The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

It had to happen.  Steig Larsson's Millennium Trilogy has been far too popular a book series to simply get the film treatment in Larsson's native Sweden.  Even though the Swedish version was released in 2009 and featured an excellent performance from Noomi Rapace, it was inevitable that Hollywood would adapt the material as fast as it could with a high-profile director and cast.  Interestingly, the titular female part in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo went to relative newcomer Rooney Mara.  How will she stack up as a character that so many people have come to love from the books?

Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is the recently disgraced journalist/editor of Millennium magazine, because this is a science fiction story where magazines are still important publications.  Mikael is basically ruined because he lost a libel case.

Glasses off: James Bond.  Glasses on: incompetent reporter.

At his lowest, Mikael receives an unusual job offer from Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer); Henrik wants Mikael to investigate the murder of his beloved granddaughter, Harriet, in exchange for information that will allow Mikael to clear his name and revive his career.  Sounds fair enough, right?  Well, Harriet disappeared forty years ago and her body was never found. Henrik suspects his own extended family, who own the island where they live, because they are the only ones who would have a motive to kill the girl.  Also, on the fateful day she disappeared, there was a car accident that blocked the only bridge in and out of town; Harriet was alive and well when the accident occurred, but was gone before the road was clear.  Sweet!  It's an old school, closed-door mystery!

It's a mystery that involves framed, dried flowers and a lack of wall space.  Thrilling...?

When he was hired, Mikael got to see the extensive background check Henrik's people had done on him; and by "extensive," I mean "obviously stepping over the line, into an invasion of privacy."  Still, Mikael knows good work when he sees it, so he contacts and hires the person who learned so much about him, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), to be his research assistant.  Lisbeth is rather abrasive, but she is extremely bright and is a skilled computer hacker.  Pretty soon, the two of them have dusted off a forty year-old mystery and connected it to a series of brutal murders.  They apparently didn't think about how much danger that puts them in, especially if Henrik is right and the killer is one of the few people with them on that island.

Luckily, Lisbeth is the human equivalent of the honey badger

The acting in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is good all-around.  I like Daniel Craig, and it was interesting to see him in a relatively action-free role.  He doesn't have quite the charisma or exude danger like he does in other movies, but he comes across as a direct, intelligent person here.  I will point out, though, that the way he wore his glasses when he was thinking --- hanging off his face, like a chinstrap --- was a ridiculous choice that I have never seen replicated in nature.  Or libraries.  Craig had the easy role in the film, though.  Rooney Mara had the tough one, and I'm not saying that because of her unfortunate bangs and bleached eyebrows.

Shouldn't she accessorize with neck bolts?

This is an incredibly difficult role to pull off; she has to be obviously smart, but emotionally detached, and yet she still has to be naive and emotional --- she is both vulnerable and a warrior.  It is a role full of contradictions, and Mara was very good at expressing them.  Time (and an adaptation of the next film in the series) will tell if Mara winds up being a better Lisbeth Salander than Noomi Rapace, but her varied performance was deserving of her Oscar nomination.  Of course, those two are just the primary characters; there were a handful of other important actors in this film.  Christopher Plummer turned in yet another solid supporting role; he has been on a roll for the past few years, hasn't he?  I wish he was given a little more time to emote on-camera --- his character is the only one with a true emotional investment in what is happening, after all --- but he did a good job with the time he was given. 

Robin Wright was fine as Mikael's co-worker/occasional lover.  I've never been a big fan of her work, but I liked the nonchalance with which she approached her relationships.  Stellan Skarsgård did not give his best performance here(I blame the character more than the actor), but he did deliver some great monologues.  It is to his credit that he was able to steal attention away from Mara in his major scenes.  While I have to admit that Skarsgård doesn't often star in good movies, I think he is very talented and we see glimpses of that toward the end of this film.

"I almost made King Arthur mediocre"

Yorick van Wageningen played a pretty repulsive character, and his performance was suitably unsavory.  In any other movie, he would have been a major villain, but this story casts him in a fairly small, but memorable, part.  You might also recognize Goran Visnijc in an inconsequential role, Julian Sands as a young Christopher Plummer, while Joely Richardson and Geraldine James get to be unfriendly to every single person they encounter onscreen. 

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo marks an interesting moment in the career of director David Fincher.  This is the first time I have watched one of his movies and noticed how differently he would have handled it earlier in his career.  In many ways, this film could have played out like Se7en, and that would have been perfectly fine because that's an awesome movie.  In other words, Fincher could have made this a plot-driven film with a variety of camera gimmicks to show off his skills.  For better or for worse, Fincher has embraced a more subtle touch, focusing more on the primary actors in his films recently.  Sure, that sounds good on paper, but I don't think anyone will argue that Brad Pitt was more fun to watch in Benjamin Button than in Fight Club.  Fincher did a great job with Rooney Mara and centered ...Dragon Tattoo around her performance.  He could have gone for more graphic violence, especially in the rape scene, but he focused more on the aftermath. 

He could have exploited the sex in the script, but aside from a little bit of nipple ring-flashing, he went out of his way to not sensationalize it --- and this is a guy who directed Madonna videos, so I'm thinking his restraint was intentional.  I also liked his use of the score (once again contributed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross) --- it was well-suited for the mood Fincher was establishing.  Technically, I can't think of anything David Fincher did wrong with the direction of this film.

Of course, that's not exactly a glowing recommendation, is it?  The actors are all pretty good, and Rooney Mara's performance borders on greatness.  The story's pacing was fine and I liked the overall mood of the film.  It was just missing something for me.  Did I want the violence to be more graphic?  Maybe, although I was relieved that the rape was as brief as it was. 

Not this scene.  This was awesome.

Was it the weird blend of European and American sensibilities?  Not exactly, although I was thrown off by the fact that everyone spoke English, but apparently wrote in Swedish.  Was it the weird James Bond-esque opening sequence that looked like a Bond girl covered in crude oil?  No, I was okay with that, especially since it's the closest thing to a new Bond title sequence I've seen in a while.  What did bother me about this movie is that it is a mystery with only one major actor in the suspect pool; I wonder if the villain will be the Swedish character actor I've never seen before, or the guy that's been in Summer blockbusters?  I hate when my recognition of actors undermines a mystery. 

I also have problems with James Bond needing stitches.  Wuss.

I had also hoped that the climax of the story --- while true to the source material, it should be noted --- would be less anticlimactic.  In fact, the whole story seems to be building to a conflict between Lisbeth, Mikael and the killer, and we never really get a great moment like that.  Is the problem with the source material or the filmmaker's vision?  That's debatable, but I found the climax to be disappointing and the falling action to be less than triumphant.

On the other hand, this is a better movie than the 2009 Swedish version.  If you're going to remake a movie, especially so soon after the original, it is important to improve upon the formula.  Daniel Craig was definitely a step up in the acting department from Michael Nyqvist and Rooney Mara was about as good as (although less edgy than) Noomi Rapace.  I also preferred the small changes made in this version, like what led Mikael to meeting Lisbeth.  Fincher did not show off much with the cinematography, but his direction was still felt more than that of the Swedish director.  I feel a little guilty for having such high expectations for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  It's a Hollywood remake of a Swedish film (that I've seen) that is based on a work of popular fiction (which I normally despise as a genre).  Still, I think that the acting and direction upgrades more or less negate the anticlimax.  I thought that the Swedish Millennium films dropped rapidly in quality with each sequel, but this gives me hope that Fincher and co. will be able to improve on those films, as well.

Syriana

 Syriana is a challenging film to watch.  Its title alone --- which I don't believe the movie ever directly addresses --- refers to the idea of people or countries molding other nation-states however they see fit, and the hubris behind such thinking.  As you might have guessed, this isn't a romantic comedy.

The plot behind Syriana, while comprehensible, is very complex, so I'm not going to waste any time detailing it.  It would take me forever and you wouldn't want to read it anyway, since this is a film where paying attention to the story is the only way not to get lost.  The basic idea is that the world dependency on foreign oil is bad for a number of reasons.  Way to take a stand, Hollywood.  It also addresses the need for oil states to develop their own identities, the effectiveness of the CIA, and the costs/benefits of high-level corruption.  What makes Syriana interesting is that it chooses to handle these issues simultaneously, so we can see how each issue impacts another.  You won't see how everything fits together for some time, as there are four storylines that exist largely independent of each other until the final quarter of the movie.  When they dovetail together, though, you are left with something to think about.  Or not.  One thing that everyone can agree on is that this is definitely not an action movie.

I did a Google Image search for "syriana action" and found this.

The cast of Syriana is shockingly noteworthy, although many of these actors do not get a whole lot of screen time.  George Clooney won his only Oscar for his role as a CIA agent who specializes in protecting American interests in the Middle East.  The big news with his performance here is that Clooney gained some weight and a beard to play the part; I don't know how much that impacts his character.  Was this an Oscar-winning performance?  Eh.  It's a fine effort among an ensemble cast, but I don't find it particularly outstanding.  Matt Damon is also fine as a consultant hired by the prince of the oil-rich emirate to make the nation more fiscally sound.  His character is also handling marital issues and a family tragedy, so Damon has the opportunity to show off some complex skills in this film; I thought he did a very good job, given the businesslike script.  Jeffrey Wright plays a lawyer that has been hired to smooth the way for an enormous oil company to merge with a smaller one that has cornered a key market; his job is convince the antitrust people that the merger is corruption-free.  I like seeing Wright in key supporting roles, but I thought his character here was a too void of emotions.  I never really had a sense of his character, and the recurring attempt to give him depth just felt clumsy.  Those are the big three, as far as characters in this movie go.  None of them are fascinating in their own right, but they are all quite believable as ordinary people that are good at their respective jobs.

This is not Ocean's 14

There is a fourth storyline that addresses the plight of immigrant workers in the Middle East and the allure of militant Islam.  Of the three actors in this story, only the missile-buying militant (Amr Waked) acts with any sort of regularity, and it shows.  The two innocent youngsters are played by two innocent actors without much more than half a dozen visible emotions between them.

And then there's the rest of the cast.  In George's storyline, William Hurt does his typical good acting thing as a confidant and Mark Strong plays a very very bad man.  Both roles are easily within the acting range of these men, but it was nice to see them handled so well.  In Damon's story, Amanda Peet plays his wife; while not a particularly strong role, she didn't screw it up, which is much better than Peet's leading roles.  I thought Alexander Siddig was very likable as the progressive-minded Prince Nassir, possibly the most positive portrayal of a Middle Eastern Muslim I have seen in years.  In Wright's story, Chris Cooper plays a domineering business owner with an abrasive personality (shocker!), Christopher Plummer is one of those white men who like to be the power behind the throne, David Clennon is interested in corruption, and Tim Blake Nelson plays a corrupt oilman.  Of all these capable actors, only Nelson delivers anything exceptional.  He gives a speech about corruption (he's unapologetically pro-corruption, by the way) that was the highlight of the movie for me.  I would show a video clip of his rant, but apparently nobody on the internet cares about TBN (as his buddies undoubtedly call him) laying some truth down on Jeffrey Wright.  I was able to find my favorite scene of his from O Brother, Where Art Thou? though:


This is a difficult movie to direct, I'm sure, and I thought that Stephen Gaghan did a respectable job here.  I do not believe he got any great performances out of his wealth of actors (with the exception of Nelson), but he did do a good job piecing this film together in a comprehensible whole.  He doesn't dumb down the story (which was loosely based on See No Evil, a memoir by an ex-CIA agent), instead choosing to overwhelm viewers with the plot.  That choice may alienate some viewers, and that's understandable.  Personally, I was able to follow along, even though I was irritated by his seemingly arbitrary choices on when to cut to another storyline, which storyline to cut to, and when to include a caption on the screen to indicate where it was taking place.  The film looks decent enough, although the camera work is nothing special.  That's not too surprising, since Gaghan is an award-winning writer, not a director; he co-wrote this movie, as well as Traffic.

As much as I appreciate what Syriana does right --- an interesting and relevant political story, interweaving plot threads, and moral shades of gray --- there are just too many things that it does wrong or simply avoids to make it a great movie.  The only character in the film that has a full character arc is Clooney's, and that development is mostly off-camera and is cut short.  There are so many characters and so little time given to them that it was hard to care about any.  I realize that, as a plot-driven "issue" movie, that isn't really the point of the film.  I also don't care.  There are three potentially interesting stories in this film (the terrorists-in-training one was predictable and dull) and all three had the acting talent to make them work.  The fact that this isn't an acting tour de force (or at least fun to watch) is almost criminal.  There are five Oscar winners involved with this movie, and the best scene features Tim Blake Nelson monologuing?  That makes no damn sense, and I like Nelson.

Not as much as Lisa does, though.

I also didn't find the story to be particularly revelatory.  Maybe I'm cynical, but the CIA trying to control foreign governments to get America what resources it needs sounds pretty accurate.  The stuff of bastards?  Sure.  But it makes sense, from a "me first and screw everyone else" point of view.  Nelson's speech was the only interesting take on these issues in the whole movie, and that's a shame because I think this could have been so much more interesting.  The whole story with Damon and Siddig had potential --- how to introduce political and socioeconomic change effectively within an orthodox Islamic culture has relevance, right? --- but didn't have enough time to develop on its own.  Clooney's CIA agent (with a heart of gold) could have had his own movie.  Wright's legal storyline takes on thriller overtones as soon as his boss starts playing king maker.  But when you squeeze these stories into one (well-edited, mind you) movie, they don't have room to grow.  Syriana has some great ideas in it, but the barrage of plot simply distracts you from the fact that you can't care for any of these characters.

Up

I don't know what my problem is.  Year after year, I see ads for the annual Pixar animated movie and, year after year, I am unimpressed by their ad campaigns.  I never get around to seeing the movies in theaters, despite universal acclaim and my own history of really liking their work.  And, year after year, when I watch their movies on DVD, I am overwhelmed with how stupid I was to put off seeing their movies.

Up is the story of Carl (Ed Asner), a widower that decides to fulfill his (and his late wife's) childhood dream of living in Paradise Falls, located in the remote jungles of South America.  It's kind of a silly idea, but Carl felt bad that, in all their time together, life always got in the way of that one goal of theirs.  Alone and childless, Carl has only one thing he wants to take with on his trip: the house he and his wife, Ellie, lived in.  As the movie poster indicates, that isn't as big of a problem as you might think, provided that you have a few hundred helium balloons coming out of your chimney.  Carl unwittingly picks up an unwanted hitchhiker at the start of his journey; Russell (Jordan Nagai) is in a club that is similar to the Boy Scouts, and he had wanted to earn his merit badge for helping an elderly person, so Carl sent him on a snipe hunt.  Apparently, being a jerk to kids sometimes backfires in children's movies, and Russell happened to be on the house porch when it lifted off the ground.  Together, they manage to land the house close to Paradise Falls, but the rest of their journey (the house is supposed to be right next to Paradise Falls) is the adventuring part of the story.  In it, they meet Dug, the talking dog, a rare giant bird that Russell names Kevin, and the film's surprise villain, voiced by Christopher Plummer.

I really enjoyed this movie.  Like almost all Pixar films, there is a very poignant emotional core to this story that makes a lot of people (me included) tear up.  Like Wall-E before it, Up has a definite sense of loss that gives the story a weight that very few animated films can match.  You remember how sad it was when E.T. or Bambi's mom died?  In a movie like Up, that's a good day.  Thankfully, the movie is able to move beyond that sadness toward a sense of renewed vigor.  By the story's end, you're not feeling sorry for Carl anymore, you're proud of him for changing.

The voice acting has some recognizable talent, but no huge names.  Ed Asner is a television icon, but he's getting old and has never been a huge name in film, but he does a great job playing the gruff old man that opens his heart again.  Not that this is a huge stretch for Asner, who played a younger version of this on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but it's been almost thirty years since he played that character, so I don't think it's type casting.  I generally like Christopher Plummer as a supporting actor, and he delivered as the aristocratic-sounding mad villain.  I was definitely surprised by how much I enjoyed Jordan Nagai as Russell, since I was annoyed by him in commercials.  He managed to portray all the innocence and excitement of childhood quite well, and if his face is half as emotive as his voice, he could become a talented actor.  Dug the dog was voiced by Bob Peterson, who was also co-director of the film and the voice of the mean dog, Alpha.  Peterson has been working with Pixar for many years now, but this is definitely his biggest voice contribution to date.  I loved his dog voices, at least in part because I think dogs are stupid and Dug's voice definitely supports my theory.

There's really not much more to add.  Director Pete Docter and co-director Bob Peterson did a great job telling a story that appeals to the child in everyone, but also handles some mature themes very well.  Is this a movie full of surprises?  Probably not, but it's well written and it hits all the right beats at the right times.  I don't know what it is about Pixar movies and their trailers, though.  How can something that seems so obnoxious in the trailer be so entertaining in the moment?  I guess I have to give credit to the filmmakers for making their humor very contextual and not just dumb catch phrases or random pop culture references.  Children's movies don't have to be this smart or emotional, but it's nice when a movie can appeal to all ages.

The Last Station

Biopics can be tough.  Casting an actor to play a real person is always difficult (except for Morgan Freeman playing Nelson Mandela --- that was a no-brainer), but that is rarely the toughest part.  The real crux of a biopic is the story arc.  Just telling the life of a person usually mutes the inherent drama in that life (Public Enemies, anyone?).  In my opinion, the best way to go with these movies is to take a slice from the subject's life and follow one of the many story lines from it.  This notion leads us to The Last Station, which tells the tale of the famous Russian author/philosopher/Count Leo Tolstoy in the last year of his life. 

I entered this picture with only some general knowledge of Tolstoy's work (War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and I knew that he was influential on Ghandi), but even that knowledge was unnecessary.  This movie proved to be very "stupid American" friendly, explaining Tolstoy's life and philosophy simply and effectively.  That might sound like a pretty dry movie, but I found it to be enjoyable, containing a surprising amount of humor.

Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) is an old man with a big beard nearing the end of his life.  In his homeland of Russia, the opening credits tell us that many consider Tolstoy to be nearly a saint, and his religious/philosophical followers have established communes devoted to his principles of chastity, equality, and nonviolence.  The movie follows a young Tolstoian, Valentin (James McAvoy), as he is recruited by the head Tolstoian, Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), to be Tolstoy's new secretary.  Valentin is not just supposed to write about Tolstoy, though.  Chertkov needs Valentin to act as a Tolstoian spy in the Tolstoy home so Chertkov can manipulate Tolstoy against his wife.  Why would someone want to do that?  Well, Chertkov believes in Tolstoy the philosopher less than Tolstoy the man; if Chertkov can convince Tolstoy to actually follow through on some of Tolstoy's philosophical musings, like renouncing his private property, then the Tolstoian movement will have a founder that lived the movement's ideals.  Of course, that means that Tolstoy's wife, the Countess Sofya Tolstoy (Helen Mirren), would get pushed to the side with her more traditional views on family and religion.  Young Valentin is thrust in the middle of this barely civil conflict as the Tolstoians attempt to get Tolstoy to sign a new will that will essentially give away the copyrights to his writings, making them public domain.  Giving away a famous author's copyrights obviously will limit the inheritance of his children, so Sofya is violently opposed.  At times, Tolstoy seems determined to live his last days according to his writings.  At other times, though, he shares his lust for life with Sofya between their shouting matches.

As the main male character, Valentin gets his own plot thread that runs parallel to this conflict.  Valentin is a "good Tolstoian," which means that he adheres to Tolstoy's writings and has remained a virgin.  His beliefs come into question after some time with Tolstoy, who clearly has not been much of a Tolstoian at all; he is a wealthy Count that had several torrid love affairs in his youth, which he remembers fondly.  While staying at the local Tolstoian commune, Valentin meets a young woman, Masha (Kerry Condon), with whom he begins a relationship with.  Eventually, though, he is faced with the decision on whether he should follow Tolstoy or his heart.

One of the more surprising aspects to this movie is the complete lack of Russian accents.  It's not a bad thing, mind you, since bad accents can really hurt a movie (I'm looking at you, K-19: The Widowmaker), but it is kind of strange when the movie is about someone that is so very Russian as Leo Tolstoy.

The biggest surprise for me was the endearing relationship shown between Leo and Sofya Tolstoy in this movie.  I cannot think of another movie that portrays the affection between an old married couple better than this film.  You know those old, bickering couples that argue all the time, but clearly love each other and can't imagine life without the other?  That's what you get here.  The fights are loud and intentionally hurtful.  The love is childlike, and yet knowing.  They share a bedroom scene --- which is not gross, I promise! --- that is absolutely adorable.  Both Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer received Academy Award nominations for their work, and they were both well deserved.  Mirren, in particular, did a fantastic job.  Plummer's acting was also impressive, but it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge his lovely Tolstoy beard, which made his casting seem perfect.

The rest of the performances are pretty solid.  McAvoy once again plays a nervous young man and that shtick hasn't gotten old yet.  McAvoy's real-life wife, Anne-Marie Duff, turns in a less impressive performance as one of Tolstoy's daughters, but she doesn't do a bad job, per say.  The same can be said for Paul Giamatti and Kerry Condon.  They're not bad, but their roles just aren't very good.  I actually like Giamatti best when he plays finks like this, but there wasn't enough complexity to his character to really satisfy me.  Condon did a fine job with her role, but it was written in a way that made some of her character's choices seem rather abrupt and arbitrary.

The same can be said for the film's focus.  While the relationship between Leo and Sofya was fantastic, the rest of the film was a little limp.  I understand the need for a point-of-view character (in this case, Valentin), and I understand the urge to give him more depth by giving him a sub-plot.  Ultimately, though, that sub-plot needs to be relatively short or serve as an extended parallel to the Tolstoy marriage to truly work.  Here, the Valentin's love story is too long to simply be an aside, but not involved enough to do much for the plot as a whole.  In the end, Valentin professes his love for Masha, but it doesn't feel like the same sort of love we witness between the Tolstoys.  Oddly enough, the praise for the good performances and the criticism for the poor plotting can both be aimed at Michael Hoffman, who directed the film and wrote the screenplay from Jay Parini's novel. 

Overall, this is a surprisingly enjoyable movie with humor sprinkled throughout, but it is carried by the performances of Christopher Plummer and especially Helen Mirren.  The movie itself may not be anything special, but their performances help romanticize the notion of growing old with your special someone, even if they drive you nuts.