My To Watch list keeps getting longer and longer. And I can justify solitary trips to the cinema and spending hours in bed watching films because I work for a casting director – I need to do my homework. A tired body meant that last weekend was spent tucked up, rather than whizzing round London. Here’s what I caught up on:
The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo (2009)
The original Swedish version, that is. I know, I know: I am three years behind everyone else. And I haven’t even read the books either. I knew the Millennium franchise was popula, but I didn’t expect to be this impressed by the first film.
Lisbeth Salander (played to perfection by Noomi Rapace) is the geeky, gothy computer hacker who gets holed up in a tiny cottage in Sweden’s back and beyond with journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nqkvist) to solve the case of missing girl Harriet Vagner. The action unfolds in a manner more akin to a riveting TV drama – at two and a half hours they can afford to take their time.
Lisbeth is both beautiful and ugly with her boyish figure, moody tendancies, black clothes and septum piercing – an endlessly intriguing anti-heroine. Her and Mikael’s relationship and its development is one of the most original love stories that movies have offered us yet – a semi-autistic young woman getting it on with a scar-faced, soon approaching middle aged newspaper journalist. After seeing the first film one can rejoices at the fact that there awaits us two more in the series to get to know these two better.
I’ve always had a thing for Nordic-ness: Vikings, Cinnamon Buns and now their delicious crime drama (check out Wallander and The Killing if you haven’t already). And boy can they do it – cool, Nordic dispositions, cold climes and colder killers: a perfect crime drama combination.
Trolljegeren (2010)
Trolljegeren, a.k.a. Troll Hunter, should be an awful, awful film. A mockumentary, couched as supposedly genuine footage, about a group of students filming troll hunter, Hans, as he covertly goes about his job of finding and killing trolls in Norway’s fjords, forests and mountains. But, somehow, it isn’t. True, it won’t be remembered as one of Norway’s most prestigious cinematic feats, but it’s a damn sight better than the Blair Witch Project and the other jerky-camera films that followed it.
The film manages to create a sinister enough atmosphere and doesn’t feel the urge to go overboard with CGI-portrayal of the trolls. However absurd you may think a concept of a Troll Hunter is you want to keep watching. One is rewarded with a violent and unsettling ending – some of the best footage of the whole film.
It is also far more interesting than most documentaries out there. Scientific explanations are given for why trolls die upon exposure to UV light, the politics attached to keeping trolls under wraps is delved in to and there is also some beautiful Planet Earth style shots of Norway’s unique landscapes.
Fish Tank (2009)
I do love my council estate dramas. And this one beats ‘em all. Fish Tank – set on an East London estate with a few day trips to the relative countryside and more middle class housing estates – follows fifteen-year-old Mia’s emotional rollercoaster of a ride as her mum Joanne gets herself a scrumdidiliumptious new boyfriend, the ne’er-erring Michael Fassbender.
Fish Tank is powerful and pulls you straight in from the very first shrieking of the C-word by Mia in the film’s opening few seconds. The kids start smoking and drinking pre-puberty, but one doesn’t dismiss this as another movie about tearaways, peppered with gratuitous sex, drugs and Drum n Bass. Or in this case, old school rap.
Mia (Katie Jarvis) is very, very real. By the end we have come to know her from every angle and have her pony-tail, cute features and brown eyes forever etched in our memories. Jarvis does a phenomenal job and is definitely the star. Not many can say that when co-starring with Fassbender.
Fassbender plays the sexy Irish, good-with-kids rascal effortlessly. The man just seems to be born to play every character he takes on! What you think will be a tale of a young girl resenting her mother’s new partner, turns into something so much bolder and more shocking at every twist and turn… with some brilliant tunes throw in too. James Brown, Bobby Womack, Nas, Yah Rule, Shy FX, Gregory Isaacs and Robin S. The Fish Tank playlist is available on Spotify. Woopee!
Birdsong (2012)
The new BBC Sunday drama started just over a week ago. Much was being said about it on Twitter and at work. A quick glance at its cast and I had to see it: Eddie Redmayne, Joseph Mawle, Richard Madden, Thomas Turgoose, Matthew Goode… oh and, I guess, Clemence Poesy. It’s based on the 1993 novel by Sebastien Faulks about a love affair and trench warfare, with Redmayne as Lieutenant Wraysford and Poesy as the French woman of his affections.
While I would not go as far as to rename it Birdshit (as Giles Coren did), I was slightly disappointed. The long list of brilliant, homegrown actors above get fleeting moments – one doesn’t miss their talent, though – while the meat of the story is allocated to the pre-war love story. It is always a treat to watch Redmayne. But Wraysford’s love story with Poesy’s Isabelle is plain boring: handsome man meets beautiful married woman – bam.
Perhaps I have been too quick to pass judgment, after all I have only seen one episode, but Poesy’s waif-like character just irritates and makes the rest of the drama fall flat, especially as the war scenes are given slightly second status. I’m not sure whether I will watch the remaining episodes. If I do it shall be with as open a mind as possible, and to enjoy the fine acting talent we Brits can call ours.
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