The Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest(2009) review and the Millennium trilogy rating

SWEDES RETURN INTELLIGENCE TO THE MOVIES

Over the years there have been some great movie trilogies. The Godfather, Lord of the Rings, Toy Story, and Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy is up there with the finest. “The Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest” is the concluding film of the trilogy and the most riveting. Even though this film has far less action than the other films it ties up any lose ends that the first two movies leave and the court room scenes had my heart pumping fast. So do yourself a favor, buy The Millennium trilogy blu-ray or dvd boxset, lock yourself in a dark room, and take pleasure in the greatest series of film made in recent years.

 The Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest, we learn even more about Lisabeth’s unknown organizations, and how everything is connected. The pieces to the puzzle come together, and I felt the film clarified roughly everything pretty cunningly, though this does involve some attention from the viewer, because a number of of the links are not highlighted that well and can be missed.

The Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest, is more alike to “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. In the method of directing and as well the ruthless reporting back. There is a lot more tension brought into this film and it made for compulsive viewing.

5 out of 5

Now I shall rate the complete series as a whole.  

“The Girl with the dragon Tattoo” is fundamentally a murder mystery and is nicely developed at a calm pace. The most important point in this is the introduction of the girl (Lisabeth), who is a fascinating personality that constitutes an underlying mystery within the mystery explored in the film itself. The mystery of the girl is discovered in the next two films in the series.

“The Girl who Played with Fire” is a mystery-action film, and unlike the comfortable relaxed pace of the first.  This sequel has a fast pace that highlights the action.

The mystery of the girl is entirely exposed in “The Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest”. Instantaneous plots are revealed in shifts back and forth, which is possibly confusing for some viewers. Nevertheless, this is competently accomplished as the plots of the investigation, the trial, and the experience of the girl through all of this are portrayed.

What an exceptional trilogy, people that don’t understand Swedish and who don’t like subtitles may not watch these great films. All three should be watched in sequence. Be sure to get the Swedish originals instead of these pitiful Hollywood remakes. 

TOTAL REVIEW- 5 out of 5

The Girl who Played with Fire(2009) review

SWEDES RETURN INTELLIGENCE TO THE MOVIES

Having been entirely gripped by the remarkable “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, I was right on the edge of my seat with my anticipation of the sequel, “The Girl who Played with Fire”. As soon as it was in the theater, I ran to buy my ticket so I could be the first to see my favorite series. These films allowed me to go into a dark theater to be carried off to places I have never been and situations I have never experienced. I just sat back and enjoyed the stories that required a functioning brain.

Films are entertainment, films are an art form, films are a visual, primary, and sound. Knowledge and films carry us to places we have been and have not. The Millennium trilogy is everything I stated in the first sentence. The viewing of the trilogy sums up my love of great cinema.

Sequels are not equals has became such a common truism that now and then we forget that there are significant exceptions to the rule. “The Girl who Played with Fire”, directed this time by Daniel Alfredson, is one of those exceptions. Whilst the first movie’s characters were more fascinating than the plot, the plot “The Girl who Played with Fire” has the distinction of being as fascinating as the characters. The set up for this film is dazzling. The Millennium journalists take in a new young and talents student Dag Svensson (Thulin), with ambitions for becoming a great journalist, into their team as they explore a sex trafficking ring which engages well-known figures of the Swedish government. Then one day Dag and his girlfriend are executed and Lisabeth Salander is blamed for their execution. Mikael Blomkvist, is influenced that Lisabeth had been framed and he goes on a dangerous hunt to determine who the real murderers are. While Lisabeth seeks out to find out the truth, she struggles with her own demons and her past. The two run into each other with a bang and we are introduced to the strange white haired muscle man Niedermann.

I will not go more into explaining the plot, apart to say that unlike Hollywood films that pursue a predicable method, it is impractical to foresee what is going to take place next in this film. Some people detest films that pull surprises on them, but for me “The Girl who Played with Fire” is incredibly entertaining because it unfolds in an irregular manner.

The pace and action of this second chapter in the trilogy is far better than the first and the quantity of plot twists and reversals will leave you on the edge of your seat. YOU HAVE TO SEE THE CONCLUDING INSTALLMENT TO UNDERSTAND HOW EVERYTHING TIES IN.

5 out of 5 

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo(2009) review

SWEDES RETURN INTELLIGENCE TO THE MOVIES

It is so hard to find a decent suspense thriller nowadays. Once the thriller is over, you realize all the film did was spook you a little. Hollywood tends to do this nowadays with these so called thrillers that are coughed out by the week. Thank the gods there are still people who know how to make a thriller that thrills and can handle to make it into one hell of a film, with a faultless plot, characters to die for and an ending that begs for a follow-up. One such film would be Neils Arden Oplev’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, which I just loved beyond words! Swedish filmmakers should educate Hollywood a lesson or two about movies. In 2008 Swedish horror “Let the Right One In” wowed audiences worldwide and now comes “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” with the same powerful outcome. Do I need to say more?

The film is about a reporter Mikael Blomqvist (Nyqvist) who is charged of libel to one of Sweden’s greatest companies because he published an article in the Millennium magazine which Mikael couldn’t verify afterwards. Before he serves his short jail sentence he decides to stay underground. During the Christmas period Mikael gets a call from Henry Vanger, who is an old family friend asking him to come visit.  Henry wants Mikael to investigate the disappearance of Harriet Vanger (Fröling) who mysteriously vanished 40 years ago, he wants to discover the truth before he dies of old age. Mikael accepts the offer. Henry considers Mikael the right man for the job because of the Intel he has collected on his private life from highly intelligent, highly pierced, and tattooed computer hacker Lisabeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) has managed to build up. She learns the case that he’s working on. Salander begins sending Bloomkvist cryptic emails. Somehow he manages to find Salander’s IP address and goes to visit her to ask her to stop hacking into his computer, but instead they end up working as partners. Soon they discover that what seems to be a single missing person case is in fact something a lot more disturbing.

 The star of the film is Lisabeth Salander the peculiar, antisocial, shy, abused, and very early-developed young girl perfectly played by Noomi Rapace. Salander is seeking judgment or vengeance in her own way. She does not trust anybody apart from Plague a fellow hacker and Blomqvist. From the very first moments in the film, I was right away struck by the outstanding performance of Noomi Rapace. From an interview with Rapace I was surprised to see how much physical transformation she had done for the role. With the beautiful feminine look to being very masculine and Gothic look. Next to her remarkable physical change, Rapace gives a spectacular performance by always making sure that Lisabeth in no way turns into a “woe is me” type of character, but instead someone who is damaged yet firm on ruining the people that tried to destroy her. Whilst Rapace is justifiably praised, I consider the performance of Michael Nyqvist as Mikael Blomkvist is incredibly under rated. Nyqvist does a fabulous job at showing Mikael not looking down on Salander.

 Remember Jonathan Demme’s “The Silence of the Lambs”? It was a faultless thriller. Remember what made the mystery and suspense reach out to us? It was the perfect leading performances of Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins, that‘s what. It’s the same exact case with “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. The suspense keeps you on the edge of your seat as the truth is being unraveled on the screen. We quickly find ourselves aggressively rooting for Mikael and Lisabeth, really caring about what happens to them and believing every solitary thing that happens on the screen, mostly because of Rapace’s wonderful performance. The film’s focus is primarily on Mikael, but when Lisabeth is on screen she steals the scene.

The story is tremendously well done too. It is written by the astonishingly talented promising late Swedish writer Stieg Larsson who hastily died in 2004 from a heart attack at only age 50. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is the first part of his Millennium trilogy which he handled to complete before his death. Sexual violence against women was his theme in this Millennium trilogy of the bestselling novels.

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is an extraordinary crime and punishment film with captivating characters that have complex human dimensions, they are almost real, and it feels like they could be your friends or neighbors or even co-workers. The film is quite excellent; it excels with brilliance that I rarely see in thrillers nowadays. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a movie experience I’ll remember for quite a long time. I highly recommend it!!! But this film is only for mature audiences. 5 out of 5

A Hollywood version remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo directed by David Fincher is coming out Christmas 2011. I can’t think of any basis to remake this astonishingly executed and perfectly acted Swedish produced film. Hollywood just loves remaking the best films from around the world and they always end up demolishing them. I can’t live with the idea of Fincher destroying Lisabeth Salader.  I would recommend Hollywood to cast Noomi Rapace instead of Rooney Mara. 

Blade Runner review

First of all, Blade Runner is not about a story, it's not about, characters, it's not about being concrete. It's about landscape; it's about city, as reflex of civilization. It's about correcting our present, knowing what happened in the past. And so, the future is used, so the sci-fi mood is brought. Paradoxal it may be the future tense gives the viewer the necessary distance towards what he is supposed to "see". And what you see is in here fundamental, not because of the spectacular sets, not because the astonishing prediction of what city will be in years to come but because it only shows what's already in front of us. Practically every sci-fi film that tries to predict an entirely new city is based on what is "futuristic" in the time of its idealization, from visual power masterpieces like Metropolis, to franchised versions of a future world like Demolition Man. Ridley Scott proposes a city that exists already, today, now. We get to the future through present, our present and that links us to it where the future tense gave us distance. Everything is deliberately thrown in a dystrophic, chaos like package that shakes, not because it's dark and rainy, but because it's in a city that exists now, and in buildings older than a century now. Sebastian lives in a neoclassic building from probably end of XIXth century, the roots of everything clearly bad and distorted and perverse in this Scott's future are clearly anchored on our present. Obviously every sci-fi director is before anything else, an earth inhabitant, so his base is his reality as an earthier, but in here, he makes the effort to through that at the viewer.


So, everything is classical, Sean Young, a replicant that doesn't know it, has a classical beauty, the characterization, the way she moves, and the way she talks. She plays the piano. She has a memory. She is human, except for the fact she is a replicant, created by men and that's where man is elevated to the category of god in the exact measure that he creates with the same perfection as Him. The camera is Deckard, the camera is the observer and this observer works in the top of the buildings, works above humanity, works on the last floor of Tyrell's Olympus like industrial complex. What is made in here is a change in time scale notion in order to get us, as viewers, down to earth. If god is eternity, and men's life is a second in eternity; what we see here is Men's life becoming the possible eternity and the replicants' 4 years life just a small passage in reality. Whenever replicants are referred in Blade Runner it is in fact me who is being referred. Ultimately, this may be about falling to earth with the notion that time is precious, and 4 years can be a long time, if well used. "All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain", says Rutger Hauer's character. This is about keeping memory for eternity, whatever that is.


Man is reflected on his creation, his imperfections, but also his qualities, show up in what he creates. So, throughout the film, we come to change our view of the replicants, from menace to empathy, from desire to eliminate (as survival instinct) to desire to embrace and consequent emptiness for their disappearance. That's when replicants become men. That's when we know he's not talking about robots, but us. "Petty she won't live, but again, who will?" this is bottom line, nothing lasts forever, creator or creation. Still, facing the inevitability of death doesn't stop Deckard from running for life, or replicants from trying to live.


Another aspect is that there is no "soundtrack", there is no "music" in this one, only "soundscapes", as dystrophic as the city, as dark as this future, as empty as no future. Those sounds are the story of that city, are the story of our past, as told in our present, where there is no memory, where memories are forgotten, or made up as, once more, a survival device. Memory is a pillow for emotions, says Tyrell, he is god, he knows emotions are needed in order to exist, but he also knows he can't perpetuate lies about it, he knows he will die.


Ultimately this may be a film noir anchored sci-fi film which, if well explored, could become a genre in itself. Checking it, you will find practically every aspect of film noir in it. For every aspect I referred, I believe this to be the essential sci-fi film, fulfilling completely the role that sci-fi was always supposed to have, but hardly ever had. Between 1979 with Alien and 1982 with this one, Ridley Scott moved definitely forward in understanding what science fiction is, and how it should leak into film making. Every artist has his limits in innovation and creation, apparently Scott's limit was defined here. His post work never got to be as influential or good as these two films, but, what he gave was more than enough.
Highly recommend this film.

5 out of 5

Edward Scissorhands review

-May Contain Spoilers-
Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands is a genuine spectacle of a movie. By turns visually stunning, romantic, suspenseful, amusing, postmodern, and deeply touching, it leaves a stronger impression on me with each viewing, never once showing its 20 years, and more importantly after all these years it remains one of the most unique, satisfying, and downright perfect pieces of cinema ever made.

On a spectacular and sprawling yet (mostly) abandoned Gothic castle high on a hill surrounded by mouthwatering gardens and views lives an artificial man named Edward (Johnny Depp), whose old inventor's (Vincent Price) death left him completely alone and with sharp metal shears for hands. But then one day he is rescued from this life of mundane isolation by Peg Boggs (Dianne Wiest), a kindly local Avon representative who takes him home to live with her and her family, her everyman husband Bill (Alan Arkin), their typical girl-next-door teenage daughter Kim (Winona Ryder) and cheeky younger son Kevin (Robert Oliveri). He becomes a hit with the locals for his amazing gift for hairdressing and dog-grooming, but that is hardly what he will remember most about this experience. Like in any true fairytale, Edward immediately finds himself infatuated over Kim and (though they first meet with disastrous results) Kim slowly finds herself feeling the same way for this artificial but uncommonly gentle and kind man. But when her rough boyfriend Jim (Anthony Michael Hall) finds out about this and tries to stop it by tricking Edward into committing a crime, a series of events transpire that put Edward in great harm.

Visually, Edward Scissorhands is almost impossible to beat as you'd expect from a director whose first job in the movie business was as an animator at Walt Disney Studios. The sets are jaw-dropping in both their design and construction, with the sets of the spooky Gothic castle and the Boggs' brightly colored suburban street wonderfully juxtaposing the life of nearly complete isolation that in the beginning Edward only knows to the very friendly, close-knit and normal suburban environment from which he is eventually cut off once again in the end. Stefan Czapsky's cinematography, while (perhaps smartly) restrained for the first two acts, is astonishing in the unforgettable ice angel sequence the best scene Burton has ever filmed and in the almost equally perfect climax, the editing is fluid and Burton crafts one of his best personal opening credits sequences of all. And the brilliant Danny Elfman's score is nothing short of astonishing, becoming (like the scores of most films that depend heavily on any kind of music) absolutely instrumental in the effect of the finale.

Caroline Thompson's (who helped Burton develop the concept for the movie) screenplay is an underrated gem, and working from it Burton also succeeds in making a fantasy movie that is not just real eye candy, but also an amazingly well-acted fantasy movie. Ryder succeeds in displaying a far nicer side as opposed to the strong cynicism she showed in the hilarious Heathers and Burton's earlier work Beetlejuice, and she truly makes you believe a girl like Kim could fall for an artificial guy with metal shears for hands, Wiest's sweet as pie warmth has never been put to better use as the kind but slightly naïve woman who sees past Edward's exterior and tries to help him fit in.But none of them can hold a candle to Depp, who's never been better before or since as he is here, astonishingly portraying with great dignity, subtlety and barely 100 words of dialogue (and let's not forget he had to endure a very tight leather suit and the afore-mentioned "metal" shears for hands and on that note a shout-out to the late, great make-up artist Stan Winston) an uncommonly gentle and kind but misunderstood and isolated artificial man who is hurt emotionally when he discovers that even the lightest touch with his scissor hands inflicts pain.

There are directors with distinctive styles and then there are geniuses like Tim Burton, whose extraordinarily vast, individual and visual imaginations are complimented by a real interest in telling beautiful stories to provide viewers with a film that will ultimately reach them on a personal level as well as dazzling their senses. He is one of the all-time gods not just of film-making, but of the arts in general, and with this film he is truly at the height of his powers. Burton still considers this to be his most personal film, and it thoroughly shows. He has and will never top this.

I give this film a 9 out of 10