New Movies

Do you have much time left after hockey these days? The movies have some ideas for you: one of the best mystery adaptations ever, a comic book hero who's not really super and a slam bam dust up at a funeral. Please notice also the two festivals of films about the environment.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO: Prepare to be amazed. This long and complex novel from Sweden has been turned into an absolutely engrossing movie. The 2 ½ hours glide by and even with the subtitles you hardly notice the time. You’re so wrapped up in the twists and turns and the revelations in this good old-style mystery in modern form. There’s even a dangerous spot midway when the story seems to turn upside down. No harm done; the film stays right on course. It’s very close to the best-selling book, a person who’s read it tells me, adding with much delight that the “girl”, Salander, the punkish computer hacker, is portrayed perfectly.

The Greek myths are back on the big screen as Sam Worthington battles Zeus and Hades, the original Olympians. Also new for you this week, there’s World War II, young love or adventure in a toybox.

An almost-forgotten all-girl rock band storms back in The Runaways, thanks to Kristen Stewart's recess from the Twilight films. A bickering ex-couple in The Bounty Hunter and a bloody pair of Repo Men feature in the other big titles. Let me suggest, though, Mid-August Lunch for a more relaxed and generous view of humanity.


THE RUNAWAYS: This is a pretty good film about the pioneering all-girl rock band - as far as it goes, which isn’t far enough. Where it succeeds is in showing how these California teens broke into the boys’ world of rock and roll and the toll it took on them. They got caught up in something they couldn’t handle because they were still far from grown up. Kristen Stewart, between Twilight films, is tough as the leader, Joan Jett, and Dakota Fanning is damaged and vulnerable as the original lead singer, Cherie Curie, who wrote the book this is based on.

Now that the Olympics are over, you may have more time for the movies. You're going to need lots of it to see the new ones now playing. There are eight of them and they include some very good ones.
 

ALICE IN WONDERLAND: You won’t recognize this new Alice. She’s now 13 years older and something of a feminist icon. She starts by rejecting an upper-class twit’s marriage proposal and ends as a world-trade visionary. (Yes. Check it out). In between she makes a return visit to “Underland” eventually picking up sword and armor to battle a dragon (actually the Jabberwock, imported from a poem and not previously found down this rabbit hole).Tim Burton’s vision of life down there is darker than we’re used to. The first point of entry is all grey like a graveyard and the unremarkable 3D also adds a dim shading to much of the film. Some of the characters, notably Tweedledum and Tweedledee, are creepy. And the story reaches for Narnia or Lord of the Rings adventure, thereby all but losing both the satire and sense of wonder and, at times, the momentum.