Change Your Image
anneonymousone
Reviews
Män som hatar kvinnor (2009)
Blast! Now I'll have to read the books!
THIS ***WILL*** CONTAIN SPOILERS.
I saw this movie because I thought I would never read the books and because it received excellent reviews. Now I'm going to have to read the series. (No reluctant reader here; I'm complaining only because I have a huge summer reading list, and I prefer to read books before or instead of seeing the movies.)
It was only after the movie that I saw the translated title _Men Who Hate Women_. That surprised me, because towards the end, I kept thinking that the movie addresses what happens when good men (Mikael Blomkvist, Henrik Vanger) genuinely value women and are willing to take us---and the pain that has been inflicted on so many of us---seriously. Their job is not to redeem men as a group, as all men do not require redemption, but to remind us that not all men buy into the role of abuser, and that some take a stand against it. There are a variety of kinds of allies. But now I have to read the books to find out if Henrik Vanger ever took a public or private stand against his brothers' Nazi involvement.
At least one previous reviewer decried the graphic nature of the violence. The two scenes in which Lisbeth Salander is abused were difficult to sit through, partly because I am a survivor of violence against women, and partly because I kept wondering why the camera lingered on the details of such horror. When she attacks her attacker, it became clear to me that the camera is reporting, not exploiting. There was no joy for me in what some may see as revenge, and none for her, either. It is only through the use of his "language" of physical domination and the threat of financial abuse that Lisbeth can get free of him and, perhaps, make it clear to unbelievers that rape is more than the legalistic definition of sex without consent; rape is degrading, profoundly dehumanizing, and not sexy in the least.
It struck me as thought-provoking violence, rather than gratuitous. It also made me consider the worth of retribution. (I saw the American edit, which means, if these other reviews are to be trusted, that I do not know how Lisbeth was tattooed. That might add another layer of understanding the scarification she performs as a reminder to the man of what he has done, as a warning to anyone who might voluntarily sleep with him, and as a consolation to anyone else he may abuse that this man has abused others, and one fought back.)
My brain just now reeled at the realization that the scene in the cellar near the end (when Mikael Blomkvist was looking at the dates and pictures of the women who had been murdered) is a mirror to the scene where the carpenter's (?) widow shows Mikael the honeymoon photos.
I loved that there were few actors who might be thought of as "Hollywood hot." Granted, they are all of similar BMIs, but the camera lingers over real faces: those that are hiding, those that are pockmarked, those that have wrinkles. It is those faces that are perceived to be imperfect that are the most lovely. It is a character's intention and a viewer's attention that create genuine beauty. The trope of Lisbeth's hair as both armor and vulnerability got a little old for me.
Many reviewers here commented positively on the music. There were many times that it was too formulaic, and one scene where I thought Angelo Badalamenti needed to be listed in the credits and receive residuals for the movie's borrowing of pieces of "Laura Palmer's Theme."
The cinematography was outstanding. Many Americans will not see movies with subtitles (which is why I had so much room at the theater) and will not stand for silences, thinking them wasted time. These silences are necessary at times for viewers to process the information they have received, to make predictions, and to think about the experience of watching the movie itself. As a Bollywood fan, I was not aware of the length of the movie at all, and was surprised to read about the run time(s) in the comments.
A previous commenter was concerned with the movie's end portraying Lisbeth as using the money she stole from a thief as a tool to become like the abusers, and I had the same problem as I watched. This situation may be addressed differently over the course of the novels and/or movies, but without a different resolution, her abuse of her law guardian becomes a mere imitation, not a move towards justice. And the domestic terrorists will have won.
It is my hope that this movie does not follow me into my dreams.
House M.D.: Help Me (2010)
Guess who's walking into a collapsed building now?
Guess who's walking into a collapsed building now? I mean, besides Gregory House and Veronica Callahan of _Mercy_. (And what's up with two shows ending with the same sort of crisis requiring the same kind of on-the-spot surgery? Is there a mole in one of the writing staffs?) Let me get this straight: Lisa Cuddy, a doctor, walks into a room to talk to a disturbed addict who has been drinking at work and elsewhere to the point of being taken from a neighbor child's bed by police officers, she shows a little relief at the fact that he hasn't taken Vicodin and acts as if it's no big deal to her when she tells him it's his choice whether to start doing drugs again? She then starts making declarations.
He's been very open about his use of legal, liquid drugs, but unprescribed use of prescribed medication is supposed to be somehow different? What's SHE on? I like how House's barriers come down periodically and his sarcasm and stiff-arming of people are revealed as defense mechanisms to protect a vulnerable self. Within that, a cozy, cutesy, stereotypical short-term recovery and redemption arc is not the answer, but there has to be a better one than this.
Between the 1950s-esque psychiatric hospital and a remarkable lack of current understandings of addiction and recovery (Did we learn nothing from the 80s?), there's an odd time warp here. If this were all from House's perspective, that would make sense, but the omniscient narration performed by the camera doesn't know enough to work at an East Coast big-city hospital.
Sincerely, someone who stopped using drugs long before Nancy Reagan demanded it :^]
Flashforward: Future Shock (2010)
UGH! Who wrote this?
Most of the dialogue could have been written by a team of moderately literate ten-year-olds who had watched a lot of action movies. The plotting was all right, but with such a lousy script, most of the actors just called in their work. Monosyllabic tripe from stem to stern.
I can live with them using up two weeks' worth of the 1970s _Dr. Who_ special effects budget (which, in US money, is about $12.50), but did the show run out of money for the script? Were the writers so grief-stricken about possible cancellation that they were immobilized? This script was overloaded with tersely stereotypical macho posturing and banality. Keiko's mother's scene was verbally dull in English; I can't imagine that it would improve in Japanese.
One bit I liked was when Agent Vreede discovers he has left his keys in a threatened building. It is a wry moment of humor, which this episode is otherwise completely lacking.
What I have liked about this series is a focus on characters, none of whom are wholly good and few of which are wholly evil. The plot is secondary to the characters who experience the events, but fair plotting lost out to plodding dialogue in this episode.
Summer 2007 (2008)
A Tale of Two Movies
I was reluctant to even offer a score for this movie as one entity, because it reads more as two separate movies.
The first half shows frivolous, thoughtless, far-too-privileged med students who don't seem to know much about medicine or care much about the academic side of being a student. They were far too sophomoric to be in their last year of medical school. Within ten minutes I was wondering what I was doing by continuing to watch the movie.
The second half was far better. A previous viewer's reference to _Rang De Basanti_ (one of my five favorite movies ever) was apt. Once some social concerns were broached (far too late in the movie for me) I began making comparisons. Because I had never been encouraged to begin caring about any of the med students, by the time they went anywhere, it was hard for me to muster any concern over their changes. That also arrived too late.
It almost appears that the script was written as they were shooting the movie---in order. Maybe it was created by a committee of people who didn't speak to each other. Rewrites would have done this a lot of good.
As in RDB, the two main female characters, both med students here, served primarily as potential or actual love interests to important male characters, but in _Summer 2007_, they were far more one-dimensional characters. Mother T. has her moments, but these women were present in the film, for the most part, because they are women and because the presence of women changes men, not because these women are people of much substance or actual influence. They are the moons off which the genuine sources of light are reflected, and, having looked at so many American screens, I have seen that movie far too many times.
Numb3rs: And the Winner Is... (2010)
An unexpected error
In a show that deals with complex mathematics, it seems really weird (and a little sad) to me that the script used "light-years" as a measurement of time. One light-year is the amount of *distance* that light travels in a year. The reference to light-years was not about distance (although with a little tweaking, it could have been); it was clearly about time.
In places, the script dealt with some astronomical information that is beyond what is known by most amateurs. If this English teacher knows what a light-year is, shouldn't the writers, or someone on the cast, crew, or set?
House M.D.: Known Unknowns (2009)
A question
Now that we are in the post-Nancy Reagan era, and recovery from addiction is no longer so simplistic as "Just Say No," and is no longer a political ax to grind, could we just occasionally have something realistic about recovery on one of the smartest shows on TV? When Wilson joined House at the table in Wilson's hotel room, it appeared that all the little hotel mini-bar bottles of alcohol were empty, and Wilson said nothing. OK, House was primarily using Vicodin, but after a stint in rehab (where he may or may not have been drinking alcohol at a hospital function), no one is mentioning abstinence from all drugs, whether legal or illegal, whether solid or liquid or gas? _General Hospital_ did better than this in the early 1980s. Unless this is expressly confronted in future scripts, there's a big House-shaped boozing elephant in the room that the writers are ignoring, y'all.
House M.D.: Epic Fail (2009)
That's More Like It!
I really didn't like "Broken," but this was much better. One thing I appreciated about this episode is that, with House temporarily gone, the rest of the team picks up the slack, and all are pretty adept at slinging snark, each in her or his own way. Contrary to what another commenter wrote, I don't think it was 13's difficulty with Foreman's new role that caused problems; he was obviously uncomfortable wielding the scepter, and did not know when to set it down.
There's still not much talk about what House is doing for his recovery besides avoiding Vicodin (oh, yeah, and other things); did we learn nothing from the Nancy Reagan-Just Say No Thank You- Drug is a drug is a drug late 1980s? I am not interested in the show shilling for the rehab du jour, but a little bit of realism can't hurt, can it?
House M.D.: Broken (2009)
I kept waiting for him to wake up
The writers and House's health insurance should have done better. Perhaps the writers underwent a lobotomy.
Last season, they totally got me when it turned out that House's dalliance with Cuddy was a delusion. It was realistic and not improbable, and I'm not even on drugs. Maybe I would have overlooked the numerous flaws in "Broken" if I had been high; with few exceptions, it was unrealistic and improbable, and chock full of stereotypes and cheap short cuts.
The psych hospital based on _Cuckoo's Nest_ mixed with a dash of _Birdy_ might have worked if the place, the people, and the program had changed as House's perceptions cleared. They didn't. The other patients, though marginally talented, were a "rag-tag bunch of misfits" that stayed that way.
Was that champagne he was drinking at a hospital function? Well, maybe, because he never discussed anything about recovery from addiction, as if the pain in his leg and his use of his brain to distance himself from others were the only problems. And the hospital staff tacitly approved of a relationship between a recently-admitted patient and a married relative of another patient. No mention of after-care or recovery meetings, either. I guess a relapse would allow the lousy hospital set to be used again, and perhaps between now and then, the writers could visit an actual psychiatric hospital or talk with someone who has worked or stayed in one.
There were a few shining moments. The bit with the music box (starting with House's intuition about its role) was lovely, and a few scenes near the end of House shedding the wooden bits and becoming a real boy were pretty good. I'd say that of the entire show, about 15 minutes were both decent and realistic.
The symbolism in the last scene was far too heavy-handed. We're smarter and we deserve better.
Bommarillu (2006)
I adore this movie
I don't always have much use for "cute," as it often dribbles over into "cutesy," but this movie had almost the perfect amount of cute. Siddharth won my mind and sympathy in _Rang De Basanti_, one of the best movies ever made by anyone, anywhere. Here he made me giggle and relive the giddiness of new affection.
It took me a little while to warm up to Genelia D'Souza, but her character was so flawlessly, honestly bubbly that her enthusiasm became contagious.
The movie includes a plea for honoring traditions and taking them into account while also allowing for change. It urges balance and moderation on everyone's part.
My high school students read _Romeo and Juliet_. This year, I plan to show a brief clip of _Bommarillu_ to show the widespread knowledge of those characters and to make the point that arranged marriages are neither a thing of the past nor a way for parents to punish the young adults in their lives.
I'm glad I bought this movie (an original copy---no bootlegs for me!); I will watch it frequently.