"The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"

"Playfulness is not necessarily the first characteristic one might expect from a motion picture about multi-generational serial murders, a motion picture that depicts torture both psychological and mental, humiliation of the helpless of all ages, anal rape, and other serious malfeasances. And yet there's a strong streak of filmmaking playfulness running all the way through The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, director David Fincher's extremely deft and captivating thriller..." Continued here. Thanks, as ever, for reading. 

Comments

[Fernando]

You're spoiling us, Glenn. This past day or so has just been a god-danged wealth of riches.

[Oliver_C]

Finally a film which breaks the David Fincher good-bad-good-bad rule?

[C.D.]

There is no such rule.

[Oliver_C]

You'll be saying the Curse of the Odd-Numbered Star Treks doesn't exist next.

[Not David Bordwell]

Thank God, I thought I was alone in not liking Seven. Or Se7en, whatever.

But I did like his Alien movie, for the record.

[lipranzer]

I sure as hell hope this is playing early enough Wednesday morning that I'll be able to see it before going to work later in the day (2pm).

[Account Deleted]

@Oliver C: Abrams effort definitely reinforced the odd-number Trek curse.

@Not David Bordwell: Fincher's Alien 3 is something of a minor masterpiece, especially when watched back to back with Jeunet's effort.

[bill]

The Curse of the Odd-Numbered Star Treks is disproven by the fact that STAR TREK IV is wretched. Nothing but awful "Wow, the past is crazy, what is this 'pizza pie' of which you speak?" jokes that just make me want to die. Well, and also there are whales.

[jbryant]

Yeah, STAR TREK IV didn't do much for me either.

I think the even/odd thing is for hardcore Trekkers only. I've never seen more than a couple of episodes of the original series, so I don't have any nostalgic investment in the franchise. Perhaps because of this, I've found even the odd-numbered films to be reasonably entertaining time-killers.

[edo]

You're saying "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" was bad? Setting aside that I think it's, uh, kind of great, I'm a little startled that anyone could go so far as to call it out and out bad. Same goes for "The Game" and "Panic Room", neither of which I think is great, but did very much enjoy.

"Alien 3", well, that was out of his hands, and still it turned out pretty compelling.

[The Siren]

Glenn! You didn't like Se7en?

I knew there was a reason we've bonded.

[Mr. Milich]

The MetaCritic linkage on your review is for the original Swedish version...

[Not David Bordwell]

OMG, film geek heaven is having Glenn Kenny and the Siren confirm your personal prejudices in the same post/thread.

Jeunet's Alien movie is such a travesty. What does it say about a studio when the director of the third entry in your franchise won't talk about the experience, and the writer of the fourth disavows it?

As long as we're on the subject, and with nowhere else to post this thought...

Does anyone else thing that Ridley Scott's PROMETHEUS project looks for all the world like a straight-up remake of Mario Bava's PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES, whose landing sequence he copied more or less shot-for-shot in ALIEN?

[Oliver_C]

Jeunet's Alien movie is fundamentally flawed for the same reason as Ang Lee's 'Hulk' (albeit approaching it from different directions): namely, that the science-fiction and comic-book genres are not interchangeable.

[randy]

How can I take any review serious from somone that didn't like s7ven?

[D]

The ORIGINAL Girl With The Dragon Tattoo series was so powerful for me that I refuse to see the REMAKE. There is no one whom can portray "Lisbeth" as well as Noomi Rapace did or "Mikael" as well as Michael Nyqvist" did. Their brilliant work made the entire series. Directors like Finch are in position to take risks with "ORIGINAL" scripts but don't? and worse, he remakes a great film 2 years after the original film was released?! shame on him. REMAKES are a lazy form of film making.

[jbryant]

Dismissing remakes out of hand is a lazy form of criticism. I haven't seen any of the films in question, but cinema history is chock full of excellent remakes.