The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Review

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Dir: David Fincher

I should open this review by saying that I have not read Stieg Larsson’s novel upon which this film is based on, nor have I watched the 2009 adaptation from its home country so I can’t compare the two or talk about faithful or not it is to the novel. I came to this film very unfamiliar with its story except for the fact that I knew there’s supposed to be a big rape sequence in it.

The film opens with a hypnotic title sequence that puts James Bond’s to shame and sets the crazy, dark, melancholic tone for what’s about to come. We are then shown Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), an investigative journalist who lost a libel case against a corrupted businessman named Wennerström which leaves both his ego and reputation shattered; that he is constantly reminded by everyone about it just makes it worse.

Later on he is hired by former industrialist Henrik Vanger to use his investigative skills to find out who in his incredibly messed up family killed his beloved niece 40 years ago. The case is not easy, everyone in the family seems to have their own motives and is evil in one way or the other, but the reward is far too good to pass: information about Wennerström that proves Blomkvist is right.

But what role does the titular girl play in this whole thing you might ask? The first time we see Lisbeth (Rooney Mara) is giving a man working for Vanger all the information they need about Blomkvist. She is also an investigator and possesses almost supernatural computer hacking abilities. For most of the first hour of the movie her story plays separately to Mikael’s; she’s under legal guardianship due to being diagnosed mental incompetency at age 12 after burning her father to death. She is presented as antisocial, strong, determined, violent when she needs to be and most of all, smart.

Though not bad by any means, all of this feels a little disjointed, almost as if we were watching two different movies intercut between each-other. It’s not until both stories converge that things start getting really good. Mikel hires Lisbeth to work with him, she only accept cases that are interesting but he doesn’t have to do much convincing her after he tells her what he has found out.

This is the point where director David Fincher’s mastery for thrillers really gets to shine. As proven by Se7en and Zodiac, very few directors can craft a murder mystery quite like Fincher does. Like those films, there’s a point where the interest stops coming from the investigation itself and instead comes from just watching fascinating characters that are well-created by both actors and screenwriters do their thing and interact with each other which elevates the otherwise predictable plot.

Fincher’s movies are also known by having a very specific type of look, this time provided by Jeff Cronenweth, with whom he also worked in The Social Network and Fight Club. Girl is no different; it’s stylish like only Fincher knows how to do. The sets are not beautified, everything looks just as it would in real life which combined with the gloomy lightning establishes the haunting mood that somehow feels both real and dreamlike at the same time.

His confident direction allows him to try inventive and impressive camera angles (like a subjective view from inside a plastic bag) that are great. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Finch is also brilliant and complements fantastically the beautiful visuals and they’re not afraid to experiment as a torture scene with an Enya song in the background proves. All in all, this is a pretty much perfect movie technically speaking.

One thing I should point out is that this is a very violent movie, which to me at first posed no problem as I’ve seen violent movies ever since I was a kid. But Fincher’s desire to make things as realistic as possible makes certain scenes very tough to watch. The rape scene in particular is absolutely brutal and stands right there with Irreversible as one of the most cringe-inducing moments in my cinema watching history.

Even though Daniel Craig’s name appears first in the titles and every promotional material, it’s Rooney Mara who steals the film with her sublime performance as Lisbeth. Her most powerful tool is silence, which makes her seem almost robotic and cold hearted but there’s a certain vulnerability displayed behind her tough exterior. The attention to every little detail in the way she talks, moves and even when she isn't doing anything is incredible. She gave everything to the character physically and emotionally and it shows on screen.

But that’s not to say that Craig is not good. He plays against type as a man who has lost confidence in himself but is nonetheless determined to get the job done, he is also clumsy and more normal looking than usual. They have great chemistry and that makes the interactions between the characters and the little moments like Lisbeth rolling her eyes when Mikel takes several minutes finding a picture on the pc an absolute joy.

Fincher is not a director who sticks to the usual three act (beginning, middle, climax) storytelling method. He does it his own way and plays around with several stories at the same time like he has with his other movies. It doesn’t work as well here due to the source material not being as strong, the main investigation is great but some subplots drag it down and the last few minutes feel out of place with the rest of the film. At two hours and forty minutes it's just too long and can get pretty heavy at parts because the story is just not made to support such a long film.

Fincher is one of the masters of modern cinema and even though Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo does not quite reach the highs established by his other films, it still is a great movie with interesting characters and beautiful aesthetics that is definitely worth watching.

Tokyo Drifter Review

Tokyo Drifter (1966)

Dir: Seijin Suziki

Tetsuo walks through a deserted train cemetery wearing a white jacket, he stands next to a man who’s wearing a black jacket. Through conversation we find out Tetsuo was once part of a yakuza gang led by Kurata, who has decided to give up his life of crime and to whom Tetsuo is loyal to. The man in black works for Otsuka, a rival gang boss who’s trying to convince Tetsuo to join him. He refuses, is beaten up and earns Otsuka’s hate. This is the beginning of Tokyo Drifter, shot in black and white, which contradicts the color-filled story that follows.

Otsuka pushes them back into the crime life after he ties them up to a real state scam, which forces Tetsuo to leave Tokyo and live the life of a drifter while trying to survive the attacks of Otsuka’s men who are trying to get rid of him once and for all.

Many other characters come into play as the plot gets thicker and thicker, but none of them are as impressive as Tetsuo. He is a classic action hero, too smart, fast and strong to be killed; a bullet repellant that never runs out of bullets himself and a master marksman. He fights to survive and because of his loyalty, which makes him pay a heavy price later on. At first sight, this seems like any other yakuza/gangster movie, and story-wise it pretty much is. But the way the story is treated is what makes it truly special. 

Director Seijun Suzuki created a film that is very much a product of its era, but one that stands the test of time like few others. He seamlessly combines amplitude of genres to make this a complex and intriguing gangster drama, a silly comedy and sometimes even a musical.

The colors are vibrant and the visual motifs are endless and can be seen everywhere from the designs of the cars’ painting to the backgrounds and the clothes the character’s wear.  But they’re not only there because they look pretty; everything has a meaning to it, the clearest example is that through the movie Tetsuo wears a light blue suit while Otsuka, the villain wears a bright red one. The set design is also inventive as well as absolutely insane. This is one of the clearest examples of how colors and lightning can be used to enhance the story and our understanding of the characters and the director’s intentions.

The editing is also extremely weird. There are many jump cuts that happen right in the middle of the action and completely throw the viewer off. One example is when Tetsuo is being chased by one of Otsaka’s men on foot; he hides behind the pillar of a bridge, we see the enemy walking above the bridge without noticing Tetsuo hiding beneath, a fast cut to the train signals and then cut back to Tetsuo facing the man in the middle of the train track with the train coming dangerously close to them.  There are many more moments like this through the movie that are absolutely bizarre.

And yet, the movie is able to get away with it because it just adds so much to the whole experience of watching it. It’s not hard to connect the dots of what happened between one moment and the other which makes it really interesting because the director fully trusts his audience’s ability to understand the procedures and they actually help the pacing of the action sequences and make them feel less silly than what we’d expect from a 60’s movies.

But this is a silly movie nonetheless. One scene in particular exemplifies this better than any other; in the last half of the movie there is a ridiculous bar fight that feels straight out of the 60s Batman show, people start joining the fight for absolutely no reason, a group of girls play around with the fighters saying things in terrible English; tables, chairs and bottles are used and in the middle of the madness an exotic dancer saves Tetsuo by punching an attacker before turning to him and saying “better than French, English and American men together” with the stupidest expression that I’ve seen in my life before he throws her away. In the end, everyone ends up conveniently piled up outside the bar.The sound also plays an important role in the film, especially the song that gives the movie its name which is sung by Tetsuo to indicate his presence.     

This is one of the few cases of “style over substance” that work, a movie that embraces its style in such a way that it is completely defined by it. There might be deeper, more meaningful stories and characters to be found in other films in the genre, but Tokyo Drifter stands out because of how absurdly entertaining it is. 

Hugo Review

Hugo (2011)

Dir: Martin Scorsese

More than a great filmmaker, Martin Scorsese is a cinema lover and connoisseur, the man knows everything there is to know about movies; you can see just how big his passion is just by hearing him talk about them, so it’s only natural that we see him making a movie about one of the most innovative creators of the early days of cinema, after all, nobody is more qualified than him to do so and with Hugo he has perfectly combined his mastery of the art-form with his love and knowledge of film history. 

We associate Scorsese with films about religion and violence starring gangsters and psychopaths usually portrayed by Robert Deniro and Leonardo DiCaprio. But the truth is that he is an incredibly versatile filmmaker who has seamlessly transitioned over a variety of genres almost flawlessly. Hugo could be considered a kid’s movie; almost dismissible by those expecting something like Goodfellas or The Departed, but this can be easily and truly enjoyed by the whole family.

Hugo learned everything he needs to know about clocks and machinery from his father, who died in a museum fire, and his drunken uncle who took him to the railway station after his father’s death to be his apprentice and has been missing for months.  Rather than being taken to an orphanage he decides to avoid the guards and live deep within the station’s maze-like interior fixing the clocks and stealing food and pieces of machinery to repair a damaged automaton that he and his father were working on before his death.

His life is complicated by the cold-hearted but dumb station inspector who chases young thieves and sends them to the orphanage. He also meets a strange old man who works at a toy shop in the station and becomes friends with his goddaughter Isabelle. He and Isabelle discover that the old man is somehow connected to the automaton and through their investigation are able to find out that this man is actually George Méliès, one of the most groundbreaking filmmakers of the early days of cinema who has given up on making movies and is hiding his past from everyone.

This is a movie with bright, lively colors, childish innocence and a beautiful sense of wonder and yet it has those classic touches that make it a Scorsese movie like repressed characters who long for redemption. Its use of old movie clips and re-creations of important moments from cinema history are marvelous and almost educational, yet never cease to be entertaining.

The story is essentially divided in two parts: Hugo’s and Isabelle’s escapades and George’s story. They complement each other well and the tone is kept consistent between both so transition between one and the other is hardly felt.  It’s a fantastic-looking film no matter which character the story is focusing on.

Asa Butterfield and Chloe Moretz do a great job as the leads; very rarely do you see child actors who are so spot-on in their performances. Ben Kingsley has been seen lately in a ton of terrible films, but here he is back to form playing Mélièr in different periods of his life and doing a fantastic job at it. Sacha Baron-Cohen plays the Inspector, who provides much of the physical comedy by being rather dumb, but he never becomes a caricature and through his relation with the other characters we get to see his human and kind side. The rest of the cast is equally memorable and there are a lot of recognizable faces there, including a cameo by Scorsese himself.

 This movie about love for movies is made with the same care and love it preaches. It has an undeniable charm that attracts both young and old and stands shoulder to shoulder with the director’s best work.  

Tower Heist Review

Tower Heist (2011)

Dir: Brett Ratner

With the exception of his unforgivable entry in the X-Men series and the lackluster After the Sunset, I rather enjoy Brett Ratner’s movies. He is a director who is usually seen with much disdain because of just how basic his style of filmmaking is. But I’ve always found them fun in all of their glorious simplicity; in fact I’ll go right ahead and admit that Rush Hour 2 is one of my all time favorite movies. Tower Heist sticks to this simple-minded mentality; it’s a good piece of entertainment but in the end, the director’s most notable trait (keeping his movies as simple and digestible for the mass audiences as possible) is what hurts it the most.

The plot borrows heavily from other movies, specially the Ocean’s Eleven and Fun with Dick and Jane remakes, hell it even has Casey Affleck (from the Ocean’s movies) and Tea Leoni (from Fun with Dick & Jane).  Here, a group of employees of an upper-class, high-security apartment building lose all their money after a wealthy tenant to whom they had trusted all their savings is found to be involved in a ponzi scheme, so they do what every logical group of people would do in this situation: Break into his apartment and steal all their money back. 

The “funny” part of the ordeal is that they’re all pretty much stupid so they decide to hire an “experienced” thief who turns out to be equally, if not more, stupid than they are, not to mention selfish.  We are then presented with scenes such as the one with an old lady approaching the group mid-heist much to their shock and asking them to walk her dog apparently oblivious to what’s happening in front of her only to turn around and walk away as if nothing happened much to the relief of the group. This, like many others in the movie, is a scene that we’ve seen done countless of times in countless of other movies.  It’s a very cliché and formulaic plot.

Heist movies are usually divided in three segments: Set-up, planning and the heist itself. This film doesn’t make it as overly complex as we’re used to see; it doesn’t really demand the audience’s full attention and it doesn’t have a whole lot of factors coming into play, again keeping it all in the simple-minded mentality.  This is not necessarily bad but it keeps it from being a truly exciting and surprising story development. 

Ben Stiller, Gabourey Sidibe, Matthew Broderick, Eddie Murphy, Affleck , Leoni and the rest of the cast do a serviceable job here, never pushing for more than what their characters demand. They’re all equally charismatic and this represents the closest Murphy has been to his glory days. But with so much comedic talent it feels like a miss opportunity, they barely go out of their way to make a line feel special or funnier.

But perhaps we have the script to blame for that. This is a very basic type of comedy, very simple and accessible, but too innocent for its own good, with such a serious subject matter it could’ve been a lot darker and have some more depth to it or at least it should’ve gone full-on with the screwball and physical comedy aspects that are briefly touched here and there. I chuckled a few times but it wasn’t funny per-se. At least it doesn’t go the Adam Sandler “kick in the nuts, shit on the face” path and we have that to be thankful for. 

Brett Ratner and company’s lack of risk tacking is ultimately what hurts this film the most. But for what is worth this is not a bad film, it doesn’t bore and it’s technically competent. It’s a good time killer that will entertain and be almost immediately forgotten once it’s over.    

Brick Review

Brick (2005)

Dir: Rian Jhonson

Film Noir is almost a lost art today with very few directors tackling what once was the most popular genre in filmmaking. So it’s rather refreshing to see a film like Brick, one that is not only heavily inspired by Dashiell Hermet’s classic crime novels but also shares the near-perfect technical touches of Hitchcock’s best thrillers. And yet, despite being inspired by and sharing many elements with older novels and films, it’s a movie that still feels fresh, that’s mostly thanks to the great set-up and characterization. 

Brick begins like many movies of this type, Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) finds his ex-girlfriend Emily lying dead in a storm drain. We rewind two days to the moment he receives a call from a terrified Emily asking for his help, she has found herself immersed deep into their high-school’s drug-trading world and made a terrible mistake. She begs for his help, we see a black mustang passing by, she screams and the conversation is abruptly over. He then spends the next two days looking for her, which leads him to enter the drug world he avoided so much and that once caused his breakup with Emily.

And then she dies. Now the focus of the story changes. Brendan hides the body, he knows that if the police get into it they’ll only find the killer, that’s not enough for him; he wants the mastermind behind the whole operation. Like all good detectives he starts investigating, planning, infiltrating and playing with the other characters in a way that reminded me a lot of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. 

The story is carried by the strength of its script, methodically constructed in such a way that lets the characters’ interactions with each other deconstruct every piece of the puzzle little by little and lets us uncover the mystery as it goes. The setting allows it to play around with the conceptions of the genre; it is a detective story but it’s also a well-made teenage/high-school drama with plenty of impeccably-timed comedic moments.  

This is writer-director Rian Johnson’s first film, made with an insanely low budget and a lot of determination. The lack of budget barely shows as there are many inventive camera tricks and practical effects that complement the amazing cinematography quite well. It’s a beautiful looking movie filled with interesting shots and great editing. 

The complain I’ve seen the most about this movie is the fact that due to its setting, the characters’ ages and rather dark tone it’s difficult to take seriously. I disagree, in today’s world I find it harder to believe that this type of drug-related business doesn’t happen in high-schools all over the world. And even if it wasn’t believable, it’s still an amazing piece of entertainment with great performances, near-flawless technical qualities and an inventive script that put it among the best modern films of its kind.