“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”
Baldur Bragason/Columbia Pictures via Bloomberg
Rooney Mara in “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” The film is directed by David Fincher.
Rooney Mara in “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” The film is directed by David Fincher. Photographer: Baldur Bragason/Columbia Pictures via Bloomberg
“The Adventures of Tintin”
Paramount Pictures via Bloomberg
“The Adventures of Tintin,” a film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the graphic novels of Herge.
“The Adventures of Tintin,” a film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the graphic novels of Herge. Source: Paramount Pictures via Bloomberg
“Albert Knobbs”
Patrick Redmond/Roadside Attractions via Bloomberg
Mia Wasikowska and Glenn Close in “Albert Knobbs.” The film is directed by Rodrigo Garcia.
Mia Wasikowska and Glenn Close in “Albert Knobbs.” The film is directed by Rodrigo Garcia. Photographer: Patrick Redmond/Roadside Attractions via Bloomberg
David Fincher gives “The Girl With
the Dragon Tattoo” a sharp English-language makeover without
losing any of its vivid characters or gloomy Swedish atmosphere.
Less than two years after a solid Swedish film of Stieg
Larsson’s best-selling novel was released, Fincher (“The Social
Network”) has made a better movie about the search for a serial
killer by a daring journalist and an antisocial computer hacker.
“Dragon Tattoo” is still set in a snowy land known for
civility and social justice. But that isn’t Larsson’s world,
which is filled with corruption, greed, prejudice and sexual
violence, as graphically depicted in a scene where tech whiz
Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) is raped by her guardian (Yorick
van Wageningen).
The superb cast is led by Daniel Craig as divorced magazine
editor Mikael Blomkvist and Mara as his tattooed, facially
pierced, bisexual co-investigator. Their relationship, which
turns from frosty to amorous, is the linchpin of a sordid story
that includes a torture chamber where the killer dispatches his
victims.
Other standouts include Christopher Plummer as retired
industrialist Henrik Vanger, who hires Blomkvist to find a niece
who’s been missing from his dysfunctional family for 40 years;
van Wageningen as the guardian who forces Salander to trade sex
for money; and Stellan Skarsgard as Martin Vanger, the
mysterious head of the family company who lives on an island
estate right out of Architectural Digest.
“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” from Columbia
Pictures, opens today across the U.S. Rating: ***1/2
‘Adventures of Tintin’
Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson were the perfect pair to
make “The Adventures of Tintin,” a computer-enhanced 3-D film
based on Herge’s graphic novels about an intrepid boy reporter
and his faithful dog Snowy.
Both filmmakers have the visual flair and childlike spirit
needed to translate Herge’s popular characters for the big
screen.
Directed by Spielberg and produced by Jackson, the buoyant
movie combines three of Herge’s books into a story about
Tintin’s search for a sunken ship that was carrying a vast
treasure.
Along with Tintin (Jamie Bell) and Snowy (operated by
puppeteer Brad Elliott), the globe-trotting adventure features a
dastardly villain (Craig), a drunken ship captain (Andy Serkis)
and two buffoonish detectives (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost).
Spielberg uses performance-capture — a technique that
makes the actors look like animated figures — and other
computerized images to produce a pleasing blend of fantasy and
reality.
“The Adventures of Tintin,” from Paramount Pictures,
opens today across the U.S. Rating: ***
‘Albert Nobbs’
Glenn Close’s androgynous look in “Albert Nobbs” — think
David Bowie with short hair and a tuxedo — is the most
intriguing part of this film about a woman who passes as a man
in 19th-century Ireland.
That’s not enough to sustain interest in Rodrigo Garcia’s
glacially paced adaptation of a short story that was turned into
a 1982 off-Broadway play starring Close as the title character.
Nobbs has dressed and acted as a man for decades in order
to keep her job as a hotel servant in Dublin. Her female side is
so repressed and her male disguise so empty that she’s lost any
connection with either sex.
Secret Lives
She briefly emerges from her shell after discovering that a
temporary co-worker (Janet McTeer) harbors the same secret,
leading to a tender scene where they both don dresses and
bonnets for a seaside stroll.
But Nobbs’s attempt to woo a pretty young servant (Mia
Wasikowska) ends tragically, and the film stumbles toward its
melodramatic finish.
Close, who co-wrote the screenplay with Gabriella Prekop
and novelist John Banville, has the exigent task of breathing
life into an expressionless, emotionally stunted character who’s
given little to do or say.
“Albert Nobbs,” from Roadside Attractions, opens today in
New York and Dec. 23 in Los Angeles for one-week Oscar
qualifying runs. It will be released Jan. 27 across the U.S.
Rating: **1/2
What the Stars Mean: **** Excellent *** Good ** Average * Poor No stars Worthless
(Rick Warner is the movie critic for Muse, the arts and
leisure section of Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are his
own.)
To contact the writer on the story:
Rick Warner in New York at
rwarner1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Manuela Hoelterhoff at
mhoelterhoff@bloomberg.net.
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Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-21/-dragon-tattoo-hacker-hunts-mass-killer-sunken-treasure-film.html
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