David Fincher's Girl With A Dragon Tattoo - 20th December 2011
What are they doing there I hear you cry?
Well they are there to bring you this generation's Silence of the Lambs and what I mean by that is an outrageous pulpy lot of old implausible and predictable nonsense tarted up with a good director and some amazing performances to convince you with its moody poster and bleak landscapes it's really a classic work of art.
Except that it isn't. It's Midsomer Murders with a graphic and disturbing rape scene. It's a 3hr nordic Inspector Morse. It's Poirot with tits.
That this received an R rating where the sight of Michael Fassbender's old chap in Shame has garnered an NC-17 is, quite frankly bewildering. While I have no intention with this piece on spoiling anything about the plot, I would say this is not a film for the sensitive.
I came out of the film an hour ago and as the credits rolled I loved it. I thought it to be perfectly made, very well acted, beautifully shot and a good story, simply told but with Fincher's usual subtle attention to detail. All the richness you required just tantalisingly out of reach. The trouble is, on the walk home I talked myself into seeing all of its flaws.
The subject matter, basically a hunt for a killer, is a well trodden path for Fincher and this does have some repetition from, what I consider to be his masterpiece, Zodiac, except with Daniel Craig leaning and posing in a straight-from-a-magazine-photo-shoot stylishly sparse Swedish cottage wearing the latest Banana Republic 'cosy thinking man's range'. It was, however, infinitely more watchable than that tedious fleck of arse beard picking that was the Social Network.
Although I haven't read the book, I get the feeling that most of the problems I have with the film stem from the book and if there's any criticism to throw at Fincher and the screenwriter it's that they followed the whole thing too slavishly and meticulously. So no surprise there then.
There were certain scenes in it that were staggeringly graphic and disturbing but actually, with hindsight, did little to inform you about the character in question (the titular girl with the named mythical creature doodle) beyond 'she's cleverer, more resourceful and disturbed than you thought isn't she and don't worry she'll be fine for money for the rest of the film' and I am sure there is a better way to inform me of all of that than what you did show me which was excessive and perverse seemingly just for the sake of it.
In fact the entire vague back story of our Girl with the Dragon Tattoo can be summoned up by the title of the film. We know what we know about her because of the simplistic yet attempting to be mysterious things we are told and shown.
She has a dragon tattoo, relevent no? dark and edgy? not in the slightest most 12 year olds probably have a tattoo at this point, sounds mysterious and possibly Asian for the cover of your novel? BINGO! Instant hit.
From all my experience of pierced, ever changing goth haired, bi-curious, blank eyed, pale skinned, mopey girls who wear t-shirts with the words fuck on them while carrying around $1500 Apple laptops in their army-surplus black rough-weave back packs is that they are excessively dull and uninteresting people who listen to dreary music and have predictable Daddy issues. I thought we'd all moved on but no, here comes this story and despite it being acted the hell out of in a very brave and gripping way by relative newcomer Rooney Mara, as a character she is a strutting cliche of what middle class white guys THINK is edgy and interesting but really she probably smells like a rusty tap water soaked bath once used for making meth and drowning rats.
It's just all a bit obvious as is the 'internet solves and knows everything' and 'computers are capable of everything in the blink of an eye' writing that passes for detective work. It's all pointless anyway anyone who knows anything will have spotted the villain in the first 10 minutes of meeting them.
The whole film is covert misdirection on Fincher's part to convince you that what you are watching is deep, twisty and turny, dark and edgy, adult and loaded with meaning when really it is a simple murder mystery in a stately home with a family full of secrets that you'll see every week you tune into Lewis (or pick your mopey detective of choice). Thinking back on it now and the overly graphic scenes really did exploit me and left me feeling cheated because they actually didn't inform the overall story at all. There were little to no consequences (for her) during the rest of the film at all.
It was fine, it was good, it never felt slow to me and the 3hrs passed ok.
There are slight pacing issues as it has the multiple ending syndrome that plagues over-reaching nonsense like this and a montage at the very end feels rushed and inartistically put together compared with the rest of the film but that was small potatoes when viewing it as a whole. When Fincher puts his mind to a set piece he can accomplish interesting things with editing, juxtaposition and tension like no other, he needs to move away from these shitty scripts and do something that matches his intelligent, diligent and detailed approach.
Also why are some people doing accents and others aren't? is this all explained in the second book?
It's got to be better than Bryan Singer taking on a big budget film of Jack and the fucking Beanstalk, right??
7 out of 10 predictable yet beautifully tossed salads
Veronica Mars Season One - 1st through 5th January 2011
Ok, so if I had to sum up Veronica Mars for a fan of TV Shows who had never seen it then I would say it is like Twin Peaks meets Buffy meets The OC with whip smart writing, plenty of nods to 50s film noir, quick fire pop culture quotes and a harder, darker and more violent edge than you'd expect.
It has the overall plot of a promiscuous, fun loving but damaged teenage girl's murder with pulp detective sensibilities like Peaks, the clever banter, school out-cast dynamic of Buffy and the soap opera, South California stylings of The OC (only it's better than the OC).
It's faults are few and far between, the main one being that the supporting cast of characters is never as well defined or overly interesting as you'd necessarily like but this is more than made up for by the cracking plots, frantic dialogue and some genuinely effecting moments.
While it does occasionally dip its toes into soap opera territory, it is never preachy, seldom soppy and unlike Buffy, Veronica is never annoyingly self righteous or overly whingy, which is a massive plus.
While the show was always interesting to watch and I can't think, off the top of my head, of any bad filler episodes that can plague other series, just occasionally the individual, week by week stories got a little throw away or convoluted but that's never the really point or the focus of this series because it's all about the murder of Veronica's best friend Lilly and the Chandleresque, twisty, turny plotting that they miraculously manage to sustain through 22 episodes.
What shocked and interested me the most about the show, in the end, was just how adult it was in places and very pleasingly so. It never shies away from violence or mature subjects such as rape, child abuse, incest, disease, alcohol and drug abuse and, of course, death but I never once felt I was being moralised to, in fact while the character of Veronica Mars definitely has her principles, she is not and the show is not moralistic in an over baring, finger wagging way. Where Buffy can fail frequently because of the heavy handed, fairly childish, self important soap boxing and a show like 24 always has to feature people who disapprove of, agonise over and chin stroke about the lead character's decisions, which, while I enjoy both shows, annoys me no end, Veronica Mars is almost a more realistic depiction of what it's like working your way through life, with themes of living with decisions and loyalty without the smug faced posturing.
Despite loving the writing, the noir throwbacks, the cameos and especially the central dynamic between Veronica and her father and while I would urge or suggest anyone who hasn't seen it to give it a go, I can't say I am a hardened fan just yet, let's see what the second and third seasons bring.
Still as a one off set of 22 episodes with one over-riding, well plotted, interesting storyline and a set of ok characters it was continually watchable, funny, engaging and exciting. Definitely a little gem in a sea of similarly set high-school shows.
8.5 out of 10 cookies
Points from the Wife 8 out of 10
Murder by Decree - 6th November 2010
You'd think with names like Christopher Plumber, James Mason, Donald Sutherland and John Gielgud that the studio making this picture would have sprung for a more convincing studio set, for example cobbled streets do not sound like creaky wooden floor boards! Also you'd think that they would've done a few re-writes because none of it really makes a lick of sense as it's going on (even if, as I did, you know the rough conspiracy theory they use as a basis of the mystery) and in the end they have to resort to a big denouement where Holmes tediously goes over the whole thing in the vain hope that the audience leave the cinema happy.
Seeing the name Bob Clark come up as I was watching this I knew it rang a bell and when I looked him up, it made sense as he has dabbled in everything from low-rent horror ("Children shouldn't play with dead things" and Black Christmas) to famous teenage sex comedies (Porkys and Porkys 2) all the way to family friendly nonsense (A Christmas Story and Baby Geniuses) and his films all share that haphazard, slightly cheap and rickety quality about them. Actually when I consider that this film falls between his horror career and his so-called comedic career it makes perfect sense as, despite a serious, sometimes spooky, sometimes gory and dark tone to the proceedings, just occasionally these oddball little scenes and lines crop up that have no place really in a film of this kind but lend the whole thing a sort of surreal and charming quality. For example there is a whole scene with Watson mumbling about a pea on his plate that had me in fits of laughter.
Check it out here : Sherlock Holmes - Murder By Decree Pea Scene
"Yes but, squashing a fellas pea..."
Don't you just love YouTube sometimes?
There are a couple of things that really bothered me about the whole thing, firstly the supernatural elements (the black eyes, Sutherland's 'psychic' character) were never explained and in Holmes novels traditionally, even when dealing with supposedly weird and other worldly things, they are always revealed to be a hoax and clever trickery in the end, even if the explanation is a little thin. Secondly, the script, specifically in the characterisation of Holmes, seems to portray him as a bit of cocky smug bastard with a vaguely ernest streak when it comes to nut cases and he never really seems to do any actual detecting. Although it's a cliche I always liked the scenes where Holmes would explain that a man had recently returned from India, owns a ginger pussy cat, likes billiards and had Wheaty Crunch for breakfast all because of the observation of some slightly reddish dirt on the cuff at the bottom of his trousers, if you take that out of the equation and, like this film sadly does, always have Holmes running off from Watson, why make him Sherlock Holmes at all?
So it wasn't as joyous or interesting a viewing as I had remembered the film being in my childhood, where any mention of Mr.Holmes would have me bouncing in a flurry of excitement and From Hell, apart from Heather Graham's unforgivable accent, is a better examination of the conspiracy theory in general but the movie does have its moments. The spooky horse and carriage through the mist scenes are particularly evocatively shot, the humour and stilted acting are fantastic, it was good to see some actual gore used a little and the over-all, boys own adventure nature of it all was fine. Also, Donald Sutherland has never been more ridiculous looking and therefor more perfect.
6 out of 10 plates of blasted peas
Points from The Wife 5 out of 10 plates of blasted squashed peas