Movie Review: Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

I've never had much interest in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo". It seems as if everyone has read the books (I haven't), seen the movies (hey, I've seen one now), and are anticipating the American adaptation this winter (I'm not). But it hasn't really hit my curiosity nerve. Still, my mom is a fan of the books, and she's been wanting to watch the movies for awhile now, and I finally got my hands on this at the library. I had to mug someone to get it, because, you know, it's quite popular.

I made my mom watch it by herself, though. I wasn't certain that I was going to watch it at all, since, like I said, I don't care about this series a whole lot. But I figured I should, otherwise I'd never watch it, and I felt that I had to. It is supposed to be great, after all.

Luckily, I did watch it by myself. I stayed up until 2 am watching it. I'm glad I watched it alone, too, because it is not comfortable watching rape/sex/abuse scenes with someone else, and I already knew that this was a graphic movie.

As a story, it's definitely interesting. Integrating the 40-year old mystery of a missing girl along with Lisbeth's and Mikael's stories, it worked well. It is a gruesome story, though! There's a lot of explicit rape or mention of rape and murder. It's better if you're somewhat desensitized to these kinds of scenes, otherwise they may haunt you. I'm not sure they needed or be so graphic, but on the other hand, it's important in order to convey how serious and horrendous the situations actually are, and it gives Lisbeth proper motivation to do some of the things that she does as well as make the audience care.

Since I haven't read the books, I don't know how they compare or what was missing, so I just have to take it for what I see. Overall, good cast, good acting, good story, sometimes hard to watch, perhaps overly long at two and a half hours, and well shot.

My grade: B+

Comments

Movie Review: Serial Mom

*may be spoilers* I feel as if I should have seen this before, but it somehow managed to escape my notice. But hey, I found it! Great premise, too: Kathleen Turner as a picture-perfect wife and mother, living in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. She's also insane and likes to kill people over the smallest matters. She has a talent for murder, but not, sadly, for covering her tracks. The thought of wearing gloves or wiping fingerprints doesn't even cross her mind. The first half of this is the strongest. After she gets arrested, it loses some of its humor and charm, though it doesn't completely fall flat. Good ending, as well. Ricki Lake plays her daughter, Misty. It's easy to forget about her acting days, especially when you haven't seen her in anything...like me. I liked her in this, and may I say that it was refreshing to have a chubby young actress instead of a typical, thin, dime-a-dozen actress? Overall, not a bad comedy, but not a masterpiece.

Inspector Lewis: Wild Justice

You know, I was excited last night. Why? Because, after weeks of no Inspector Lewis, they were finally airing two new episodes back to back! Yay! PBS has been a bit backed up, what with all of their pledge programming and favorites. There are four new episodes in total, and two, I believe, were supposed to air in September. Only one did. Naturally, I was looking forward to the 9-midnight Lewis-athon. And you know what ticked me off? They didn't play two new episodes back to back. They repeated the first one and then played a new one. So I had to wait until 10:30 to get my fix. Because of course everyone wants to re-watch the first one, right? Wrong! Mamma not happy! But we did get one new episode, so I'll be content with that. They should be playing the other two next week, since a new series is supposed to start soon. This one is called "Wild Justice". Lewis and Hathaway are investigating the death of a female Bishop. She flew across the pond from the USA for

Restless Tonight -Reviews and Rants

Search This Blog