The Thing With The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

[WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW]

is that it is bafflelingly casted. I noticed it, now that posters of the film are everywhere – in train stations, on bus stops – to promote the DVD and Bluray of the film. David Fincher’s American film remake of the Swedish miniseries original casts James Bond opposite that girl from the opening scene of The Social Network. It is silly, and a little bit creepy.

In the original miniseries Män Som Hattar Kvinnor (“Man Who Hate Women”) the middle-aged journalist Mikael Blomkvist was played by Swedish actor Michael Nikvist. Nikvist (1960) is notably older than Daniel Craig (1968), and not only because of the years, but also because of the looks. Moreover, Movie Star Craig can put on some glasses and wear sloppy clothing, but he remains 007. Action hero. Sex god. Craig’s Blomkvist can’t be in serious danger when he is caught by serial killer Martin Vanger. He can’t depend on the aid of a 23 year old slightly autistic punk girl! This happens, but I never believe it.

If Nikvist’s Blomkvist ends up in bed with almost every woman he meets, then there must be something special about him below the surface. Or it is a comment on Swedish society; a very wry one in a relatively feminist text as the Millenium books. If James Bond sleeps with every woman in the film, that’s just… normal. Daily routine. It means nothing.

So the betrayal that Lisbeth Salander feels when she sees Blomkvist embracing his editor Erika Berger at the end of the film means exactly that: nothing. Silly girl, did you really think he would stick around with you? You just bought him a jacket that you saw him wearing in a picture of him and his ex-wife. Do you really think you are mature enough to be with him?

Salander doesn’t stand a chance with Craig’s Blomkvist. She is played Rooney Mara, a young and talented actress who nevertheless does not do a lot more than a sufficient imitation of Noomi Rapace. Mara (1985) is notably younger than Rapace (1979) and is in age closer to the Lisbeth Salander of the book. But she is not by far as strong a Salander’s Rapace. So with a stronger Blomkvist and a weaker Salander, their brief relationship is never destined for anything more than a pity fuck on a cold and isolated island. The fact that Blomkvist’s teenage daughter (who cannot be less than seven years younger than Salander) plays a small but significant role in Fincher’s film, and not in the original, only heightens the sense of inapproriateness, even creepiness.

And yet. There is this one moment in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in which all of this is turned around. It is too small a moment to save the film, but it is there. When Blomkvist arrives at the cottage after he is being shot at, with a superficial but bloody wound on his forehead, Salander makes him sit down in the bath tub, with his clothes on and the shower running. It does not only cleanse him of the blood, but also of the stress and the fear. It is the mirror image of that one scene in Casino Royale, in which Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd sits in the shower, clothes on, with the water running, after she witnessed a brutal fight between Craig’s Bond and two African assasins. Bond sits down next to her and embraces her tenderly.

Salander does not embrace Blomkvist tenderly. She sterilizes a needle with vodka, cleans his wound with the drink and stiches him up. Excellent.

A Worthy Addition to the Franchise – the The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo review

David Fincher is a curious filmmaker. He is the king of cool, with films such as Fight Club, Se7en and The Social Network on his CV. Slick, technically superb and moody pieces; clearly mirroring his early career in music videos. But he also made the sugar-sweet and flawed The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. And stylish-if-generic thrillers like The Game and Panic Room. His best film, Zodiac, is probably the least seen one while his reputation was almost blown to pieces because of Alien3, a film heavily cut and recut by the studio.

Where does The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo fit in this list? Well, as a reassurance we can say that it is at least not Benjamin Button or Alien3. It is an exciting film, which in its visual and musical style is closest to Fight Club, while thematically it is related to Zodiac. But it is not as good as either of these.

Of course Fincher is handicapped by the fact that his film is not only an adaptation of the first of the hugely popular Millenium books by the late Stieg Larsson; the Swedish/German/Danish television adaptation (which had a cinematic release in a shorter, flawed version) is also deeply appreciated and only 2 years old. There are few people who will come to see this film who are not already familiar with the adventures of disgraced journalist Mikael Blomqvist and brilliant hacker but social outcast Lisbeth Salander.

And, crucially, who do not think the portrayal of Salander by the Swedish actress Noomi Rapace (now in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) seminal. Lisbeth Salander is already an iconic role, and casting her must have been a headache for Fincher. Eventually he came up with Rooney Mara, a relatively unknown actress who had a small supporting role in The Social Network. Mara has big boots to fill, but she manages quite well. Her Salander is younger and more vulnerable than Rapace’s and, depending on your understanding of the character, arguably closer to the literary version. An Oscar for her role would be a bit too much, but it is nice she got nominated.

Daniel Craig fares less well. To put it simply: 007 is too confident and handsome to be the troubled mind Blomqvist. Michael Nyqvist (now in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol) was much better because he looked worse. And because he was obviously not an Action Hero. He needed the help of Salander, more so than Craig’s character. Daniel Craig is a fantastic actor, but the Bond-thing works against him as it did for Sean Connery and for Pierce Brosnan.

A serious problem in the book, the long epilogue, was better dealt with (read: shortened) in the first adaptation, but the central plot is structured and told well by Fincher. Quick synopsis: disgraced journalist is hired by old millionaire to investigate the 40 year old disappearance of his niece. After he calls in the help of an outcast hacker he finds out that the mystery extends to present day. TGWTDT is a film about the old and the new Sweden, and the racism and the sexism on which this apparent model society is built.

These underlying themes play out really well in Fincher’s film; and more than in Nils Arden Oplev’s television version, which was more of a character study and a murder mystery. All in all the new film is a worthy addition to the Millenium franchise, although I doubt whether it justifies remaking the sequels as well, as they were more about Salander, and Salander is and always will be Rapace.

Oh, and there is a stunning opening credits sequence that I just wanted to never end:

Standard Biopic, Unfortunately – the J. Edgar review

It is hard to make a good biopic. Mostly because, usually, a person’s life, the events in it and the order in which they happen don’t correspond well to the conventional structure of a fiction film. So filmmakers have to rearrange, squeeze and fit in and sometimes come up with all kinds of artificial devices in order to have a proper three-arc structure with two clear plot points and a satisfying climax.

The most common device used by filmmakers to make the story fit the structure is the flashback, possibly with voice-over. This gives the filmmaker the chance to tell two parts of a life’s story intercut rather than straightforward. Preferably this is a flashback in which an old person remembers his or her youth. Effective, but a bit boring. Another device is the writing down of memoirs. This is the device Clint Eastwood chose for J. Edgar, his biopic of legendary FBI founder and director J. Edgar Hoover. Also effective, and slightly less corny than the flashback.

Leonardo diCaprio plays Hoover, both in his prime and in his old age. Many have commented on the make-up and prosthetics of the old version of the character, deeming them unconvincing. I disagree. Hoover was completely recognizable, and I had never the idea that I was watching the actor diCaprio. What I found more distracting was the high-pitched voice with a drawl of a Southern accent. It may be a realistic impersonation ofHoover, but not pleasant to listen to.

DiCaprio does a good job, although this is not a performance of the same quality as the ones he gave in Catch Me If you Can, Shutter Island or Inception. Judi Dench is enjoyably creepy as Hoover’s overbearing mother, although the suggested causal relationship between Hoover’s alleged sexual orientation and his relation with his mother is an anachronistic example of ‘momism’ and can be experienced as quite insulting to homosexual people. The stand out performance of the film however is by Armie Hammer, the actor who had is breakthrough in David Fincher’s The Social Network. There he played two twin brothers, here he plays the old and the young version of Clyde Tolson,Hoover’s closest friend and ally and, some say, his lover. And he is very, very good. Unfortunately Naomi Watts is somewhat underused as Helen Gandy,Hoover’s lifelong secretary. That is a pity because when she is allowed to act, she shines.

It is so hard to do a good biopic. J. Edgar is another example of films that just want to squeeze in too much. Much like Oliver Stone’s Nixon and Alexander, or the fictional biopic The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Much more successful examples are Walk the Line, which focused on the early part of Johnny Cash’ career, and Eastwood’s own Invictus (2009). That last film is to me a key example of a good biopic. In that film Eastwood dids not tell the whole story of Nelson Mandela’s life, but chose to capture one period, the Rugby World Cup of 1995, in order to let all the important parts of the man’s character and history come to the surface.

J. Edgar, unfortunately, is nothing like Invictus. It is too long, and in the end a bit boring. And it uses too many of the clichés of the biopic genre. Clint Eastwood obviously played it safe after the disappointing responses to last year’s Hereafter. I, however, would rather see him experimenting more, and would take for granted the inevitable occasional miss.

In Time, Out of Ideas – the In Time review

Let’s make one thing clear: it is a good thing that films such as In Time, are made. On proper budgets, with big stars. There is considerable value in the genre of the intelligent sci-fi action blockbuster. Much more so than in the genre of the stupid-robots-hitting-each-other-while-the-apocalypse-looms films. Not each and every one of these intelligent sci-fi action blockbusters is actually really good. But it is good that they are made. They are brave attempts to make movies based on ideas, with the explosions and chases as extra attractions instead of as the core ingredient. Source Code, earlier this year, was a very successful attempt. And the big example is of course Inception.

In Time, the new film of director Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, Sim0ne, Lord of War, writer on The Truman Show) is not by far as good as Inception, or Source Code. But it is an interesting film, that at least in its first hour is entirely idea-driven. Justin Timberlake plays Will Salas, a factory worker in a future society in which time is the currency. People don’t age beyond their twenty-fifth year, but from that moment they have to earn time to stay alive, pay rent and buy food. As a consequence the poor working class, literally, live day by day, while the superrich are as good as immortal. It is only when Will is given 100 years by a rich, suicidal stranger that he can afford to question and fight the system. “No one should be immortal if only one person has to die” is his conviction.

But after an hour or so the idea runs out of steam, and so does the film, and Niccol has to resort to bank heists, chases, running around and even more chases to fill the two hours. All good science fiction combines original, philosophical ideas with universal, or at least classical stories and characters. The problem of In Time is that the first half is all ideas, and the second half is a strange mix of Robin Hood and Bonny & Clyde.

On the plus side Timberlake is convincing as a working class rough. With this film and last year’s The Social Network he has shown to be a proper actor. Perhaps even a better actor then he is a singer. Next to him love interest Amanda Seyfried falls a bit flat. It is striking that I thought of Timberlake’s as Will Salas, whereas I kept forgetting the name of Seyfried’s character. The third major role is played by Cillian Murphy, who is a sinister ‘time cop’ on the hunt for Will. Murphy does his best, but he has little to work with and is obviously typecast, with his strange, sinister big blue eyes.

And while Timberlake, Seyfried and Murphy run circles around each other in the second part of the film, some glaring inconsistencies, mistakes and stupidities show up. And, worse, you have ample time to notice them and worry about them. If no-one ages past twenty-five, then how come Cillian Murphy looks forty? If bank heists are so simple to pull off, then why did no-one think of doing them before Timberlake and Seyfried? And how in God’s name can Seyfried run around on that fast on those heels? Why does her character even bother to wear high heels?

When you start asking yourself these kinds of questions, while the film is still running, than that is a bad sign. In Time is not a bad movie, it is the right kind of movie and more like it should be made. But better. Please.

Mini reviews: Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Another Year, The Social Network, The Losers

Sometimes I get to watch films faster than I can keep up with in terms of writing reviews. Over the last couple of months I saw four films I haven’t been able to write about yet. So here are some very brief reviews of The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Another Year, The Social Network and The Losers.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (dir. Michael Apted)

This third installment in the Narnia movies series is uncomparable to the previous two films, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian, which themselves are very different as well. The setting and the structure of the narratives are different for each film, as they are different for each of the eight books that C.S. Lewis wrote about the magical country (in contrast with the repetetiveness of the first six Harry Potter books). In this film the youngest two Pevensy kids, Edmund and Lucy, return  to Narnia with their obnoxious cousin, Eugene, to join king Caspian on a nautical quest to find seven noblemen and save Narnia from a mysterious green mist. Disney dropped the series after the disappointing box office take of Prince Caspian, and 20th Century Fox picked up the rights, but made the film on a considerbaly smaller budget. This shows especially in the CGI, which is not up to the current standard. The very episodic structure of the story fo the book does not translate well onto film, but Will Poulter (Son of Rambo) as eugene is a revelation. A wonderful child actor who will hopefully return in the next installment, The Silver Chair.

Another Year (dir. Mike Leigh)

A delightful new dramedy by Mike Leigh (Naked, Happy-go-lucky). Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent play the middle-aged British couple whose dinner parties serve as a safe haven for their more troubled friends and family. Tom and Gerri provide a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on for Gerri’s alcoholic colleague Mary (a stand out performance by Lesley Manville) and Tom’s old (and equally alcoholic) pal Ken. During just another year their son starts a new family, while an older brother of Tom suffers a big loss. Tom and Gerri are there for everyone, without interfering or meddling in others’ business. Heartwarming.

 

 The Social Network (dir. David Fincher)

Much lauded as this year’s film about our time, The Social Network tells the story of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, whose determined quest to ‘bring the entire social experience of college’ online results in alienation with his girlfriend and former best pal. Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield shine in the central roles, while Arnie Hammer is sensational, playing both the Winklevoss twins. Director David Fincher tells the story with great control in a  non-chronological order, the music is spot on (Oscar winner), the editing is flawless (Oscar winner) and Aaron Sorkin’s dialogues are razor sharp (Oscar winner). But the essence of the story comes down to the punch line: “You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies” and nothing more. The real film about what Facebook really is and can do is Catfish. Meanwhile, I don’t really care about these annoying American college kids and their empty self-obsessed lives. The Social Network is an excellent film that is nonetheless instantaneously forgettable.

The Losers (dir. Sylvain White)

This film wins the Jasper’s Take award for the most cliched and pointless action flick of the year. Watchmen‘s Jeffrey Dean Morgan leads a team of betrayed CIA operatives in an attempt to get even with the executive who set them up and to clear their names. Idris Elba (The Wire) gets too little to do with his talents. Zoe Saldana is a redundant skinny girl who is good with guns, but there is much fun to be had with Chris Evans’ (the new Captain America) science nerd Jensen. Jason Patric is the most ridiculous bad guy of the year.  The plot has no surprises after the 5th minute, and the film does not know if it wants to be Mission: Impossible with kills or The Expendables light. It makes perfect sense that this film did not get a Dutch cinema release.

By the way. I got only 11 out of 18 of my Oscar precidtions right. Should I find another hobby?

The Big 2011 Academy Award (that is: Oscar) Prediction List

Tomorrow night some Hollywood people over in Hollywood are going to spend the evening giving each other little gold statues and thanking their mothers. And let’s face it: for a day or so it is the most important happening on the planet. More important than Lybia even, although I do kinda expect an agonizing joke about Aaron Sorkin (the writer of those zingy dialogues in The Social Network) having scripted Khadaffi’s mid-week sort-of-speech.

Over the last months I have named several actors, actresses, directors and films as potential Oscar winners, but here is the final list. It is not complete, as I have not delved into shorts, documentaries, foreign films, or short foreign animated documentaries, but it does feature all the major and technical categories. This is not a list of who I think should win, but of who I think will win. And why they will.

 

Best Film: The King’s Speech

 Because: of what I’ve written in the first paragraph of my review of the film.

 

Best Director: David Fincher (The Social Network)

Because: The Social Network is not winning best film, and this is how the Academy usually makes up for that.

 

Best Leading Actress: Annette Benning (The Kid Are Allright)

Because: the Academy is giving her an oeuvre award at the expense of Natalie Portman and her superior single performance in Black Swan.

 

Best Actor: Colin Firth (The King’s Speech)

Because: he should have but did not win last year for an even better performance.

 

Best Supporting Actress: Helena Bonham Carter (The King’s Speech)

Because: she’s riding the wave of success of this film. And she truly supports Colin Firth in his performance.

 

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale (The Fighter)

Because: Geoffrey Rush was comic relief in The King’s Speech, and Jeremy Renner is awesome, but The Town was a bad movie.

 

Best Original Screenplay: Inception

Because: it is the most orginal of the nominees, and this way the academy will make up to Nolan for not even having a Best Director nomination.

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Social Network

Because: of those zingy flashy dialogues by Aaron Sorkin.

 

Best Animated Film: Toy Story 3

Because: everybody was crying their eyes out under the 3D goggles.

 

Best Original Song: ” We Belong Together”, Randy Newman (Toy Story 3)

Because: everybody was crying their eyes out under the 3D goggles.

 

Best Score: Alexandre Desplat (The King’s Speech )

Because: in a very classic way it tells the story without calling attention to itself. Thus being the polar opposite to Hans Zimmer’s bombastic Inception score.

 

Best Cinematography: Roger Deakins (True Grit)

Because: of all the work he has done with the Coens, and because the movie breathes “Western”.

 

Best Costume Design: Alice in Wonderland

Best Make-Up: The Wolfman

Because: no matter how crappy both films are, these awards have nothing to do with a film’s quality. They are craft prizes.

 

Best Visual Effects: Inception

 Because: that revolving hotel corridor was a REAL revolving hotel corridor, no computer graphic.

 

Best Sound Editing: Inception

 Best Sound Mixing: Inception

Because: of the thundering freight train, the way the sound effects mix with the musical score and that sound of Paris folding ontop of itself.

Best Editing: 127 Hours

Because: of the way it mixes regular images with hallucinations and home video recordings.

So, the take: The King’s Speech and Inception both walk away with four Oscars, but those of The King’s Speech have more gravitas, so that film will be the evening’s big winner. The Social Network gets two statues, but nice ones, so they won’t feel like losers. Toy Story 3 picks up two as well, because everyone cried their eyes out under the 3D goggles. Other awards are neatly divided between the other best film nominees: The Fighter, The Kids Are Allright, 127 hours and True Grit get one each, just as The Wolfman and Alice in Wonderland for awards that say nothing about the quality of those films. The big loser will therefore be Black Swan, which should win Best Director, Best Leading Actress and Best Editing, and for me was even the Best Film of the year. But, as with Pi and Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky is just too much of a  radical pessimist for the Golden State.

A Breathtaking, Tangible Masterpiece – the Black Swan review

“I just want to be perfect” says Natalie Portman’s prima ballerina Nina Sayers when company director Thomas (Vincent Cassel) urges her to let go and live and discover the black swan inside of her. He is convinced that she can do the innocent, perfect white swan, but the leading role in Swan’s Lake demands more from Nina.

“Their names were Tom and Jerry and I fucked them both.” The premiere of the ballet is nearing and it becomes clear that Nina has transformed, or is transforming. But whether this is a good thing…. She throws out her stuffed animals and the music box with the twirling ballerina figure on top. She locks out her over-protective mother from her room and indulges in sex, drugs and rock’n’roll with alter ego and rival Lily (Mila Kunis, from the That 70s Show).

The question is if Nina will really be able to pull of the black swan, the aggressive and seductive mirror image of the white swan. And if so, at what cost? Director Darren Aronofsky has made a true masterpiece out of Black Swan. Aronofsky, a controversial love-it-or-hate-it figure seems to have finally won over not only the critics that favored him already, but also the big film going audience. His previous work was marginal (Pi), excessive (Requiem for a Dream), misunderstood (The Fountain) and finally overlooked with The Wrestler, which gained respect because of its leading man (Mickey Rourke) rather than its director. But while (some of the) critics who did not appreciate Aronofsky’s work in the first place remain unconvinced, the master of psycho-horror has finally managed to produce a box office success Stateside.

With a hand-held camera that is often too-close-for-comfort to the characters, suggestive lighting, a thunderous reimagining of Tchaikovsky’s music by Clint Mansell and a breathtaking new choreography of the famous ballet Nina Sayers’ descend into madness and self-mutilation turns visceral and even tangible to the audience. Her strive for perfection, the pressures endured on behalf of Thomas, Lily and her mother and the discipline that Nina maintains with regard to her body are literally felt. The film leaves the viewer physically tired and overwhelmed. And delighted with joy and admiration.

And how wonderful has Natalie Portman grown up. From a wunderkind in Leon to a spunky youngster in Garden State and passed a political coming-of-age in V for Vendetta she is know with right one of Hollywood’s leading ladies. And when she grabs that well-deserved Oscar for Black Swan she will be there with the likes of Streep, Roberts and Kidman; the true – deserved – divas of American cinema. That her career survived the agony of the Star Wars prequels, unlike those of Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen, is just another diamond to her crown. In Black Swan Portman goes all the way. She transformed physically into a dancer (losing 10 kilos and learning to do the ballet scenes herself) and puts her character through the murkiest depths of psychological horror and disintegration. Only to transform into something even more beautiful than the white swan and transcend all darkness in the end.

Black Swan is one of the top movies of the year, deservedly nominated for 5 Oscars. And although Best Film might be out of reach with the competition of the likes of The Social Network, True Grit and The King’s Speech, and although Inception might pick up Best Cinematography, Natalie Portman is a shoe-in for Best Actress, Aronofsky has a shot for Best Director, and the ballet sequences deserve an award for Best Editing. Whether the Academy agrees is to be seen, but American audiences loved the film, I loved the film and I hope many of you will too.

Facebook Film With a Heart – The Catfish review

The Facebook film of the year, the one’s that everyone went to see, the one that everyone talked about, was of course David Fincer’s The Social Network. But while Fincher’s film was about people, and money, and friendships and relationships, the whole social media thing was only a MacGuffin in it. Another film, one with a much lower profile that comes in almost under the radar, is Catfish, a documentary made by New York film makers  Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman.

The story goes that Joost and Schulman started filming the connection that Schulman’s brother Yaniv was developing through Facebook with a creative and lovely family in Michigan. 8 year old Abby turns his dance photographs into paintings, mother Angela is very friendly and open and Abby’s older sister Megan is a ravishing beauty and starting musician. Yaniv and Megan start a relationship, although they’ve never met each other. But soon Yaniv, Ariel and Henry start having suspicions. A few things on the facebook profile of Megan do not seem to make sense. Thus they decide to travel to Michigan and meet the family in real life, a road trip that leads to a shocking revelation and a highly emotional climax.

Catfish is an amazing film. Where it a fiction film, than it would probably have a last act in which a psychopathic redneck killer chases the three city boys with a chainsaw. But in reality, people aren’t like that. They’re still people, even if they’re not really who they say they are online. The film has a heartbeat and a moral centre in Yaniv, who can laugh about his own naivety, but who is also sincerely interested in the character and motivations of his online ‘friends’.

I stated that Catfish came in almost under the radar. Almost, not entirely. For there is some controversy surrounding the film. There are clues that the film is not a documentary at all: some of the things said and done in the film are almost too beautiful to be true. Also, there is a use of a supposed hidden camera under water, what seems technologically implausible. There is even a court case now. Record company Spin Move Records wants money for the use of some Amy Kuney songs in the film. If the film is a documentary, then it is a matter of ‘fair use’, a journalistic and academic exception in copyright legislation. But if the film is not a documentary, then the makers should have paid money to the record company before suing the songs.

But actually the controversy is not that interesting. For even if Catfish is not real, then it is still realistic. It may not be honest, but it feels honest. If the story is thought up, then it is thought up really well, and it is really original. And it is touching. It is a lovely little film about important issues surrounding the use of new media, and it is a lovely little film about interesting and beautiful people. And that is two qualities it can boast that The Social Network does not have.