Movie Review - The Girl in the Book

The Girl in the Book (2015)

Starring Emily VanCamp, Michael Nyqvist, Ana Mulvoy-Ten, Ali Ahn, Michael Cristofer, and David Call

Directed by Marya Cohn

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

Every now and then I'll find myself streaming a movie no one has heard about on Netflix and wondering why it didn't get a little more acclaim or recognition in the prior year.  2014's sleeper for me was The Grand Seduction -- seriously, give that charming flick a go -- and 2015 brings me The Girl in the Book.  While not quite of the same caliber of that aforementioned Taylor Kitsch film in part because of its low Kickstarter budget, The Girl in the Book tells the rather gloomy tale of twenty-nine year-old book editor Alice (Emily VanCamp) whose trying teenage years come back to haunt her emotionally when a friend of her father's, author Milan Daneker (Michael Nyqvist), returns to her life nearly a decade after causing irrevocable harm to her.  What exactly that "harm" is reveals itself slowly through a series of flashbacks in which the teenage writer Alice (played by Ana Mulvoy-Ten) is mentored by Milan as he tries to help her become a better wordsmith.

Even discounting the pain Milan caused her, Alice has also had to live with the fact that Milan's most popular novel -- one that has been read prolifically in high schools and colleges over the past several years -- is essentially a detailing of her teenage life.  This trying emotional anguish is elegantly displayed by Emily VanCamp, an actress perhaps best known heretofore for her work in several long-running tv dramas.  While tv certainly doesn't carry that "lower tier" stigma anymore that it perhaps once did, The Girl in the Book asks quite a lot from Ms. VanCamp and she exceeded my expectations, creating a character that was captivating and believably realistic in her emotions, actions, and reactions.  Her naturalness is matched by her younger counterpart Ana Mulvoy-Ten who captures the innocence and adventurous curiosity of a teenage girl.  Together, the two actresses have crafted a character I found to be immensely intriguing.

That said, The Girl in Book isn't quite without its faults.  I admittedly almost turned the thing off in the first fifteen minutes.  This is director Marya Cohn's first feature film and in those opening moments, things seemed sketchy visually and I found the story (also written by Cohn) initially bland and uninteresting.  I'm quite happy I stuck it out though, obviously becoming quite entranced with Alice's tale.  Granted, much like the beginning, the film's conclusion falls a bit flat, feeling too bouncy and nicely tied up considering the higher-strung emotional stakes that preceded it.  However, The Girl in the Book doesn't overstay its welcome (it's a short 85 minutes) and it gives us two of the better and certainly overlooked female performances from 2015.

The RyMickey Rating:  B

Movie Review - Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

-- Mission: Impossible Week --
Please note that all Mission: Impossible Week film reviews may contain spoilers related to both the film that is being reviewed and other films in the series.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)

Starring Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Paula Patton, Michael Nyqvist, Vladimir Mashkov, Josh Holloway, Anil Kapoor, and Léa Seydoux

Directed by Brad Bird

***The review below was originally published on May 27, 2011.  Reading it over, my feelings are pretty much the same now as they were then.  Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is a really solid film and the best film in the Mission: Impossible series.  By far the funniest flick of the bunch (I laughed out loud when the machine that makes the famous Mission: Impossible face masks broke down), Ghost Protocol is also filled with great action sequences -- some of which should be noted for their surprising lack of weaponry and combat, but instead for their ability to create tense moments from something as simple as a desert dust storm.  Enjoy my original review below.***

Although Mission: Impossible II was one of my least favorite movies the year it came out, I don't utterly detest the Mission: Impossible series of films.  Maybe it's just the catchy theme music -- which really is one of the best tv theme songs ever created -- but it's probably more that I like the gadgety spy vibe that runs throughout.  I had heard really good things about animation director Brad Bird's first foray into live action filming.  Fortunately, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol did not disappoint and is probably the best action flick to come out of 2011.

Part of the reason for its success is that this Mission: Impossible has an odd joyfulness to it that I don't remember at all in previous incarnations in this series.  There's a humor here that I wasn't expecting and it added a breath of fresh air to the typical explosions and chase scenes that are part and parcel of a film of this ilk.  Certainly much of the chuckles come thanks to Simon Pegg who is the gadget guru Benji, part of the special team headed by Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt, who after being rescued from a Russian prison finds himself on a mission (impossible) to hunt down a Swedish nuclear weapon expert (Michael Nyqvist) deadset on starting a world war.  Aided by Jane Carter (a very solid [and sexy] Paula Patton), Ethan and his team travel from Moscow to Dubai to India tracking down the baddie.

It also helps matters that the story is very straightforward -- read: easy to comprehend.  Sometimes spy films like this tend to throw more info at you than you really need -- red herrings here, ridiculously convoluted background information there.  MI4 doesn't do that at all and I don't mean this as an insult to it.  Don't think that things are overly simplified -- it's just that Brad Bird and his screenwriters have pared things down to be exactly what is needed to make this story fly by.  Bird also crafts his action sequences without the superfluous quick edits and nonstop explosions that are so prevalent in movies today.  There are some genuinely exciting moments here that rely on tension rather than rapid movement to succeed and that's often a rarity nowadays.

Unfortunately, I think the film falters a tiny bit in two areas.  One, Jeremy Renner's character of a government official who is forced to become part of Ethan's team seemed to simply be there to attempt to craft future movies around him.  He isn't really given a lot to do and although he's fine in the role, this is the one point in the movie that probably could've been fleshed out a bit more.  Secondly, the final act of the movie seems almost unnecessary.  When the team moves to India, I couldn't help but think things could've ended in Dubai to much greater effect -- not all movies need to be two hours and ten minutes long.  The final action sequence (which was genuinely tense and exciting) could so easily have taken place in Dubai that the move to India only screamed "Look at our budget!" to me.

Still, those are actually minor quibbles in the grand scheme of things because Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol really excels in all areas -- acting, directing, writing -- where most action movies nowadays fail miserably.

The RyMickey Rating:  B+

Movie Review - John Wick

John Wick (2014)

Starring Keanu Reeves, Michael Nyqvist, Alfie Allen, Willem Dafoe, Adrianne Palicki, John Leguizamo, Ian McShane, and Bridget Moynahan

Directed by Chad Stahelski

"Keanu Reeves is back!" raved some of the overwhelmingly positive reviews for John Wick upon its release in the fall of 2014.  The story of the title character who seeks revenge on a group of Russian mobsters who kill his newly received beagle -- a gift from his recently deceased wife (Bridget Moynahan) -- John Wick is a series of (admittedly cool) violent fights with the tiniest strand of flimsy story to tie them together.

Reeves seemingly speaks less than one hundred words as a retired hit man called back into duty when the members of a stereotypical Russian mob family pick on him for some reason and to say that the actor "is back" in top form based off this performance is outrageous hyperbole.  Yes, he works well enough in the choreographed fight scenes and he tries his best to engage the audience in his vengeful acts, but there's very little for the actor to latch onto.

The odd thing is that there's some weird sense of potential in screenwriter Derek Kolstad's script with hints of interesting elements.  For example, when Wick heads back into the realm of being a hit man, he sleeps at a hotel that caters to people of his type, keeping their residents' secrets and providing them with the necessary instruments to carry out their assignments.  This is just one of the unique elements present, but very little is done to expand upon them, making me wonder if there was an awful lot left on the cutting room floor...or perhaps it was all oddly surface on the scripted page.

Nevertheless, the incessant fight scenes grow tiresome a little less than halfway through and makes the film's final fifty minutes a slog to watch.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+

Movie Review - Europa Report

Europa Report (2013)

Starring Sharlto Copley, Michael Nyqvist, Christian Camargo, Anamaria Marinca, Karolina Wydra, Daniel Wu, and Embeth Davidtz

Directed by Sebastián Cordero

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

Europa Report can't hold a candle to this year's other "lost in space"-themed epic Gravity, but this little low-budget found footage/documentary-style science fiction pic is actually well produced with surprisingly decent special effects and a interesting storyline that is smarter than expected.  Granted, as the film reaches its climax, it teeters out a bit getting too chaotically frantic for its own good, but it still musters up enough goodwill in its previous hour that it makes it worth a watch should its story appeal to you.

A six-person international crew is shuttling their way through space on the Europa One mission -- the first manned attempt to go beyond our moon and eventually reach one of Jupiter's moons, Europa, which is believed to contain water and, henceforth, perhaps additional life forms.  Much of the crew's privately funded mission has been aired on television, but six months into their flight, a solar flare knocks the crew out of communication with mission control.  They continue to proceed (though not without significant consequences) and eventually reach Europa at which point things expectedly take a turn for the worse.

Rather than tell its story in a linear fashion, director Sebastián Cordero and writer Philip Gelatt begin the tale as if we're watching a documentary.  We hear Dr. Unger (Embeth Davidtz), the CEO of Europa Ventures, as she narrates the tale of the six person crew.  We also hear first-hand narration from pilot Rosa Dasque (Anamaira Marinca) as she relays to us what was happening on board the shuttle while the mission was taking place.  With the documentary format and the premise that cameras were strategically placed within the shuttle for the reality tv aspect of the mission, Cordero and Gelatt jump back and forth through time, revealing pieces of the mission gradually.  Admittedly, this non-linear gimmick is probably the most disappointing aspect of the film and really is just a ploy to up the tension. Ultimately, it comes back to bite them as the film's final half hour is told linearly and feels a bit "out of place" amongst the rest of the film because of it.

Still, the director gets some nice performances out of all of his cast including District 9's Sharlto Copley and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo's Michael Nyqvist being the "big names" in the group.  The cast of characters is never forced to do anything "stupid" for the sake of the plot and their actions and reactions feel genuine which is a pleasant treat for a movie that so easily could've tried to be a "thriller" or "horror" film.  The fact that Europa Report never went that route is quite admirable.  It never dumbs down its plot which is more focused on "science" than anything else and I'm sure that's the reason why it never made it out of the ten or so arthouses (if that) where it probably screened.

The RyMickey Rating:  B-

Movie Review - Disconnect

Disconnect (2013)

Starring Jason Bateman, Hope Davis, Frank Grillo, Michael Nyqvist, Paula Patton, Andrea Riseborough, Alexander Scarsgård, Max Thieriot, Colin Ford, Jonah Bobo, Norbert Leo Butz, Haley Ramm, Kasi Lemmons, and Aviad Bernstein

Directed by Henry-Alex Rubin

Disconnect is one of those movies where a bunch of apparently unrelated storylines have tenuous connections that allow the players from one tale to have interactions with players from another tale.  I typically really like these kinds of films and while Disconnect generally works, it's not nearly as deep and profound as it aspires to be.  Taking on the internet, Disconnect attempts to tell us that we enter this (not so) newfound technological breakthrough at our own risk -- but is that really new information for us?  Aren't we all aware that bad folks are ready to prey on us online?

Still, despite the obvious, we are treated to some good stories here.  The best involves a young high school kid named Ben (Jonah Bobo) who just so happens to look at two of his classmates Jason and Frye (Colin Ford and Aviad Bernstein) in a disdainful way as they play a trick on someone in a mall.  Jason and Frye get ticked off and decide to get back at the shy introvert Ben by befriending him on Facebook with a fake female profile.  Ben finds himself falling for this fake profile as Jason and Frye continue escalating the relationship until Ben is eventually humiliated at school.  Needless to say, the humiliation ends in tragedy, changing forever the lives of Ben, his parents (Jason Bateman and Hope Davis), and Jason and Frye.

Another major story revolves around a news reporter (Andrea Riseborough) who investigates and befriends a young man (Max Thieriot) who was willingly hired to work on an internet porn site catering to those wanting to video chat with young men and women.  The final tale focuses on Cindy and Derek Hull (Paula Patton and Alexander Scarsgård), a couple who recently lost their only child.  While Derek tries to suppress his grief by online gambling, Cindy has taken up visiting grief community websites where she befriends a guy who says he recently lost his wife.  When the Hulls find their credit cards maxed out and their savings depleted, they begin to investigate whether Cindy's online "friend" is the culprit.

While all of these stories are perfectly acceptable and never teeter into "boring" territory, they also fail to be fresh.  I couldn't help but feel that I'd seen all of these tales told before on daytime television.  Thankfully, the acting ensemble is all pretty great from the youngest actors to the oldest ones and they elevate the material beyond the obvious.

The RyMickey Rating:  C+

Movie Review - Abduction

Abduction (2011)

Starring Taylor Lautner, Lily Collins, Alfred Molina, Jason Isaacs, Maria Bello, Michael Nyqvist, and Sigourney Weaver

Directed by John Singleton

I should have known that in the first scene when high school senior Nathan Harper (Taylor Lautner) and his two buddies get excited about going to the home opener of the Pittsburgh Pirates season that Abduction was going to be lacking in realism.  I mean, it's the Pirates...does anyone get excited about them?  Still, I told myself to suspend disbelief for a few more minutes and give what was one of the worst reviewed movies of 2011 a chance.  In the end, and I've used this criticism before, Abduction is a movie that I can't help but feel I could've written in my childhood "novel" writing days where dialog was cheesy, characters were ill-conceived, and plots were by-the-book.

I'm only familiar with Taylor Lautner from the Twilight films and I always thought that he was the strongest part of that series -- I confess that I was probably quite wrong in that assessment.  Lautner here is simply painful.  Mugging for the camera and overly mannered, he's the opposite of charming and charismatic.  Here, Lautner is Nathan, a typical high school senior.  When working on a research paper with his childhood friend Karen (Lily Collins), he comes across a picture of his four year-old self on an internet site for missing persons.  Just as he confronts his folks (Jason Isaacs and Maria Bello) about his discovery, their house is broken into by some foreign baddies and Nathan and Karen are forced to go on the run.

How a film so obvious and surprise-deficient managed to snag people like Maria Bello, Alfred Molina, and Sigourney Weaver to join the cast is beyond me.  None of those names are given anything to do here and it's completely obvious this was a "paycheck only" movie.  Lily Collins comes off as okay -- I'll reserve judgment on her until I see a bit more.  She's certainly attractive, but she isn't given a whole lot to do here and what she is given is mind-boggingly bland.

But the biggest problems with Abduction are the "star" Lautner whose faults I mentioned above and the director John Singleton who has done such a poor job crafting this movie that I have to think someone off the street could've done better.  Fight scenes are poorly choreographed and edited, transitions are abysmal, and Singleton fails to get a good performance from his lead.  To me, despite the simplicity of the plot, the fault with this movie lies squarely with Singleton who is to unable to bring anything to the table.  Abduction may not be the worst movie of the year as some may have called it, but it's certainly not any good.

The RyMickey Rating:  D

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