The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo : American remake

Mikael Blomquist(Daniel Craig), a journalist just expensively convicted of slander takes a job to investigate a decades old murder case, taking on a hacker, Lisbeth Salender(Rooney Mara), the girl with the tat, as an assistant.

Whatever the American production team may like to say about this being a re-interpretation of the source novel thats rubbish. It's a cynical move by an American studio to bring in cash by REMAKING an already popular title in English. To claim re-interpretation you have to produce something significantly different from the former effort (reviewed previously). If anybody could find a different take, David Fincher would be a good bet. But no such luck. This is ostensibly the same film. A little more stylish in looks, a little less gripping in content. It just doesn't reach the claustrophobic tension of the Swedish version which is disappointing from the director of Fight Club and Seven.

His is a perfectly decent telling of he story, Craig and Mara both throwing in decent performances but I thought Noomi Rapace was better before and this really only stands to serve those who can't be bothered with sub-titles. 

The Artist

As the era of "Talkies" dawns on the age of cinema, a silent era star finds himself behind he times, out of work and down on his luck. It's a well worn tale with few surprises for the plot to spring.

What has grabbed peoples attention is it being a black and white silent movie itself. Its a bold move that has stunned audiences and I do mean stunned. From beginning to end of the showing I was in people were rapt, no rustling popcorn, no unwrapping of sweets as though to introduce unplanned noise would be to sully this work of art.

You suddenly became aware of how important the score is. How note perfect, capturing the prevailing mood and carrying you along with he characters. Without words every facial tic becomes important and an experience that is fundamentally the same "watching a movie" suddenly seems fresh and exhilerating by stepping back to something very old.

Essential.