a camera in the bag, which takes the surprise effect away when she later plays the tape of her rape.

In the American version, some characters in the Vanger family are compressed.  That’s fine with me.  There are really only so many nasty blondes you can tell apart.

In the book (I understand) and the Swedish movie, Lisbeth ties Gottfried and Martin to the murders by plowing through the travel receipts in company’s archived expense accounts.  In the American version, Lisbeth is looking through archived records when she (and we) see news photos of Gottfried and Martin near the scenes of the crimes.  I prefer the non-dumbed down Swedish version.

The Swedish movie contains flashbacks that we learn depict 12-year-old Lisbeth burning her own father for his abuse of her mother.  This device worked very well to explain Lisbeth’s constant state of fury.  In the American film, this fact is described in dialogue and not shown.  It’s usually better to show and not tell, and it is here, too.  I prefer the approach of the Swedish film.

The American version’s opening credits depict a nightmarish montage of oiled human forms, all to a ripping version of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song.  I didn’t like the montage, which does not kickstart the story and just looks the opening sequence to a TV drama series.  I do like the version of Immigrant Song, which I wrote about here.  In fact, I liked all the music in the American version, by Nine Inch Nails founder Trent Reznor.

Apparently, Scandinavian audiences don’t need filmmakers to tell them that they live in a cold clime.  But Fincher makes the unrelenting cold into a character itself, a touch that I liked very much.

On the whole, both movies are very good.  After the first Dragon Tattoo, there was a change in directors for the Swedish trilogy, so I expect that Fincher’s take on the second and third movies to be far superior to the plodding Swedish versions.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Fincher keeps the thrill in “thriller”

I loved last year’s Swedish version (it was #8 on my list of the year’s best) and had very high hopes for this film by David Fincher (The Social Network, Zodiac, Fight Club).  Those hopes have been fulfilled.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo tells the first part of journalist-turned-novelist Stieg Larsson’s Milenium trilogy.  The stories are centered on Larsson’s muckraker alter ego Mikael Blomkvist and the damaged and driven Goth hacker Lisbeth Salander.  Lisbeth is only 90 pounds, so she will lose a fistfight with a man; but she prevails with her smarts, resourcefulness and machine-like  relentlessness.  Lisbeth is always mad AND always gets even.

In top rate performances, Daniel Craig plays Blomkvist and Rooney Mara plays Lisbeth. Lisbeth is the key to the movie, and Mara comes through with a compelling portrayal – stone faced until she explodes into a cyclone of wrath.  The other characters are played superbly by Stellan Skarsgard, Christopher Plummer, Robin Wright and Stephen Berkoff.

Fincher is still operating at his best.   Remember – The Social Network is essentially about some annoying, immature geeks writing computer code and getting financing for a company – but Fincher made it rock!  Fight Club‘s desperate violence and Zodiac‘s whodunit relentlessness translated directly to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. So there couldn’t be a better director for this project than Fincher.  I’m looking forward to his versions of the next two chapters in the saga.

Fincher shot the film in Sweden and had made the country look and feel unrelentingly frigid.

The score by Nine Inch Nails founder Trent Reznor is award worthy and is a major contribution to the story.