Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Saturday, December 10, 2011) (114)

I was totally expecting Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy to be a very typical mystery/spy movie with twists and double twists and lots of Cold War stuff with secret tapes and the Berlin Wall and all, but it's actually a whole lot more than that. Director Tomas Alfredson (who previously made the Swedish Let the Right One In) does a lot with a very well-written script (by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan, adapted from a book by John le Carré) and probably brings more to the story from a directing point of view that most movies I've seen in a long time.

The story is about a double-agent in the MI6 agency who is working for the Russians spying on the British spies from within during the early 1970s. George Smiley (Gary Oldman) is relieved of his duties largely due to a botched job and then becomes obsessed with finding the leak, which nobody else seems to notice or care about. The title comes from the code names for three top-level spies in the agency, Tinker, Tailor and Soldier. Smiley conducts interviews with agents who have recently been in the field, in Budapest and Istanbul, and gets a young agent to help him get documents out of MI6 to examine so he can find the rat within. We see flashbacks to earlier days in the intelligence service, where Smiley is trying to put small details in order to try to solve the case.

Alfredson creates a world with a wonderful motif of frames and windows. Almost every shot has some sort of frame or window in it, or is in a room with no frames and no windows. The concept of deeper and deeper levels of security is constantly present, interestingly undermined because, of course, we know there's there's a double-agent in the midst. There is one amazing shot of a British spy watching a Russian agent in his hotel room through the window from across the street. This Rear Window homage is not only gorgeous, but also underlines how important the concept of perceiving oneself to be safe and the freedom to move within such a space really are in the spy game. Even the wonderfully stuffy wool suits the characters wear highlight these themes, as they all have waistcoats, adding yet another layer of material to their bodies and helping to frame each of their faces.

The film is a collection of old and young British actors from John Hurt, Colin Firth and Oldman, to younger up-and-comers like Tom Hardy, Mark Strong and Benedict Cumberbatch. All of them are really fantastic, though Oldman and Hardy stood out to me the most.

This is one of the best spy movies I can remember seeing in a long time and a really excellently made film. It's sometimes a bit confusing with the time lines and knowing if we're in the past or the present, but it does all turn out to make sense by the end. There are wonderful small details throughout that would make it a joy to see a second time, I'm sure.

Stars: 3.5 of 4

Love Crime (Monday, August 22, 2011) (72)

Alain Corneu's Love Crime owes everything that it is to Alfred Hitchcock. It is a noir-murder mystery very much in Hitch's style, down to the blond heroine and brunette villainess. It is, however, nothing close to anything he would have made, because the details that are the hallmark of his films are nowhere to be found here; this is the film Hitch would have made if he had had no imagination.

Isabelle (Ludivine Sagnier... God, she's gorgeous) is the hardworking assistant to Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas... who can only make movies in French now) in an international business firm. As the film opens, we see Isa at Christine's house preparing for an upcoming meeting. Christine hits on Isa, who is clearly shocked by the overture, but also interested by it. Just then, Philippe (Patrick Mille) comes in to break up the tension. He's a client of the firm and Christine's lover.

Christine sends Isa to Cairo to present a deal to new clients. Her pitch goes off brilliantly and she celebrates with Philippe (who is there for the presentation) over a fancy dinner and roll in the sheets (French men are sluts). Back at the office, Christine, takes full credit for Isa's success, much to her consternation. Their relationship falls apart from there and culminates with Isa murdering Christine. It's unclear exactly why she does it, and also what her plan is to get away with it.

Whereas Hitch shows the amazing and meticulous detail of murder in a gripping, if mundane, dispassionate, way in Rope or Dial M for Murder, here Corneau takes out all the beauty and interesting minutiae and basically shows us a list of actions. It's an interesting difference that might have a lot to do with camera placement and depth of focus approaches of both directors (and a great lesson on the brilliance of Hitch).

Hitch shoots these expository scenes from far away or with short lenses that expand the frame, sometimes shortening the depth of a shot; Corneau, on the other hand, shoots this long murder and cover-up sequence mostly in close-ups or with longer lenses, isolating Isabelle (not a big problem for me, as I love looking at Sagnier up close) and merely presenting these mundane elements just as mundane elements. It reminds me of the expression that someone "is so interesting you could listen to them read the phone book". Here we have a very boring person just reading a phone book ... and it comes off sounding like a phone book.

The murder itself is weirdly direct and sudden with almost nothing shown to get us to expect it. In an interesting touch, Corneau uses a Pharoah Sanders jazz saxophone score layered over the action, adding a nonchalance to the act. I actually like this and respect the boldness of such a oddly fitting sound from what we are seeing (the conflict of the visual and the aural are wonderful), but it's almost too artistic for the overall tone of the film. It also hard to keep from laughing when you see Sagnier dressed in a white anti-bacterial suit as she does the deed (she really looks like an oompa loompa with a knife... you'll get no commercials).

Corneau uses two visual themes throughout the film, Isa in her bed going to sleep and Isa eating breakfast in her kitchen. They both seem to create a shorthand for showing her as a meticulous person who has a spotless house, who is almost totally isolated from warmth and love, who has few passions in her life but is still not average (as clean as she is shown to be, she might be the worst dish-washer I've ever seen on screen). As with the music choice, I like the strangeness of these scenes and how they break up the flow of action we see. I think they're ultimately unnecessary, or at least there should be fewer of them, but again, I like Corneau's daring to include them.

As much as I like looking at (OK - watching) Sagnier, I have to admit that her performances are wildly inconsistent from one to the next. Here she is actually pretty wonderful as the workaholic woman who clearly cares more about her job than her her physical appearance or dating life. In one scene when Christine comes on to Isa, there is an amazing moment where we see Sagnier's eyes change at the realization that she's being hit on; later we see a similar change in her look when she is given a work assignment. Clearly she is a good actor, perhaps some of the roles she gets are less interesting.

Aside from the overall polished and banal look of the film (why couldn't have been shot like a classic noir?) I really don't like that the narrative here is rather obscure. We never really learn why Isa does what she does. Is it really a crime of passion or is it a complicated way of getting rid of her boss to get promoted? There is almost no look into her psychology - not even through objective correlatives or stylized lighting and mise-en-scene. The murder is almost comically sudden and unprovoked. There are clearly some good elements here, but the overall aroma of the piece is stinky and underdeveloped.

Stars: 1.5 of 4 Stars

The Double Hour (Monday, April 4, 2011) (23)

The Double Hour is a movie about... well, about doubles. Boom! The title comes from the moment when the hour on a digital clock match the minutes (10:10, say). At these times there is some magic in the air and there is a suggestion of an alternate world - a parallel world to ours (though not as elegant as the Double Life of Veronique).

In the film, Sonia (Kseniya Rappaport) is an Eastern European immigrant maid working in a hotel in Turin. One night she goes to a speed dating event and meets Guido (Fillippo Timi) a widower who is working through the pain in his life by dating (and fucking) as many women as he can. There is an instant connection between the two of them as they are both trying to escape their pasts and enjoy the romance and eroticism of the other's company.

One day, on a date to Guido's work as a surveillance security guard, they are caught up in robbery that goes wrong. It seems to us that Guido is killed and Sonia survives, but in this world of doubles, things aren't always what they seem.

Director Guiseppe Capotondi is anything but subtle with the double imagery and motifs. Guido's deceased wife looks just like Sonia (as does one of the women he's screwing at the beginning of the film), leading us to make constant double takes (get it?!) and question who we are seeing at any given moment. There are a lot of mirrors throughout (an easy thing to put on screen when Sonia's work involves cleaning bathrooms) and the screen if frequently split by masking devices (like in the poster). All of this style is clever, and overall this is a very good looking film, but it is totally overdone. It's impossible to watch the film and not notice every single double, which gets very tedious and really doesn't add up to much in the end.

This feels like a movie that has a slick script that looks great on paper and is nice and sleek looking on screen, but really doesn't mean very much once all is said and done. As an exercise in technique it's a lovely work, but it's emotionally rather hollow and has such a pedestrian twist it could just be a big budget Hollywood studio piece (though such a film probably wouldn't look so good).

My problem with Euro movies that feel like Hollywood garbage is that Euros don't really know how to make Hollywood garbage well. They put too much beauty in them (they're Euros after all). On the surface this seems like a nice movie, but if you dig just below the surface there's not that much there. I guess that's yet another "double'.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

The Lincoln Lawyer (Sunday, March 20, 2011) (17)

On paper The Lincoln Lawyer seems like a great film noir in the grandest Hollywood sense, but it is executed so poorly it just comes off as a really terrible film.

Mick Haller is the eponymous advocate, who gets his name because he rides around Los Angeles in a Lincoln Town Car (seriously - that's all the name means). It seems he has an office (at least he has an assistant), but he never spends time there. Instead he rides around town going from one court house to another and from one client to another. He has a driver, apparently because his license was suspended at some point in the past, but he has his license back now and still uses the driver mostly - except for the middle act when the guy is mysteriously not around. Whatever.

He's sent to meet with a rich-boy client, Louis Roulet (Ryan Phillippe), who is being charged with assaulting a girl who turns out to be a prostitute. Roulet says he didn't do it, and his story is very convincing, however when Mick gets to digging - or gets his investigator, Frank (William H. Macy), to dig - they find that he's not the boy scout he seems to be. Mick's ex-wife, Maggie (Marisa Tomei) is a district attorney (of course) and they get into fights about their daughter, have sex now and again and share confidential information with one another. That's just what exes do, dontcha know.

I really appreciate how much of an ode to Hollywood noir this really is, with silly, random gunfights, views of obscure parts of Los Angeles and rich boys getting into trouble for their bad habits that involve unseemly elements of town, but the script here (written by John Romano, based on a book by Michael Connelly), aside from the basic plot points is really terrible. The dialogue sounds like it was written for a teenybopper soap opera and the story is so inert, it's no surprise when twists come or when characters flip.

There's absolutely no style to be found at all, as most of it takes place in daylight (that's an interesting update of noir if there's no way to get interesting shadows and lighting that gave the genre its name) and in a shity Town Car from the 1980s. Oh yeah - the stupid car that inspired the title is a late-model Town Car - because somehow Mick wouldn't care to buy a new car or something. Why not call it the Mercedes Lawyer or the Land Rover Lawyer? Is the American auto industry in such shape that this guy's heap would be its salvation?

Most of the acting here is terrible, but the actors aren't really working with any good lines. It seems much more like a high school drama club performance of a noir than any real movie with professional players. It's really badly directed (by Brad Furman). I guess this film serves the purpose of how to make a bad film noir with only bad choices. Film students can dissect each scene looking at what Furman does and lean how to do the opposite. That would probably make a pretty good movie!

Stars: 1 of 4

Cold Weather (Monday, February 14, 2011) (6)

More than being a genre, mumblecore is an aesthetic, a way a movie is made and designed. There is no reason why there can't be genre movies underneath the mumblecore umbrella (the Duplass brothers' Baghead was basically a mumble-thriller). Aaron Katz's Cold Weather is the first mumble-mystery movie, although it gets there is a really dull, sloppy way.

Doug is a loser living in Portland, Oregon where he shares an apartment with his sister and works at an ice factory while he figures out if he's going back to finish college. One day his ex-girlfriend comes to town on business. When she doesn't show up for a date (with a friend of his) he and his sister start looking for her. It seems she's involved in some mysterious but illegal dealings and her life might be at risk. So this everyman has to track down the bad guys who are threatening his ex and do something about them.

The biggest problem with this is that it starts out like a normal mumble movie with long, uncomfortable domestic scenes, quiet conversations about nothing (Man: "Doug, what did you study in college before you dropped out?" Doug: "Forensic science" Man: "Oh - like CSI:?" Doug: "Yeah.") and no particular plot. It's only in the second act that the film turns into a mystery and strangely sheds this "conceit of nothingness".

Unexpectedly, Doug becomes a driven man who seems to be more than totally helpless (which he is at the beginning). This transition happens for no particular reason and never really looks back at the past. Doug is suddenly and ridiculously not a loser, but a cunning private eye. We are abruptly in a different movie, different in tone, speed and narrative from the first. To say that solving the mystery gives Doug purpose and direction is just facile and silly. He begins merely as a type and then becomes a different type, but with no motivation or struggle.

Based on Katz's past works, like Quiet City and Dance Party, USA (both of which are good, but not great), we expect this to be a story of relationships, love and sadness. He pulls a rather unfair trick by showing Doug in what seem to be romantic situations with the woman he lives with (like taking a trip to a beautiful waterfall) but not telling us until later that he's doing these things with his sister - we have thought to this point that she's his girlfriend. This is a bit of an eff-you from Katz to us, I think, and serves no real purpose.

Despite the mystery plot giving some structure to the film, it is not a really good puzzle and doesn't really keep us guessing, or even giving a shit. Ultimately, Cold Weather is neither fish nor fowl. It's not a mumblecore movie about nothing and it's equally not a good brain-twister. I appreciate that Katz is pushing the boundaries of the DIY genre, but in the end, the story is really, really dull and there's very little good about the film.

Stars: 1.5 of 4

Inspector Bellamy (Monday, November 29, 2010) (150)

On it's surface, Claude Chabrol's Inspector Bellamy is a murder mystery investigation movie, a story of a cop who gets pulled out of his vacation and into a twisted tale of a crime of passion. It is really not that at all, but rather a tale of love, lust and aging, an examination of family ties and devotion to loved ones.

In Chabrol's final film (having died in September) we see Paul Bellamy (Gérard Depardieu), a famous detective who has written about his years on the police force, is on vacation with his wife Françoise in the South of France. He is contacted by a man who explains a very complicated romantic story involving the apparent murder of a homeless man, insurance fraud, facial reconstruction surgery, and a passionate extra-marital affair. The man hopes Bellamy can investigate his story and prove that he is not guilty of murder.

Bellamy is close to retirement and he and his wife are looking to spending more quiet time together, doing crossword puzzles and having dinner with friends. Bellamy's drunk, ne'er-do-well brother, Jacques, barges into their quiet life at this moment and begins to stir up their regular lives. Bellamy is a consummate cop, always digging, never trusting, never shitting down.

Depardieu gives one of his best performances, probably his best since his wonderful performance in Berri's Jean de Florette. He's an old man who still has a lot of life in him (and quite a sex drive). He's bitter and cynical, but very sympathetic and sometimes very funny.

We cannot forget that the film is the work of a master filmmaker. Chabrol takes the whole mystery genre and uses the structure as a McGuffin, a cinematic red herring. The film is not really a mystery at all (at least the mystery is rather the secondary story), but a story of a man coming to terms with the third season of his life and the messed-up nature of humanity. The script by Chabrol and Odile Barski is really wonderful, full of depth, love and humor.

Chabrol uses a wonderful a wonderful score written by his son Matthieu to set a rather sweet, nostalgic and light tone to the film. He uses lots of playful first-person point-of-view shots, somewhat ironically, as if we are Bellamy, walking through his house. The cinematography by Eduardo Serra is simple and straightforward, but very nice.

This film is really about nostalgia and old age, I think. It's about a man coming to terms with his own mortality, his own history and his own humanity. It has a slightly unusual structure (most of the film is the mystery story, but that is really the background), but is very sweet and interesting.

Stars: 3 of 4

Ondine (Saturday, May 22, 2010) (43)

Ondine is a nice little movie by Neil Jordan about an Irish fisherman, Syracuse (played by Colin Farrell), who pulls a woman out of the sea in one of his nets. She is not forthcoming about who she is or why she was in the water and insists on staying out of the way of the locals in town.

Syracuse, known as Circus by his friends for his penchant for wildness, is a devoted father who has been struggling to kick alcohol and improve his life. He and his wife are divorced and she is in much worse shape than he is. He's a good, likable man and is very good father. His daughter Annie, physically disabled and in a wheelchair, decides that the woman, Ondine, is a silkie, a Scots-Irish folklorish mermaid-like lady who lives between humans and the ocean. Through the film it becomes more and more unclear whether she is some sort of magical creature or just a woman who fell in the water.

The movie is very nice and simple. The best thing about it is how Jordan never really lets us know the truth about Ondine (until the end). We recognize that this world is very real and supernatural stuff probably doesn't happen in it, but Annie is very convincing and for awhile it's the best option we have. I really like this mystery and how it is played. It's not insulting us - but showing how the people of this small coastal town are in a position (economically, culturally) that such an idea might be conceivable.

Colin Farrell is really great in this role. He is respectful to Ondine from the moment he meets her (and considering his boozing past, it's nice to see that he treats this gorgeous woman with such class). His character struggles with his sobriety, but he is clearly the most constant force in his daughter's life (she lives with her more drunk mother).

Ondine is played by Alicja Bachleda who is, again, beautiful and very convincing. I like that Jordan decided to have the character enjoy playing along with the mystery and not telling people what she really is. There's a wink-wink to her performance as she thinks the uncertainty about her humanness/silkieness is fun.

At worst, the film is a bit too slow and very small. There is nothing really brilliant about this, but also nothing bad either. I think having Annie in a wheelchair is unnecessary and silly, but whatever. It is a fun little real-world fairy tale and very nicely executed by Jordan.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

The Ghost Writer (Friday, April 30, 2010) (37)

I was a bit surprised that with all the press Roman Polanski was getting with being arrested in Switzerland recently there was not more attention given to him having new movie out, The Ghost Writer. Somehow this movie snuck up on me and I didn't really know it was a Polanski movie until a few people told me about it. Regardless, I was interested to see it not only because it stole its title from one of my favorite Philip Roth novels, but also because Polanski has had an interesting voice, at least in the past.

This film tells the story of a man (Ewan McGregor) who is hired as the ghost writer for the recently-retired Prime Minister of the UK, Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), as he tries to complete his memoirs. It seems that his last ghost writer mysteriously killed himself a few weeks before. As McGregor sets into the task, he discovers more and more unusual stuff in Lang's past. As this is happening, Lang is being accused of helping the CIA torture terrorist suspects - a fact that makes the writing of the memoirs even more difficult.

Overall the story is rather straight-forward and silly. There are a few twists that you might expect from a film of this nature, but nothing is all that surprising. The big reveal at the end is rather dull and visible from miles away.

There is not really all that much here to be all that critical about. The film looks good and the story generally hangs together well and moves along well enough. I found it a bit dull somewhere late in the second act - but that's also not a surprise for a big budget film like this (perhaps the story could have been shaved by a few pages around that point).

The acting is good, but nothing really remarkable. Brosnan and McGregor are generally always good; Olivia Williams, as Mrs. Lang, is very good, I thought - and I look forward to seeing her in more stuff (she's got the more down-to-earth appeal of Liz Hurley, with a bit more acting chops). The one casting decision I was surprised by was Kim Cattrall in the role of the PM's chief of staff. She is really not a very good actor and I thought struggled through this role. Considering she was born in the UK and studied there a fair amount, I was surprised that she seemed to have trouble with the English accent she had. I don't know - too much sex in New York can take the Brit out of any woman, I guess...

One funny thing - which, again, I am surprised hasn't gotten more press - is that Lang is hanging out in the U.S. after he's been charged in the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The U.S. doesn't sponsor this court and as a result does not extradite people to it. This of course is weird as Polanski has been living in France and Switzerland for 30+ years because they wouldn't extradite him to the U.S. to be charged for his statutory rape of a girl in the 1970s. I don't know if this was a thumb in the eye of the American judicial system or not - but it's an interesting real-world rhyme with the picture.

This is not a great movie - but not a bad one by any means. It's very OK. It's a clever ride and ties up nicely, if predictably. There's nothing particularly Polanski about this - it feels rather anonymous - but it's a decent effort nonetheless.

Stars: 2 of 4

The Secret in their Eyes (Sunday, April 25, 2010) (33)

I was curious to see this film because it won the Oscar this year for Best Foreign Film, beating out The White Ribbon and A Prophet, two movies that I either liked or loved. Last year the Oscar winner, Departures, was a very safe and sweet movie, but not even close to the brilliance of The Class, Revanche or Waltz with Bashir, three other films that were nominated and were superior to the victor.

And once again, the Academy picked the safe, easy, boring movie over two more interesting, difficult pieces.

This film is basically a Hollywood-style murder mystery with an Argentine accent. Benjamin Esposito is a retired lawyer who was a long-time clerk and assistant to a federal judge in Buenos Aires. He is now working on a novelization of an old case that has haunted him since he first investigated it 20 years before. At that time, a woman was brutally murdered while her husband was at work. Over the course of the investigation, Esposito found an old flame of the woman who he thought was the probable murder. The man was not convicted and then went missing.

Part of the story he constructs in his book involves Irene Menéndez Hastings, a young judge investigator (sorry, I don't totally understand the Argentine judicial system to know who does what) who worked with Esposito at the time of the murder. He was in love with her, but she had a husband and dating her was out of the question. As he finishes his novel, he reconnects with Hastings and falls back in love with her. He then goes off to see if he can finish the investigation and find out who really killed that woman so many years ago.

There is nothing particularly interesting or fresh about this story. It could have easily been written by John Grisham or the like. Director Juan José Campanella, a veteran of American television like House and Law and Order: SVU seems to borrow heavily from his small screen work. The characters are quickly sketched out with only a bit of depth and the story is rather simple - even considering its long, 127-minute run-time.

The best thing about the film is the performance of Ricardo Darin as Esposito. Darin, who was recently in the beautiful and brilliant XXY, is a natural talent - reminiscent of George Clooney and Javier Bardem. He oozes charisma and familiarity - as if he was your favorite next-door neighbor. The character is not all that special - but Darin makes him kind, lovable and sympathetic.

There is nothing really bad about this film other than the fact that it feels mostly recycled. What is great about contemporary Argentine cinema is the freshness and smallness of the stories. The movies deal with very matter-of-fact and frank stories on the ground. There is nothing all that fabulous or special about the stories - other than the fact that they are totally honest. This film seems much more over-constructed and complicated than any other recent Argentine effort. Much like how Tell No One was a failure of a French film because French filmmakers don't make Hollywood movies, this is a mess of an Argentine film for the same reason. Campanella has spent too much time making American TV shows and should return to his homeland for further study.

Stars: 2 of 4

Mother (Sunday, March 28th, 2010) (25)

I am a big fan of South Korean director Joon-ho Bong most well known film, The Host. It is a monster movie in the tradition of the great B-movies of the 1950s and 1960s, like Godzilla or Mothra, but is silly, self-aware, moral and very down-to-earth. Because of this, I was very excited to see his new film, Mother.

This is a Hitchcockian murder mystery based around a guy, Do-joon, who is autistic. He has a small group of friends in the rural town setting and they treat him like anyone else. One night when walking home from the bar he discovers the body of a girl who has been murdered. Immediately he is the main suspect, but mostly because he's an easy target who can't account for his whereabouts -partly because of his difficulty communicating and partly because he was a bit drunk at the time. His mother and all his friends don't believe he was capable of such a thing and they set out to prove him innocent and find the real killer (with or without police help).

Much like The Host, the tone throughout the film is very silly and over-the-top. People behave in ridiculous ways, launching into long monologues, being very silly when they drink, and using very crude language all the time. The violent scenes are also crazy and super bloody - but with a juvenile gory element to them. At times these aspects are enjoyable and at times they are frustrating. Bong spends so much time setting up the ridiculous, stylized situations that I got annoyed that I was not just able to see what was happening without the zaniness. It is a bit too much style and not enough substance. It is certainly a lot of fun, but just too overdone for my taste.

The eponymous mother character is a bit unhinged and is for me a bit hard to empathize with. She's overbearing and much-too concerned with her special-needs son. She interacts with him as if he was a child - even in his 30s - and seems to go overboard with her reaction to his arrest. I guess, as the title describes, this is the central part of the movie - but it actually felt like a side story and not the main direction. For me, the film is really about this special-needs kid and how he lives and then gets into trouble. That his mother is a mad freak is just a bit unnecessary for me - a hat on top of a hat, if you will.

The ending of the film is pure Hitchcock where it is unclear whether the good guy really wins in the end - or if everybody else loses. I really like these classic elements of the story and script.

Stars 2.5 of 4

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Friday, March 19, 2010) (20)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a film adaptation of the first book of the trilogy written by Swedish novelist Stieg Larsson. The rather complicated story is about an investigative journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, who gets a job from a mega-rich industrialist, Henrik Vanger, to investigate the murder of his teenage niece some forty years before. As soon as Blomkvist begins the search on a remote island where the Vanger clan all have their houses, he is joined by computer-hacker extraordinaire Lisbeth Salander who has taken an interest in Blomkvist (who has been disgraced by a recent libel case against him). She has a thing against men who abuse and hurt women (which goes back to her own troubled childhood).

The two begin to look into the possible suspects inside the Vanger family and uncover a world of rape, abuse, Nazi love and murder, all covered up by the family's status and political power. And just when you think the story has concluded, there is another chapter (the total run time is more than 2 hours 30 minutes).

The story is very complex with several threads going on at once. Lisbeth (the eponymous inked girl) has a whole subplot of her own where she has a financial guardian who abuses and rapes her and tells her she will be cut off from her money if she tells anyone about it. She ultimately gets a very graphic, sadistic revenge on the man. It seems like the multiplicity of narrative threads in the film would work better in the novel than onscreen. For a viewer, it seems like a bit of a hat on a hat and that some of these extra subplots could have been cut out.

The acting is very good throughout. Michael Nyqvist is great as Blomkvist. He's a smart journalist who seems to have a good moral sense about him. He's a diligent researcher and knows how to bend the rules to get what he needs. Nyqvist looks very smart and clever, with a brightness in his eyes that's refreshing to see. Noomi Rapace is also great as Lisbeth. She is very quiet and methodical, but clearly knows what's going on below the surface of an event. She's flirty at times (though clearly she has had bad interactions with men) and also has a zeal in her gaze that's nice to see.

I was rather surprised by how frank and violent the film was. The scene where Lisbeth is getting raped by her accountant we basically see the whole thing - but also see close ups of her face as she cries out and winces in pain. This is pretty shocking. Then we see in great detail exactly how she savagely takes revenge on the man. Later we see several very violent acts shown without any apologies or filters. Director Niels Arden Oplev (a Danish man, not a Swede) clearly thinks that showing exactly what is happening is the best way to present the material (as opposed to, say, suggesting what is happening offscreen). It is powerful stuff, though not for the easily shocked.

I guess it's unfair to hope that every Swedish movie should look particularly "Swedish", by which, I guess, I mean "look like Bergman". Still, this film comes off much more like a fast-paced American action film than anything I've ever seen from Scandinavia. It does move along from one point to another very smoothly and very fast. There is something nice about this, definitely. Still, I have to ask myself that if this was a Hollywood production with big action stars in it, would I like it at all - and I'm not sure that I would. I think there is something nice and refreshing in the straightforwardness of it - something that is ultimately Swedish that I like.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Shutter Island (Saturday, February 20, 2010) (15)

It has been a very long time since Martin Scorsese made a great movie, and also a long time since he made even a good movie (I guess one could argue for The Departed or Gangs of New York - but I thought both were only OK and mostly derivative of earlier stuff of his). Shutter Island falls into a growing category of his recent films: terrible movies.

The story is about Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio)a U.S. Marshal in the 1950s who is called out to the eponymous island, an insane asylum and jail, in the Boston Harbor where a violent woman criminal has broken out of her cell mysteriously. Somehow, though it's not clear what exactly he's doing there, he is supposed to find her on this isolated island he's never seen before (because the guards who know the island well are unable to do it).

We find out that Daniels' wife and kids were murdered recently and the man who did the job is on this island behind bars. Daniels also doesn't know his brand new partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), who just started in his department the morning they start the case. The bald-headed doctor on the island, Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) is super weird and mysterious too. Oh, and it's foggy and rainy the whole time - because sunny and clear wouldn't be scary enough.

As Daniels tracks the missing woman around the island, he becomes more concerned that the inmates are being mistreated with electro-shock treatments and begins to question his own sanity. He has flashbacks to his time in World War II when he liberated a concentration camp and found out about some of the electro-shock experiments the Nazis had done to some of Jews. Oh - and one of the doctors on the staff of the hospital is German. Blah, blah, blah.

It's hard to imagine a cast of such talented actors (DiCaprio, Ruffalo, Kingsley, Patricia Clarkson, Max von Sydow, Jackie Earle Haley, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer) could all put out such consistently bad work throughout this film. All around the acting almost not serious it is so overdone. That Marty didn't see this is shocking to me; that he would direct actors this way is also shocking. And then they all struggle with the Boston accent. I think Leo is a very good actor, but I don't think he has the chops for accents the way some actors do. He's very naturalistic and organic and he struggles with the accent here as much as he did in Gangs of New York.

The script by Laeta Kalogridis, based on the Dennis Lehane book is a freaking joke. (I've never heard of her, but I see she was a producer on Avatar, so she has *that* going for her and hopefully she's made enough money from that that she won't ever have to work again... Oh, God I hope so!). It jumps back and forth between the present and the past and a fantasy world that it's almost impossible to figure out. Then it twists so many times - and not all that unexpectedly - that you end up getting a very different movie than you started with (like The Sixth Sense meets the Bird Man of Alcatraz). What's worse, the twists are telegraphed three scenes before they happen so it's impossible not to see them coming before they do.

(I would also like to say here that of the three Dennis Lehane books that have been adapted to the screen - this one, Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone - it surprising to me how good and how bad some of them are. In order, Gone Baby Gone, directed by Ben Affleck is the best, Mystic River, directed by Clint Eastwood, is very OK but not worth the Oscar attention it got, and this turd is the worst. So you have Affleck is better than Eastwood who is better than Scorsese... I never would have believed that!)

This film is directed terribly. I don't know how it's possible, but Marty has clearly lost something. The dubbing is terrible so you can hear when looped in dialogue is clumsily spliced into certain spots. In the few scenes where blood is seen, it looks like Marty went to the Hammer Studios makeup department and got some ketchup to spread all over the place (a big change for a man who used to deal beautifully with blood - in Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and Goodfellas). There also seems to be no control on the story or the script. It goes on for at least 30 minutes too long, running 2 hours and 18 minutes. There is absolutely no need for this last 18 minutes, but it should be even shorter than that. What ever happened to a nice 112-minute movie, Marty?

There is nothing good about this film whatsoever. It is boring, totally trite and totally confusing. The acting, directing and writing is terrible. I guess the photography by Robert Richardson is nice, but I thought it was generally too cliche (grays and blues outside and blacks and golds inside - boring). Somewhere in the middle of the film, maybe in one of the many Nazi flashbacks, I strongly considered walking out because the story was going nowhere and I the twists coming down the pike were uninspiring. I stuck with it, but now I'm considering whether that was a good way to spend those 70 minutes of my life. I'm not sure it was.

Stars: .5 of 4