David Fincher’s remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo stays close to the dark, brooding, wintery feel of the original (directed by Niels Arden Oplev, released in 2009), which only proves that they made this movie to please the lazy Americans that couldn’t sit through two hours of subtitles. The sub plots for each of the main characters are captivating, gritty, realistic; unfortunately the main plot is hokey and reeks of schlock. Can anyone tell me what, if any, significance did the hand sewn flowers that the missing girl sent the old man have in helping the investigation of the disappearance of said missing girl? Besides that initial show and tell of the framed flowers hanging on the wall, was it ever even mentioned again, or did I fall asleep during that part? Plus, the whole idea of the old man deciding that some disgraced journalist would figure out what happened to his missing daughter or granddaughter or whatever? Not buying it. You’d think the people making those decisions would hire the girl they used to dig up the information on the journalist first. Luckily the journalist figures this out for them. I suppose that’s more the fault of Stieg Larsson than anyone else.
I’ll tell you a Fincher movie that I hadn’t even heard of before a friend put me up on it, one that he co-directed with Spike Jones (Were The Wild Things Are, Being John Malkovich) and that is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time: The Fall. If you’re a fan of movies like The Never Ending Story or The Princess Bride, where the story within the story becomes the movie, then you’ll admire the technique and tricks that these directors use to braid the two stories together. The cinematography is just stunning. It falls into the category of aesthetically pleasing movies that have been coming out lately (The Tree of Life, I Melt With You, anything by Lars Von Trier) with beautiful contrasts in color, shape, size; the choreography of film at its finest. It’s about a stuntman in the early 1920’s who has been hospitalized and enjoys the company of a little Spanish girl with a broken arm to whom he tells the story within the story. The story is about a group of bandits (one of whom is Charles Darwin) and their plot to over throw their common nemesis. It is also what the stuntman uses as a distraction and a lure for the little girl to steal him morphine pills so he can kill himself. Sorry, did I just ruin the movie for you? The plot is obvious from the onset anyway, so I didn’t actually spoil anything just yet. Either way, you gotta see the movie just because the performance by the little girl is amazing. She is the cutest thing in the world, with her little arm stuck in a cast at 90 degree angle, and her little staccato accent, and her little chubby cheeks. This isn’t a movie made for little kids, but it sure brought the little kid out of me while watching it.