Tag: Noomi Rapace

Prometheus

For all of its green computer readouts and drab, ‘70s styling, Ridley Scott’s “Alien” has aged remarkably well. It’s still an absolutely riveting classic because Scott creates such an encompassing feeling of dread in every moment. The movie’s shadows make us afraid not for what we can see but all that we can’t, and even more so for what we can hear.

It’s possible that a horror movie hasn’t been made since that’s quite as good, not because today’s directors are incapable of it but because the kids crave a new kind of queasy spectacle these days.

That’s why my anticipation for “Prometheus” was as high as any movie still to come out this year. To combine the special effects wizardry of the 21st Century with the atmospheric slow burn of one of the greatest horror movies all time would be a marvelous achievement.

To capture that mystique, Scott would have to be ambitious. “Prometheus” then is more than a closed-door horror movie where the characters are picked off one by one. It has lofty aspirations about the questions of life and existence with a glossy sci-fi finish. It’s a breathtaking epic that on a technical level leaves “Alien” in the dust.

And yet in its attempt to get bigger, it actually got smaller. Continue reading “Prometheus”

The Girl Who Played With Fire

The sequel to the Swedish “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” falls short of the original.

This review was originally written and published in the summer of 2010.

Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy is a literary phenomenon. The rapid speed in which the books were released and diffused all throughout the world has been remarkable, and the great quality of the first Swedish film, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” only added to that excitement.

The Swedish filmmakers answered that demand even quicker than the publishers of Larsson’s books could. The Millennium trilogy was intended to be a Swedish TV miniseries following the first film, but instead was hustled out the door as two more films so they could be released within WEEKS of one another.

After seeing “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and realizing that this trilogy would be completed within one calendar year, I speculated this had potential to be the greatest collection of three anyone had ever put out in one year since the Beatles put out three albums in 1964.

So my anticipation for “The Girl Who Played With Fire” was high, and for a while I ignored a lackluster story and poor writing that read like a TV movie for a chance to see Noomi Rapace take another stab at Lisbeth Salander.

But a TV movie is exactly what this sequel is. It’s a half-baked attempt to capitalize on a craze, and it misses the point of what made the original so compelling. Continue reading “The Girl Who Played With Fire”

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009)

This review was originally written and published in the summer of 2010 before I knew “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” was a book and before it was an international phenomenon as well as before I knew any casting news on the American version.

Before I had even seen “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” I had heard news about its announced American remake directed by David Fincher. I hope that film is not a direct remake, as this Swedish film is a dark, disturbing, complex and cerebral thriller with a hard R-rating. After seeing it, I’m less excited for the American version and more so for the two sequels due out in the same calendar year.

This is a rare thriller that does as much for its story as it does for its characters. It has an intricate plot about a journalist named Mikael Blomkvich (Michael Nyqvist) being framed for forging evidence for an article. He’s got six months until his sentence, and in that time, businessman Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube) has hired him to pick up the pieces of a murder/disappearance case that’s 40 years old. His niece Harriet was murdered by one of the members of the Vanger family, and after some digging, Mikael suspects three brothers that were Nazi supporters.

As he investigates the murder, Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), a goth girl and the best computer hacker in Sweden, is investigating him to find proof that he really forged the evidence. She says Mikael’s clean, but she continues following him and helps him out with the murder case. Lisbeth’s a recluse with a mysterious past, a criminal and psychiatric record, and she’s a feminist with lesbian urges.

Throughout the course of the film, we see her endure some serious pain and torture, but the other side of the coin is her ability to dish it out as well. The complexity of her character lies in her questionable morals and ethics, which teeter the line between decency and justice. Continue reading “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009)”