I am sure this film is perceived in a very different way depending on whether you have seen the original Swedish films and / or read the books. I have seen the films, not read the books, and I was wondering what Fincher would bring to the screen that was not there before (especially the first Swedish film is really excellent). Not much, actually. The actors are almost all less interesting and edgy than in the Swedish version, the story is laid out not half as clearly. The Swedish movie is one of high suspense and tension, the Fincher one is basically an effort in style over substance. That style is great, no doubt, as is common with Fincher films. One very poor choice is to ask the native English speakers to speak with supposedly Swedish accents, what sense is that supposed to make?? It is actually borderline ridiculous, and is indicator of all the problems of a film that needs to be very specifically positioned in the market to find any audience, but that at its heart does realize that it does not know why it exists. The Trent Reznor / Atticus Ross soundtrack is another example: it is excellent, but is also an over-stylized, abstract approach. Too much abstraction for a very concrete story usually is an indicator that this story has been processed too often already, and yet another way to tell it is sought. I think what they are trying to do is add layers and variations to the story in order not to bore those who are familiar with the plot from reading the books. That means as a stand-alone product, the film is way too abstract to make any sense. As part of the Millenium universe, it does not add too many interesting aspects. While it is possible to enjoy this approach on an intellectual level, I think nobody would have missed this film had it not been made…
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_girl_with_the_dragon_tattoo/
There are those days when you feel life is just too bright and happy, prospects are too good, people are too nice to teach other. Watch this film, it will bring you back down. There has hardly ever been a film that treats family and parenthood so coldly, cruelly and truly, that dares to ask what a parent can do when he / she realizes that through all parental love, the fact remains that their kid is a bad person. I would expect most parents at some point develop a degree of hate against their ungrateful, obnoxious, annoying, dirty, omnipresent, always demanding, permanently crying children. If only for a minute, or for life, that will depend. But all parents, I guess, will feel terribly guilty about these feelings at some point. “We need to talk about Kevin” is about this guilt, and how you possibly can deal with it. Tilda Swinton’s character realizes that while her relationship to her son is failing almost from the very first day, she is unable, maybe unwilling, to give up on him. She puts effort and energy into him every step of the way, even when I as audience to this movie would long have asked for the form with which I can get separated from my child and send him to a foster home or a hospital. She takes punches for him even after she needs to, she is like the Irish sin eaters who try to relieve the just-deceased’s afterlife by taking their sins and burdening themselves instead.
If you have read Stephen King’s 
I should not have watched that. As a kid, I never watched the tv show when it was on, and I did not watch it in particular because German title really put me off (“Smileys Leute”). I was an astheticist from early on, even though I still do not know whether to spell it like that. Anyway… I never heard the English title until this movie was announced, and immediately thought that this is an even worse title for a movie than the German one. I did not even understand 25% of the words in it! The third downer came when I read that it was based on a novel by John Le Carre, which means it is a spy novel, which means it would be the least likely of all novels ever to be read by me. I think I have never ever read a spy novel. I do not like James Bond movies. Cold War stories are fun only when they are about hiding the microfilm in a body cavity and smuggling it from Krakow through Bucharest to Vienna, where the dead body of the microfilm mule will be found decoratively spread on a very well-lit wet pavement. That means I am not interested in the film’s story, I do not understand the references to other books or films or tv shows. In the case of “Tinker Tailor…”, I do not even understand the story. Usually within the first 20 minutes of a film, you will know where this is going, the plot has been outlined. Then you can lay back and enjoy the execution of the story. Not here: I got a bit distracted after 20 minutes, and when I paid attention again I did not have a clue where all these people were going and what they were doing. Luckily most if the scenes are lined up like a game designed for the annoyance of the Gary Oldman Character: he needs to go from one possible source to the next one, and sometimes you can understand what he is trying to achieve even without having followed the previous bits. Gratefully, Le Carree and the script authors also used some flashbacks that were very helpful in creating more confined areas of amusement, where it did not matter whether I knew why this person was blindfolded and tortured or the other one shot in the head.
During the opening moments of “The Descendants”, I could not help to think “oh this is what an American version of ‘Beginners’ looks like”. After half an hour, I was worried that it would be an American, or Hawaiian, version that would not even be half as good as “Beginners”. In the end, I was happy to see that it had taken some interesting twists and turns and had found its own story.
There is no point in doing a film of the year 2011 list, because most of the 2011 films reach me way too late – I can do a list if the best films that I saw and that were originally released in 2011 maybe early 2013… but anyway, as I keep updating my “ranking” of the films that I have actually seen, why not praise those that were the best and were actually released AND seen by me in 2011.
There are films that I can watch almost any time, in any mood, and that surprise me with new perspectives and details. There are not many, maybe seven altogether? In any case, “Seven” is such a film. The gloomy atmosphere, the perennial rain, the brooding Detective played by Morgan Freeman, the clearly temper challenged young guy with a past that Brad Pitt makes come alive. To position Kevin Spacey such late in the film, give him only a couple of minutes screen time, but make him the intellectual opponent to Freeman’s Detective with a brain.
It is an appropriate reverence, to look back on Pina Bausch through her works. Wim Wenders knew and liked her work for many years, and they apparently wanted to collaborate for a long time. Because of Pina Bausch’s death, the form of the film had to change from something we do not really know, because it was never thoroughly developed, to what we now see: a revue of Bausch’s most famous choreographies, replicated to make for most beautiful camera capture. It looks gorgeous, even though I do not understand what the 3D would add to it. Being a technical layman, I can also only guess that the 3D is not done in the most professional way.
It is about a horse that goes to war. If you have seen any film in your life, you will know exactly what this film will look like, what the storyline is, and how it will end. The episodic nature of the film is almost the best aspect about it, because it promises to get away from the expected by cutting off the bonds established in each part. It cuts many of these bonds, and quite violently, actually, but when towards the end I realized that in one crucial way, the film will go soft on the audience and offer closure, I got even a little angry. A film about the war that left the world in shambles both morally and economically cannot end on such a light note, or nothing has been learned about the cruelty of war. Of course War Horse is a comic movie in the wider sense of the term, it does not allow to be judged by the standards of real life. But: then nothing is left that lifts this film above any Bollywood happy ending movie. Devastatingly unoriginal…
The wet dream of the Scottish Tourism association: Ever other decade, it is perfectly possible to watch Braveheart again. Of course Sophie Marceau and the clichés about giggling French Mademoiselles are still annoying. Of course Mel Gibson’s hair does not look more fashionable with increasing distance. Of course some of the Scottish accents are really more off than they should be. And what struck me this time: these Highlanders had a hell of a good dental plan, look at these armies of white straight teeth!
The film is slightly better than I feared it would be, big budget Chinese production that it is. Those have continued to let the audiences down during the last years, especially when they are about current themes. The least that will happen in the average production is that the heroic efforts of whoever is suitable to be heroic are highlighted with such inappropriate pathos that it is hard to watch and destroys whatever may be the good sides of a film. The Tangshan earthquake has some heroes and heroic stories to be told – but director Feng Xiaogang manages to keep the glorification of the army and the survivors and the government at a (probably necessary) minimum. His interest seems to be in a story of cruelty: a mother who decides the fate of her children in the middle of the earthquake aftermath – she has to make a terrible (albeit slightly contrived) choice. As a consequence, she will suffer for more than 30 years under a guilty conscience, while the child on the losing end of the choice will nurture hate against her and will punish her with indifference. That is quite an interesting moral fable, and it allows a strong final scene, where both mother and child reflect again on their respective choices – and it turns out that both have seriously punished and damaged themselves with the choices they made. The film indicates that the daughter was more wrong than the mother, which you may or may not accept, but the moral face-off is worth the 135 minutes wait. For a foreign audience unfamiliar with Chinese family life, obligations and commitments, I can imagine the characters are sometimes a bit hard to understand in their motives, but I found it mostly convincing, even surprising how the author dares showing the drama and the failures that comes with being stuck in this rigid form of family system.
It is a bit funny to see these films with a political message today, when that message is not allegorical or hinted at, but spoken right into your face. On the other hand, communication was different in the 1950s, and so was political logic and diplomacy. The whole film only works because the alien with the vastly superior technology, ability to fly from wherever in just five months, produce impregnable metal and indestructible robots – this alien is not able to just send out a radio broadcast or tv message all over the world’s channels, making sure that his message about love peace and happiness and the end of all violence is heard by all the world’s leaders at the same time? Why bother to bring them together? Because that gives you more time to contact the superbrain scientist who believes you and brings his fellow top scientists from all over the world to come and witness your statement. It is just such a good guy, that alien man that looks just like people on Earth do: when he makes the world stand still for half an hour by cutting off electricity, he makes sure nobody is harmed by leaving out the hospitals, airplanes in flight and other vital instruments. He is not beyond threat, actually he came to Earth in order to explain his threat.
Not a masterpiece, but a nice bit of entertaining with a great acting trio at the center. It has some very nice elements that make it terribly entertaining, at times even hilarious. One is Harrison Ford: a seasoned political journalist forced into the purgatory of moderating breakfast tv, disgruntled by this but unable to escape the allure of good tv money… that sounds a bit like Harrison Ford, seasoned actor of character drama, pushed into the pit of romantic comedy… and that has its moments. While he is predictably grumpy during most of the film, he has some glorious outbursts: a nice introductory speech where he gives his impressive CV: “I have cooled Mother Theresa’s feverish forehead with a wet tissue. I have been shot at in Bosnia. I have had dinner with Dick Cheney!” (or similar, could not find the quote right now). And in the grand finale, he brings down the house with a very awkward impro cooking show, and all is in tears… Rachel McAdams, who I did not know before, is cute as the overwhelmed but determined producer, and Diane Keaton is really great as Harrison Ford’s co-host, engaging in a match of the elderly about screen supremacy (“who gets to say ‘Good Bye’?”) .
Kristen Wiig. Enough said, she is the only reliable comedian in the Saturday Night system at the moment, and as this the only perspective for a Tina Fey follower. Is there any other fearless female comedian out there? I don’t know one, really, and it seems that unless you have gone through the SNL boot camp, you shrink away. She is here to stay, even though the number of facial expressions she has is still limited. Never mind, she is hilarious as the loser maid of honour who messes up every single element of wedding preparation for her best friend – by bringing down the plane that was supposed to take them to their Vegas bachelorette night, by making everybody crap their gowns, and street, and sink. By just not accepting that the bride is now grown up and enjoys fancy France trips more than hanging out with the girls in the backyard pub. Or does she? Nice additional note by her relationship to police officer Rhodes, who brings an English touch of sophistication and principles – which does not make both their lives easier of course.
thomas4cinema 