The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

image Watching this exquisite crime movie, I wondered:  Who wrote the story for the script. So I did some research and discovered that it was indeed a Swede to wrote the story. Frequently, writers live rather boring lives. Not so in the case of   Stieg Larsson.  According to his partner of 20 years, Larsson’s witnessed a rape when he was young and never forgave himself for not trying to stop it. In real life he tried to be a journalists but apparently did not have the social skills and personality to fit into a news organization. Larsson worked tirelessly to counter radical right wing activists in Sweden. This endangered his life. Larsson and his partner never married because the address of a newly married coupled is published in Sweden and Larsson’s would have been more easily targeted.  The hero, Mikael Blomkvist (Craig Daniel), and the heroine, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), seem to be an amplified version of Larsson, but not in a way that this would became in any way tedious.

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Movies, Drama

No Comments 8 May 2012

The Maltese Falcon

image Four short year after the Golden Gate Bridge opened in 1937, this detective flick was produced in San Francisco. Humphrey Bogart plays a private detective. He is retained by a beautiful women, who under false pretenses has Bogart’s partner shadow a man, who allegedly has let her sister to run away with him to San Francisco. Before we know it, two people are dead. The plot turns fast. While the themes of the film (greed, love, passion) are eternal, the film did not age as well as the Golden Gate Bridge, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year.  I had more fun with African Queen, another old Humphrey Bogart film. But the writing is very good.

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Movies, Drama

No Comments 28 April 2012

Women on the Verge of Nervous Breakdown

image When I saw Women on a Verge of a Nervous Breakdown almost twenty year ago, I did not find it very funny. In fact, I was bored by it. Perhaps I was simply too tired. But the film (or I) aged well. Almadovar in 1988 build into his film a refernce to Islamic terrorist. After September 11, 2001 this reference has gained a lot of poignancy. If you have a woman in your life who is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, this comic film will help.

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Movies, Drama

No Comments 19 April 2012

Key Largo

image The decor and the language of the film reminded me so much of other films of this era that I erroneously thought the film was written by Riginald Rose or directed by Sidney Lumet. A mafia boss who wants to get back into major deals descents with his entourage on a small hotel in Key Largo in the middle of the summer when no one in their right mind vacations on the Florida Keys. The owner of the hotel runs the hotel together with his daughter in law who lost her husband in World War II. Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart) was with the son and husband just before he was hit in Italy.  To help them come to terms with this death, Mcloud pays them a visit to tell them the details how he died. But before he can do this, the mobsters hold him and everyone else hostage and now Frank’s courage is tested and his heart is opened up by the beauty of his comrade’s widow.  While it would not make my top 100 list, the film is worth seeing, especially if you are on a visit to the Florida Keys.

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Movies, Drama

No Comments 14 March 2012

L.A. Confidential

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In a recent New Yorker article Adam Gopnik has provided a detailed portrait just how much more people are incarcerated in the United States compared to other countries. The murder rate in the US is higher than any other Western country. For this reason America is perfect background for a celebrity, crime, and corruption film in the heart of the film capital: LA. I had seen part of LA Confidential 7 years ago but for some reason I could not watch the end of the exceedingly well-crafted film-noir about the LAPD in the early 1950s. Treat yourself to this wonderful drama. 

 

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Movies, Drama

No Comments 8 February 2012

The Descendants

imageAlexander Payne is one of my favorite living directors.  I finally had a chance to see his new film, The Descendants. His early films all took place in his home state, Nebraska. In Sideways he ventured all the way to California. In the new film, Payne takes us to Hawaii, deploying the natural beauty of the island to a great effect. The Descendants is considerably darker and sadder than About Schmidt. But Payne uses the healing power of the beautiful Hawaiian landscape to tell another deep story about the human condition. This is art. Don’t miss it.

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Movies, Drama

No Comments 2 February 2012

Whale Story

image Anyone who feels particularly strong affection for animals, Dolphin Tale will love this film. The movie starts out unpromising but then manages to tell a new chapter the human-animal relationships. Even those who feel that it is pathetic that many people seem to value pets more than other human will find Dolphin Tale at heart-warming story.

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Movies, Drama

No Comments 6 January 2012

Our Idiot Brother

image If you think you have an idiot brother, watch this film and you will realize that you brother is actually pretty smart. Ned (Paul Rudd) is the brother of three intelligent, good looking and charming sisters and a pretty dumb mother.  Paul is not intelligent my any definition of the world, apparently inheriting most genes from his mother. There is something painful to watch someone who is stupid but not overtly handicapped as Forrest Gump. The pain becomes less throughout the film as Ned’s take on life—to trust everyone and to love unconditionally—proves to be winning strategy for happiness. If you are into romantic comedy but want to see something different and have 90 minutes to kill, this film will amuse you mildly. Most importantly you will think that your brother not stupid.

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Movies, Drama

No Comments 1 December 2011

Easy Rider

image Some have billed Easy Rider the mother of all road movies.  Until the end, it is very difficult to figure out where this journey is leading to and what the whole point of the film it. It starts out in the American West. Two bikers (Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper) set out to travel east after doing a drug deal in L A, which gives the cash to pay for it. The film covers beautiful landscape of the American Southwest and the hippy culture that started in the 1960s. (If you have never been to America, it would be a nice introduction to landscape.) On the journey the meet people from all walks of life.  But there seems no purpose to the journey. Only at the end it becomes clear that the film wants is a philosophical meditation on what freedom really is. I will not give away the surprising final scene.

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Movies, Drama

No Comments 13 November 2011

Crazy Beautiful

image There is a fine line between being a genius and being crazy,  so a popular saying goes. It is difficult to know whether Vincent Van Gogh, one of whose paintings is a key feature of my homepage design, became insane only later in life after contracting syphilis or whether the roots of his mental illness lie much earlier in his life and paved the way for his creative genius. Cleary, Van Gogh is an example of the proverb that opened this review.  At age 37 craziness fully took hold of him and he shot himself dead. When you take a look at his paintings you realize that, even if they depict something a bit crazy, they are beautiful. For the average mortal, however, craziness is generally not related to beauty but to ugliness and destruction. When we see someone act really crazy, we fear that the person will self-destruct sooner or later. This assumption is what the film Crazy Beautiful plays with.

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Movies, Drama

No Comments 30 October 2011

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