Technology is the Ultimate Drug: Disconnect

Disconnect (2012) / US / Directed by Henry Alex Rubin / Written by Andrew Stern / Starring Jason Bateman, Hope Davis, Frank Grillo, Paula Patton, Alexander Skarsgard, Andrea Riseborough, Michael Nyqvist, Max Thieriot, Jonah Bobo / 115 mins

I've always felt like films about technology don't really get it. There's the films that imagine the way that technology will be in 10, 20, 30 odd years. But the films that try to capture technology now...it is a tricky tightrope these films are walking. The technology of now is not always going to be the zeitgeist. A film made in 2011 isn't going to be relevant in 2012. Plus, technology is such an interior world, making it difficult for a filmmaker to show its effect on the exterior.

However, Disconnect is a film that may become irrelevant and dated as early as next year in terms of the technology it is showing, but its overall message should keep people wary for years to come.

Mission: Fairly Difficult, But I Did It Anyway

With the never-ending amounts of sequels being released today, I've had to fill in many gaps in my watchlist to ensure that I'm up with the play. The latest series demanding my attention was Mission: Impossible. Starting in 1996 with a Brian DePalma film, which rebooted a popular TV series, and spawning three sequels, the latest of which - Ghost Protocol - has just been released on DVD, the series follows Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), a super IMF agent who always accepts fairly difficult missions. It was strange watching a series that is just one year younger than myself, and like my life, it has gone from stage to stage with varying results. Let's pick each film apart...

So, When Does Anyone Actually Get Abducted in Abduction?

Film: Abduction
Year: 2011
Director: John Singleton
Written by: Shawn Christensen
Starring: Taylor Lautner, Lily Collins, Maria Bello, Jason Isaacs, Sigourney Weaver, Alfred Molina, Michael Nyqvist.
Running time: Far too long.

Hailing from the halls of all things awful in 2011, Abduction is the fifth film of the year to get the lowest of the low 1/10 from me. It joins such terrible films like The Roommate, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, The Hangover: Part II and Sucker Punch. But the difference that Abduction has is that Taylor Lautner aside, it had a half decent cast. Maria Bello, Jason Isaacs, Sigourney Weaver, Alfred Molina, and poor old Michael Nyqvist in his first big Hollywood role offer their names to Lautner's big post-Twilight debut. Also different is the fact that those four movies have titles that make sense to the story. Here, no-one actually gets abducted. Unless we're talking about the audience. Never before I have I wanted to turn off a movie so much - but no man shall get the better of my 'start watching it, finish watching it' rule.

Reviews Round Up, Part 2: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, Unthinkable, Made in Dagenham

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Around a year ago, I watched The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which is probably one of the most brutally disturbing films I've ever seen. That movie was gold. Then I saw The Girl who Played with Fire, which was okay, but it was such a huge step down from the first one. And then I saw The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, which many dismissed as the worst film of the series. I, however, actually enjoyed this movie a bit more than the second. I don't know how, seeing as there isn't a lot going on in this one, but I just found it a lot easier to watch. I guess the series just ran a bit dry after the first one. The first one was so great because of the chemistry between Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace, and the combination of their characters. But the second two barely even feature them together at all. The ending to this one was kinda annoying, though, because they meet at the very end, and just have this strange "I guess I'll see you around" kind of moment before the film just ends. Like, I wasn't expecting them to jump around hugging each other before riding off into the sunset on their ponies, but it was a bit of a downer. I did like how this movie was pretty minimalistic, though. And I love how Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist are so consistently great in the series. Especially Rapace. Rooney Mara has some very big leather boots to fill.

What I hoped for:

What I got:

Unthinkable

Okay, I hadn't heard of Unthinkable until it popped up on the DVD shelves. Then I saw it made IMDb's Top 25 of 2010 list, as voted by users. So I thought "Hmmm, it might actually be good." After two months of seeing it's awful trailer on the TV at work, and wondering how Michael Sheen would do playing a terrorist, I gave it a shot. And let me just say: YOU NEED TO SEE THIS MOVIE. I wouldn't describe it as an earth shattering masterpiece, but this was a really good movie. Basically, Michael Sheen plays a terrorist (Yusuf) who has placed three nuclear bombs in three US cities, and it's only a matter of time before they go off. The FBI catch him, and take him to an unknown place for interrogation, which is lead by Samuel L. Jackson, who likes to torture people to get the truth. So he happily chops off Yusuf's fingers and electrocutes him until he gets the answers. Now, I don't like torture movies, because I find this pointless, but this one if quite interesting. It's set up like a stage play, which scores a few points with me, and it also has so many great ideas about ethics and justice. Michael Sheen is virtually unrecognisable, he's that great, and Carrie-Anne Moss makes an appearance too! It's also a really short, snappy, to the point movie, which I really liked. As I said, it's by no means a masterpiece, and the end is a piece of crap, but I demand you see it. Demand.

What I hoped for:

What I got:

Made in Dagenham

I love British movies. In fact, I'm having a huge British phase at the moment (damn you, royal wedding). Made in Dagenham is quite a good little British movies, but I can only imagine women enjoying this movie. Because woman rule all the time in this movie. What did you expect? It's a movie about how women came to get equal pay as men. It was actually interesting finding out about how all that happened. Some brave women fought very hard for our right, almost forgetting their families in the mean time. While the movie is really just a fluffy tale with a few cliches (even though it's a true story) and bored me at points, I have to comment on how incredibly well acted it is. Sally Hawkins leads the show and she is nothing short of brilliant. She is just such a lovable figure. Geraldine James, Jaime Winstone and Andrea Riseborough are all great supporting performers as well. Many people have commented on how brilliant Miranda Richardson is in this movie. I have to agree, she was so ferocious and alive I couldn't help but wonder what she was having in her porridge in the morning. However, I'm a huge fan of Rosamund Pike and I thought she was just brilliant in this film. Her character wasn't one that was absolutely vital to the story, but she made her scenes worthwhile. She has this moment which I absolutely love: "I'm Lisa Burnett, I'm 31 years old and I have a first class honours degree from one of the finest universities in the world, and my husband treats me like I'm a fool." This line just spoke to me on so many different levels.

What I hoped for:

What I got:

DVD--The Girl Who Played with Fire

or: New director, way different sequel.

One word to sum it up: Inferior.

I, amazingly, really enjoyed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, for the utterly fearless and brutal film that it was. Even though I don't really get the whole craze over the books by Stieg Larsson (they're average, but not as great as everyone makes them out to be). However, with my enduring excitement to watch The Girl Who Played with Fire, I came out quite disappointed. Mainly because the slight soft-porn theme this movie took on and the detached direction from Tomas Alfredson, who doesn't have a patch on Niels Arden Oplev.

After spending a year abroad, Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) returns to Sweden. She calls on her court-appointed guardian to remind him, in her own way, of his promise to submit satisfactory reports on her behavior. Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) continues as an editor of Millenium magazine and they are onto a major story about prostitution and trafficking in women from Eastern Europe. When the investigative journalist working on that story is killed, the police announce that Lisbeth is their prime suspect. Lisbeth and Mikael work independently trying to find who is behind the murders. They not only learn the identity of the culprits but also some of Lisbeth's family secrets.

The biggest thing that this series has going for it is it's heroine, Lisbeth Salander. Most heroines we see these days are beautiful and sexy, go around shooting evil and never really have a back story. Lisbeth, on the other hand, is tomboyish and likes goth makeup and clothing; instead of shooting evil, she makes sure they suffer as much as she has; and the more we go into the series, we learn about Lisbeth's painful past and what she has done for female liberation. Therefore, Lisbeth is not only a very interesting watch, she is also iconic and stands for a reason. The perfect thing about Lisbeth is that she was brought to life by the amazing Noomi Rapace. My message to Rooney Mara: you have shoes three times the size of Bigfoot's feet to fill.

Not only does Noomi Rapace continue to give good performances in the series, she also has great chemistry with Michael Nyqvist, who plays Mikael Blomkvist. This, unfortunately, is part of the undoing of The Girl Who Played with Fire, as they spend most of the movie apart. Though learning of Lisbeth's background does make up for that, the sex-trafficking story seems so distant from the rest of it that I couldn't help but feel a little bored. It's not just the deficiencies in the story which keep this movie from being as good as the first. It's the strange direction from Tomas Alfredson, which at points felt either very doco-style or very home video style. He fails to pack to punch that the first one had, and I don't know if that's whether the material was just better, or if it's because of the big change. Despite all this, Rapace and Nyqvist keep things going, in a sequel which can't live up to the first one, but still proves worthy.


THE VERDICT: The Girl Who Played with Fire is a fine installment to the Millenium series, but the new director and slightly mediocre material.

6/10