The Kids Are All Right

'The Kids Are All Right' is written, directed and I think most other things by Lisa Cholodenko. Who apparently writes from personal experience, so it’s kind of semi-biographical.

Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) are an 'old' married couple but, and the clue is in their abbreviated Christian names, a lesbian couple. They also each have a teenage child produced with the aid of the same anonymous sperm donor. The test tube version one assumes. In many ways it’s an ordinary family with the kids constantly embarrassed and annoyed by their parents.



The eldest, Joni (Mia Wasikowska), named after Joni Mitchell, is now eighteen and legally able to track down her biological father without her Mother’s permission. She isn’t that bothered but is convinced to do so by her younger brother (Josh Hutcherson). Though we don’t get given any background to why the kids feel differently about it and why her brother is so keen. The man they trace is an easygoing restaurateur and organic farmer called Paul (Mark Ruffalo).

The brother by the way is a fifteen year old called Laser... 'Cool name' says his new found Dad. Errr no. Well maybe for a dog. Then again, no not even for a dog.



Paul begins to regularly meet with the kids and is taken by surprise by the fact he starts to feel very paternal towards them. He seems to have a positive influence on them and it starts to change him a bit as a person.

As for the mums. Jules is intrigued by this man who is undeniably part of her kids make up, yet also a complete stranger and she agrees to design and construct a garden for him. While control freak Nic is suspicious and jealous of someone she sees as an interloper in their cosy family set up.

There is a side plot about Joni trying to discover herself sexually and about Laser, well there’s not much about Laser actually, other than him stopping a friend of his inexplicably peeing on a dog...

Nic and Jules’s relationship has obviously gone a bit stale and one night we get a comedic, well cringe inducing, scene where they attempt to spice things up by watching male gay porn complete with leather clad hunks. An odd choice, that they then have to attempt to explain, unconvincingly, to Joni when she overhears them.

The result is more old spice that hot ‘n’ spicy, so it's no wonder that Jules decides to get her next sperm donation the old fashioned way and throws herself into Paul's leather clad arms the next chance she gets. A turn of events that will no doubt annoy lesbians in their droves. Who knows if a girl can be turned that quickly and that easily but it’s a male fantasy that Paul can now cross off his things to do before I die list.



Consequently Jules spends more time getting athletic in Paul’s bedroom than digging his garden. Cue several gratuitous graphic love scenes, although we’d already had one earlier with Paul and his attractive female assistant. Jules will be pleased to know that he seemed to repeat the exact same repertoire in the exact same order with her.

One of the strongest moments of the film is when Nic has a scene with Paul at the dinner table, watched by the whole family, where she finally seems to come around to Paul's easy going charm, almost to the point of seduction. Jules looks mightily jealous and concerned. Then Nic discovers her partner’s hair in Paul’s bathroom and subsequently, when she snoops, in his bed... Hang on. A question if I may? Would you recognise your partner’s hair in the plug hole? I wouldn't. Long brown hair is long brown hair. You would have to be a mega suspicious person to jump to the same conclusion that Nic did and if your partner wasn’t even supposed to be into that gender, totally paranoid too.

This unsatisfactory discovery of their affair leads us to a very unsatisfactory ending. Well actually it’s a complete cop out. The film had created some interesting situations that were well worth exploring but then it all ended in such an illogical way.



Jules grovels to the rest of the family, apologizes for her actions and assures Nic that she’s still an All American lesbian despite showing more than a few traits of being a rampant bisexual. So Jules rejects Paul, despite the fact he confesses he’s fallen in love with her. As do the kids, the kids that Paul has now realised mean everything to him. Enabling Nic to triumphantly tell Paul to go and find his own family, when he comes to their house to make his own apology.

So in the end the film never goes anywhere and everyone appears to end up back where they started, resuming their previous lives as if nothing has happened. Which is something I really hate to see in films.

It also caught me off guard. I’d thought all the way through I was supposed to be rooting for Paul, who after all didn’t ask for any of this and it was the kids who initiated the contact with him, but all along it was a film about two lesbians staying together in the face of adversity.

It’s an entertaining film but one that fails, frustratingly, to fulfil its potential.

I imagine in the end both kids went on to maintain contact with Paul, Joni did takes his hat that he gave her to college with her, meanwhile Jules presumably left Nic, anything else just wouldn't be realistic.

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

It’s a Wonderful Life was originally released in 1946 and now has one of those tags as an ‘enduring classic’. It was nominated for five Academy Awards but won none in a year the board was swept by `The Best Years of Our Lives'.

George Bailey (James Stewart) is a man with big ideas. He wants to leave his home town of Bedford Falls, go to college, travel the world and make something of his life but it never happens for him. Life throws up situation after situation for George but each time he puts others and the well being of his town before himself. Which means that he ends up never leaving the town.



The bonus here should be that he is stalked, albeit laid back 1940’s style stalking, by the lovely Mary (Donna Reed). Frolicking naked in a bush, we know your game Mary. That was no accident was it? George proves to be a hard man to snare but Mary is a patient girl who waits around for the penny to drop and for George to realize that he loves her.



The film tells us all this in flashback because George has had enough of being a failure and is ready to end his miserable life by throwing himself off a bridge and would have done so if it hadn’t been for Angel Second Class Clarence (Henry Travers), a man yet to win his angel wings, who is sent to save him.

First though Clarence is given the story of George Bailey's life which is how we find out that as a child George saved his brother’s life, a brother who went on to be a war hero and he also persuaded his chemist boss Mr Gower that he had unwittingly prescribed poison to a child. Then when he was older and his father died he took on his father’s loans business. It was his father’s dream to build affordable houses despite the greedy Mr Potter's (Lionel Barrymore) influence on the town and the loan company being probably the only business that Potter doesn’t own. There follows many situation where George puts the town folk or his family before himself.

Then on Christmas Eve, George's absent-minded Uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell) misplaces a large sum of the business’s money. Potter finds the money and keeps it. George realizes that he will be held responsible and probably jailed, finally allowing Potter to take control of his company.



After arguing with his wife and family, George gets drunk at a local bar and comes to the conclusion that he should never have been born. Broken and suicidal he heads for the bridge, where Clarence’s grants him his wish. Clarence shows George what life would have been like had he never existed and what would have became of the people he knew. It’s a nightmarish vision of Pottersville, a town mired in sleaze where all George’s friends and family are either dead, ruined, or miserable. Most horrific of all Mary has become a librarian and a spinster.

The film appears to say that we are all inextricably linked to each other’s lives and we each play an important part in one another's existence. True but not necessarily to the good. George was one in a million. No one else in the town had the back bone to stand up to Potter and as for Potter. What would have been Clarence’s spiel had it been Potter on that bridge? Or would he have even bothered getting out of bed for that one. Erasing his existence would have had a positive effect on everyone or at least you would think.



Perhaps the true message is one of sacrifice for the greater good. George sees the influence he’s had on friends and family and finally realises just what a wonderful life he's really had. He is restored to the present, gets down off the bridge and goes home. Where everyone is dredging up their life savings to raise the money to save George. It’s all heart warming stuff. Even I was a bit touched.

Of course theft is theft and George would be jailed anyway, as Potter never does seem to get his comeuppance, but that just wouldn't be Christmas.

Rare Exports

Tonight we take in a Christmas film, although admittedly a slightly offbeat one, which is quite different from the usual cheesy Christmas fodder. How refreshing. Kind of.

‘Rare Exports’ is actually a prequel to two short films that the same director made a few years ago and I mean short. ‘Rare Exports Inc.’ is eight minutes long and ‘Rare Exports Inc: Official Safety Instructions’ is ten minutes long. The premise of these is that Santa isn't the nice rotund gentleman dressed in red that we've come to know but is actually something far more sinister.

A few days before Christmas, somewhere in Finland, some faceless corporation are excavating something from one of the mountains. Meanwhile in the valley below, the local residents are getting ready for the annual reindeer round up, only to discover they’re all dead. They blame the excavation team but when they go to confront them no one is there and they appear to have left in a hurry.



A young boy called Pietari reckons he has, with the aid of a bit of dedicated research, discovered what they were digging up. Santa. Buried there centuries ago because he was an evil guy who punished naughty children in horrible ways. Now they’ve dug him up and suddenly being naughty or nice becomes a life or death decision. When Pietari sees footprints on the roof outside his window, he assumes Santa is coming to get him.



The next day, Pietari and his father discover an old man who has fallen into their wolf trap. Pietari is convinced it’s the main man himself and eventually persuades his father, who together with some friends attempt to sell Santa back to the corporation that organised the excavation but they tell him it’s not Santa Claus but just a mere elf.



Then suddenly dozens of naked old men with long white beards appear out of the shadows, elves galore. The man from the corporation gets an axe in the back of the head and his helicopter pilot is dragged away and killed. They all run for cover into a nearby aircraft hanger but inside there is another surprise. The elves have been busy collecting all the naughty children. They’ve bagged them all up in potato sacks and taken them to meet Santa or rather the large ice cube with horns that is still being defrosted by dozens of heating appliances that the elves have pinched. A total 'elf and safety nightmare.



The smart kid, Pietari, of course, saves the day. After only a few ‘the grown-ups won’t listen to me’ moments, he comes up with a cunning plan and the film descends momentarily into action movie mode with a quite improbable situation of dozens of kids in potato sacks being airlifted to safety by helicopter. Then again, what’s probable about burying Santa under a mountain? It's just a shame we didn't get to see the evil Santa before they blew him up.



It’s a very original storyline, creepy in places but all done with a very dark sense of humour and the lad who plays Pietari is simply superb. The elves also deserve an honourable mention. Just how did they get all those old men to stand naked in the snow for hours on end? Ok, so may have been fake snow.

The daring rescue of the kids and the destruction of Santa just leaves them with one small problem. Well quite a large problem actually, 198 naked elves, who now without their master seem to have become quite docile. Can they domesticate them, make them like all the kids and perhaps become nice friendly Santas. Of course they can.

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest

So the late Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy comes to its conclusion with ‘The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest’ or to give it its Swedish title ‘Luftslottet Som Sprängdes’ which translates literally and badly as ‘The Air Castle That Was Blown Up’. It seems that in Swedish an ‘Air Castle’ is what we would call a ‘Pipe Dream’. With that info the title starts to make more sense.

The film picks up exactly from where the second one left off and because of that it’s kind of important to have seen that film. Preferably you need to have read the books because again there’s quite a lot of unexplained stuff going on.

Our heroine Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) has somehow survived being shot in the head, as well as in the hip, and is now in hospital. Just down the corridor is another patient, the man who tried to kill her, her father Alexander Zalachenko. He’s having an axe removed from his skull, which is where she left it. Amazingly neither of them has a police guard. So it’s not difficult for the clandestine group inside the secret police, which we now know as ‘The Section’, to attempt to assassinate them both. They manage with Zalachenko but by more chance than anything they fail to get to Salander.



The film then follows Salander's rehabilitation process and also the preparation for her impending trail where she will charged with attempted murder. The same powers that be, who locked her in a psychiatric institution at the age of twelve, are hell bent on returning her there.



Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) meanwhile is preparing a special issue of ‘Millennium’ magazine exposing the whole shady lot of them and in the process hoping to exonerate Salander.



What follows is a complex web of intricate plot lines and characters, which is why you need the background story. Many people muck in together to help her; her friendly doctor is on side, as is Blomkvist’s sister Annika Giannini, an attorney, who is to defend Lisbeth. Her fellow computer hacker Plague even rides in on his white horse to assist. The old men of ‘The Section’ however, have no boundaries and are prepared to do whatever is necessary to silence everyone, prevent exposure of their group and bury their secret forever.



Finally though Salander and Giannini have their moment in court, outsmarting the prosecution and turning the tables on their key witness Lisbeth’s former psychiatric doctor, Dr. Teleborian. That’s quite fun to watch.



Unlike part two, which was all action at the expense of a more meaningful plot, this film is the other way around and most of the action comes towards the end as Salander explores an old factory left to her in her father’s will. That said the suspense of the scene is diluted by knowing that her psychotic half brother is lurking there. The action with the nail gun doesn't disappoint though.

For a film that still sprawls itself over two and a half hours, it is still lacking in detail and I can’t imagine it makes much sense to the casual viewer. Obviously a lot of material had to be cut from each of the books, which are huge tombs, but they have made some odd calls about what to leave in and out. There are also superfluous additions. Scenes added of Neiderman and an unnecessary sub-plot concerning Millennium boss Erika Berger and a stalker that was altered from the book but still left needlessly in the film. It achieved nothing and if the minutes were so valuable, why waste them?

Both of the last two films had a badly cut feel about them and when I dig deeper I find out possibly the reason why. All three films were intended as a six part mini-series but were then cut down to a reasonable film length. With that information, it begins to make sense why it doesn't make sense. I look forward to seeing the DVD's of the full versions sometime.

Neither this film nor 'The Girl Who Played With Fire, were as compelling as ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ but it's not bad. Overall the series has been a little disappointing and for once I'm actually looking forward to seeing Hollywood’s take on these. Not all car chases I hope. However Hollywood’s Salander, Rooney Mara, has a lot to live up to. The films may have been a bit messy but Noomi Rapace has been outstanding throughout.

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows (Part One)

I booked tickets for Harry Potter 17 tonight or is it Harry Potter 7? I’m not sure, I lost track at number three. Apparently though this is the last book, so it’s the last film... though actually it’s not because they’re releasing another one next year. Confused.com? I am but that’s my usual state with Mr P. Still I’m willing to give this one a go, if only to complete (or, as it turns out, nearly complete the set).

The cinema is packed but no one complains about the endless stream of pilgrimages to the toilet, which seems higher than usual tonight. Is it boring some people? Or have they not read the books and have simply gone to Google 'Regulus Arcturus Black' and the like, on the sly? Some folk are less underhand and openly have Wikipedia open and running on their smartphone (that's me) in an effort to keep up with the plot.

The headmaster of Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore, is dead. On the surface that should not matter much to our now ex-students who have taken a year out, presumably at the taxpayers’ expense and are bumming their way round the UK. Yep, rather than go interrailing like normal teenagers, they have gone off on foot with a tent they found at the bottom of Hermione’s handbag.

Hermione is the first woman on earth ever to pull something useful out of her handbag. She also has a complete wardrobe in there, not only for herself but for Harry and Ron as well, presumably right down to their underwear. Though this isn’t confirmed. Of course the boys would have happily worn the same outfit throughout, so the clothes weren’t essential but the tent, yeah, that was useful. Welcome to Harry Potter - The Road Movie.

I’m getting ahead of myself though. Their trek has a purpose. Voldemort has installed a new regime at the Ministry of Magic, no coalitions there, this is an outright takeover and they’re painting Harry as a wizard with a price on his head, complete with stylish ‘wanted’ posters. When Bill Nighy tells you ‘these are dark times’, you better believe it.

Hermione waves her wand and erases herself from the photos on her parent’s mantelpiece. A move that isn’t just teenage vanity. She completely wipes herself from their memory, so that she can join Harry as he’s escorted from Privet Drive by his allies, dressed up as at least half a dozen decoy Harry Potters.



Yet they are met with an attack from the Death Eaters. Hagrid drives their air born motorcycle and sidecar the wrong way up the Dartford Tunnel in an attempt to lose them. Use the bridge Robbie it’s far quicker.

The safety of the Weasleys’ Burrow is achieved but at the cost of Mad-Eye Moody and that owl thing (Hedwig?) which bites the dust early doors. Then what do they do? Lie low? Nope. They hold a wedding there, which predictably also comes under attack. From which the three escape and set off on their camping trip across the English countryside in the absence of any form of coherent plan.

Harry’s mission is still to find and destroy the remaining horcruxes that contain fragments of Voldemort's soul. Harry accompanied by his trusty sidekicks infiltrate the Ministry of Magic to steal one of the horcruxes which is in the form of a locket. By the way, to gain entry to the ministry you have to flush yourself down the toilet. All grown up stuff this.

Having achieved this they find the locket to be indestructible and take turns in wearing it to dilute its powers, as whoever wears it experiences deeply negative thoughts.

At this point the film starts to feel very unlike a Harry Potter movie and a world away from the first film which was undoubtedly a kid’s film. The pace is slower in this film, perhaps too slow for some. They’re not veering off on some subplot every five minutes and making the whole thing feel cluttered. There’s also less time devoted to the special effects, though it has its moments. The music is also less intrusive, the more senior actors and actresses are kept mostly on the sidelines and there’s less overall action, which means less for the kids to enjoy I suppose. It's a more mature, much less cheesy and dare I even say grittier film. This is not your everyday blockbuster and it’s all the better for it.



There’s plenty of air in this film, space that could easily have been compressed to make the two parts into one but it is kind of good that they haven't and not just for their bank balances. By doing this they have succeeded in making a film that mere muggles like I can follow.

For the first time a Harry Potter film is character driven. It's a film about the friendship between its three principal figures, who, to be honest, all act their socks off. Any notion that they ditched the 3D version in case Daniel Radcliffe was exposed as a cardboard cut-out can be dispensed with.

The film takes a few risks, gets emotional and is at times as moody as its teenage cast. Full of long silences, meaningful glances and tension that you could cut with a blunt wand.



They all throw their toys out of the pram at one point or another of course. Ron reckons Hermione has fluttered her eyelids at Harry once too often and storms off in a huff. Bad call mate. Whilst he’s gone, left alone in the tent together, feeling all sad, lonely and disillusioned, the pair bond and cheer each other up, by dancing to Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds who are playing on the radio. For a moment Harry seems to contemplate renegotiating their ‘just good friends’ contract but if he did, they cut that bit out.

Still the pair of them pitch camp atop Malham Cove. Which is a nice romantic spot, when it isn’t raining or when there aren’t Death Eaters after you, just don’t tell the National Trust.



Though they didn't even pop down to the Buck Inn for an Old Peculiar and that's just not realistic but then again, if this is fantasy, perhaps it's not supposed to be.

Then comes the most ‘chilling’ moment of the whole film. I could actually see my partner shaking next to me as Harry strips off to dive through the ice to retrieve the sword of Gryffindor. Brrr. That must have been cold, particularly as the locket tried to drown him. Ron’s reappearance rescues him and then when it falls to Ron to finally destroy the locket with the sword, ‘poor’ Harry’s naked again. Though this time he’s being warmed by an equally naked Hermione. The locket is playing on Ron’s paranoia and throwing up a hallucination (unless someone filmed them on their mobile) of Harry enjoying a prolonged rally of tongue tennis with a topless Hermione, who’s been kinkily sprayed silver. That’s one for the Emma Watson aficionados.

If that was racy then the return of Dobby was, well, sad.



His last ever scene was possibly the most poignant ever performed by a CGI elf, and I ask is one allowed to get misty eyed over such matters? Hope so.

Then there was the excellent animated sequence about the origins of the Deathly Hallows, which was very clever and the ending... well I can't really spoil that for you because this ones to be continued.

Overall I didn't have great expectations but I was pleasantly surprised with the latest from Mr P. I might even be coerced into the next one.

Tamara Drewe

Tamara Drewe was originally a weekly comic strip serial by Posy Simmonds in The Guardian. It is supposedly, loosely based on Thomas Hardy's nineteenth century study of country life, ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ and ran for 110 episodes from September 2005 until October 2007. This was then released as a graphic novel in Nov 2007.



So take a dash of Thomas Hardy, add in Stephen Frears to direct it and then get Gemma Arterton to wear some really brief cut-off jeans and hey, you have an audience. Hmmm, I didn't expect to like this but at least I can check out Gemma’s rear.



After the death of her mother Tamara Drewe (Gemma Arterton), a young journalist working in London, returns to the Dorset village of her childhood, Ewedown. She intends renovate and sell her late mother's house and cash in on her inheritance.

The village, which is tranquil to the point of being in stupor, well that according to the two fifteen year old girls who inhabit the bus shelter there, Jody (Jessica Barden) and Casey (Charlotte Christie), has become a retreat for authors. A place where they can work on their stories in peace without the fear of anything exciting coming along to distract them. Novelist Nicholas Hardiment (Roger Allam) and wife Beth (Tasmin Greig) accommodate a bunk of these literary folk in their own home and what a desperately shallow and stereotypical lot they all are. Among these is an American called Glen (Bill Camp) who is struggling to get published with anything, let alone his current book on Thomas Hardy (naturally).

So when Tam’s Mini Cooper roars down the country lanes she shakes up everyone’s dull but happy (well apart from the teenagers) little world. She also turns a few heads; the once ugly duckling schoolgirl with a big nose is now a real stunner. Tam’s former boyfriend Andy Cobb (Luke Evans) isn’t impressed though, he’s not impressed with her nose job or her new glammed up image but then he once got his leg over the old version. He has a point. Any girl can buy herself a new nose but presumably that cute rear end is all her own work. To which all eyes are drawn as she climbs over a stile in nothing but a skimpy top and an even skimpier pair of cut-off jeans.



Still, Andy is happy to work on her house for her, whilst Tam starts work on a novel about herself. A touch vain perhaps but she appears to be exorcising ghosts as well. Tam’s father walked out on her and her mother as a child and she says she got the nose job to feel better about herself.



Whilst she’s ‘home’ she also continues her journalist work and heads off to a local music festival to interview one of the members of the band ‘Swipe’. Her interview with their drummer Ben Sargeant (Dominic Cooper) takes place in her kitchen, at first, but quickly moves upstairs to the bedroom.



He moves in along with his dog, which has a liking for chasing cows, and when he proposes marriage she accepts, even though he quickly grows bored with the countryside and longs to return to take Tam back to London with him.

This is bad news for one of the teenage girls. Jody is hopelessly in lust with Ben and will stop at nothing to keep him in Ewedale where it’s easier to fantasise about him. She lets herself into Tam’s house and starts interfering with her emails. The two girls seemingly hate ‘Plastic Fantastic’ as they have christened Tamara but are none the less obsessed with her.



‘Writers are just thieves and liars’ so says Nicholas Hardiment to his literary fan club and he should know. His wife entertains them for him whilst he’s out cheating on her with other women. When Tam’s relationship with Ben implodes, Nicholas, who the film gives the impression that Tam had a thing for when she was a teenager but got knocked back, moves in. He catches her at a low point and they embark on an unlikely affair. She’s obviously a very flawed girl is our Tam. Girl, you spent all that money on your nose just to be another notch on the rock star bedpost and then to shag a serial philander twice your age. Good call. Plastic surgery will get you everywhere...



As I said I didn't expect to like this but after a slow start, where the film seemed to wander around a bit wondering which plot line to follow, it settled down and became pleasantly entertaining. It’s clever in parts, funny in others. It’s not laugh out loud funny, which is fine with me, as I don't like comedies anyway and it’s actually surprisingly perceptive. Well up to the dreadful ending that is, which is one of those all too common neat and tidy ones, that’s ends up tarring the film with a stroke of the Rom Com brush.

Plus, I hate happy endings. At least, Nicolas got was coming to him but the graphic novel also killed off Jody. Dead in her bed clutching a can of computer cleaner apparently. My sort of ending but perhaps the 15 certificate couldn’t stomach that. Which means our underage stalker is there for the finale, as she finally gets close to her hero Ben. Then as she comforts him over the death of his dog, the film plays out with Swipe’s ‘Jailbait Jody’. The dark humour of which is probably lost on a lot of the audience who leave as soon as the credits start to roll.

So plastic surgery will get you everywhere... well, seemingly back where you started with the guy who didn’t mind the old you, the old nose... who basically always accepted you for what you are. Perhaps that’s the moral of the story.

The Girl Who Played With Fire

'The Girl Who Played with Fire', is the second instalment in the Millennium trilogy and the sequel to 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo', which was released earlier this year.

One year on from the conclusion of the first story, Mikael Blomkvist is back at work at Millennium magazine when a young journalist and his researcher girlfriend approach the magazine with a meticulously researched exposé of Eastern European sex traffickers which implicates several people in high office.

Meanwhile Lisbeth Salander is drifting around the globe, eventually returning to Sweden with a bang. When the journalist and his girlfriend working on the trafficking story are killed, Salander’s prints are on the gun. Then Lisbeth's hated guardian Nils Bjurman is shot dead as well. It’s not looking good for the dragon girl.



She is accused of murder and Blomkvist embarks on a quest to exonerate her but she’s not totally helpful at clearing her own name. No one can even find Salander, who hides out in her plush new apartment that no one, especially not the authorities know about.

Shadowy characters linked to Salander’s past go to her registered address but Salander has sublet the place to her friend and occasional lover the kickboxing Miriam Wu. They kidnap Wu and leave her in the hands of Ronald Niedermann, a thug with a bizarre medical condition called ‘congenital analgesia’ that means he feels no pain, oh and he’s built like a brick shithouse as well. He beats her up in the quest for information she does not have. It falls to a friend of Salander’s, a real life boxer called Paolo Roberto, played by the man himself, to rescue her in a bare knuckle fist fight with Niedermann.



Now, stop right there and just hang on a minute or two. All this excitement happens pretty quickly in the film, whereas it took weeks of perseverance with the book for me to get this far. I feel cheated already. Lots of background and character development have already been skipped. It’s also like Salander has immediately been presumed innocent, that’s not how it was. Out go the dynamics within the police force, and most of the murder investigation. Even the sex trafficking angle is only touched upon very lightly.

Ok, so it’s always difficult when converting a book to film to decide how much to leave out and what to focus on but I think they got this one wrong. The first film was a genuine whodunit, whereas this time they’ve removed the ‘who’ because it’s clear who ‘dunit’ almost from the start. This causes the film to lack substance and become far less interesting, even the mysterious ‘Zala’ suddenly does not seem that mysterious.

There’s no sustained tension. There can’t be when the film sped along at such a frightening brisk pace. So much so that Salander‘s escape from being buried alive was treated so flippantly it was almost comedic. It’s probably my own fault that I’m un-enthralled by the story because I’ve broken my golden rule of seeing the film of a book I’ve read.



That said, it is faithful to the book, but only as far as it goes and that's a synopsis of the main events from the book. There are so many elements that are hinted at but not explored. Everything else has been jettisoned to cram what’s left into two hours. In fact the film looks like it’s been cut. Why not take another half an hour and flesh it out.



Oddly the first film choose to discard Blomkvist’s relationship with Erika Berger, whereas this second film includes it but with little explanation. A change of director clearly brought a change of approach.

On the plus side, the action is riveting and it still a good film, highly entertaining with Noomi Rapace brilliant again as Salander.

Perhaps I should just read less.

The Killer Inside Me

‘The Killer Inside Me’ is an arty film noir set in 1950's Texas. Casey Affleck seems to reprise parts of his role as the coward Robert Ford from ‘The Assassination of Jesse James...’ even down to having the same surname. His character, Deputy Lou Ford, seems a polite well mannered sort of chap but oh, how appearances can be deceptive. When the son of one of the town's top business men is discovered in the arms of a prostitute (Jessica Alba), Ford is given the simple task of running her out of town.



When she won’t go easily and has the audacity to strike out at him, this arouses more than anger in him and his reaction, to return the blows with interest, certainly does plenty for her too. After they exchange increasingly forceful blows, they fall into bed.



Then despite Ford having the delectable Amy (Kate Hudson) as his girlfriend, they embark on an affair, a sadomasochistic affair at that. One where the Alba rear end gets a regular tanning and some more, as they switch from sex to violence and back at a moment’s notice, redefining ‘liking it rough’, as she unearths his inner psychopath.



Unfortunately some manner of the plot and particularly the occasionally mumbled dialogue makes it hard to follow at times. We gets flashbacks about what happened to him as a child but was he abused, or was he the abuser?



The pair of them team up to blackmail the business man, threatening to expose his son. Ford however double crosses her, which brings us to the real talking point of the film, when the violence turns nasty.



The scene where Alba gets beaten to pulp is probably not going to be everyone's cup of tea. Shocking? Yes. Gratuitous? Maybe. Necessary? Probably. I don’t think a Disney version would have worked.

Then there’s the way he does it, with his fists, while telling her how much he loves her. I love you, thump, I love you, thump thump. Nice. Not.

Then he shoots the business man's son and presses the gun into her hand, hoping to make the deaths appear to be a lovers' tiff or perhaps a prostitution transaction gone wrong. Yet quite how she got to land a prefect shot on him with a broken neck and only one eye... I’m not sure.

The murder pricks the attention of the District Attorney, who seems to have spotted the same glaring holes in the staged double murder. Yet he doesn’t seem to do anything about it. Meanwhile inside Ford’s twisted mind he doesn't seem to believe he`s a bad guy at all. He tries to build an alibi and to frame other people for the murders. However, when his plans don’t go quite as well as he hoped, he’s forced to commit more crimes to cover his trail, including using his boxing skills again, this time fatally on his girlfriend.



Director Michael Winterbottom tries to paint a picture of a seriously disturbed human being. Maybe, he doesn't go far enough because I don’t think he quite succeeds. It’s a fascinating but slightly meandering film that’s not helped by Affleck’s deliberately vague portrayal of Ford and the ending’s a bit weird too.

Still, I thoroughly enjoyed it but needed a stiff drink to get over it.

Four Lions

The film ‘Four Lions’ is about suicide bombers, which is hardly the most jolly of subject matters unless of course the terrorists are totally inept in achieving their aims and the whole thing descends into farce.

This film will be different things to different people. You could view this as an incredibly funny film and roll around the cinema in torrents of laughter, and a few people did, but anyone seeing this as a comedy is missing the point really. I don’t think that's what’s it’s about at all.

Yes, there are plenty of opportunities to laugh out loud such as when this little group of ‘terrorists’ are forced to transport their bomb making equipment by hand when their car breaks down, probably due to its dodgy ‘Jewish spark plugs’, but tellingly the majority of the cinema audience choose not to.

The humour gradually gets darker and you get a warning when a ‘suicide crow’ becomes a martyr for the cause but it still comes as a bit of shock when a member of the group trips over a sheep and blows himself up. Yes that’s funny, well kind of, but at that point you realise what it is that you would be laughing at and probably don’t. Although perhaps the odd guilty smile is allowed.



In this film Chris Morris has taken an interesting approach and has actually refused to have a go at terrorists through their race or religion and has instead shown us the type of people who could quite easily be lured into terrorism, whatever their race or religion. That they are predominately Asian doesn’t really matter and in fact one of them, Barry, is a white Englishman who has converted to Islam but possibly only because he quite fancies playing at being a terrorist. He turns out to be much more of zealot than the others.

The rest of the terrorist cell are hardly feared assassins. There’s the weak minded one, who would be easily lead by anyone; the stupid one, who hasn’t a clue what he is doing but is looking forward to the afterlife which he imagines is like a ride at Alton Towers and the brave one, who is actually all talk and bravado but clearly out of this depth.

Then there’s their leader, Omar, who we see at home with his loving wife and young son, both of whom support him in his aims. There are some quite bizarre scenes of the family unit. Like where he reads his son a bedtime story about 'Simba's Jihad' and where his wife talks him back in to martyrdom after he threatens to walk away from it all. She tells him he how ‘much more fun he was when he was trying to blow himself up’. That is if he can get the rest of the group to talk to him again, they’re all ignoring him on their chosen form of communication which is through their avatars on the Puffin Party website.

The film takes us through their many blunders as they prepare for and decide on a mission. They build bombs and even go to a training camp in Pakistan, from which they are sent home in disgrace.

It becomes clear early on that their mission is doomed to fail and this, in a way, makes you feel pity for them and concern, as to how much damage they are going to do to themselves and to other people in the act of failing. Despite the horror of what is probably going to happen, the film makers have blurred the edges between good and evil. They have encouraged you to form an emotional attachment with these guys because they are actually not monsters but just naive, misguided, and perhaps even likable people.



Their plan is to attack the London Marathon for which they will all don fancy dress costumes and of course there is a sad inevitability about it all. Where oddly, despite their supposed opposition to the ‘Church of McDonald's’ and western consumerism in general, it all in the end comes down to those very western inventions, mobile phones.



I thought it was an excellent film, entertaining, well written, thought provoking, very well performed and yes, funny.

Eva's Eye (1999)

‘Eva's Eye’ is in Norwegian, and is a real rarity. It’s based on a book by Karin Fossum, which is the only book she’s written that hasn’t been translated into English but it was made into a film back in 1999, not in English though naturally and it’s rarely screened.

Eva Magnus and her daughter are walking along the river’s edge when they discover a body floating in the water. Eva is urged by her Daughter to call the police and they rush to nearest phone box. Where Eva rings her father for a chat instead...

When the body is eventually discovered, Inspector Konrad Sejer takes up the case. He quickly links it to another unsolved murder, that of a woman killed in her bed, a woman who was doing a bit of freelancing prostitution and who was also a friend of Eva Magnus...

Things spiral on from there as Eva lies to cover up her story and we get lots of my favourite flashbacks. Sejer himself doesn’t exactly seem to do much, occasionally nonchalantly pointing out an inconsistency in her story but generally most of the clues seem to fall into his lap without him seemingly having to even lift an eyebrow. Nice work if you can get it.

The real star is obviously Kollberg, his dog, off whom he bounces ideas. It’s probably Kollberg who solved it, he was just too modest to mention it.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

This film is showing as part of Broadway’s Nordic Noir season which in turn is part of the ScreenLit festival.

There’s something immediately odd about the film version of ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ and that’s the translation of the title, which in Swedish is ‘Män som hatar kvinnor’ or ‘Men Who Hate Women’. This actually gives a bit of the story away, whereas the Anglicised version doesn’t.

The story itself is the first part of Stieg Larsson’s ‘Millennium Trilogy’. Larsson was unlucky enough to die of a heart attack before the publication of any of the books in his trilogy, so he never got to see how popular they would become nor see the films they would spawn.

The film is two and a half hours long, so it should be more concise and to the point than the rather long book. It opens with the delivery of a package from Hong Kong, a pressed flower in a frame. The recipient, Henrik Vanger, receives one every year and one thing I’ve never quite understood in the book or now in the film is why he assumes it is from his missing niece’s killer, and not from the niece herself, which would of course suggest she wasn’t dead after all. Anyhow, swiftly steeping over that plot hole.

Vanger has been trying to solve the mystery of the niece, Harriet, for forty years. That is how long she has been missing. Now he decides to employ an investigative reporter called Mikael Blomkvist to have one final crack at solving the mystery before the ageing Vanger’s life comes to a close. It has become an obsession with him and over the years he has gathered a lot of information relating to the case but this hasn’t taken him any closer to finding out what actually happened to her. The disappearance happened during a family reunion on their isolated island and at the same time the only bridge linking the island with the mainland was closed due to a road accident, so Vanger is convinced that a member of his own family is responsible.



Blomkvist is sort of at a loose end after recently losing a libel case over an article he wrote for ‘Millennium’ magazine, a magazine in which he is involved with. He has had to resign his post there, as well as being required to serve a three month jail term, so he takes up Vanger’s case. He quickly discovers that the Vanger family are a weird bunch and also one with Nazi connections.



Eventually Blomkvist forms an unlikely alliance with the much younger Lisbeth Salander. Salander is an intriguing individual, a multi-tattooed, multi-pierced, leather clad biker chick type with a troubled past, who hacked her way into Blomkvist’s computer. She’s a former psychiatric patient who now has her financial affairs managed by a guardian. Her guardian is a nasty piece of work and we get to know Salander through some horrendous scenes with him.



Once together, the investigation starts to make progress and they follow a complex set of clues that reveal a string of sadistic murders of women going back decades. They realise they are tracking at least one serial killer, if not, due to the time span of the crimes, two. Things then get more serious when someone takes a pot shot at Blomkvist whilst he is out running and then when he makes a visit to one of Mr. Vanger's brothers who he thinks is involved, he ends up with the old man pointing a rifle at him. However Martin, Harriet's brother, saves him but when Blomkvist spills the beans about what he’s discovered in his investigation, he ends up drugged and about to find out who really is behind it all.

Salander has to rush to his aid, saves him, chases the murderer and then for an encore supplies the vital information that solves the mystery of Harriet.



It’s a grisly tale of murder, set amongst the cold Swedish winter, lightened somewhat by an upbeat ending. I thought it was quite a good effort at getting the marathon text of the book down to just a few hours. Though there are several things that have been changed or airbrushed completely out of the story.

The other two films in the trilogy have already been released in Scandanavia and the first of which should be out here later this year. Needless to say, just like 'Let The Right One In', a Hollywood version is already in the pipeline. I wonder who’ll play Salander?

Hurt Locker

‘Hurt Locker’ opens with a failed bomb disposal attempt in Baghdad, during which the team’s leader and disposal expert gets killed. The story concerns his replacement, Sergeant Will James who at best can be described as a maverick. When James arrives, Bravo Company have thirty-nine days left to serve. It will be a long thirty-nine days for James’s team of Sanborn and Eldridge, who are simply happy just to keep their heads down and stay alive. Consequently they are shocked by James’s unnecessary risk tasking and rightly so.

I didn’t understand the opening scene. The bomb that kills his predecessor is triggered by a mobile phone but rather than shooting the guy with the phone, the other soldiers rather tamely shout him to ‘put down the phone’. This kind of sets the tone for the rest of the film. It’s all good exciting gritty stuff with a good dollop of suspense thrown in but it's also probably totally unrealistic.

Hurt Locker is not my usual sort of film but I felt I had to see it when it won lots of awards. It’s a decent film, well acted and well made but, as you watch it, it certainly doesn’t strike you as anything that would be likely to win any awards. It’s entertaining but at the time it didn’t really occur to me just how unbelievable it all was until I started writing a review of it.



For a start the bomb disposal team hardly seemed professional even before James arrives to disrupt them. They seem to wander around Iraq a bit like we used to around Nottingham as students in between lessons at Uni.

Then James arrives and things get even more reckless. He clearly gets an adrenaline rush from disarming IEDs (improvised explosive devices), regardless of the risk to his safety or that of others. Preferably he’d like to be peppered with sniper fire whist he’s doing it. Which may be fair enough, maybe, but would the army really let him get away with being so reckless? His attitude puts others at risk. Anyone behaving in that way would either be severely disciplined or severely dead.



He refuses to use the bomb disposal ‘robot’ and annoys his colleagues by removing his radio headset. At one stage when he encounters a car bomb he removes his protective suit as he looks for the trigger wire. Brave or just plain stupid?

Then when he encounters the dead body of what he thinks is a young Iraqi boy he had befriended, that has been turned into a body bomb, he goes off on one and attempts to find out who is responsible. In Baghdad, on his own, at night. Then he simply wanders back through the streets to the compound. A bit far fetched I would have thought. Then he enlists his team to help him pursue his personal quest and gets one of them shot in the leg.



We never quite get to the bottom of why he behaves like this. We just assume he’s a nutter. We do see him back at home with his family, visibly bored. Without the stimulation of war he is nothing. So at the finish we find him back in Iraq, ready for another year in the war zone.

So it's another gung-ho American war film then, realism suspended, but gets the best picture Oscar. Sorted.