Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)

Director Guy Ritchie’s 2009 “Sherlock Holmes,” with Yank actor Robert Downey Jr. playing the Brit detective, was an entertaining farce that tripped too far into the superhero arena. The Ritchie-directed sequel “Game of Shadows” gallops full force into silly Hollywood cliches with “top this” action pieces minced into slow-mo chunks of film that may irritate even the most Ritalin-deprived viewer. A third-act chase through a forest sticks out as the sorest thumb, smashed by Ritchie’s antic edits. Ditch the deerstalker hat and get this Sherlock a cape as Holmes’ pipe, careful contemplations, and witty word play are for the most part dumped in lieu of a 007-worthy plot involving arch-nemesis Moriarty (a ho-hum Jared Harris) as the instigator of a 1890s European war that plays out too broadly and with inane clues (to the winery!) that reek weak. Worse, great actress Noomi Rapace (the Swedish “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “Prometheus”) is stuck glaring in silence as Downey along with Jude Law as Watson ham up literature’s oldest bro-mance, making this outing shrivel under the shadow of greater Holmes adaptations, including the stellar BBC modern-day-set mind-fuck “Sherlock.” C

Prometheus (2012)

The must re-watch shocking, amazing, perplexing, fascinating film of the summer, maybe the year. “Prometheus” is not exactly an “Alien” prequel, but a smarter, darker great-grandparent to such a prequel, fueled with curiosity of beginnings and origins, but not just of the classic 1979 sci-fi horror film that set off a new genre and exploded my young mind, but where all life began. The questions and the answers here, as in life, vex more than soothe and settle, and I’d settle for nothing less. Weeks out, I still obsess about this entry.

“Alien” – for all its glorious cinematic blood and guts, big hidden ideas and woman as warrior hero/savior of a kitty, was sort of like “Jaws in Space,” a monster film. A  brilliant one, no less. With exploding-from-the-inside chests and a real Paranoid Android, thank you, Thom Yorke. I love that film, endlessly. This is far deeper, and comes from not just the mind of original director Ridley Scott, but co-screenwriter Damon Lindelof, the man behind the question-baiting, answer-withholding enigma-within-a-puzzle “Lost,” an absolute favorite TV show, and I don’t watch much TV shows.

All this in a summer flick, I love it. I digress. 

To the film: Despite the million bitch-and-moan reviews you see everywhere, those pointing out scenes don’t match up, we’re not even on the same planet -- LV-426 -- that Ripley et al landed on in our 1979, the movie’s 2122. Instead, here, much of the action takes place in the year 2093, on a moon dubbed LV-223, and believed to be the exact spot of the creation of humankind, all the universe, or so a series of ancient cave paintings tell two scientists, one a Christian named Shaw (Noomi Rapace of the European “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” trilogy) and the other an agnostic hard-ass named Charlie (Logan Marshall-Green of “Devil”). The two brains become the center of a $1 trillion, multi-year mission to find the planet, and meet our makers, God, or –- so dubbed here –- The Engineers. (Go engineers!)

Yes, things go bad soon after touchdown and a non-human, but definitely hand-built massive structure, is explored, and bodies are ripped apart, stomachs opened, and -– in one nasty scene -– a worm crawls out of a person’s eyeball. (I refuse to give any spoilers, so I’m being as vague as possible here, but think this: Worst science class field trip ever.) But this isn’t a B-horror movie, it’s Scott’s bid to give us a pre-telling of not just “Alien,” but possibly “2001: A Space Odyssey,” every great science fiction film ever made, including “Blade Runner,” and our own lives. Connections to the 1979 flick are ... on your own to figure out, off screen, before or after this action.

“Alien” is just one child of this movie, this story, this Father. So many more films are wide open to explore, even those closer to home than anything in the films we all know and love, save Parts 3 and 4, and anything with “Predator” in the title. To wit: Dig the opening scene in which a massive, ivory-colored being drinks a strange, harsh potion atop a massive waterfall, and immediately starts to literally crumble. From the inside out. A disc, flat then tall, hovers above. He falls, splashes dead into the water, and his decaying cells are reborn in the water into new live, and we can flash guess from the next jump to Scotland, we just saw the birth of humans on Earth. All us.

In a summer flick. (Have I mentioned that before? Call me smitten.)

It’s not a perfect film, too many of the scientists, engineers, doctors and brainiacs aboard the ship must act foolish in order to meet their end, and a late-in-the-game self-surgery procedure (the film’s biggest talk-about-it scene that will live on infamy and YouTube clips for decades) would lay a person flat for a week, but the wildly resilient character bounces back far too quickly. (Note: The person ingests and injects enough drugs to kill every member of Guns N’ Roses, so the script leaves wiggle room on that point. Almost.) 

But damn the nitpicks, I loved it all, from the sound design, the vast sets of the human space craft (the ironic title of the film is its name) to the caverns of the alien temples and spacecraft, and Michael Fassbender’s David, an android with no outward feelings or emotion, but all too aware that as his creators -– mankind -- are all capable of being flawed, hopeless, hopeful, beautiful, addictive, messy, psychotic, murderous, and kind, why cannot man’s Creator also be that. Scott even plays off of Fassbender’s godly good-looks and stranger-among-strangers post as David obsessively watches and mimics Peter O’Toole’s performance in “Lawrence of Arabia.” Even the 3D version rocks, including the surgery scene, and the eyeball, quite effective. Also, will someone please nominate Fassbender for an Oscar already, the man from “Shame" near owns this epic tale.

This “prequel’ is no “Thing 2011” rehash -– that’s the worst this film could be –- Scott is shooting for the heavens, the stars, and beyond, and that’s something to celebrate during a summer of caped hero movies and Adam Sandler comedies. Let the uncut, full, master version of Scott’s vision come quick. God may be in the details. Imperfections and all, this is my kind of summer flick. Bravo to all. A  

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

“The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” finishes the so-called Millennium Trilogy not with a blast or a happy or even a grim conclusion. It is not what I hoped for in a Swiss-language series that started with a killer thriller (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”) followed by a middling-by-comparison second-part bridge story (“The Girl Who Played With Fire”).

This deficit is not the fault of director Daniel Alfredson or his writers, though. It is apparent from Web stories that source book author and leftist-journalist Stieg Larson planned a 10-part series on his Superman alter-ego, a left-wing magazine editor named Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), and his punk/hacker lover-cum-daughter figure Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), a goth girl who would make Robert Smith cower. Alas, Larson died.

“Nest” brings the events of the first film full circle. “Tattoo” focused on a young woman who was brutalized by her father and brother, and a woefully corrupt government. As set up in “Fire,” it is Lisbeth who suffers a similar fate. Alas, in a twist that takes much of the sting – pardon the pun – out of Lisbeth, our heroine spends nearly the entire film hospitalized and then incarcerated, away from Mikael. It is he (again, Stieg) who must save Lisbeth’s life, and, I suppose by some weird symbolic effort, that of all women, against the Men Who Hate Women. (The original title of the first book/film. This third book’s Swedish title was “The Air Castle That Exploded.” I don’t know what it means.)

Love it or hate it, it’s been a hell of ride in a single year. I can’t recall another series of films that put one woman through such a hellish trip of beatings, rapes, near deaths and torture. Yet, they introduced a kick-ass, no-shit heroine. Lisbeth, as played by Rapace, has a singular fury and obsession normally reserved for Eastwood or Stallone of some French European hit man too cool for school. Alfredson improves on his direction here, the wheels don’t grind as much here.

A major sore spot opens up here. Larson has a killer lead heroine, hands down. But his other women are absolute doormats. It's Mikael's co-editor/fuck buddy (Lena Endre). Erika always has been the sicko male-fantasy doormat woman, always available and always willing and always forgiving, but here she goes over the top. Or under the bottom, so to speak. Mikael is an ass to her from frame one, and Erika runs back to him. Again and again. I hated this in Book 1, and it showed ugly bright here in silver screen film.

As with “Fire,” “Nest” is not bad, it has nasty, evil grandpops running about doing bad deeds, but it’s just lacking a true finale. A third-act confrontation between Lisbeth and her evil Bond-villain brother brings back a bit of the revenge kick from “Tattoo,” but this third supposed series closer remains just another bridge. One that with Larson’s death and no more books leads nowhere. So, a downgrade from thee second film. B-

The Girl Who Played With Fire (2010)

In most trilogies, the middle film is always awkward. Background info is required from the first entry, and the ending is wide open and bleak. Such is “The Girl Who Played With Fire,” which follows "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” If you don't know the grisly past, you'll be lost. And it ends with a literal gaping hole in the head for a coming third chapter, which also has “Girl” in the title. (A fourth film should be called, “The Girl Who Screamed, ‘I’m a Damn Woman’”)

The pyro-player is punk/hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), who is wanted by police for the slaying of two journalists, even as she hunts for the first man to ruin her life. This is her father, who she set on fire in a flashback in film one. Figuring into her life again is editor Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), employer of the slain journalists.

“Fire” lacks the spark that drove “Tattoo.” It smells of a TV police drama with dot connections galore, and sports an oddly placed body-builder villain from 007. Rapace as Lisbeth is one hell of a heroine -- silent, deadly and calculating. It’s not remotely a bad film, there just may have been no place to go but down. B