Puts you on the ledge.

Remember when Sam Worthington was the next big thing after AVATAR? Remember when he outshone Christian Bale in TERMINATOR SALVATION? In my reality, Bale’s fantastic recorded outburst – rendered to dance music – was due to his frustration over his hapless role as John Connor. He knew Worthington had the better part. (Bale Out – RevoLucian’s Christian Bale Remix!) The director of TERMINATOR SALVATION McG liked the remix and put a copy of it on his iPod, and Bale said he had heard the remix and thought “they did a good job”.

Anyhow, Worthington is back as “the man on a ledge.” A former cop, he escapes from prison during a day leave for his father’s funeral. He’s innocent. We quickly know he’s up to something when he doesn’t pay for his Manhattan hotel room with a credit card, but the concierge isn’t suspicious, so why should we be? But when he cleans off all his fingerprints from his room service breakfast, we know he’s got a plan.

Nick Cassidy (Worthington) climbs out on the ledge and becomes a New York City sensation. This being The Big Apple of Corporate Evil and Personal Depravity, a crowd quickly assembles demanding he jump. It beats waiting for the 51st Street Lexington Avenue train.

First on the scene is beefy, badly dressed veteran detective Jack Dougherty (Edward Burns, whose TV commercial for his new movie NEWLYWEDS is on more times than Progressive’s “Flo”. I chant his line: “How do you spell ‘vasectomy’?” all day long). Hey, it’s Jack’s day job, so he wants the guy to jump and stop clogging up Manhattan traffic.

Next to arrive is burned-out police negotiator/psychologist Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks). We know she’s burned-out because she sleeps late, takes aspirin when waking up, and is wearing a full face of makeup and has bed-sex tousled hair. It’s Lydia’s scene to command and her job to get the “jumper” down.

It takes a while for Lydia to find out who the “jumper” is since TV cameras poised on him do not seem to get a good picture of his face. He’s not recognizable as the man behind the diamond heist of the century? Seems Nick stole the largest diamond ever – a 44 carat 4C (cut, color, clarity, carat weight) stone owned by wealthy real estate titan David Englander (Ed Harris, appropriately aged but showing off the body of a 22 year old). Apparently crushed into a million little engagement rings, Englander’s insurance company paid off the claim. Nick believes the diamond is safely hidden in Englander’s impenetrable vault.

Lydia has a backstory that made her a pariah in the police community. A cop “jumped” on her watch. Now she is tasked with Jumper No. 2.

While Nick is causing mayhem on the ledge, his scrappy brother Joey (Jamie Bell) and girlfriend Angie (Genesis Rodriguez) are across the street shaming Ethan Hawke, Jason Bourne, and even old-timer James Bond. They laugh at MacGyver.

MacGyver: If I had some duct tape, I could fix that.

Ha! Joey and Angie are master criminals. Big-haired bombshell Angie’s background as a thief, bomb expert, and electrical genius were bred when she began her life of crime breaking into empty houses as a high-schooler on Staten Island. They squabble like teenagers hitchhiking to the prom. Sure Joey wants to help his bro, but was he the best lover Angie ever had?

Directed by Asger Leth, MAN ON A LEDGE puts you on the ledge. It’s “[your name here] on a ledge” and I kept having to look away every time Nick peered down at the crowd or twisted his body talking to Lydia. I would have slipped just because of the wind up there on the 52nd floor. For this reason alone, MAN ON A LEDGE delivers.

Looking for Leth’s and screenwriter Pablo F. Fenjves past credits, imdb.com has this highly interesting “Trivia” on Fenjves: “Lived next door to the house on 875 South Bundy Drive in Brentwood, where Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were murdered. On the evening of June 12, 1994, Fenjves was the first neighbor to hear Nicole’s dog barking at around 10:15 pm.”

Tense, high speed action but with terrible acting, especially Ribisi and J.K. Simmons.

Remember how terrific Mark Wahlberg was in THE DEPARTED and THE FIGHTER? In both, Wahlberg had strong directors. However, not here. You loved J.K. Simmons in BURN AFTER READING and JUNO. The only one who comes out of CONTRABAND with any dignity is my personal favorite – so far he can do no wrong – Ben Foster. Remember the homoerotic element Foster infused into 3:10 TO YUMA?

Without question, Giovanni Ribisi and Simmons go way overboard with their characters. No matter how many weird characters Ribisi plays (THE RUM DIARY, FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX), I keep seeing him desperately trying to erase his performance in THE OTHER SISTER.

They are all here working hard to sabotage Baltasar Kormákur’s CONTRABAND.

In THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER’S Actors Roundtable Discussion (December 2011), THR asks George Clooney, “Do you think you were bad and have become better?”

Clooney: I think scripts make people better. Direction makes people better. You can find a lot of projects where actors were tremendously good in one project, but you’ll see them not work necessarily well in others. I think scripts make a huge difference in that department.

Yes, a strong director certainly helps.

Alfred Hitchcock said: “The better the villain, the better the picture”.

Ribisi plays Tim Biggs, an almost homeless drug kingpin. Biggs is a feared, big money drug lord who lives in squalor. The only thing missing from Biggs is missing teeth. Ribisi gives Biggs a weird high-pitched, screechy Daffy Duck voice. He is almost upstaged by Simmons (The Captain) who keeps going in and out of a hybrid New Orleans accent.

Chris Farraday (Wahlberg) was the greatest smuggler there ever was. We know this because people keep introducing him that way. But what happened to all the money he earned from smuggling? He and his family live in a middle-class dump, his wife works as a hairdresser, and he is struggling with his contractor business. Farraday has a mantra. All he keeps saying to his wife Kate (Kate Beckinsale) – throughout the absurd heist – is “I love you”. After the tenth time, I said, “I get it. You love her.”

Chris’s dumb and scrappy brother-in-law Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) throws Brigg’s nearly million dollars of cocaine overboard when custom agents intercept the shipment. It falls to Chris to pay off Andy’s debt and save Kate and his two boys from being whacked by Biggs.

Chris gets his best friend and fellow former smuggler Sebastian (Ben Foster) to put together the usual “one last job”. Chris, Andy, and Danny (Lukas Haas) get crew jobs on a ship going to Panama. Guess who is onboard? All of Chris’s former crew. Chris, who is against drug smuggling on ethical grounds, plans on bringing back millions in counterfeit bills.

As we all know, in an action movie, time must be running out. Here, the clock ticks with only an hour stopover in Panama. Luckily, with no traffic on the streets of Panama, Chris runs into some problems with crazy international counterfeiter Gonzalo (Diego Luna). When Andy slips away with the cash for the phony bills, Gonzalo demands Chris and Danny slam into an armored truck he is going to rob. Meanwhile, back in New Orleans, there are plot twists, reversals and rug-pulls.

Written by Óskar Jónasson, Arnaldur Indrioason and Aaron Guzikowski, CONTRABAND is based on a 2008 Icelandic thriller which starred this film’s director, Baltasar Kormákur. Kormákur knows how to stage tension but he cannot direct his cast. He is talented, but with seasoned American actors, and with Wahlberg as a producer, you have to hold the reins tight.

“We’re still blaming mothers.” – Joyce Flint, Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN is riveting, frightening, and hard to forget. Tilda Swinton is emotionally raw. It is a breathtaking performance. The 2 boys who play Kevin as a toddler (Rock Duer) and as a 6-8 year old (Jasper Newell) are fantastic – where do they find these children?

Then there is Ezra Miller as Kevin as a teen. He is seductively terrifying.

Eva (Swinton) has been emotionally made empty. Her teen son Kevin went on a well-planned and executed high school killing rampage. Forced to still live in the community shattered by the massacre so she can visit Kevin in jail, she is a pariah.

The question of guilt – are the parents guilty when their children turn into serial killers? Should we blame them? Six months after the Columbine Massacre, polls showed 85 percent of Americans held the parents responsible for the shooters’ acts.

Just like Joyce Flint, Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother, Eva is condemned as a “Monster Maker”.

Eva leads a solitary life in a small run-down house. Like Joyce Flint after Dahmer’s arrest, no one will hire Eva. Finally she lands a job in a travel agency, but her co-workers refuse to even look at her. As Eva relives everything that happened, we go back through her horrifying ordeal to the beginning.

Eva was a free spirit travelling around the world in a hippie idealistic way. She married Franklin (John C. Reilly) and they moved into a New York City downtown loft. In a foreshadowing of what will come, having a child does not look to be a joyous event for Eva. We see her in the hospital room immediately after the birth. She is frozen. She is empty of feeling.

Eva cannot bond with her baby. He cries constantly. Eva can offer the baby no comfort. Kevin exhausts her with his crying.

“Mommy was happy before Kevin came along.”

It all seems to begin or end with Mother. “Serial murderers are frequently found to have unusual or unnatural relationships with their mothers,” notes Steven Egger in his book The Killers Among Us.

Eva and Franklin move to a large suburban house with Kevin. Eva stays home trying to teach the toddler, who refuses to speak.

Kevin does not wear pants, only a diaper. He refuses to be toilet trained as he becomes older. He delights in making his mother change his feces-soiled diapers. He is cruel and verbally abusive to Eva and destroys her “room of her own” that she has lovingly decorated. In a fury, she pushes him, injuring his arm. At the hospital, Kevin lies for his mother. Now, whenever he wants something, he strokes his arm. He’s got Eva guilt-ridden and frightened.

Kevin forms a loving bond with his father to spite his mother.

The Macdonald triad (also known as the triad of sociopathy), first identified by J.M. Macdonald in 1963, is a set of three behavioral characteristics that are associated with sociopathic behavior. The triad links animal cruelty (A disturbing red flag. Animals are often seen as “practice” for killing humans.), obsession with fire setting (Pyromania is often sexually stimulating. The dramatic destruction of property feeds the same perverse need to destroy another human), and finally, persistent bedwetting past the age of five leads to violent behaviors, particularly homicidal behavior. Bed Witting is the most intimate of these “triad” symptoms, and is less likely to be willfully divulged. By some estimates, 60% of multiple murderers wet their beds past adolescence.

Kenneth Bianchi, The Hillside Strangler, was a child loner, with many problems. One clinical report said that “the boy drips urine in his pants, doesn’t make friends very easily and has twitches. The other children make fun of him.”

Kevin is dangerous. So why in the world does Eva get pregnant again? I was afraid Kevin would drop his baby sister Celia (Ashley Gerasimovich) or harm her in some way.

When Kevin becomes a teen, his sport of choice, encouraged by his father, is archery. He has become a very good archer. It is possibly a risky sport that neither parent considers.

Eva and Franklin need to talk about Kevin. But they never do.

Kevin’s killing spree – as horrific as it is – is solely meant to destroy his mother’s life. Even though he is incarcerated, he is the winner. He left his mother alive intentionally so she would suffer.

Parents know their children. Children with problems want their parents to know. They hide nothing. Why should they?

Should we blame the parents? Yes, because they saw all the signs and looked the other way.

On Tuesday, April 20, 1999, at two Columbine High School senior students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12 students and 1 teacher. They also injured 21 other students directly, and three people were injured while attempting to escape. The pair then committed suicide. The Harris and Klebold families have not spoken publicly about what they did or didn’t know leading up to Columbine.

Oh really?

Dylan was depressed. His parents knew this, though not the extent of it. And it wasn’t because they weren’t around. Dylan’s father worked from home and saw his son every day. Wasn’t his father at all curious about what he was up to?

Eric was troubled and his parents were well aware of it. He broke into a van, he was found making pipe bombs and setting them off for fun — and they took steps to address this. He was enrolled in a program for juvenile offenders, he was taken to a psychiatrist and given both therapy and medication.

But they were not watching Eric closely enough, were they?

Swinton’s performance is outstanding. Her face expresses Eva’s abject misery. She has lost her body. Her clothes hang on her. She is numb as she drags herself through life, living only to see Kevin during visiting hours. They sit motionless across from each other.

Lynne Ramsay has delivered a very troubling movie. Ramsay’s skill as a director brings a real dread to the story. Her handling of “the young Kevins” is masterful. Ramsay and co-screenwriter Rory Stewart Kinnear adapted Lionel Shrivers 2003 novel.

Swinton’s stark gaunt appearance aids dramatically in expressing Eva’s state of mind. Swinton has given an Academy Award performance and clearly challenges the performances of Glenn Close in ALBERT NOBBS and Meryl Streep in THE IRON LADY.

Considering so many films use child actors, an Academy Award should honor one child under 8 years old for recognition.

Beginning March 15, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold made a series of videotapes specifically addressing the attack they planned, and expressing their reasons. Known as The Basement Tapes, since filmed in Eric’s basement bedroom, as of 2010 the tapes have never been released, or leaked, even in part.

In the farewell video Eric left for his parents, he quoted Shakespeare: “Good wombs have borne bad sons.”

Sex and incest. Michael Fassbinder electrifies. Unfairly an NC-17 movie.

It’s called SHAME. But what is shameful in this straightforward story?

Should Brandon Sullivan (Michael Fassbender) feel “shame” that he is so sexually charismatic that New York women want to have sex with him after meeting him for 10 minutes in a bar? A woman he is briefly introduced to at a bar offers him a ride home, only to willingly have sex with him minutes later in an alley.

How many New Yorkers would be ashamed of having one-night stands?

Isn’t texting considered “Dates 1 thru 3” these days?

Should Brandon feel “shame” because he masturbates in his office bathroom? Tell me guys have never done that.

Is it “shame” to masturbate at home to online porn? Not according to the millions of porn enthusiasts who troll the millions of porn sites online.

Should you feel “shame” if you hire prostitutes? Why not ask the thousands of “hobbyists” – the new, friendly word for “johns”? Escorts and strip clubs are currently very popular forms of entertainment.

Is it necessary to feel “shame” because you take advantage of the anonymous sex offered all over Manhattan?

Is “gay” sex shameful?

It is “shame” if you were forced to have sex with your sister or sexually abused by a parent and turn to a sibling for comfort through sexual intimacy?

That is what the film SHAME is about for me.

Brandon (and star Fassbender) has all the requisite sexual attractiveness to women perfected through evolution. His body – a relatively narrow waist, a V-shaped torso, and broad shoulders are characteristically indicative of good genes. He is tall, athletic, with powerful legs. He has a high-degree of facial symmetry indicating high testosterone during fetal growth (smart mating also does help here). A strong masculine nose, a wide forehead, high cheekbones and a strong jaw all make Brandon’s sexual conquests not conquests at all. He is also a man of few words – another good evolutionary trait. And Brandon is well-endowed.

So is Brandon a compulsive sexual addict or just damn lucky?

SHAME opens with Brandon getting up in the morning walking in front of the camera nude. This aggressive positioning of the camera puts the viewer in an intentional state of mind. We are intimidated by Brandon.

Brandon’s apartment is featureless. You cannot know anything about him by walking through his apartment. You cannot uncover his secret by chance. He wants it that way.

Sitting across from a young pretty woman on a train wordlessly dramatizes how Brandon communicates his sexual intent. It is a forceful, challenging scene.
Brandon’s answering machine is filled with messages from a woman pleading with him to see her. He keeps turning off the machine. She has called constantly. It is clear to us that this is one of his many one-night stands who keeps begging him to see her again. He is sick and tired of hearing from her.

Coming home from work one afternoon he finds a girl showering in his bathroom. Shocked, he demands to know why she is there. She stands there naked while they argue. He gave her the key, she says. Brandon throws her a towel she barely uses to cover herself with. The next morning he is making her breakfast. She is wearing a short, flimsy cover-up clearly showing her breasts. She is Sissy (Carey Mulligan). Brandon’s sister. She needs a place to stay. She reminds him they only have each other and Brandon has always taken care of her.

I don’t have a brother. Is this kind of nudity between male and female siblings usual?

Brandon allows Sissy, a nightclub “singer” to crash for a few days on his couch. She is messy and disrupts his highly organized sterile lifestyle. When he takes his married boss, David Foster (James Badge Dale) to hear Sissy sing, she immediately goes to bed with his boss in Brandon’s bed and then inappropriately calls David at work.

Sissy walks in on Brandon masturbating. He puts on a small towel and furiously jumps on top of her on the couch. The towel nearly comes off as they argue and he yells at her. He hates her and demands she leaves.

Yeah, brothers behave like that all the time with their sisters.

Brandon goes on a date with an attractive woman at work. When Marianne (Nicole Betharie) asks him about his relationships and commitments, he is uncomfortable. He does not understand monogamy and his longest relationship was – he lies – four months. She is judgmental, something Brandon has always protected himself from. Later when they are about to have sex, she is sexually dominant and it looks like Brandon is in for a romantic sexual encounter – but he cannot perform. He knows this cannot be a one-off sexual encounter.

He immediately hires a prostitute and has sex with her standing up in front of a wall of glass windows.

(According to IMDb: The sex scene with Michael Fassbender and a woman on the window was actually filmed above a busy street during the day. Spectators watched while the two actors, in the nude, smiled and waved at them between takes.)

Unlike Patrick Bateman’s (AMERICAN PSYCHO) rodeo-riding threesome orgasm, Brandon’s threesome is hungry lust on his part and, when finally climaxing, he is clearly in orgiastic pain. He has to break through something painful to achieve orgasm.

Sissy is no walk in the park. She has numerous scars on her arms from past suicide attempts. When David asks about the scars, she says, “Oh just…when I was a kid I was bored.”

Whatever pain they share, Sissy is more up front about it. She has accepted the trauma and has the marks to prove she survived it.

I read an interview with SHAME’s director Steve McQueen who states categorically that SHAME is about sexual addiction. He interviewed many sex addicts and did tons of research.

Well, if McQueen, who I think is a sensational, absolutely riveting and bold director, really wanted to make a film about sex addicts, he would not have chosen Michael Fassbender as his star.

This is McQueen’s and Fassbender’s second collaboration and it is a film that cannot be dismissed. Fassbender surrenders to McQueen and submerges himself in his character.

Fincher’s Twilight-like Hollywood heroine is shy and moody. Not the venal, alternate lifestyle lesbian-punk hacker from the beloved book. Anybody else think Mara’s sex scenes with Craig were done by a body double?

No one in Hollywood really cares what the people who saw the original Swedish language film think of the remake. And why should they? The Hollywood studio remake is for the people who read the book and never pay to see a foreign film.

Fifteen million copies of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo were sold in the U.S. alone. There are 62 million copies of Stieg Larsson’s best-selling Millennium crime novels.

Niels Arden Oplev’s original film, released in 2009, was the first of three films and remains the all-time box-office smash in Scandinavia, taking over $16 million there. It was released a year later in the UK and US, and performed adequately, grossing £1.5 million and $10.1 million respectively. The budget of the original was $13 million. David Fincher’s remake had a budget of $100 million.

Cutting to the chase, how does the remake size up to the original that starred Noomi Rapace as hacker/investigator Lisbeth Salander and Michael Nyqvist as Mikael Blomkvist?

Well, Daniel Craig – who continues to askew being good-looking and downplaying his sex appeal in films (it must be in his James Bond contract) – is certainly a more visually interesting Blomkvist. But Rooney Mara as Lisbeth?

Fincher has created a franchise star, but what happened to the Lisbeth Salander all those fifteen million U.S. fans made a female icon?

Fincher faithfully follows Oplev’s version scene for scene – until he and his screenwriter clean up and streamline the ending slightly. A quick summary of the plot: Mikael Blomkvist (Craig), co-founder of an investigative magazine, has been found guilty of libeling a top industrialist, Hans-Erik Wennerström (Ulf Friberg). While awaiting incarceration, aging tycoon Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) offers Blomkvist a job writing the Vanger family history.

Vanger really wants Blomkvist to investigate the disappearance of his beloved 16-year-old grandniece 40 years ago. Vanger, who believes her killer has been taunting him every year, is more than obsessed, he is creepily obsessed.

In return, Vanger will give Blomkvist financial backing desperately needed by Millennium magazine and deliver the real incriminating evidence of Wennerström’s illegal activities.

Blomkvist has been vetted by a brilliant young sexual anarchist/punk private investigator named Lisbeth Salander (Mara). Surprised that his financial and private life has been so thoroughly and skillfully hacked, he meets with Lisbeth and asks her to help him find a serial killer preying on young women.

A ward of the state and forced into a cruel S&M relationship with her new guardian Bjurman (Yorick van Wageningen), Lisbeth’s money and freedom are in the hands of this vile predator. Forcing Lisbeth to perform oral sex to get money for food from him, he then anally rapes her.

You would think Lisbeth, whose definitive look clearly identifies her personality, frequents gay bars, and prefers sex with women, would loathe sex with men. But then she meets Blomkvist.

Fincher delivers a Hollywood love story. Lisbeth’s look changes. She becomes softer, less introverted, and her severe haircut miraculously undergoes a transformation.

See what love can do!

Noomi Rapace had a very hard edge to her, which served the character well. She was always angry, bitter, resentful and wary. Mara is just shy and withdrawn. It is Fincher’s mistake, not Mara’s.

Mara is absolutely riveting as Fincher’s creation, but she is not Larsson’s creation.

Rapace was overlooked by Hollywood for the remake. Hollywood likes to create their own stars they can manage – after all, there are two more in The Millennium Trilogy, maybe even a fourth, out there. Larsson, who died in 2004 of a heart attack at age 50, had laid an outline of a total of ten books in the series.

(Eva Gabrielsson, Stieg’s life companion for 30 years, could finish the fourth book, as she was deeply involved in the writing while Stieg was still alive. Following Larsson’s death, all of his assets went to his father and brother, leaving Gabrielsson with no claim to any of the author’s inheritance, resulting in an ongoing ugly legal battle.)

Since Fincher, Mara and Craig have signed on for the Trilogy, what will they do with the third one where Lisbeth spends the entire book in a hospital bed?

David Fincher has a tough act to follow. Not only is he having to adapt source material that’s already had a critically-acclaimed film version, he’s also following up on last year’s extraordinary THE SOCIAL NETWORK. Fincher and co. have handled the build-up to its release perfectly, with inventive trailers touting DRAGON TATTOO as ‘The Feel Bad Movie of Christmas’, cryptic websites containing hidden footage, and a controversial poster.

DRAGON TATTOO’s story is a deconstruction of the ‘locked room mystery’ Agatha Christie made famous, with an overarching commentary on Sweden’s sociopolitical climate, and (even though it’s set in 2003, the time of the novel’s publication) it’s troubled history before and during World War II. In it, a wealthy CEO, Henrik Vagner (Christopher Plummer), hires a disgraced journalist by the name of Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) to investigate the decades-past disappearance and possible murder of his sister, Harriet Vagner. Along the way, Blomkvist teams up with introverted hacker Lisbeth Salander, who assists in his research as the investigation turns up a connection between Harriet’s vanishment, and a series of bizarre and brutal serial killings occurring around the time of the incident.

The novel is far from perfect. The first third of it in particular is plagued by a frustratingly slow pace, with little happening in overly-detailed sections that seem to go on forever. However, once all the characters are in place, it leads to an incredibly compelling mystery that lends itself well to a film adaptation.

David Fincher and his screenwriter, Steve Zaillian decide that the way to fix the novel’s pacing problems is to proceed at such an accelerated rate that they don’t give the audience any breathing room. Although this approach helps in making the story more engaging at points, the film is likely to be very confusing to those who have never read the novel or seen the Swedish film. Even at such a fast clip, Fincher creates a tense and brooding atmosphere, with echoes of his earlier film, SEVEN. There’s plenty of suspense and incredible detail.

As you can see from the cast list on the right, there’s a roster of great performers to be found; but the most incredible of all is Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander. Through a rigorous exercise regimen, she looks exactly as you’d imagine Larsson’s character to look; short, pale, and somewhat androgynous. Her speech pattern is scarily close to the odd, clipped, somewhat-monotone verbiage of someone with a social anxiety or developmental disorder. You can tell that this is an actress who really dove headfirst into the role she was given.

Daniel Craig is, as always, an engaging lead as Blomkvist. Taking more from his work in LAYER CAKE as a cautious but exacting career criminal, he builds the character well as a level-headed guy caught up in something much bigger than himself.

David Fincher has been given due praise in his past work for his marvelous technical prowess, and this is no exception. From his beginnings as a commercial and music video director, there’s always been a masterful cinematographer by his side. This is his third collaboration with Jeff Cronenweth (son of legendary cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth), who expertly milks the loneliness and expansiveness from even the smallest and darkest of locations.

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor and fellow musician Atticus Ross, fresh off their Oscar-winning score for THE SOCIAL NETWORK have put together another engaging musical score. Composing close to three hours of music for DRAGON TATTOO, the duo furthers the eerie atmosphere. Karen O even sings a cover of the classic Led Zepplin “Immigrant Song” over the incredible opening title sequence, with backing from Reznor and Ross.

Despite all its technical and acting prowess, DRAGON TATTOO is a bit of a letdown due to its rushed storytelling and wonky pace. Nonetheless, it’s worth a look for its strengths; brilliant technical work, an amazing musical score, and memorable performances.

A comedy? Lazy, tedious Polanski. It’s all about putting on and taking off coats. Moviegoers will not rush out to the theater after seeing this.

Why did 78 year old Roman Polanski want to do a film adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s play, God of Carnage? It is lazy filmmaking. After all, there is only one set – a gorgeous Brooklyn apartment – and 4 actors in the same clothes bitching about their lives.

Perhaps Polanski related to the play about children behaving badly and parents getting all upset and moralistic over it.

As soon as my husband and I meet a new couple, we immediately get past pleasantries and get drunk. We then dive into the state of our marriage, our failures, our children’s psychological shortcomings, and our sex life. Finally, we cut to the chase and suggest wife-swapping.

Is CARNAGE a comedy? I did not laugh once.

Reza’s play was a big hit in France and England. On Broadway, it garnered Tony Award nominations for all four actors in the original cast: Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, James Gandolfini, and Marcia Gay Harden. Harden won the Tony for Best Leading Actress in a Play. It is the third-longest running play of the 2000s!

Doing a play is very demanding. You have to memorize a lot of dialogue and there are no car chases.

Penelope (Jodie Foster) and Michael Longstreet (John C. Reilly) have invited the Cowans, Nancy (Kate Winslet) and Alan (Christoph Waltz), to their stylish, well-situated apartment to discuss the playground fight their 11-year old sons had. Zachery Cowan (Elvis Polanski) hit Ethan Longstreet (Eliot Berger) with a stick, knocking out 2 teeth and badly bruising his face. Ethan may require major dental surgery in a few years. His mother is rightfully outraged.

Offhandedly, peddling introductory social banter, Michael makes the mistake of mentioning he abandoned his daughter’s noisy hamster outside on the street.

Quelle horreur!

Now Kate has something on hardware wholesaler Michael!

Trying to be civil, the Cowans attempt to make a graceful exit after expressing their surprise and dismay over Zachery’s attack. Well, Kate is sincerely apologetic; Alan knows his son is a little monster. But Penelope is not happy with just an apology; she wants to know if Zachery is truly sorry. Penelope wants Zachery to throw himself on the mercy of the Longstreet’s court. There will be no appeals for leniency.

I was waiting for Penelope to demand Zachery do community service and get counseling.

It gets damn tedious replaying the same scene over and over again – each time Kate puts on her coat and goes to the door to leave, either Penelope or Michael say something and its back inside for another go-around. At least Alan has his cell phone and more pressing matters to deal with.

I counted the number of times the Cowan’s headed for the door. It was exhausting. I wanted to shout at the Cowans – “Leave already!”

Then there is the horrible vomiting scene. Kate gets sick and vomits all over the Longstreet’s living room, Alan’s suit, and Penelope’s treasured art catalog. But no, the Cowan’s still do not leave. This was probably very shocking to theater audiences, since no one vomits in public anymore. (Well, those of us who participate in ayahuasca ceremonies know “purging” all night long in the company of strangers sitting all around you purging themselves is ‘de rigueur’.

(My second nod to Frenchwoman Reza.)

If any of us were in this situation, we would have left immediately. Who wants to hear a couple purging their psychological crap? Who wants to join in and commiserate?

Instead, the two couples start drinking.

Penelope, the pompous instigator, is demanding not only compensation for the dental work – that the Cowan’s easily agree to – but abject remorse. As Alan finally announces, “He’s an 11 year old boy!”

As the foursome wallow in their miserable, but privileged lives – Michael is a highly successful, but ruthless corporate lawyer – the play descends quickly into boring, narcissistic banter. As if to be even more punishing to audiences, Penelope is a self-satisfied liberal working on a book about Darfur.

Instead of bailing on this funny, biting satire, I waited. I was sure Kate would undress or Michael would make a serious pass at Alan.

Foster is high-strung and tense. Foster allows Polanski to show not only her age, but her stern, starved of protein, face. Her character may be the one hailed by a Tony Award, but it is not pretty. Winslet is too beautiful, big, and a solid visual presence to be the demure wife of a viper. Waltz is terrific. His manner, air, speech, and facial cruelty gives Waltz a strong platform showcasing a man who is more interested in screwing people in a pharmaceutical fraud then his kid’s redemption. It is the more meaty role. Reilly has trouble with Michael. Reilly is so non-threatening and with such a friendly façade that when his Michael turns, it is surprising.

CARNAGE is only for people who loved the play.

Travelling shots down empty hallways. Strong, saturated color design. A precise, functional sound mix and a full-bodied, supportive score. All these technical virtues power up an elusive story about vulnerable people at the mercy of a haunted school where, decades before, multiple murders might have been committed. It’s the indie answer to Kubrick’s THE SHINING, beautifully shot, creepy and mysterious.

Director Wes Tomasz Ciesla brings a decidedly Eastern European sensibility to the story. It’s no accident that, late in the film, the principal is seen at home reading Kafka’s ‘The Castle.’ And when he’s not reading that, he’s playing video games…anything to keep from answering his cell phone and coming to a student’s aid.

The student in peril is Julia, played by Kristen Brancaccio. Though she comes from an even more dysfunctional family then teen friend Ivan Perez, she seems more impervious to the evil aura the school puts out. Ms. Brancaccio begins the film as a plain Jane, but ironically grows steadily more attractive and voluptuous as her fate draws nearer.

Dennis Brito, as fanatical teacher Octavio Zenidro, isolates himself in the near-empty school for the Summer to write what he passionately insists is an important book about history. Within days of his self-interment in the gymnasium of the huge educational edifice, he is hallucinating that a German teacher (John Dean – delivering an excellent and chilling performance) is inviting him to understand that establishing the ‘ideal’ would, as a matter of course, give way to racist behavior, something Zenidro finds that he could embrace.

In the middle ground, but drifting swiftly in Zenidro’s direction, is school nerd ‘Sander’ Dessler, played by Ivan Perez. He and Julia have access to the school for the Summer to earn a little dough cataloguing books. Sander has Julia’s friendship, but when friendship turns to infatuation and the girl gently rejects him, Sander heads over to the dark side. Julia ends up alone and in danger, but is slow to realize what’s happening.

The foreboding figure of a black janitor lurks around the hallways, and his big scene, commiserating with Zenidro during the Summer’s sixth week, is one of the stronger SHINING connections, as is the intense amount of energy the obsessed teacher devotes to writing his treatise which, when revealed, is both less, and more, than what we’ve been expecting.

The gliding camera moves and seductive color design pull you into the story, even if Ciesla and screenwriter Rivka Rappoport, like Kafka, never deign to let you fully understand the what’s and the why’s of the narrative.

A quintessential comedy of (bad) manners.

You’ll want to see this more than once–just as I did, confirming my initial reaction that James Westby’s indie is, without doubt, a FIND — and one of the most entertaining films of the year.

No, don’t expect any vampires in this far-from-bleak black comedy –though its star (an excellent Katie O’Grady) could pass for one. (You could swear she was the twin sister of Noomi Rapace’s Lisabeth Salander in THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO.) Rather, the plot concerns the misery of a rejected wife, and her trials and triumphs as she follows her own yellow brick road to happiness.

Plot: After his computer business fails, hunky hubby Mitch (John Keyser) and sweet ‘n simple bride Meris (O’Grady) relocate to his old Oregon hometown, where he reunes with his childhood chums and their wives (AKA the cronies from hell). Sure, they welcome him with open arms, but purposely snub and sneer at her every attempt to become part of their in-crowd. (If looks could kill, they’d all get the chair.)

From the get-go, Mitch doesn’t offer her any support. And matters only get worse when his old flame, beauteous buxom blonde Briann (Storm Large) unexpectedly turns up with outstretched claws to rope him in. Obviously, she gets her sense of immorality from her mother, played by Theresa Russell (BLACK WIDOW), the only A-lister in the cast.

In this world riddled by self-absorbed snobs whose conversation is littered with the maudlin and mundane, everyone wants to get rid of her. So what’s a girl to do? Here, Meris does the unexpected, successfully emerging with a new sense of self-esteem–as she blissfully mutates from a plain Jane clerk at a local candy store by day, to a punk rocker at night with a shocking, radical new look.

And it all seems so real. The outstanding cutting-edge performances by relative unknowns serve to highlight the impact of the superior filmmaking, courtesy of the masterful script, editing/cutting by Portland-based writer-director Westby.

The bad news: with its low marketing budget, it might not get the exposure it so definitely merits. (I.e. it’s opening in NYC in just one small downtown movie theater – Cinema Village.)
The good news: In just 89 minutes, a miniscule $50,000 budget, and only a 20-day shooting schedule (plus 3 months on the edit) , Westby, cast and crew have managed to create a film that far surpasses most of the pedestrian megabuck entries flooding local cinemas.

Bottom Line: “Rid of Me” is a keeper. Not to be missed.

Trivia: The opening sequence where you first see Meris in her punk-rocker guise is a shocker (which I won’t reveal). You’re prepared to dislike her. Wrong. As the film unreels, you’ll readily draw her close to your heart.

At the screening’s Q&A, Katie O’Grady said she “lobbied to keep it in = and that’s the joy of experimental filmmaking.”

An interesting aside: in person, she’s an unbelievably gorgeous blonde.

When Westby was asked where he came up with the idea for the plot, he said “It started with the old high school friends of my ex-wife.”

Apropos, he also recommended accessing the website: hegotridofme.com (Try it. You’ll like it.)

A sweet fairy tale about a tepid, chaste week. There is no ugly side, just an unloved little baby-woman pampered by well-paid sycophants.

“…But one felt a terrible unreality about her – as if talking to someone under water.” *
- Arthur Schlesinger on meeting Marilyn Monroe

What’s next? “My Lunch with Elvis”? “My phone call from Michael”? Oh, wait! That’s already been done.

Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) is an aristocrat who desperately wants to be in the film business. He leaves his parochial family estate and gets a job as an unpaid assistant on Sir Laurence Olivier’s (Kenneth Branagh) film, THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL, directed by him and co-starring international sex goddess, Marilyn Monroe (Michele Williams).

MY WEEK WITH MARILYN is based on Clark’s memoirs, The Prince, The Showgirl, and Me. Clark was not the only on-set eyewitness to write about what happened on the film. Cinematographer Jack Cardiff, played here by Karl Moffatt, also wrote about the making of the film in his memoir.

Cardiff’s account is widely recalled as defining the relationship between Olivier and Marilyn this way: “She never forgave him for saying to her once, ‘Try and be sexy’.” **

You cannot besmirch our cultural icons. Remember the reviled book, Elvis: What Happened? (1977), by former Presley bodyguards Red West, Sonny West, and Dave Hebler, “as told to” Steve Dunleavy? What about the outrage when Monroe’s former maid Lena Pepitone wrote a book, Marilyn Monroe: Confidential (1979?

Marilyn’s behavior on film sets and her personal life were already well-known by the time she, at age 30, arrived in London to begin THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL. Marilyn was accompanied by an entourage that included Milton Greene (Dominic Cooper), who owned, as he gleefully said, 49% of Marilyn Monroe Productions, Paula Strasberg (Zoe Wanamaker), Marilyn’s insufferable wet-nurse and coach, and her husband, playwright Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott).

“Well behaved women rarely make history.” – Marilyn Monroe

With Marilyn making the entire cast and crew wait for her to arrive on the set, her repeated failure to remember her lines, refusal to take direction from Olivier, and her obsessive reliance on “acting coach” Strasberg, Marilyn’s behavior was unforgiveable. Marilyn’s insistence of being treated like a “child” would have made anyone a venomous, vulgarities-spewing demon.

Immediately, we see how Marilyn demands and expects people to treat her: Strasberg loudly worships her on bended knees and proclaims her the greatest living actress on Earth; co-star Dame Sybil Thorndike (Judi Dench), woos her with seductive praise and honor. Being hailed as the world’s greatest living actor and knighted – for God’s sake – Olivier is beside himself with rage.

Marilyn, quickly realizing that Olivier will not fall madly in love with her, takes an instant liking to his “third assistant director” Clark. He becomes her confidante. Thus begins his tepid, chaste week with Marilyn.

MY WEEK WITH MARILYN is a love letter to an icon. Unfortunately, some facts about Marilyn had to be addressed, however gently. Troubled, drugged, and psychologically comatose, Marilyn – in my opinion – retreated into infantilism, enabled by the people around her.

Remember Anna Nicole Smith’s baby talk?

Williams conquered every nuisance of the public Marilyn Monroe. While she is breathtaking in her performance, the script is empty. The audience would have been furious if shown the ugly side of Marilyn. Yet, Williams must carefully straddle that side of Marilyn as well since it is so well known. How do you make such a person likable? Williams, using her wide-eyed innocence as a tool, conveys the film’s central theme – Marilyn was too troubled to be manipulative.

Williams succeeds admirably and so does Branagh and Dench, but Redmayne cannot surmount the incongruities of his character. An aristocrat, Eton-educated and highly motivated to work in films, Clark appears here as just having fallen off the turnip truck. Branagh has the voice of reason and chafes with anger at the irresponsibility of Marilyn.

A career high for Williams but a lukewarm film.

* Arthur Schlesinger set forth in his diaries his recollection on meeting Marilyn Monroe for the first time. As he writes on August 6, 1962, the news has been brought to him that Norma Jean Baker has died from an overdose of barbiturates.

“I must confess that the report yesterday of Marilyn Monroe’s death quite shocked and saddened (but did not surprise) me. I will never forget meeting her at the Arthur Krim party following the JFK birthday rally at Madison Square Garden in May. I cannot recall whether I wrote anything down at the time, but the image of this exquisite, beguiling and desperate girl will always stay with me. I do not think I have seen anyone so beautiful; I was enchanted by her manner and her wit, at once so masked, so ingenuous and so penetrating. But one felt a terrible unreality about her – as if talking to someone under water.”

** Famed cinematographer, Jack Cardiff, whom Monroe personally asked to photograph and light her for the film, wrote in his memoir, “Conversations with Jack Cardiff”, by Justin Bowyer, “Marilyn had this ghastly obsession with method acting and was always searching for some inner meaning with everything, but Larry would only explain the simple facts of the scene. I think she resented him”.

“From the first, it was evident that Marilyn was going to be a problem for Larry on the film”, said Cardiff. “Most actors will come on the set and chat, but she would never come on the set. She went through so many agonized times with Larry because he was, to her, a pain in the arse. She never forgave him for saying to her once, ‘Try and be sexy’.

Cardiff adds: “I saw Larry years later on The Last Days of Pompeii, which was made for television in 1984. We talked a lot on set and I asked him one day what he had thought about Marilyn and he just said, ‘She was a bitch.’”

POSTSCRIPT: “When Deborah Gould asked her ex-husband, Peter Lawford, how Marilyn had died he said, ‘Marilyn took her last big enema.’”