True Grit

The Coen Brothers are making a western.  I want this to be in theaters immediately.

I've said this before, but casting Jeff Bridges in a role originally played by John Wayne is absolutely genius.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Apparently this weekend was all about watching David Fincher projects, present and future.



The original title of the book this is based on is "Men who hate Women" and given the subject matter, its incredibly apt.  I'm not really familiar with Swedish cinema, but the tone of this felt a lot like the original Insomnia with some pulpy crime tropes thrown in.  Though this film superficially is a crime thriller, underneath the labyrinthian murder plot, are a series of strong critiques of big business and misogyny in Swedish culture.  I think its worth seeing, but given how explicitly it deals with violence (physical and otherwise) against women, it makes for some really difficult viewing.

The Social Network

Really well made.  I didn't like it much.



There might be an interesting movie to be made about Facebook someday.  Its certainly emblematic enough of social and societal change in response to technology that its worthy of some amount of attention.  But to put it plainly, tremendous direction, acting, writing, editing, and scoring, just aren't enough to get me to care about the personal and professional conflicts between a bunch of elitist billionaires.

The film is worth seeing for how well it is executed technically.  The direction is interesting, the acting is strong, and the score is suitably moody.  Really, if you can get over the face that the central conflict of the film is amongst a bunch of explicitly elitist Harvard students, than this might be the film of the year.  I couldn't, so the film fell flat for me.