Posts tagged found
“The Girl Who Played with Fire” Case of Sophomore Slump?
Jul 15th
“Case of Sophomore Slump?”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE is the second in a trilogy of films based on novels that have become a phenomenon in Sweden and Europe, and Hollywood is working on its own version of the films at this moment.
However, don’t wait for the Hollywood versions when you can enjoy the Swedish films and then compare and contrast later.
Also, see the first film in the trilogy, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, first, because the story of all three is chronological, and otherwise you might be unnecessarily confused by characters and events that are explained in the previous film.
This one begins with the anti-heroine and title character Lisbeth Salander entering a man’s apartment late at night while he is asleep and looking for the files that he has on her.
He is Nils Bjurman, and he is Lisbeth’s court-appointed guardian who has to submit a monthly report on how Lisbeth is doing. She awakens Bjurman, threatens him with his own gun, and tells him to send in only positive reports about her or else she will go public with a damaging DVD she has of the two of them together.
After Lisbeth leaves, however, Bjurman calls someone named Zala and tells Zala to kill Lisbeth and return the DVD to Bjurman.
Then two people who were just about to publish an investigative article about the sex trade in Sweden are found murdered, and Lisbeth is the prime suspect, but the police can’t find her.
Neither can Mikael Blomkvist, Lisbeth’s friend and collaborator from the first film, and as he tries to get in touch with her, he discovers more information about this mysterious woman, some of it quite disturbing.
There are plenty of characters, events, and locations to keep the audience guessing about what is going to happen next, but the ending has way too much unnecessary melodrama, especially since we all know that a third installment is coming in the story.
This one also leaves a lot of unanswered questions at the end, one of which is why do filmmakers put white subtitles over a white background, making them almost impossible to read?
THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE is well worth seeing, but not as good as the first film, and I am hoping that it is just another case of sophomore slump.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“The Ghost Writer” Full of Ominous Surprises
Mar 25th
“Full of Ominous Surprises”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE GHOST WRITER is a political thriller of the first order with a contemporary subject and characters designed to make the audience identify them with real people in international politics.
Roman Polanski received the award for best director at the 2010 Berlin Film Festival for this film, which is as good as-if not better than-his 1968 Rosemary’s Baby and the 1974 Chinatown.
The story begins with a ferryboat crossing from an island off Massachusetts to the mainland, but when it arrives, one automobile is left on the boat and no one claims it.
Then when a man’s body is found washed up on the shore of the island, the authorities determine it was either a suicide or an accident.
The man was the ghost writer of the memoirs of Adam Lang, a former prime minister of Great Britain who lives in a mansion on the island.
However, the publisher of the book has invested $10 million on the manuscript, and so another ghost writer is hired for $250,000 to finish the book and deliver it in a month.
The new ghost writer is played by Ewan McGregor, and when he expresses some concern about the death of the first writer, his agent says, “Accident, suicide, who cares? It was the book that killed him.”
McGregor arrives at the prime minister’s estate, which is under tight security, and is shown the manuscript, which cannot be removed or copied. After examining it, he proclaims that all the words are there, but just in the wrong order.
Then Lang himself shows up at the estate. He is played by Pierce Brosnan, and McGregor interviews him to learn some interesting details about his life, such as why he got into politics in the first place, especially since he had seemed to be more interested in acting while at college.
A media circus suddenly erupts when Lang is accused of handing over prisoners to the CIA for torture when he was prime minister, and now the publisher wants the finished manuscript in two weeks.
Not only that, but the ghost writer’s hotel room was searched while he was away, he suddenly encounters suspicious people, and he has to move onto the estate, where he is put in the first ghost writer’s room.
THE GHOST WRITER is full of ominous surprises.