Prometheus

Typically, when I see a movie, I jot down some thoughts and will probably blog it within a few days.  Unless I'm being lazy, which has been known to happen from time to time.  With Prometheus, though, I had a different problem.  I just wasn't sure how I felt about it.  So, I pondered and pondered, making sure to stay off the interwebs and work it out in my noggin.  The more I thought about Ridley Scott's kinda-sorta-not-really prequel to Alien, though, the more I realized that my take on the movie didn't fit my traditional review format.  So, first up is this review.  My next post will be "Prometheus: What the Hell Was That?" and I will try to explain what confused me so much about this film.

Prometheus is, at its core, the story of Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), and their quest for answers.  Shaw and Holloway are romantically-entwined archaeologists, and they have found the same star constellation in the primitive artwork of several ancient civilizations, separated by thousands of years and thousands of miles. 

"Is that...somebody playing jai-alai?"

That wouldn't be a big deal if the constellation was the Big Dipper, but this particular constellation is not visible with the naked eye.  In fact, human technology had to expand to an advanced degree before discovering it.  That fact, coupled with the inexplicable coincidence of societies that had no contact sharing the same image in their artwork, leads them to conclude that the constellation is a map.  A map to where, you may ask?  A map to a planet where humanity's predecessors (dubbed "Engineers" by Shaw and Holloway) came from --- humanity's cradle, if you will.  Their theory intrigues the aging corporate magnate Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) and he funds a space voyage (on the ship Prometheus) to investigate the planet.  Once the crew arrives, however, they find a barren world with only one empty base.  Well, maybe not exactly "empty."

Giant statue head with made-to-scale aspirin tablet statues

They also find a corpse of what they presume to be an Engineer.  But what could wipe out the Engineers?  Why did they come to Earth in the first place?  Can we still find out where humanity came from?  The last two questions, while good, are not nearly as important as the first. 

That looks vaguely familiar, doesn't it?

When you consider that question, the natural follow-up is this: how likely is the survival of a group who doesn't know what they are up against?  Hint: not very.  With every passing minute on this planet, it feels less and less like the cradle of humanity and more like a tomb.

Now, if you've seen the film and are wondering where all the buff Powder clones are, that's what I'm going to get into with "Prometheus: What the Hell Was That?"

While my synopsis may not indicate it, there are actually more than a couple of actors in Prometheus.  Noomi Rapace was good as the innocent who has to get tough, but she wasn't great.  I wanted to like her character more, but wound up being distracted by some other plot elements instead.  I will say that she conveyed pain and fear better than anyone else in the cast, at the very least.  Oh, and if you have any fears about pregnancy, she's in a scene that you may not want to watch.  Ever.

Logan Marshall-Green was a lot less sympathetic.  He did a fine job playing an overconfident prick, but I think that his character was intended for more, given the amount of quality screen time he had.  I did like Idris Elba as the captain of the Prometheus.  It was odd seeing a captain play such a passive role in a sci-fi flick, but I enjoyed his laid-back approach.  I would have liked to see more of his character, but he did a good job with what he had and his choices at the end of the film didn't feel completely out of left field.

The rest of his core crew --- Benedict Wong, Emun Elliott, and a few others --- were inconsequential to the overall acting quality of the film.  The character design for Sean Harris was a bit unusual for a geologist.  I expected him to be a guard or something, but he was a scientist.  So...there's that.

Sometimes, even smart people get tattoos on their head

Rafe Spall's character was similarly odd.  He plays a biologist who shows zero interest in a dead alien and later acts like a complete jackass when encountering a new species.  Worst.  Biologist.  Ever.  I wasn't a big fan of either of those two.  Charlize Theron played a cold, calculating bitch in the background of scenes; I don't think Theron did a bad job acting here (her reaction post-flamethrower was pretty good), but her character felt like a waste of space to me, another bit of misdirection in a film jam-packed with it.  I have no idea why Guy Pearce was cast to play the elderly Peter Weyland; Pearce was fine and his makeup was good, but why cast a young man as an older man if you're not going to show him as a youth?  And, no, I don't count viral marketing as a good enough reason.  Maybe this means that Pearce will be showing up in a planned seuqel/prequel to Prometheus?  Whatever, it's not too important.  Similarly, I was surprised to see Patrick Wilson playing the incredibly bit part of Shaw's father in her dreams.  The most impressive actor in Prometheus, though, was definitely Michael Fassbender.  His work as the android David was fantastic.

Dare I say..."Fasstastic"?  No, probably not.

It takes a lot to play a character supposedly devoid of emotion and make him absolutely mesmerizing in every scene, but Fassbender accomplished it.  He was cold, manipulative and sneaky, but he didn't remind me of the other android characters from the Alien series; his character felt very unique.  He also had a viral ad that was pretty good, but it doesn't even hint at how much fun he was to watch as a quasi-villain.

The first thing I think of when I ponder Ridley Scott's direction in Prometheus is how incredibly gorgeous the movie looks.  The cinematography is sometimes breathtaking, the sets are impressive in both size and style, and the details of the Prometheus ship technology and the Engineer base are well beyond cool.  The imaginative visuals in this movie make it one of the most visually astounding science fiction films I have ever seen.

I'm not always an IMAX guy, but this looked amazing in IMAX

Scott obviously had a pretty good relationship with Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender, as they turned in good performances, but I was a little disappointed in the rest of the supporting cast.  There are a lot of characters in this film that make important decisions, but I felt that Scott made them seem more important to the overall story than they were, which made them feel overvalued and underdeveloped. 

Example number one

I wouldn't have minded that so terribly if the film wasn't so packed with subtext.  Prometheus is a dense movie that does not stop to explain itself to the likes of you, the audience, or hint at what details are going to be important later.  On the one hand, I respect that choice; more often than not, films err on the side of over-explaining themselves.  Prometheus, though, is absolutely unapologetically confusing.  Scott definitely gives enough hints to read into his intentions, but the fact that I feel compelled to write another blog post about those intentions should indicate that his storytelling is not as taut or clear as it could have been.

That's really the problem with Prometheus.  It has one truly impressive performance (Fassbender) and a good secondary performance (Rapace), a wonderfully developed universe, and an ambitious concept (humans seeking their makers).  What it doesn't have is good storytelling.  There are a few reveals in this film, but they are predictable and dull.  And then there is a twist, which is astounding because it appears to have no motivation.  For the first two-thirds of Prometheus, it is a slow-boiling sci-fi thriller with somewhat pretentious themes, and it looks like it's going to be great.  And then it suddenly becomes a horror movie, complete with psycho killers and monsters.  That just felt cheap to me.  I also didn't appreciate the bushels of questions (that is the proper term of measurement for questions, by the way) I was left with when the film finished.  Granted, it did get me to ponder the film for an entire week after seeing it --- which is quite a feat --- but I was left unsatisfied.  Prometheus is absolutely gorgeous and ambitious, it handles the creation of mankind so well that the existence of an alien Engineer race doesn't preclude the existence of God, and it is very, very impressive.  It is also purposefully obtuse and frustrating.  As much as I wanted to be blown away by this movie, the story and the unexplained subtext disappointed me.  Still, it is certainly worth seeing, if only for the spectacle and Fassbender.

By the by, I wanted to call out prometheus-movie.com as the source for all the cool pics I included in this post.  I don't know who's in charge of that site, but they are definitely the web's singular resource for all things --- pics, details, theories, whatever --- Prometheus.  And they appear to be pretty bright; after I jotted down my interpretations of what happened in this movie in my follow-up post, I went back to compare my take with theirs and I learned a few things.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Well, that was quick.  The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is the third and final film in the Millennium Trilogy, based on the books by Steig Larsson; The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire also had American theatrical releases in 2010.  I think it is worth pointing out that this film's title was changed for American audiences.  The Swedish title was Luftslottet Som Sprängdes, which means "The Air Castle That was Blown Up."  Okie dokie, then.


Hornet's Nest picks right when Played With Fire ended.  Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is suffering from several gunshot wounds, her evil father, Zalachenko, is suffering from gunshot wounds and an axe to the head, and her evil half-brother, Niedermann (Micke Spreitz), is trying to escape police custody.  Lisbeth and Zalachenko both reach the hospital in time to save their lives, thanks to Lisbeth's reporter friend Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) calling an ambulance in time.  While recovering from brain surgery to remove the bullet in her head, Lisbeth is charged with the attempted murder of her father.  Knowing that Lisbeth doesn't stand a chance against those charges --- with her aggressive goth-punk look, history of alleged mental illness, and cyber-criminal activities, he has a point --- Mikael decides to dedicate an entire issue of his muckraking magazine, Millennium, to proving Lisbeth's innocence.  Things get a bit more complicated when a clandestine government group decides that Zalachenko and Lisbeth must die before they have the chance to talk to the authorities.  The group makes their move and kills Zalachenko, but Lisbeth survived.  Now, this group is pulling all the strings they can to guarantee Lisbeth gets declared "criminally insane" and locked up in the asylum of their choice, attended by doctors that they can trust.  How can Mikael possibly compete with the people behind the people behind the people who stand behind the president?  By being a reporter, of course.

"Does this look like the face of a murderer?"

If you have read the books or seen the other two films, you might notice just how different each story is.  The first movie was a kind of closed-door mystery, the second was a thriller, and this one is a courtroom drama.  The direction and pacing of the movies doesn't change from film to film, but that abrupt change in genre is all the more apparent with the short span of time between the release dates of the films.  The acting in this movie is about the same as the other two; Lisbeth spends a lot of time sulking and being stubborn, so more of the narrative duties fall on Mikael.  Once again, Noomi Rapace is the best thing about the movie, even if her character spent less time active in this film, and Michael Nyqvist turned in another mediocre performance (better than last time, though).  The direction of Daniel Alfredson is simple and efficient, with little time spent on anything that doesn't propel the plot forward.

I had hoped that this film would succeed where so many other "Part 3" movies have failed.  After all, it was filmed and released in the same year as its predecessor, so there was no change in major cast or crew.  And I will give it credit for not trying to out-do the second film.  Instead of trying to top that fast-paced thriller, it opts for a Grisham-esque legal battle.  I thought that was an interesting and unexpected choice, but it ultimately didn't work for me.  The key to a good legal thriller is some sort of reveal, where a key piece of evidence suddenly shows everyone the truth.  This movie doesn't tell us anything new about Lisbeth.  If you saw the first two movies, you have every personal detail that they revealed in the courtroom.  Where were the twists?  Where was the surprise?  This was a whole movie about Lisbeth's life, and it took most of its information from the last movie.  The American title implies that Lisbeth had tempted the fates and gotten herself in trouble, but the fact of the matter is that her character was a victim the entire time.  But if you've watched any of these films, that is obvious already.

The thing that really bugged me was the complete lack of explanation why a secret government group would bother with Lisbeth.  "It's because they brought her father into the country as a Soviet defector."  Yeah, so?  I don't understand what was so dangerous about her that these men went out of their way to harm her.  I'm not saying that there was no feasible reason for this secret group to act the way they did.  I'm saying that it is not explained in the movie.  The villains don't have a motive.  That's either the worst subtitle-job ever, or the filmmakers were inept.  I'm leaning toward the latter.  Why?  Well, there are all sorts of odd details that bothered me in this movie, details that should have been caught in the script stage, but managed to make it in the final product.  For starters, an experienced secret government agent goes to the hospital to kill Lisbeth and Zalachenko; he doesn't use a silencer, a pillow, or even a 20oz soda bottle to dull the sound of the gunshot.  Everyone hears the shot, and there is enough time for someone to help protect Lisbeth.  You don't get to be an elderly covert agent without quietly killing a few people, but this moron brought an extra loud popgun for an assassination job?  That makes no sense.  Also weird: Lisbeth eats pizza by folding the tip back to the crust.  And I thought New Yorkers had it wrong.  That's not really a jab at the movie as a whole, but it bugged me.  For the courtroom scenes, Lisbeth dresses her goth-iest, complete with chains, studs, and spiked accessories.  How is someone in police custody, someone presumed to be crazy, allowed access to potentially dangerous gear?  Again, that makes no sense.

This movie isn't terrible.  The story is told clearly and it helps the characters complete something vaguely resembling an emotional arc (well, Lisbeth does, anyway).  This movie just isn't necessary.  The whole film just feels like falling action from the previous movie, wrapping up loose ends and helping Lisbeth clear her name.  I don't see a need for that to have taken more than half an hour, tops.  Maybe I would feel differently if the bad guys had known motives.  Maybe not.  This third chapter to the Millennium Trilogy is definitely the worst of the bunch.

The Girl Who Played With Fire

Why are the headlights still on?

Aww, yeah!  It's Swedish sequel time!  Interesting side note: if you do a Google image search for "Swedish sequel," you may find this.  Hot on the heels of the hit Swedish-language film The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the next part of the Millennium Series just hit DVD shelves.  This is the adaptation of Steig Larsson's book of the same name, which was a world-wide best seller.  The film was released just seven months after Dragon Tattoo and just two months before the final entry in the series, so you know these Swedes are trying to hit while the iron's hot.  The budget was slashed for the sequels --- it was assumed by the producers that the sequels would be direct-to-DVD, but the $100 million dollar success of the first film changed that --- which usually isn't a good sign.  How did it turn out?  Let's find out.

Over a year has passed since the events of Dragon Tattoo, and the heroine Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) returns home to Sweden after a year abroad.  She tries to keep a relatively low profile, partially because she does a lot of illegal computer hacking and partially because she is blackmailing her guardian officer (it's like a parole officer for formerly institutionalized Swedes) into giving her glowing development reviews.  As such, Lisbeth lets her friend and sometime girlfriend, Mia, stay at her old apartment, rent free.  Meanwhile, Lisbeth's old pal Mikael Blomqvist (Michael Nyqvist) and his co-workers at Millenium magazine are preparing an expose into human trafficking and prostitution.  When the reporter who is writing the article is found murdered with his wife, the police are able to trace the gun used back to Lisbeth's guardian officer.  That's good.  But he's dead and Lisbeth's fingerprints are all over the gun.  That's bad.  The police naturally start a womanhunt for Lisbeth, but they aren't the only ones looking for her; some scary dudes involved in the drug trade are also in the hunt.  Hey, Mia, I bet that free apartment doesn't sound so great now.  Mikael decides to use his investigative eye to help Lisbeth, but it is ultimately up to her to find out who has framed her and why.

Like the last film, Played With Fire is fairly plot heavy; unlike the last film, it is less of a mystery and more of a thriller.  Daniel Alfredson takes over the directing chair this time, but I didn't notice any difference in style from the first one.  So, either this is the best sequel ever for maintaining the look and feel of its predecessor, or maybe Swedes just don't have any style.  The acting in this movie is both better and worse than the last film.  Noomi Rapace turns in a far superior performance in this film; she spends some time acting, instead of just posing as a surly Goth chick.  There is almost no screen time shared between Rapace and Michael Nyqvist, which helps build up the strength of her character.  Nyqvist's performance definitely suffered without Rapace's Goth-crazy to fuel him; I would rate him at four out of five on the "dead behind the eyes" scale.  For those scoring at home, a dumb eight year-old in a calculus class gets a one, and these hacks pull a perfect five.  The supporting cast is, surprisingly, a little better this time around, with former boxer Paulo Roberto playing himself (but not Mike Tyson making a cameo, this guy had a substantial role) and Micke Spreitz essentially playing the Swedish version of Kevin Nash's Russian from The Punisher; that means that he is big and blonde, and when he gets hit, he just looks confused instead of hurt.

There is a lot to like in this movie.  I was impressed by how much Roomi Rapace improved from film to film, and I liked her character more this time around.  It helps that she's portrayed as less crazy than in the first film.  I always enjoy seemingly indestructible villains (like Spreitz), so that was fun for me, too.  There is a lot more action and violence in this movie, including some fairly realistic (and still pretty bad ass) moves from Rapace, several gunshot wounds, and somebody getting an axe to the head.  Along with the violence, this movie brings the sex, too, with a moderately graphic (by American standards) lesbian scene.  The film's pace is probably the best thing about it; a lot happens in this movie, including research, but the characters are always moving, which really helps even the slow parts seem active.

Unfortunately, pacing doesn't hide all of the movie's shortcomings.  I am all for films that want the viewers to figure out what is going on, but I didn't appreciate the vast difference between telling Mikael and Lisbeth's parts of the story.  Whenever Michael was going to do something, he explained it first to someone else, and then did it.  Lisbeth would stare at a computer screen and then abruptly choose to do something, sometimes even going to a spot where Mikael had been only a few scenes before.  Yes, I realize that Lisbeth had access to Mikael's computer and was taking information from him and applying it to her own, but I think that explanation could have been mentioned once in the film, at least; there were times where I had to figure out why she was going wherever she was going, and that was distracting.  I wasn't a huge fan of the story itself, although I liked the way it was told; when you boil things down to their core, this is a story that seems more at home in a comic book or a professional wrestling ring than in a thriller.  And, again, I wish the story depended less on Mikael to figure things out, because Nyqvist's emotional range varies from sleepy-eyed indifference to sleepy-eyed mild surprise.  Even with Rapace's performance, this movie sorely misses the feel of genuine acting, as there is little to no need for chemistry between characters when they're just running from place to place.

Overall, I think fans of the book will be just fine with this adaptation.  It is better than it should be, given the budget, and definitely feels like the next chapter in the story.  I don't think the story is nearly as strong this time around, but the frenetic pace almost makes that point moot.  I will admit, though, that I am a sucker for the thriller genre.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009)

Foreign films can be difficult for some people to get into.  I sympathize.  The language barrier can impede the enjoyment of a lot of great films, unless you are able to read subtitles.  If you're moderately literate, then you have no excuse for your laziness.  The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is the Swedish film adaptation of Steig Larsson's book, whose American title is the same as this movie's.  The Swedish title, Män som hatar kvinnor, translates into "Men Who Hate Women."  I guess we can learn two things about this movie from its two titles.  One: this probably isn't about a female martial artist.  **Sigh.**  Two: judging from the Swedish title, this will be a comic romp that will finally introduce Swedish comedy to the world at large.  Get ready for two hours of Swedish Fish jokes and Swedish Chef impressions!  Bork bork bork!

Actually, this is a murder mystery that, for the sake of the mystery, I will just give you the background on.  Recently disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is hired by Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube) to investigate the forty year-old disappearance of his niece, Harriet.  She disappeared from her island home on a day that the only bridge into town was blocked for twelve hours with no one entering or leaving the island.  Her body was never found, and she was never seen again; her last few hours alive are documented through some photographs of a parade that day, but that is basically the only clues that exist.  Henrik suspects a member of his own family for the murder; they are all heirs to the vast Vanger Corporation fortune, but the murder was probably not for monetary reasons.  The Vanger family has many secrets, though, including the fact that three out of the four eldest Vangers were Nazis.  Why does Henrik suspect his own family?  Because, for his birthday, Harriet always gave him a framed pressed flower; for the last forty years, somebody has been sending him similar framed pressed flowers from all over the globe on his birthday.  Knowing how cold and bitter his relatives are, Henrik has concluded that one of them is the killer and is taunting him.

What does this have to do with a dragon tattoo?  Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is a computer hacker that was hired by Vanger's people to check on Mikael before Henrik hired him.  Lisbeth believes that Mikael's recent disgrace was not his own doing, and thanks to her in-depth work, Henrik hires Mikael. Lisbeth is a little weird; she has the fashion sense of a Cure fan and the personality to match.  For whatever reason --- maybe she got a crush on Mikael when she was cyber-stalking him, I don't know --- she decides to hack into his computer and see what he's up to.  She discovers his files on Harriet's murder and decodes a clue.  Trying to be helpful but still Goth, she sends an anonymous email to Mikael with the clue; since he's a clever reporter, he finds a way to backtrack the email to her computer and asks her to help him with the case.  Together, they start to uncover details relating to not only Harriet's disappearance, but evidence pointing to the murders of several young local women over a forty year period.  Oh, and Lisbeth is the girl with the dragon tattoo, in case the word "Goth" didn't clue you in.

I haven't read the book this is based on yet, but I do have some experience with Swedish novels; in my experience, they tend to be pretty straightforward affairs, heavy on plot and relatively light on emotion and style.  That reliance on plot makes stories like this ideal for adapting to the big screen.  The director, Niels Arden Oplev, does a pretty good job telling the story, but I think I appreciated what he left out more than anything else.  This movie has some rape in it.  It's not an I Spit on Your Grave remake, by any means, but that doesn't change my attitude toward rape (for the record: I'm against it).  The rape scene is shot briefly and there is no real nudity, eroticism, or unnecessary grossness shown; it's an ugly act that the director knows the audience would rather see pass quickly, and he thankfully does so.

As far as the acting goes, I was pretty indifferent to Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace throughout the film.  I enjoyed the story, but felt that Nyqvust was particularly bland.  He wasn't awful, but he tended to work on just one level.  Rapace was better as the clearly disturbed Goth chick, but I have to admit that I was a little uncomfortable with her mannish features.  I don't require every female lead in the movies I watch to be supermodel quality, but Rapace has some veiny neck and shoulder muscles, and I was a little creeped out.

This movie was probably better than it should have been.  Apparently, the Swedish film company that made this (and the adaptations for the book's two sequels) assumed that Dragon Tattoo would be the only one of the trilogy to be released in theaters; its popularity allowed all three to hit Swedish theaters in the last year and a half.  That intent implies that these movies were made for relatively small amounts of money, which would explain some of the supporting actor quality.  I thought the cinematography was uninspired, too, because mysteries are always ripe for some cool camera shots that subtly indicate the murderer.  Still, I found the story interesting and the director kept the plot moving, which was appreciated.  This was the best "locked room" mystery I have encountered in quite some time, and I thought the small town full of suspects was a pleasant reminder of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple stories. This is one foreign film that I think could be improved with a Hollywood remake, so I'm kind of psyched to see the Daniel Craig version next year.