Movies to See this Week

MONSIEUR LAZHAR

My top pick this week is Monsieur Lazhar, the story of French-Canadian fifth graders recovering from a traumatic experience with their replacement teacher, an Algerian immigrant.  It’s an emotionally compelling film that was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

On a lighter note, Goon is a hockey comedy that manages to be violent, raunchy and sweet.

In Footnote, a rising Talmudic scholar sees his career-topping prize accidentally awarded to his grumpy father. This potentially comic situation reveals the characters of the two men.

Then there’s the searing and brilliantly constructed Iranian drama A Separation, which won the Best Foreign Language Oscar, and the Best Picture Oscar-winning The Artist.  Both are still still playing in theaters.

You can skip Damsels in Distress, Whit Stillman’s misfire of an absurdist campus comedy.

You can read descriptions and view trailers of these and other upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick this week is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, director David Fincher’s hold-on-to-your-seat version of Stieg Larsson’s rip snorting stories centered on the damaged and driven Goth hacker Lisbeth Salander.

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.

Movies to See This Week

Writer-director Asghar Farhadi's real life daughter Samina plays the daughter at the center of A SEPARATION

In a sizzling performance, Woody Harrelson plays a corrupt and brutal LA cop trying to stay alive and out of jail in Rampart.

The searing and brilliantly constructed Iranian drama A Separation won the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

Joshua Marston, writer-director of the brilliant Maria, Full of Grace has made a fine drama set in Albania, The Forgiveness of Blood, which opens this weekend.

Safe House is a fine paranoid action spy thriller with Denzel Washington and the director’s pedal jammed to the floor. Thin Ice is a Fargo Lite diversion.

If you still need to catch up on the Oscar winners, you can see the Best Picture Oscar winning The Artist and the rockem sockem thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,

I have also commented on Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, the sex addiction drama Shame, the biopic The Iron Lady, the feminist action thriller Haywire and Ralph Fiennes’ contemporary adaption of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.

You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick of (last) week is the fine political drama The Ides of March with Ryan Gosling, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti and George Clooney.

Movies to See This Week

George Clooney and Shailene Woodley in THE DESCENDANTS

The best films in theaters are the magical silent romance The Artist, Director Alexander Payne’s (Sideways) family drama The Descendants with George Clooney, Martin Scorsese’s revelatory 3D tale Hugo, the rockem sockem thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and the searing and brilliantly constructed Iranian drama A Separation.

I have also commented on Steven Spielberg’s War Horse,  the sex addiction drama Shame, the biopic The Iron Lady, the very odd fable Albert Nobbs, the feminist action thriller Haywire and Ralph Fiennes’ contemporary adaption of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.

You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick of the week is Drive starring Ryan Gosling, a stylishly violent noir tale unfolding on a brilliantly filmed canvas.

Movies to See This Week

A SEPARATION

Some of the year’s very best films are in theaters now. I especially recommend these four:

The Artist: A magical romance given us through the highly original choice of an almost silent film.

The Descendants: Director Alexander Payne’s (Sideways) family drama is set in Hawaii and contains a brilliant performance by George Clooney.

Hugo, Martin Scorsese’s revelatory 3D tale of an orphan living in the bowels of a 1920s Paris train station who strives to survive by his wits, keep his independence and solve the puzzle of an discarded automaton.

Best Movies of 2011. Steven Spielberg’s War Horse has also been nominated for Best Picture.

I highly recommend A Separation, the searing and brilliantly constructed Iranian drama, but it’s a tough watch.  It’s a cinch for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

Here are my comments on some other current films, the sex addiction drama Shame, the biopic The Iron Lady and the very odd fable Albert Nobbs.

This week’s lightweight pick is the feminist action thriller Haywire.  My heavyweight pick is Ralph Fiennes’ very fienne contemporary adaption of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.

I haven’t yet seen the Denzel Washington spy thriller Safe House, which opens this week. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

Movies to See This Week

THE ARTIST

Some of the year’s very best films are in theaters now. I especially recommend these four:

The Artist: A magical romance given us through the highly original choice of an almost silent film.

The Descendants: Director Alexander Payne’s (Sideways) family drama is set in Hawaii and contains a brilliant performance by George Clooney.

Hugo, Martin Scorsese’s revelatory 3D tale of an orphan living in the bowels of a 1920s Paris train station who strives to survive by his wits, keep his independence and solve the puzzle of an discarded automaton.

Best Movies of 2011.  Steven Spielburg’s War Horse has also been nominated for Best Picture.  Roman Polanski’s Carnage is a fine comedy.

Here are my comments on some other current films, the sex addiction drama Shame, the biopic  The Iron Lady and the very odd fable Albert Nobbs.  Plus, I liked the lightweight feminist action thriller Haywire.

I haven’t yet seen A Separation or Pina 3D, which open this week.  You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

 

2011 in Movies: the year’s best movies

INCENDIES

Here’s my list of the best films of 2011: 1)  Incendies, 2) Take Shelter, 3) The Artist, 4) The Descendants, 5) Poetry, 6) Midnight in Paris, 7) Beginners, 8) Source Code, 9) Young Adult, and 10) (tie) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Drive.

Continuing with my list of 2011’s best films, here are my honorable mentions: The Guard,  Project Nim, Buck, Tabloid, The Adjustment Bureau, Carancho, and Potiche.

(Note:  I’m saving room for some films that I haven’t yet seen, especially Roman Polanski’s Carnage and Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus.)

You can watch the trailers and see my comments on all these films at Best Movies of 2011.

According to Metacritic, all of my picks (except The Adjustment Bureau) were highly rated by prominent critics.  I did disdain some art films, most notably The Tree of Life, which made lots of critics’ end-of-year lists.  See 2011 in Movies: biggest disappointments, which I’m posting on Tuesday.

(Further Note:  Incendies was nominated for the 2010 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, but was widely released in the US in 2011.  A Separation, which I and most folks won’t be able to see until after January 27, will contend on my 2012 list.)

Your Holiday Movie Guide

THE ARTIST

As usual, some of the year’s very best films have been released for the Holidays.  I especially recommend these three:

The Artist:  A magical romance given us through the highly original choice of an almost silent film.

The Descendants:  Director Alexander Payne’s (Sideways)  family drama is set in Hawaii and contains a brilliant performance by George Clooney.

Young Adult, another of the year’s best.

Michele Williams gives a dazzling performance as Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn, a lesser but satisfying film.  Here are my comments on some other current films, the sex addiction drama Shame, the Japanese gangster movie Outrage and the Freud-Jung costume drama A Dangerous Method.

Happy viewing!

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.