Movie Recommendations, Rants and Ruminations
Another take on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo releases on December 21. It’s a gripping story and, boy, am I looking forward to the version by David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac, The Social Network). Here’s the teaser, featuring a remix of Led Zep’s Immigrant Song by Trent Reznor and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O. Unfortunately, the teaser contains about 150 cuts in 100 seconds, very few of which show the stars, Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara. But Sweden still looks gray and forbidding!
1. I couldn’t see some of the Cannes and Sundance Festival favorites because they haven’t been released where I live: Poetry, Certified Copy, Uncle Boonmee, Cane Toads: The Conquest, Aurora, The Princess of Montpensier.
2. After director Niels Arden Opley’s super rockin’ The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the second and third films in Stieg Larsson’s Milenium trilogy were dragged down by plodding director Daniel Alfredson.
3. The 2004 French action movie District B13 introduced us to thrilling parkour and was an original, offbeat spectacle. But this year’s sequel District 13: Ultimatum was cartoonish and very, very dumb.
4. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps: First of all, I hoped that the movie was going to be primarily about the Michael Douglas characterization of Gordon Gekko – which Douglas knocked out of the park yet again. Will someone explain to me why Shia LaBeouf seems to be a movie star? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Second, the screenplay keeps raising the issue of moral hazard (whether to bail out people from the consequences of risks that they knew they were taking). Yet, at the end, the two flawed main characters each get exactly what they wanted at the beginning of the film despite making risky or evil choices throughout. The movie’s payoff (things will turn out OK no matter how badly or foolishly you behave) is exactly opposite of the movie’s sermonette.
5. No one could find a better vehicle for the sublime Amy Adams than the execrable Leap Year?
6. Pirate Radio: Has Philip Seymour Hoffman been in a worse film?
7. From the trailer and the buzz, I thought that The Kids Are All Right was shaping up to contend for Best Picture. It’s a good movie with a wonderful performance by Annette Bening, but it didn’t fulfill its promise as one of the year’s best.
8. I really wanted to like Ireland’s animated The Secret of Kells, but it was a snoozer.
9. The German comedy Soul Kitchen had a fun trailer (that contained the actually funny three minutes in the entire film).
10. Shutter Island: Marty, what were you thinking?
Here’s my list of the best films of 2010: 1) Winter’s Bone; 2) Toy Story 3; 3) The Social Network; 4) The Secrets in their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos); 5) Rabbit Hole; 6) Black Swan; 7) A Prophet (Un Prophete); 8 ) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; 9) Mademoiselle Chambon; 10) (tie) Ajami and Inception.
(Note: I’m saving room for some films that I haven’t yet seen, especially Mike Leigh’s Another Year.)
Continuing with my list of 2010’s best films: The Tillman Story, True Grit, The King’s Speech, The Girl on the Train (La Fille du RER), Inside Job, Fish Tank, The Ghost Writer, Carlos, Fair Game, Hereafter, The Fighter, Solitary Man, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work and Sweetgrass.
You can watch the trailers and see my comments on all these films at Best Movies of 2010.
(Further Note: The Secrets in their Eyes, A Prophet and Ajami were nominated for the 2009 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, but were widely released in the US in 2010.)
It was another year in which foreign cinema was essential. Three of the nominees for the 2009 Best Foreign Language Oscar were released in the US this year: Ajami (Israel/Palestine), A Prophet (France) and the Oscar winning The Secrets in Their Eyes (Argentina). Those three made my list of Best Movies of 2010, along with Mademoiselle Chambon, The Girl on the Train, and The Ghost Writer from France, Carlos from France/Germany, Fish Tank from the UK, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo from Sweden. If I couldn’t see foreign films, I wouldn’t have a Best Movie list.
France also gave us the Mesrine films. Ireland offered Kisses. Italy had the food-centric I Am Love and Mid-August Lunch. In a tremendous year for crime drama, the Aussies added Animal Kingdom and the Koreans contributed Mother. Police, Adjective was another bleak, cynical drama from Rumania.
Here’s the trailer for Kisses.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is an acceptable final chapter in Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy and best as the showcase for Noomi Rapace’s final performance as Lisbeth Salander. If you’ve seen the first two movies, you should complete the trilogy by seeing this film.
Yet director Daniel Alfredson (who also directed the second film, The Girl Who Played With Fire) lets the film plod to its climax. Considering that Alfredson had a great page turner of a story and a singular performance from Rapace, it’s kind of amazing that he let his two movies drag.
This wasn’t a problem with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, directed by Niels Arden Opley. That movie popped off the screen. After Dragon Tattoo, I was worried that the Hollywood remakes would dumb down the story and soften Lisbeth. But now, I’m really looking forward to the American versions directed by David Fincher, and starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara. It’s easy to see how Fincher will improve the pacing of the second and third films in particular.
As with the first two films, Hornet’s Nest centers on Rapace’s Lisbeth, a tiny fury of a Goth hacker, damaged and driven. Lisbeth is always mad AND always gets even.
The Social Network tells us something about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – not about this year’s Swedish version, but about next year’s Hollywood version to be directed by David Fincher.
First, The Social Network shows that Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac) is still operating at his best. The Social Network is essentially about some annoying, immature geeks writing computer code and getting financing for a company – but Fincher makes it rock! Fight Club and Zodiac are two of my favorite contemporary films, and Fight Club‘s desperate violence and Zodiac‘s whodunit relentlessness translate directly to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. So there couldn’t be a better director for this project than Fincher.
Second, the success of the Stieg Larsson trilogy depends on the portrayal of Lisbeth Salander. The Swedish version has been amazing because of the Danish actress Noomi Rapace’s jawdropping Lisbeth. But in Fincher’s movies, Lisbeth Salander will be played by Rooney Mara. The good news from The Social Network is that Mara nails her scenes as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s soon-to-be ex-girlfriend. And we get a glimmer of the intensity that Mara will need for Lisbeth. Plus Mara is used to working with Fincher, who is notorious for his scores of takes; reportedly, Fincher required over 90 takes for the opening scene between Mara and Jesse Eisenberg.
Well, here’s a surprise. In David Fincher’s upcoming film versions of the Stieg Larsson novels, Lisbeth Salander will be played by…Rooney Mara. 25-year-old Rooney Mara, sister of Kate, will play in Fincher’s The Social Network this October, so he must know something. She also has a few credits in TV guest slots, plus a Nightmare on Elm Street movie. She was also in Youth in Revolt, a nice little movie that I saw in January, but I have no memory of Rooney in it.
The entire success of the film trilogy depends on the portrayal of Lisbeth Salander. Is Rooney Mara a good choice? Right now, I’ll withhold judgement. It’s important to realize that Noomi Rapace, the actress who has so convincingly played Lisbeth in the Swedish versions, is not naturally a psycho hard ass – she undertook lots of preparation for the role, including six months of kick boxing AND a special diet AND the body piercings to harden herself for the role.
Well, we’re at the halfway point of the movie year – the summer movies are winding down, and the Oscar bait is still ahead of us in the autumn and holidays. So it’s time to take stock of the year’s movies to date. I now have ten movies on my list of Best Movies of 2010 – So Far. You can read my comments and watch the trailers on the Best Movies of 2010 – So Far page.
Better yet, you can see Toy Story 3 and Inception in the theater this week.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, A Prophet, The Girl on the Train, Fish Tank, The Ghost Writer and Sweetgrass are all available on DVD right now. Sweetgrass is also available on Netflix streaming video.
The Secrets of Their Eyes will be available on DVD on September 21. The DVD release of my top film of the year so far, Winter’s Bone, is October 26.
The Girl Who Played With Fire (Flickan Som Lekte Med Elden): This is a highly entertaining follow-up to my personal favorite film of the year so far, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Again, the story revolves around Lisbeth Salander, the tiny woman with a lethal mix of damage and drive, played by the Swedish actress Noomi Rapace. Rapace’s Lisbeth is a tiny fury of a Goth hacker. At only 88 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. As I have written before, Lisbeth Salander is the best new crime drama character since Helen Mirren’s Inspector Jane Tennyson.
In The Girl Who Plays With Fire, Lisbeth is framed for a triple murder. She must find The Real Killer while on the run, aided by a mostly independent investigation by her ally, journalist Mikael Blomkvist. Their parallel investigations lead to a villain much closer to Lisbeth than one could imagine. Plays with Fire has the structure of a detective procedural, but has the tone of a thriller.
Although I liked them both, I did prefer The Girl With a Dragon Tattoo to Plays With Fire. The Wife and two friends who had all read the books, strongly preferred Played with Fire to Dragon Tattoo. I don’t know whether this is a gender thing or whether people who know the story react to the movies differently. I generally enjoy major plot twists more when I don’t see them coming, and I have certainly found some big surprises in both Dragon Tattoo and Plays With Fire.
Plays With Fire is the second part of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy, to be followed in October by The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.
There’s some good news about the upcoming Hollywood versions of Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy. First, David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac) will direct, and Fincher’s track record suggests that he is the perfect guy to pull this off.
Second, Hollywood is planning to make all three films (instead of just the first or compressing them into one movie).
Third, Entertainment Weekly reports that Daniel Craig will play Mikael Blomkvist. If you’ve seen the gritty British crime drama Layer Cake, you know that Craig can play the smart and understated Blomkvist.
Still, the success of the project depends on who will play Lisbeth Salander – and we still don’t know. My first choice is the Danish actress Noomi Rapace who has originated the role, and she speaks English well; but on the extra features of the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo DVD, Rapace says that, after living with Lisbeth for 18 months of prep and filming, she is done with the character. Carey Mulligan has been quoted that it won’t be her, either. So we watch and wait.