Author: Mary Beth

On DVD and streaming on Netflix.

Much to my amusement, the movie’s English subtitles conspicuously neglect to translate the title card. That is, of course, because the book that English-speaking readers know as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was first published in Sweden as Män som hatar kvinnor—literally, Men Who Hate Women. Sure, American publishers have been known to replace quirky, distinctive non-English titles with dull, generic titles, but in this case, I think they did author Stieg Larsson a favor. Men Who Hate Women is a hilariously unsubtle and thus hilariously appropriate label for the grim, plodding work—or at least the Swedish film adaptation of it. (The inevitable American version is in production now.) I admit, I haven’t read the wildly successful book or its two sequels, but having seen the movie (which is, to my knowledge, scrupulously faithful to Larsson’s bestseller), I don’t feel any need to do so.

In theaters.

The echoes of the Bourne movies are impossible to miss. Preternaturally gifted assassin protagonist—check. Assassin goes rogue—check. Shadowy puppet-masters attempt to determine just what the titular assassin is up to—check. Assassin may have grudging allies among the puppet-masters—check. Highly choreographed on-location action scenes—check. Explosions, gun fights, and improbable leaps from one moving vehicle to another—check, check, check. Evelyn Salt might be more likely to use a maxipad to staunch blood flow from a bullet wound (which is actually kind of hilarious and awesome), but other than that, she and Jason Bourne are essentially the same character, right down to the chiseled physique, stoic demeanor, and ninja-like reflexes.

But despite the glaring similarities between Salt and Bournes Identity, Supremacy, and Ultimatum, Salt doesn’t begin to measure up to its predecessors. It’s not a problem of execution, though: Salt might be a knock-off, but it’s not a cheap knock-off. Angelina Jolie was born to play superhuman roles like this, and she’s backed up by a great supporting cast, including Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and August Diehl. Director Phillip Noyce is no Paul Greengrass, but he’s talented enough to keep the energy up and pull off a few rollickingly good sequences.

No, the problem with Salt is in the fundamentals, past the look-alike plots into the storytelling itself. The Bourne movies might not be cinéma vérité, but they take place in a recognizable contemporary world. Salt, by contrast, is utter nonsense—worse, dated nonsense, like someone awkwardly dolled up a forgotten McCarthy-era screenplay in modern-day garb and CGI. And why the hell would anyone want to do that?

In theaters.

The remorseless sense of detail is what first captures your attention. Set in the Missouri Ozarks, based on a novel by Daniel Woodrell, who calls that area home, Winter’s Bone inhabits a world of bare trees and stray dogs, lined faces and tumbledown shacks. The impoverished rural community where heroine Ree Dolly lives is not the kind of locale that usually turns up on movie screens, so at first, that setting is all you can see. But once you acclimate, the story’s mythic arc becomes visible—strong and tense and enormously compelling.

Woodrell’s work is sometimes described as “country noir” (the subtitle of one of his books is, in fact, “A Country Noir”), but that doesn’t seem quite right here. Tonally speaking, Winter’s Bone is less criminal underworld and more hellish Underworld. Like Orpheus, Ree plunges down, ignoring all advice against doing so, resolute in the way of one who believes she has no other choice, because she is on a mission to find someone lost. Ree’s quest is not romantic, not even particularly affectionate (at least not toward the man she seeks), but she holds to it doggedly. She is an epic hero in a painfully realistic world.

In theaters.

Sean wanted to see magic and explosions in addition to dark dreamscapes this past weekend, so we spent a lot of time at the movie theater. I wasn’t nearly as excited about The Sorcerer’s Apprentice as I was about Inception, but I can compromise. Besides, the preview reminded me a bit of Pirates of the Caribbean, for which I have perhaps too soft a spot, so I figured, what the hell. Broad, campy performance at the center; arch, knowing humor; grand but goofy special effects—I can be into that.

Unfortunately for me, I was too optimistic. Oh, sure, Nicolas Cage is game, giving his kooky all, and that’s fun enough, but the movie itself is shambling and lifeless. Six people share credit for the screenplay, and it shows. The movie is packed with tacked-on character motivations and poorly conceived backstory, and the previews give away all the best special effects, so even that bright spot has been aggressively dimmed. Pirates, I think, is dumb in a fun, clever, energetic way; Sorcerer is dumb in a dumb way, which isn’t much fun at all.

In theaters.

Is this how writer-director Christopher Nolan dreams? My own dreams are chaotic, flotsam-and-jetsam ordeals, so the systematic, clockwork dreams of Nolan’s Inception leave me puzzled, not so much because of their complexity but because of their weirdly antiseptic, rational nature. Like an android’s explanation of love, the movie is coolly fascinating, compelling in its own odd way, yet fundamentally flawed: It isn’t wrong, per se, but neither is it whole. I spent a couple days turning Nolan’s movie over in my mind, trying to figure out why it left me intrigued but utterly unmoved, and I finally concluded that it’s that seemingly alien quality that keeps Inception at a remove. Straightforward narratives have no place in dreams. By hewing to one, Inception makes itself a mere curiosity.

In theaters.

The story is remarkably straightforward, with barely half a dozen characters, no subplots to speak of, no meta-narratives or endless riffs on pop culture. The ostensibly villainous hero might disguise the movie’s nature, but underneath that, Despicable Me is retelling the simplest of fables: It is a tale about the power of love to make us better people.

Such fables can come across as naive. As one who once wrote an essay lambasting the message of the classic Beatles’ song “All You Need Is Love,” I know that well (and, for the record, I stand by that essay). But I think the slickly animated Despicable Me manages to avoid insufferable rosiness. The details in the story’s arc feel specific and true, and the protagonist’s incremental transformation feels earned in its own fairy-tale sort of way.