'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011)' review:

Having hated the Swedish film adaptations of Stieg Larsson's "Millennium Trilogy" - a series of unspeakably nasty TV movies - I wasn't looking forward to spending another 2 1/2 hours in that disturbing world courtesy of David Fincher's new English language version of 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo'. I never doubted Fincher's take would be slicker, more artful and, as a consequence, a more gripping experience than its European forbear, but I couldn't imagine taking any pleasure in the company of vengeful, anti-social computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (now played by Rooney Mara) and her boring investigative journalist friend Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig).

The 2009 film played like a boring sub-Agartha Christie detective story with bagfuls of added sadism, as we watch see our heroine subjected to every kind of injustice, and are afterwards expected to relish her "eye for an eye" take on brutal sexual violence. Yet this version at least understands that two rapes don't make a right.

Despite Fincher's reputation as a cold hearted bastard behind the movie camera, his version of the story (as scripted by Steven Zaillian) is a little more humane and, as a result, infinitely more enjoyable even if it retains all of the original's most unpalatable moments. It helps that this Lisbeth doesn't spend the entire film looking either indifferent or angry at the world, as Noomi Rapace's did. She is every bit as cold, sullen, bad-ass and capable (in a fight and as an ace investigator) when she needs to be, living in an equally gritty version of modern Sweden, but Mara brings out more of the character's vulnerability and fear, playing her as a tragic figure - a lifelong victim of violence at the hands of sadistic men.

With Mara's nuanced Salander even showing some affection and warmth, as well as contempt for manfolk, we can see her as more than just a leather clad angel of vengeance, every bit as "evil" as those she despises. She is a person who we feel for: whose triumphs we enjoy and whose relationships we can invest in. She is in fact a much more interesting character than the story she inhabits - a motorcycle riding punk with a photographic memory and a past she'd rather forget.

Whilst there are stomach turningly nasty sequences, mostly of a sexual nature, less emphasis is placed on violence in this version and, when Salander is transgressive, we relate that more to her troubled back-story and precarious mental health, instead of being encouraged to view her as an anti-hero and potential outlet for fantasies of "fuck you" nihilism. Mara enjoys good on-screen chemistry with Craig - who makes for an almost equally engaging Blomkvist - whilst the presence of Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgård, Joely Richardson and Steven Berkoff, in the ranks of the nefarious family of aristocratic former Nazis, gives the dialogue some heft.

The book's tired murder mystery storyline - with Blomkvist invited to a remote island by an old patriarch in order to investigate the 40 year-old disappearance of a young girl - retains some crippling structural problems: Blomkvist and Salander don't meet until halfway through, whilst three separate plot threads never really connect satisfactorily. Yet this rote whodunit benefits from the overall improvement in cast, atmosphere and some typically inventive directorial choices. Sound is especially key to its success, as aided by a score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (fresh from Fincher's 'The Social Network'), this is consistently tense where the other film was just boring.

'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' is out now in the UK, rated '18' by the BBFC.

'Moneyball' review:

"How can you not be romantic about baseball?" asks Brad Pitt's jaded team manager Billy Beane of himself, somewhere near the end of 'Capote' director Bennett Miller's engaging sporting biopic 'Moneyball'. Billy's relationship with the game is bitter-sweet, having given up a college scholarship on the advice of talent scouts only to come up short as a professional athlete, before moving upstairs into the frustrating and thankless world of sports administration. His love affair with the game may be in jeopardy but, as co-written by 'The West Wing' and 'The Social Network' scribe Aaron Sorkin, you suspect he'll come to bask in that romance again - and that we'll bask right along with him whether we care about the sport of not.

'Moneyball' is the intelligent, talky film you'd expect from Sorkin, who balances rapid-fire sporting jargon between top-end professionals with pithy, memorable one-liners. It's a drama with deft comic touches and populated by earnest, well-meaning characters for whom the proper running of a baseball team is a sacred vocation.

It begins with Beane's (relatively) modestly budgeted Oakland Athletics suffering a heartbreaking, but expected, end of season loss against the titanic force of the New York Yankees - a much better funded team, who compound the Athletics' misery by poaching their star player. Fed up with trying to compete against much wealthier teams using the same player recruitment strategy, Beane enlists the help of a Yale economics graduate played by Jonah Hill, who has come up with a whole new way of putting together a winning team based on a new set of principles founded in dry statistical analysis.

This philosophy sees the duo - who enjoy a surprising on-screen chemistry - recruit a roster of misfit, imperfect players long since overlooked by Major League scouts, our inherit love of the underdog being skilfully exploited to offset any reticence we might have at seeing the rules of this traditional game rewritten (with seasoned scouts being overruled by a young maths-whizz with no history in the game). All of baseball, including the team's taciturn head coach played by the always brilliant Philip Seymour Hoffman, think Billy has gone insane. The stakes therefore go beyond simple sport: if this bold new strategy doesn't succeed Billy will find himself out of a job - an unemployable laughing stock.

Pitt, who looks increasing like Robert Redford, is a force of understated charisma even as this serial loser (at baseball if not in life) who obsessively wants to compete but, at the end of one terrific sequence (that sees the Athletics break a hundred year old record), finds mere winning hollow. Billy doesn't just want his team to win: he wants his team to change the world. Anything less will plunge him into a depressive coma lessened only by the love of his precocious daughter (Kerris Dorsey).

If 'The Social Network' made computer coding and the founding of a social media website play as cinematic, then 'Moneyball' does the same for contract disputes, statistical analysis and the economics of sports management. We spend more time in the offices of the Athletics then we do on the field of play - though the film still has its share of lovably cliché fist-pumping sports movie moments.

'Moneyball' is rated '12A' by the BBFC and on limited release in the UK now.

José Padilha interview at The Telegraph

An interview I did with Brazilian director José Padilha, to coincide with the DVD release of his gritty, violent police thriller 'Elite Squad: The Enemy Within' (released December 26th), has gone up on The Daily Telegaph website. I mainly spoke to him about his plans for the upcoming 'RoboCop' remake, which sounds like it should be, at the very least, interesting. Read the interview here.

I'm pretty excited about this interview, from a personal point of view, because it's the first freelance thing I've written and then pitched to a newspaper subsequently. It's exciting because the story - having gone up on the site of a major paper - has been quoted elsewhere, meaning my work is also (kind of) up on NME and The Metro, which is quite fun!

'Arthur Christmas' review:

The second computer animated feature from beloved British stop motion specialists Aardman, 'Arthur Christmas' is a thoroughly enjoyable family movie which, in the tradition of festive films, sees an enthusiastic youngster try to save the holiday against all odds. Our Christmas-loving hero of the hour is the titular Arthur (voiced by James McAvoy) - the youngest son of the incumbent Santa (Jim Broadbent), himself the latest of a hereditary line of jolly, present-giving fat men dating back to the original Saint Nick.

Something of an overlooked, accident-prone outcast on the North Pole, Arthur customarily spends this time of year replying to children's letters in the shadow of his older brother Steve (Hugh Laurie): the brains behind the family business, groomed as their father's successor. But in Steve's increasingly soulless, mechanised version of Christmas - where presents are delivered via a spaceship manned by teams of high-tech elves - one child has been accidentally overlooked due to technical error. Arthur is horrified when told that Steve - who swears the evening has been a statistical success - won't be going back to deliver little Gwen's (Ramona Marquez) bicycle and takes it upon himself to ensure she wakes up to a gift from Santa, lest her fragile heart be broken.

This daring, covert mission involves pairing up with a former Santa - Arthur's cranky, old fashioned 136 year old grandfather (Bill Nighy) - to pilot a forgotten reindeer-powered sleigh and make the hazardous journey to the girl's Cornwall home before sunrise. But without the benefits of Sat Nav they end up rocketing across several continents facing danger and petty inconvenience along the way - evading everything from hungry African lions to British military fighter jets whilst careening between city streets and mountain ranges in set pieces of effective 3D spectacle.

Aside from the guileless, faultlessly good-natured Arthur, each member of the Christmas clan is written with a touching degree of subtly, with none overtly heroic or particularly villainous. The grandfather is the most fun, constantly coming out with opinions and anecdotes which are well observed, if exaggerated, versions of the sorts of (often offensive) things people of "the greatest generation" say. Meanwhile Broadbent gives his slightly rubbish Santa a touching air of vulnerability. The whole thing benefits from a cynicism free spirit of fun, with action scenes, earnest character development business and everything in between peppered with inspired visual gags, deftly written one-liners and delightfully daft concepts. The result is something that's surprisingly laugh out loud funny, as co-written by long-time Armando Iannucci collaborators Peter Baynham and director Sarah Smith.

'Arthur Christmas' is rated 'U' by the BBFC and is out now in the UK.

'Margaret' review:

When a completed film spends years gathering dust before a perfunctory release it's usually because the studio behind it is aware said film isn't any good. It's odd then that Kenneth Lonergan's 'Margaret', shot in 2006 and just released at the tail end of 2011, should be earning so many rave reviews from critics. Apparently its time in cinema purgatory was the result of a protracted legal clash between the writer-director and 20th Century Fox over the final cut, with Martin Scorsese and long-serving editor Thelma Schoonmaker eventually brought in to mediate between the two - producing a final cut which runs at two and a half hours. The result is one of the year's most emotionally affecting and thought-provoking dramas - even if its protagonist is comfortably one of the most infuriating screen creations of recent memory.

The drama exists principally in the "moral gymnasium" of Lisa Cohen, a high school student played by a fresh-faced Anna Paquin, who is the unwitting cause of a traffic accident which sees a woman (Allison Janney) killed by a speeding bus - the immediate aftermath of which is truly, utterly harrowing. Lonergan's sprawling follow-up to 2000's 'You Can Count On Me' is chiefly about taking responsibility for your actions - something Lisa spends about two hours and twenty minutes singularly failing to do, intruding on and causing trouble in several other people's lives in the process. Her mother (J. Smith-Cameron), a successful Broadway actress, bares the brunt of her contemptuous attitude and insensitivity most fully, though a mild-mannered English teacher (Matthew Broderick), a hunky "math" teacher (Matt Damon) and the friend's and family of the deceased also have to deal with her inexhaustible pouting, arguing and self-important drivel. And firmly in her cross-hairs is Mark Ruffalo as the bus driver who Lisa is determined to see punished for the accident in order to assuage her own guilt.

Lisa is a brilliantly written character. She's truly horrific, yet she isn't a caricature and Lonergan's treatment of her is infinitely humane. I even related to her a little: she's a perfectly observed example of youthful know-it-all-ness. She literally has an answer for everything, never listens to anybody and asserts half-formed, confused opinions about the world as if they are ironclad facts - often seeming foolish in the process (such as when she vents her frustration with an extremely helpful detective by irrelevantly chiding him about the history of racially motivated police brutality). She consistently chooses her friends with unfailing superficiality, being nasty to both the boy who earnestly likes her (John Gallagher, Jr.) and Broderick's affable teacher, whilst sucking up to the cool kid (Kieran Culkin) and Damon's square-jawed hunk. If that reads like a cliché, then it's one Lonergan survives because he writes all of these people equally nice, rather than creating any goodies and baddies. It's more important what Lisa projects onto these people, without consideration of their feelings, than who they actually are.

'Margaret' is a brilliantly conceived character study and never less than compelling as a look at life in the shadow of tragedy, even if it's theme rich and character packed to the point of distension (I haven't even mentioned the incongruity of Jean Reno as Colombian lothario Ramon). But conceived in the more immediate aftermath of 9/11, it's disquieting how relevant it remains to the political moment given its protracted post-production period. Set in New York, with heavy emphasis placed on the city, there are frequent heated exchanges about the rights and wrongs of American foreign policy between Lisa and a Syrian classmate. Here Lisa's refusal to at least share responsibility for the accident is presented as having moral equivalence to her nation's emotional, reactionary blindness towards the human cost of the "war on terror". The fact that this element of the film still registers (even a reference to a disliked "current President" survives the change in administrations) is a monument to how little has changed in the last half-decade.

'Margaret' is rated '15' by the BBFC and on a limited release in the UK now.

'We Have A Pope' review:

Nanni Moretti's new comedy opens on a grieving Vatican as throngs of Catholic mourners mass in the streets following the death of a pope. They are sombre but also excited because, inside the corridors of power, Cardinals from around the world have gathered to agree upon a new pontiff. After several inconclusive rounds of voting - tied between the bookmakers favourites - the assembled religious leaders turn to a surprise candidate: the humble, shell shocked Cardinal Melville (Michel Piccoli). Melville, succumbing to peer pressure, reluctantly assumes the mantle of pope, but before he can be introduced to the waiting world he suffers a massive anxiety attack, brought on by feelings of inadequacy, and runs away screaming. Desperate to find a quick solution to this crisis, the Vatican's press officer (Jerzy Stuhr) calls in the self-proclaimed world's best psychoanalyst (Moretti), an atheist.

'We Have A Pope' reads like a recipe for high concept comedy and possibly even a ballsy satire of the papacy. Yet those expecting a damning indictment of the institution will be disappointed. Moretti declines to make cracks at paedophile priests or the church's irresponsible position on contraception in Africa. However there is some implicit criticism of the church which comes in two flavours: the first of these is a recurring joke which sees Moretti mix the sacred with the mundane. Here the Cardinals are made to appear slightly ridiculous - if in an affectionate, gentle way - as they play volleyball in full regalia. Elsewhere they are made to behave like slightly naughty schoolchildren. They are not exactly portrayed reverently, though their religious conviction is never placed in doubt.

The second (and much more effective) way in which Moretti critiques the church is in the organisation's handling of Melville. This is effectively the story of a bewildered old man being bullied into spending his last few years sitting in a glass box being waved at. Forgoing a lot of easy laughs, Moretti treats Melville's sudden depressive episode with utmost compassion and, in the second half, tips the film towards drama rather than out-and-out farce. It's possible that a lot of the comedy is in delivery and doesn't carry over if (like me) you can't understand Italian, because Melville's scenes - as he goes AWOL and wanders around Rome - struck me as more sad than funny. Moretti's analyst character certainly is funny, but - beyond one initial (hilarious) scene as he's introduced - his story is quite separate from Pope Melville's belated odyssey of self-discovery.

'We Have A Pope' is a strange film that doesn't go where many will expect it to - or indeed want it to. It could be considered frustrating, toothless and too slight, and I can certainly see all of those criticisms in it. But if taken on its own terms I think it's quite a poignant and faultlessly humane look at how a frail, mentally ill person in such a position would struggle to find compassion or understanding amongst peers who deny the existence of depression - especially in one supposedly selected by God. In their one scene together, the analyst is not allowed to ask Melville any of the questions he might usually ask his patients. Discussions of childhood, repressed sexual desires, his mother and dreams are among those declared off limits by the pope's advisers, who insist the session takes place in the middle of a large room full of Cardinals. It is said you can feel all alone in a crowd of people. Moretti, almost without judgement, is asking us to imagine how it must feel to be pope.

'We Have A Pope' is out now in the UK, rated 'PG' by the BBFC.

'Las Acacias' review:

Pablo Giorgelli's little Argentine road movie 'Las Acacias' tells a simple story with minimal incident and even less dialogue. In it a long-distance lorry driver called Rubén (Germán de Silva) reluctantly drives a stranger, Jacinta (Hebe Duarte), and her baby girl all the way from Paraguay to Buenos Aires at the behest of his (unseen) boss. It's really just these two characters and an adorably smiley baby - probably the cutest on record - sitting in a lorry not talking to each other very much for 85 minutes. They make a couple of short stops, but otherwise the film is comprised of real-time snatches of this epic and awkward drive.

As with all road movies the journey is part metaphor, paralleling the development of the characters, though unlike most road movies there is little, if any, emphasis on landscapes. What we see of the overcast Argentine countryside is gleaned incidentally through the cabin window, with Giorgelli's camera more interested in - for want of a less pretentious turn of phrase - the landscape of the human face. The story takes a predictable arc and is far less compelling the talkier it becomes, as Rubén and Jacinta become more at ease in each other's company, but for the first half the emotional story is told with laudable economy, through glances and emphasis on small details.

For instance, it is notable that Rubén is uneasy when he finds he'll be driving a mother and child. Later Rubén swigs a bottle of water without any thought of offering it to his passengers, which gives us some indication of his reluctance to let them into his life. As he washes we see a large scar across his abdomen, emblematic of the emotional scars he carries - which we will come to understand as he opens up. His gestures become less misanthropic and he realises that his chosen life of isolation on the road is not necessarily where it's at. So it goes.

This reliance on visual metaphor might seem heavy-handed when read on the page but it's carried off with a pleasing degree of subtlety. This premise could probably have made a more compelling, not to mention tighter, twenty minute short without really losing anything other than the sense of time spent on the road. (As a case in point, the above trailer more or less contains all the key events in the narrative (and in order) in around 100 seconds.) Though in spite of this incredibly slight story, Giorgelli's film never really comes close to outstaying its welcome.

'Las Acacias' is out now in the UK and rated '12A' by the BBFC.