What Happened to Monday

What Happened to Monday (2017)

Starring Noomi Rapace, Marwan Kenzari, Christian Rubeck, Pål Sverre Hagen, Clara Reed, Willem Dafoe, and Glenn Close

Directed by Tommy Wirkola

Written by Max Botkin and Kerry Williamson

***This film is currently streaming via Netflix***

Summary (in 500 words or less):  In the relatively near future, Earth is hugely overpopulated.  In order to rectify the situation, the Child Allocation Bureau headed by Nicolette Cayman (Glenn Close) has been formed in order to limit the number of children to one per mother.  Somehow in the midst of this police state where electric bracelets pinpoint human locations, a grandfather (Willem Dafoe) has kept hidden a group of septuplets, naming them after every day of the week.  As they grow, each of the septuplets leaves the grandfather's apartment on the day of the week that matches their name.  Decades go by and now as adults, the sisters (played by Noomi Rapace) have taken on the persona of Karen Settman, an investment banker, but when Monday doesn't come home after her day out, the remaining sisters set out on an investigation to discover what happened to her.

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: C+

Movie Review - Child 44

Child 44 (2015)

Starring Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Noomi Rapace, Joel Kinnaman, Paddy Considine, Fares Fares, Jason Clarke, and Vincent Cassel

Directed by Daniel Espinosa

"In 1933, at the height of Stalin's state-imposed famine against the Ukranian people, an estimated 25,000 died each day from starvation.  The systematic extermination by hunger known as the Holodomor left millions of children orphaned."  One of those children mentioned in Child 44's opening subtitles is Leo Demidov who as an adult (played by Tom Hardy) has become a Russian Ministry of State Security agent.  When a series of child murders is uncovered including the killing of his partner's son, Leo sets off on a mission to find the murderer...however, this doesn't sit well with his commanders because Russia at the time failed to acknowledge murder as they felt that was a crime brought about by capitalism.  Soon, Leo finds his wife Raisa (Noomi Rapace) accused of being a traitor to the state and the only way Leo can save her is by moving far away and taking a job in a lowly militia.  Desperate to find the serial killer ending the lives of innocent children and also hoping to seek revenge on fellow agent Vasili Niktin (Joel Kinnaman) whom Leo believes set up his wife, the vengeful Leo finds himself battling a Russian mindset that is unwilling to face the truth.

Ultimately, the problem with Child 44 is that it tries too hard to be too many things.  In addition to the variety of story lines above -- murdered children, traitors, the Holodomor -- there are numerous other tales woven into the mix.  While the serial killer certainly takes precedence, it too often feels pushed to the side while a variety of other depressing aspects make appearances with very little emotional impact.  Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace are fine, but there's certainly no aire of charisma between the two.  Quite frankly, I didn't even realized they were actually married until about halfway through.  Gary Oldman (as an officer who befriends Leo) has a tendency to overdo it in certain films, but here, his screen presence is a welcome breath of fresh air in the film's second act.  Granted, it's not enough to save the film from being a rather tiresome slog to sit through.  While there are aspects of the story that could very well stand on their own, the kitchen sink method of Child 44 just doesn't work in its favor.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+

Movie Review - The Drop

The Drop (2014)

Starring Tom Hardy, James Gandolfini, and Noomi Rapace

Directed by Michaël R. Roskam

When his cousin Marv's (James Gandolfini) bar gets robbed, bartender Bob (Tom Hardy) finds himself thrust into an investigation that makes him question his family, friends, and himself.  If that summary of The Drop sounds generic, that's because The Drop as a film is a bit generic.  That's certainly not to say that Michaël R. Roskam's film is a bust, but nothing new is brought to the table here in this tale of a corrupt New York City family.

However, I don't necessarily want to be a downer when it comes to this flick because it absolutely held my interest.  Helping to elevate things are the solid performances from the three leads with Tom Hardy, James Gandolfini, and Noomi Rapace giving their roles a bit more intricate depth than the somewhat basic plot seemingly would allow.  There's an innocence to Hardy's role in particular that is oddly striking and ultimately compelling when stacked up against the hardened Gandolfini and a few other mobster types that make their presence known throughout the flick.  It's a bit refreshing as I'm used to Hardy taking the same tough edge in many of his films, so the almost childlike demeanor he presents here is a fresh twist for the actor.

Still, in the end, The Drop emits this sense of genericness that it never really is able to overcome.  It's a perfectly acceptable crime piece, but it never truly excels at elevating itself to something really captivating.

The RyMickey Rating:  C+

Movie Review - Passion

Passion (2013)

Starring Rachel McAdams, Noomi Rapace, Karoline Herfurth, and Paul Anderson

Directed by Brian De Palma

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

Passion is an English-language remake of the 2011 French film Love Crime, a movie that wasn't very good to begin with, but almost landed in the guilty pleasure realm because of its ludicrousness.  Having disliked Love Crime, I admittedly only watched Passion because of Rachel McAdams' presence which I hoped would make the story a little more bearable.  That didn't happen.

Instead, I discovered that Passion is one of the worst films of the year.  Director Brian De Palma has always been a second-rate (or even third-rate) imitator of Alfred Hitchcock and despite the Master of Suspense's obvious influence on the director, De Palma just can't hold a candle to Hitch and his attempts to do so are laughably bad.  Having seen a few De Palma films at this point, it's obvious why he chose Passion as his passion project -- his first film in over five years.  The lesbian overtures between the two main characters were just too much for the director to pass up considering his tendency to overly sexualize his films to the point of absurdity.  (As an example, the advertising firm that the two main characters work for in this film is named "Koch."  Maybe it means nothing, but with De Palma, my mind went right to the phallic reference.)

There's no subtlety on display -- I don't think De Palma knows the meaning of that word -- and despite getting an acceptable performance out of McAdams (whose role harkens back to her Mean Girls character), Noomi Rapace gives one of the worst acting performances I've seen this year.  Admittedly, it was Rapace's awful performance that kept me watching as I wanted to see if it would land on my Worst Performances of the Year chart for the 2013 RyMickey Awards -- it most certainly will.  Overacting to the nth degree followed by acting like a limp noodle with no emotion, Rapace's eyes are just empty throughout this whole thing.  There was never a moment when I felt anything at all from her.

The film is set up as a power struggle between two women -- McAdams' Christine is a high-ranking executive in an advertising firm and Rapace's Isabelle is one of her underlings -- and when Isabelle creates an ingenious ad campaign and Christine takes credit for it, Isabelle's mind begins to shift towards revenge.  The same problem with the story in the original French film still holds true here -- sleaziness and sexiness doesn't give you the right to toss a believable plot aside and both De Palma's film and its predecessor focus solely on a Cinemax-ian late-night soft-core porny vibe than anything else.  If you want to go that route, go for it, but go all out.  Trying to balance some modicum of seriousness with the Skinemax style won't ever work.

Passion is a truly horrible piece of cinema.  If you're forced to choose between Passion and Love Crime, absolutely take the French flick.  The French language at least sounds a little sexier.

The RyMickey Rating:  F

Movie Review - Prometheus

Prometheus (2012)

*viewed in 3D*

Starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Logan Marshall-Green, Idris Elba, and Guy Pearce

Directed by Ridley Scott

**There will be some spoilers ahead here...the film's been out a month now, so I feel no qualms about that.**

Prometheus - the "not-a-prequel, but really-is-a-prequel" to Alien - has its share of problems most courtesy of a script from Jon Spaihts and Lost alum Damon Lindelof, but despite what are warranted criticisms, I couldn't help but like what I saw onscreen.  I've always been a fan of Ridley Scott's Alien and James Cameron's Aliens (see my Alien Week coverage here), and what Scott does here is further the backstory behind the sci-fi series while, at the same time, creating a stand-alone film that works quite well despite a few faults.

Those delving into Prometheus thinking that they're going to see something in the same vein of any of the previous four Alien incarnations are in for a surprise.  Instead, Prometheus is one archeologist's quest to discover the reason for human existence.  We meet Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) in the late 2080s as she and her team are exploring the rocky cliffs of Ireland.  There, they discover cave paintings that closely resemble similar paintings found all across the earth all of which seem to be pointing to the notion that something from space came to earth tens of thousands of years ago.  With the help of the Weyland Corporation (a name familiar to those who've seen other Alien flicks), Shaw and her partner Charlie (Logan Marshall-Green) are funded for an expedition to a far-off planet that seems to have the same capability as Earth for human existence with the hopes that this planet may hold some of the answers to these cave drawings.  When they land on the planet, Shaw, Charlie, and the crew of the ship Prometheus, including the captain (Idris Elba), Weyland overseer Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), and android David (Michael Fassbender), set out to explore and uncover some interesting finds leading us both into familiar territory for this series and quite unfamiliar territory in the overarching religious and spiritual questions it attempts to pose.

Surprisingly, the biggest problem in the film tends to be with the alien side of things.  These people just seem to act plain stupid around them.  Here you've landed on a foreign planet with unknown creatures and you're just going to go right up to these "things" and try to pet them?  I mean, really?  The characters just end up losing all credibility in these scenes and it hurts the movie in the long run.  I think that's what makes the first two Alien films so successful -- even if the characters weren't fully realized (I'm looking at you, Aliens), they still acted "truthfully" and realistically based off of their personal characteristics.  You didn't really get a sense of that here with some of the characters presented.

However, there are two really solid performances from Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender.  Rapace is quite good, embodying a completely different female here than Sigourney Weaver's kick-ass Ripley.  Rapace's Elizabeth Shaw is mellow and slightly timid -- two characteristics that could never apply to Ripley.  Shaw's mission isn't to kill, but to try and understand all that she can about human existence and her place (and the place of spirituality and faith) in this world.  Fassbender also continues his excellent streak of work with the robotic David.  Even lacking the ability to show emotions, Fassbender still manages to draw your eye to him in every single scene thanks to this sense of underlying (and sometimes not so underlying) menace his character exudes in nearly scene.

I actually got a very "last episode of Lost" vibe from Prometheus thanks to the similarities in tone resulting from their exploratory dives into faith, and given that Damon Lindelof co-wrote the last episode of the series, that shouldn't be all that surprising.  However, also like Lost, Prometheus doesn't provide all the answers and while some would complain about that, I'm actually okay with the open-endedness.  To me, we can't have all the answers when we're discussing something as esoteric as faith and to expect them is almost ludicrous.  I'd be more than open for a sequel that delves a bit deeper.

The film looks beautiful visually and I give much credit to director Ridley Scott for taking things in a different direction with this flick.  Yes, there are still some excellent action sequences and some great set pieces (that "computerized surgery machine" came in quite handy, didn't it?) which show that Scott still has quite a knack at filming tense action.  But we also discover that he is quite adept at the quieter moments of which this film certainly has plenty.  If only he could've convinced the writers to give him more fully-realized secondary characters than I would've been a much happier camper.  But as it stands now, Prometheus is a solid addition to the Alien saga landing right in the middle in terms of quality for the series.

The RyMickey Rating:  B

Movie Review - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2010)

Starring Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist

Directed by Daniel Alfredson
***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

Spoilers pertaining to the second part of this trilogy are ahead, FYI...No spoilers revealed for this film, however...

The finale of the Millennium Trilogy picks up immediately where the disappointing Girl Who Played with Fire ended.  Our heroine Lisbeth Salandar (Noomi Rapace) finds herself in a hospital after being shot in the head by her estranged father.  Seeing as how Lisbeth attacked her father with an ax, she also finds herself in police custody.  Needless to say, Lisbeth isn't the least bit pleased that her father has survived the attack.  Also not happy is Lisbeth's only friend in the media, Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist).  Backed with boatloads of evidence, Mikael attempts to clear Lisbeth's name, proving that she has been part of some incredibly convoluted government conspiracy.

Fortunately, this third film is much easier to follow than number two.  Unfortunately, it's the worst crafted film of the bunch.  These flicks were made for Swedish television and this one feels like it had no budget whatsoever.  It didn't feel cinematic in the slightest.  From the dialog to the acting to the plot, it all seemed like something you'd see on a poor episode of CSI.  Even the two leading actors -- Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist -- seem bored by the whole affair.  There's no excitement to be had here and they're well aware of that fact.

In the end, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is marginally better than the middle film of the Millennium Trilogy (simply because I actually understood what was happening), but overall, the last two films were disappointing follow-ups to the series' first flick, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  In the end, I've got to say that this is a series of films that is not worth the seven hour investment.  I can honestly say that I'm not looking forward to the US remake of this at all...however, there is definite room for improvement.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+

Movie Review - The Girl Who Played with Fire

The Girl Who Played with Fire (2010)

Starring Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist 

Directed by Daniel Alfredson

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

I liked The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  I wasn't head over heels in love with it like some other critics, but I thought it was an interesting mystery tale that, while not particularly groundbreaking, had some decent performances from two lead actors.  The chemistry between Noomi Rapace's edgy Lisbeth Salandar and Michael Nyqvist's somewhat clean-cut Mikael Blomkvist was quite good.  In the second part of the Millenium trilogy, The Girl Who Played with Fire, that chemistry is never present because the two actors never share a scene until literally the film's final minute.  Instead, the film lacks that emotional oomph that carried the first flick and piles on a much more convoluted and uninteresting murder mystery.

I'll be honest, I zoned in and out of this one in terms of story.  They started throwing around a bunch of people with 'J's in their last names (Bjornsen, Jorgenson...they're all the same to me!) and I kinda got lost.  Apparently there are people in the political realm who are involved in some human prostitution trafficking and two news reporters working for Mikael Blomkvist's magazine "Millenium" are murdered after they uncover information involving the politicians.  However, for some reason (that I'm pretty sure is explained at the end, however, the movie had already lost me at that point) Lisbeth Salandar is the prime suspect because a gun was used with her fingerprints on it.  Needless to say, Lisbeth finds herself on the run and Mikael does what he can do clear her name.

Ultimately, the story is what killed this flick to me because I actually found Noomi Rapace's performance as Lisbeth more enjoyable in this flick than the first.  Despite the fact that her character didn't have nearly as much of an emotional journey as she did in he first film, the performance felt a little more balanced.  I also liked the way this second film looked a bit more than than the first, so kudos to new director Daniel Alfredson.

However, those are the only two things that worked in the film.  Everything else (including an absolutely boring turn from Michael Nyqvist) was a disappointment.  While I'm certainly going to finish up the trilogy when the last film arrives on Netflix in the next few months, the middle flick of the series didn't live up to the moderate expectations set in number one.

The RyMickey Rating:  D

Movie Review - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2010)
Starring Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, and Sven-Bertil Taube
Directed by Niels Arden Oplev
***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

Much talk has been made on the arthouse circuit for the films that make up Millenium Trilogy, based off of a very successful series of books by Stieg Larsson.  The first flick, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, did quite well for a foreign film here in the States and the Swedish mystery certainly has me intrigued to see what happens in the two follow-up films.

Journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) has just been convicted of libel against a well-known entrepreneur.  Before he has to head to jail, he's hired by Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube), an elderly gentleman who longs to discover who killed his niece decades earlier.  Mikael agrees to take the case (if only to get his mind off of the fact that he's going to have to go to jail in a few months), but unbeknown to him, his computers are being hacked by Lisbeth Salandar (Noomi Rapace).  I'll be honest...this whole subplot is a little shaky to me...I'm unsure in actuality why Lisbeth was hired by a company to hack Mikael's computer, but, nonetheless, she soon finds herself intrigued in Mikael's investigation and eventually contacts him in order to provide assistance in the case.  Eventually, the two meet and begin to search together for the murderer.

While the plot doesn't sound all that interesting on paper (or in this case, on the computer), it certainly never bored me.  In fact, the nearly 150 minutes flew by.  Bits and pieces of the mystery were revealed at the right moments to continue to provide suspense.  Still, there were scenes in the film that had me questioning why they were there.  There are some fairly intense moments involving Lisbeth prior to her meeting with Mikael that, while certainly providing shock value, were unnecessary.  I realize that in the grand scheme of things, these difficult scenes were in the film in order to create a more well-rounded character and to provide some background for what makes the rough-around-the edges Lisbeth the person whom she is, but despite the fact that the moments were well-produced, they stood out from the rest of the film (and not in a good way).

Nonetheless, just wanted to put this review up rather quickly (hence the probable lack of coherence), but one should note that this is a nice little mystery that is certainly well worth a watch.  It should also be noted that the main mystery is self-contained to this film (or at the very least appeared to be self-contained to this film as I have no idea what happens in the next flicks), so if you give this one a go and don't care for, you won't need to watch the other two films in the trilogy.

The RyMickey Rating:  B