Movies Reviewed, 2012

Movies Reviewed, 2012
REVIEWS, BY YEAR:

02/18/12
This Means War -

02/17/12
Antz - quite a collection of stars do the voices of this dreamworks animated film...dan akroyd, sly stone, sharon stone, woody allen, anne bancroft, gene hackman, j. lo and others. unfortunately the animation is distractingly bad and the story is formulaic at best. it's a precursor to bee movie which is about bees instead of ants and they do a much better job in that film of relating the charm of the colony and of squeezing a lot of material out of telling the story from that point of view. here there are some little jokes or bits of material that are gotten from the fact that it takes place in an ant colony, but mostly it either is played straight or the stuff falls flat. the mis-spelling of the title is, i guess, a nod to the protagonist's name - "z." so, i suppose it can be read as ant Z as well as the plural of ant, modernized. C.

02/15/12
Searchers - a perennial top pick when it comes to best westerns or best films lists.
i've seen it 4 times and slept 2 or 3 of those times. wayne's character is tortured by racism and the civil war and probably a host of other things. and this is the strength of the film - the host of other things that we don't really ever see or know about. there's a lot in the film that we don't see - the damaged bodies left by the comanche, the affair (or whatever it is) that occurs between wayne and his brother's wife, the surrender of the south in the civil war, the scalpings, the kidnappings, and many other things. the most dramatic elements of the film are excised, purposely i'm sure, but i don't know that it's something that translates today. and this is what i was getting at in my review in 2002 - the film leaves a lot out and i think that plays well in the 50s. today's audience, for better or worse, wants to see what they're missing. on the whole i think the film is overrated. wayne's performance is good, not legendary. the setting is great (despite being factually inaccurate - monument valley isn't texas, though texas might wish it was). the cinematography is another of the film's strengths. so is the music, though it's sometimes too literal for me.
the plot is slow and contains seemingly excessive elements. i think you'd be hard pressed to justify the existence of every scene in the film. when seen in light of what is purposely left out, it's puzzling that some of these scenes are included.
ultimately, i predict that that film will fade in its perceived greatness in the coming decades. or maybe i'm wrong. i'm apparently wrong about john ford. i've seen many of his films, certainly enough to judge him, yet i don't think of him as a pantheon director. andrew sarris does, though. so does my dad. kurosawa called him "the master." and orson welles said he learned everything he needed to know about cinema from "stagecoach." all these people know more about film than i ever will, yet i can't get excited about any of his films outside of the grapes of wrath and, to a lesser extent, the man who shot liberty valance. it's an important film
that has had elements borrowed from it in films like star wars, but that's not the way i judge a work, as you well know. if it were, then the bible would be the best book of all-time, followed by aesop's fables. B.

02/12/12
Prefontaine - i think steve james (hoop dreams, interrupters, etc.) and i would get along. this is his only feature film, and i can't say that it's great filmmaking, but the subject he picked is a good one. the 1972 olympics are probably the most interesting from a storytellers point of view. you have the israeli hostage situation, the russia/usa basketball game, and young steve prefontaine making one of the most daring moves in running history against possibly the greatest distance runner ever (lasse viren). i first saw this race when i was 16 or 17 years old and a runner myself. our coach showed us the 5000m race on vhs and we all kinda thought
that prefontaine had a chance when, with three laps to go he made his move toward the front. unfortunately he didn't have the kick that viren and others had. ultimately, the slow pace is what killed it for him.
the film itself captures all the drama of the 72 olympics and adds the drama of the time politically and socially as well as the pro vs. amateur fight that was really heating up at the time. i don't think this issue was resolved until the 90s when they finally allowed pros to compete in the olympics and that's most famously manifested in the dream team which is still the greatest assemblage of athletic talent the world has ever seen (except for christian laettner). it also catches the early days of nike. phil knight isn't in it, but of course bill bowerman is.
the downfall of the film is in its more human moments. the relationships it portrays never fully work. some of the acting is flawed as well. ultimately, james is a documentarian who wanted to tell the story of someone who interests him, but who had died many years ago. so, you get what this film is. it's a faux documentary (it's told after his death with many of the characters narrating their thoughts about prefontaine like they would in a documentary). it's shot in a cinema verite style as well. i don't think it's going to draw the average person in very much, but i'm a fan of prefontaine. he had a great gift and was extremely devoted to it.
so if you like prefontaine and/or steve james it's worth checking out, otherwise probably not so much. B.

02/11/12
Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory - third and final (one must assume) installment of documentaries covering the west memphis three and the child murders at robin hood hills.
the first 30 minutes or so is basically unnecessary for those of us who have seen the first two installments. i'd like to see a version that is combined into one film, in two parts, that cuts out all the redundancies. once you get past the recap portion of the film, though, this is a great cap to the story and the trilogy of films. when watched along with the staircase and into the abyss (which i watched a few months ago), you get a pretty interesting glimpse into the criminal justice system in this country. these films do well when watched together.
certain themes and motifs consistently arise. like the women who are drawn to these guys on death row or life imprisonment. i've worked with one of them before, actually. basically they come off as normal people on the whole, but i guess there's just one part of them that desires a man who can't hurt them, but is dangerous at the same time? or maybe they're ultra jealous and want their man to be locked up? who knows. i know that scott peterson is extremely popular and i find that extremely creepy. pop psychology aside, there are other similarities between all these films.
you see how quickly truth not only becomes muddled, but also how quickly it becomes secondary to the rest of the circus. these high profile murder cases become their own subcultures. you have mr. byers who is probably the most colorful character in the three films who goes from grieving stepfather (paradise lost 1) to nutty potential murderer (paradise lost 2) to possibly the most reasonable guy in the circus (paradise lost 3). by the end of the film you have the alleged murders who have always looked the part, but always said they were innocent (except miskelley's one-time confession under pressure) finally say that they are guilty. once they admit guilt they are let free by the state, after 17 years in prison. make sense? it's called an alford plea which is one of those things that can only exist in a system devoid of real common sense. maybe it makes sense to some philosopher, but i'm a simple guy so it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. essentially, in order for the convicted murderers to finally be set free they must admit that they committed the crime. this allows the state to not admit any wrongdoing, avoid being sued, etc. it also allows the convicted (and now admitted) murderers to be set free into society. basically, the state knew that they were going to get off because of dna evidence (actually lack thereof) as well as other new evidence, so they let the guys go...after 17 years of wrongful (in my mind) incarceration. brilliant system.
the whole thing is so bizarre and twisted. there are all these little subplots and interesting sidebars and secondary characters. meanwhile we have three innocent men who have had their lives basically ruined and three innocent boys who were murdered a long time ago and are always in the background, forgotten.
this installment is the cherry on top and its grade is indicative of the trilogy, rather than just the last film. A-.

02/10/12
Safe House - pretty much played out as you expect once you know who all the characters are. lots of acting talent here with farmiga, denzel, and gleeson, but it's not really utilized well. plays like a tony scott film in terms of look and feel, but ultimately doesn't deliver like one. a little longish, otherwise it passes the time albeit not in the most inspired way. B-.

02/09/12
Animal Kingdom - not quite sure why this one received so much hype. it's reminiscent of many family crime dramas where anything can happen and you get that the protagonist needs to worry about his life/well being all the time. i found it to be a fairly lifeless film, though, and, as a result, i can't say i would have minded the death of any of the characters. sure, the acting was good and the matriarch was creepy at times, but it never achieved lift off for me. B-.
Staircase - maybe the best courtroom/criminal justice documentary of all-time, can't think of a better one except maybe the paradise lost trilogy. follows a man who is accused of killing his wife. she's found at the bottom of a staircase dead with a lot of blood at the scene. was she beaten or did she fall? the plot thickens with every 45 minute episode of this 6.5 hour drama. yeah, it's long, but it's very compelling stuff.
the victim, as always, is lost in the shuffle as is the truth. everyone around michael (the accused) gets sucked into this thing, sides are chosen, politics, his sexual orientation, etc. all factor into the case in some way. i feel like these courtroom documentaries are like war films where the first casualties are truth and innocence. it's a depressing work in the final analysis because each side is so tenacious in its argument, because things that shouldn't be considered, are. because a family is torn apart, once again. because we'll never really know what happened and yet so much is on the line. it shows, as if we didn't already know, that truth isn't obtainable and that people (on both sides) are blind to facts and arguments that don't fit their views. A-.

02/08/12
Dexter Season Six - spoilers. sure the show is formulaic in its ebb and flow and conflict setup, but it's solid entertainment with some meaty stuff to think about as well. with this season we're officially all caught up with the rest of the world and it's too bad because, for the first time, the end of the season left a cliffhanger.
the dexter/deb relationship is what drives this season more than anything else. her feelings for him, her walking in on him killing yet another victim...how is this going to affect an already fragile deb? how will he explain things? will he come clean or draw a new line of defense (e.g., say that it was just this one time because he felt so strongly about the case). if he covers his ass and kills her, dexter will never be the same again. we won't be able to ever side with him again, that's for sure. of course, in reality, he crossed that line a long time ago, but, in a fictional world, we can still root for him right now. B+.

02/07/12
Chronicle - felt like cloverfield, but it wasn't as exciting. there was a latent power in the film that was only barely ever released. and by the time things did peak i wasn't sure i knew what i was supposed to make of it all. is it just a story about coming of age? B-.

02/04/12
Dexter Season Five - after losing rita because of inaction at the end of season four, i sorta figured dexter would turn for the worse. i also figured he wouldn't find anyone who could fill the emptiness left by her absence. i was wrong on both accounts and this leads to a possibly even more depressing finale than last season.
the main plotline here is the bonnie and clyde setup with dexter and lumen (julia stiles) hunting down men involved in the rape of stiles and 12 other women. in lumen, dexter finally finds someone who he can open up to, who is like him, and who isn't completely nutty. there's a caveat, though, which is that lumen is only like dexter so long as she is hunting the men who raped her. so, by season's end, after the task is complete, lumen realizes that her need to avenge is gone; her "dark passenger" has left her, as dexter puts it. it's sad, but inevitable and this inevitability is what keeps it less tragic than rita's murder, for me anyway.
deb continues to be a strong character. she's the rock and moral compass of the show in many ways. sure she loses it from time to time and she has a way of getting involved with people she shouldn't, but she's also a strong character with character. everyone else seems to have their issues - angel is blinded by lust, maria is power hungry, dexter is a murderer...deb, though, seems to always have the best intentions even though it may not always work out for her.
these last two seasons have been the best so far. i only wish they could increase interest in the first half of the season. it seems like a back loaded show in that all the drama comes late. B+.

02/02/12
Artist - i've always wanted hollywood to revisit silent and noir films, but it never seems to happen. sure, they do it in their own way with fargo or l.a. confidential or something, but they never fully embrace the style of yore. luckily, we have the french who love early hollywood. sometimes it creates crappy, overrated wannabes like godard, but occasionally you get a solid film like rififi or the artist. there's nothing amazing about this film, but it revisits the style in a loving and charming way. film geeks love movies about movies so this one should get a strong showing at the academy awards. someone has probably written about the interesting relationship between the french and the americans, i'd like to read it. they bailed us out in the revolutionary war, they gave us the statue of liberty, we bailed them out of world wars one and two, they labeled our greatest film genre (film noir), etc. this film adds another page to the book. and while it's interesting in that way and as a piece of film history, it doesn't strike me as a particularly great film. it's solid. it's fun. it's a nice throw back. but i didn't see greatness in it. B.

01/31/12
Breaking Bad Season One - so i'm going to start reviewing select tv series as i watch them. each season will count as one movie, i think that's fair. i plan on only counting series that have a running plot like like breaking bad, sopranos, etc. in other words, south park, the simpsons, twilight zone, etc. won't be included. there are going to be more spoilers in these reviews than in my movie reviews so don't read any of the reviews if you haven't already watched the season in question. i'll try to keep spoilers to the seasons they occurred in.
most tv series have trouble finding their feet the first season, but bb is an exception to this. it pretty much hits the ground running from the pilot episode. it keeps you interested right away with a problem or clue in the opening scene that needs solving or figuring. i like their opening scenes for this reason. it reminds me a bit of far country (james stewart/anthony mann western) which opens with three men riding into town. one of them (stewart) has the guns of the other two, but we also get the impression that they were partners at one point. how did this happen? what will come of this tension? the beginning asks a question and the rest of the episode (usually) answers it. it's a great device.
the first season is really well pitched. there's plenty of drama, things are still very believable and i felt like jesse and walt could still emerge from things (relatively) undamaged. the titles of episodes 2 and 3 reference a line from the sweet smell of success. i'm writing this review a month or two after watching the first season so i don't have too much to say about it specifically, but i will say that breaking bad is the series that started me thinking about getting into tv more. when i lived in ohio i watched twin peaks (season one) and sopranos and west wing in their entirety, but didn't feel compelled to write about them as much as i do about this. breaking bad is top notch. cranston is great. aron paul really grew on me and the secondary characters are intriguing, good foils, good for plot, and great comic relief. A.
Breaking Bad Season Two - probably my favorite season of the series through the 4th. things with tuco really heat up and jesse and walt are forced to grow even closer, while also getting more tense. walt is forced into lies that grow increasingly deep and convoluted. the blackout lie and getting close to hank finding out about everything when he is at tuco's really stretch the limits of walt's imagination and resourcefulness. there's also still a good amount of science in this season and i found that that fades as the series progresses.
this season shows the highs and lows of the business as well as any other and does so while maintaining believe-ability. after all that jesse and walt go through with tuco they're still broke. it's the classic case of having to go deeper or dropping out completely. they choose to go deeper. saul's character is introduced (my favorite outside of jesse/walt) and they go from rags to riches after finding gus.
there are a lot of professional changes as well. hank moves up in the dea and there's a life changing event there. walt has trouble at work. jesse realizes he can't break into normal society. skyler gets a job and drama emerges there.
we also see jesse continue to evolve. his run-in with the meth heads and their son is a highlight. unfortunately as jesse seems to be getting better femme fatale jane takes a turn and they drag each other down the drug rabbit hole. jesse is too much of a follower for his own good. walt turns a major corner in the second half of the season culminating with him allowing jane to die in front of him. A.
Breaking Bad Season Three - things really fall apart for the first half of this season. i stopped pulling for walt and jesse as all their wrangling and lies had seemingly left them bereft of possible redemption. hank emerges as a more central character this season and skyler is much more active as well. jesse and walt get as close as ever to being caught when hank finds the rv at the junkyard.
this was a tough season for me. it hurt to see jesse off the wagon last season, but it's almost worse to see him resigned to criminality here. his strong moral compass when it comes to kids is redemptive and walt stepping up for him, thus strengthening their partnership, are good things to see. of course this is capped off by the finale which is as tense as any episode in the series.
the series continues to be about walt/jesse and them solving problems together, but this is the season where hanks and skyler really are central to the plot. i think of it as a plot-driven show since so much is always happening, but the characters are so strong and complex that it works on both levels. as always, actions have consequences and we see that here. A.
Breaking Bad Season Four - this season gets a little outlandish with some of the plot. things are almost ridiculously tense. it's contrived hysteria at times, but i mean that in a good way. the writers do a good job of ratcheting up the drama without straying too far into absurdity.
in gus, walt finally has an adversary worthy of his intelligence. much of the series walt is obsessed with the fact that he's underutilized in this regard so it's nice, in a way, to see him finally challenged to the fullest. his potential is being realized and i guess that's all any of us can hope for, but it so completely destroys everything around him - his family, jesse, the community, order - that it's also depressing. hank's idleness is similar - he's bed-ridden and unable to fulfill his potential until he goes out with walt looking for heisenberg and breaks the law in his pursuit of his white whale.
i'd like to think that walt and jesse can return to some normalcy in the final season, but they've passed the point of no return. walt is far too tenacious to give up and there are loose ends that will surely bite them next season. ted's death may haunt skyler, the cartel wanting a piece of jesse (who helped gus in his overthrow), etc. at the end of the season it looked like maybe they were done with the business, but the business may not be done with them. A.
Dexter Season One - the first season takes a little while to lift off, but it is intriguing enough to keep you coming back for more. dexter is a more plot-driven series than it is character-driven. i found myself much more interested in who the ice cream truck killer was than what motivated any of the characters. part of that is a lack of great secondary characters and part of that is the voiceover, which inserts for the viewer, dexter's interpretation of the characters and events. so, instead of interpreting things yourself, you are given his opinion; in essence you are told what to think. i think that the use of the voice over evolves a bit as the series progresses. it's less present and more seamless. it's more funny, too.
dexter is like a lot of people and he has a code, he has scruples which makes him capable of some sympathy. i think audiences appreciate when psychopaths draw a line, it allows them to connect at least a little bit. towards the end of the season dexter is forced to decide what kind of person he's going to be, and this is the kind of decision he'll likely face throughout the entire series.
luke got me started on this and i wasn't really sold on the series until about half way through the first season. you really have to give a series several episodes if you see any potential. even seinfeld took a little while to find its feet. glad we stuck with it. B.
Dexter Season Two - this season was about the hunt for the bay harbor butcher and dexter battling with living a normal life or a life in the closet. i think this will be a long standing theme of the show. if he ever goes fully in one direction or the other the show will lose much of its intrigue. this is also the season where lila plays the foil for dexter. his brother was the foil in the first season, but he was firmly on the insane side of the spectrum. lila comes off as embracing her wickedness in a less destructive way. turns out, though, that she's a total nut who is willing to do whatever she needs to get what she wants. her insane energy and dastardly
manipulation make for some good episodes.
it was during the first part of this season that i found myself finally warming up to dexter the character. i was already sold on the series, but the character hadn't quite won me over yet. now, though, i started thinking to myself "maybe we need a guy like dexter around to do the dirty work for us from time to time." just a thought.
it's a really taut season as it revolves around looking for the bay harbor butcher which is dexter. lundy is hot on his tail and so is sgt. doakes. dexter comes as close as he can to giving himself up without actually doing it. B.
Dexter Season Three - the season of jimmy smits as foil and friend of dexter. took a little while to get into the plot of this season since the stakes weren't as high. but smits' character was good and unpredictable. dexter, and the audience, think that smits is for real - a potential partner and friend for dexter. someone who finally understands dexter but isn't a sociopath. someone who dexter can teach and learn from at the same time. but, as always, things unravel and smits turns out to be another nut job. a formula is arising here. we have a foil for dexter. dexter becomes more normal and assimilated. dexter reaches out to someone who understands him. this person proves to be unstable and unreliable. dexter kills this person out of self-preservation and in line with "the code" since this person also happens to kill the innocent.
i'm left wondering what will happen once dexter is wrong about someone he kills. he uses science, sure, but one day may come when he is wrong about who he decides to kill. this season wasn't as good as season 2, but the production is better in these two seasons relative to the first. secondary characters like angel,
deb and rita get a little more meat to them. B.
Dexter Season Four - just finished this one so it's fresher in my head. it's the best season i've seen so far. john lithgow is a great foil for dexter because he's, from afar, the guy who can balance being a killer with being a family man. sure, he doesn't live by the same code as dexter (and thus must die), but dexter can learn something from him...or so it seems. deb goes through some more awful stuff when lundy dies. she's basically the show's punching bag. things with angel and maria heat up out of nowhere. he's too good for her, in my opinion.
really, though, this season is about dexter settling into married/family life. can he successfully manage those two worlds? probably not, and in the final moments of the season it turns out he kinda doesn't have to. rita is killed (presumably) by lithgow, though i'm not sure how he would have found out about dexter's past. it's possible it was just a coincidence, i suppose. i accidentally looked up julie benz online and saw that she was dexter's wife through season 4. it was a fleeting glimpse and at the end of the season i still held out hope that i had seen it wrong. turns out i didn't, but it wasn't too much of a spoiler because i never saw it coming that she died the way she did. honestly it was a very sad moment. dexter needs rita, i think, and now that he doesn't have her i'm afraid he's going to wander into even more despicable territory.
season four also saw dexter being wrong about one of his murder victims for the first time. john dahl directed several episodes in this season and season three, so i guess that explains where he's been lately. i also noticed a difference in the way harry appears in the last couple seasons. instead of being used solely in flashbacks, harry is now used as dexter's conscience and comments on what's currently happening. i think it's a more seamless way of inserting the character and was a good change. B+.

01/29/12
Haywire - i went into this movie knowing that a lot of stars were in it and that was all. meryl sets our movie agenda and i told her a while back i wanted to see it, but had completely forgotten about it by the time we saw it. as i was watching it i kept thinking that it felt and awful lot like a steven soderbergh film. the long takes, the movement of the camera, the david holmes-esque music. it felt like a laid back ocean's eleven. then the credits roll and it says directed by steven soderbergh and suddenly the world makes sense. and then it says music by david holmes and i feel like a genius for about 2 seconds. then i find out that the lead is gina carano who is an mma star. this makes sense for two reasons. she's a pretty convincing fighter in the film (though the editing needed some work to make the fights tighter) and it fits the girlfriend experience mold that soderbergh made with sasha grey. in that film he got a porn star to play a prostitute and here he gets an mma fighter to play a mercenary.
the plot wasn't exactly clear, but it was interesting enough to keep me engaged. carano cleans up nice, too. all in all it wasn't a bad movie, but it wasn't as good as you expect from soderbergh. B-.
One For The Money - gotta respect the truth of the title. katherine heigl could easily move to the next level in the acting world if she chose to. she's a pretty good actress when the material is there and she has plenty of pull. in knocked up she made $300k for her starring role. now she's making over $12 million a picture and, it appears, taking any work that comes along. this picture is bad and formulaic. heigl tries a jersey accent, but it's inconsistent and not particularly good anyway. gross commercialism here. glad we stole this one. D-.

01/27/12
Grey - thinking back on this movie a few days after seeing it, it's hard to say exactly why i liked it so much. not a whole lot happens and it's not the film that the trailer depicts, but it's a real good film nonetheless. there's a great balance of tension and comedy, some good mystery, and a nicely chosen cast. liam neeson is pretty much must-see these days. it's not often that i'd rewatch a movie within a week, but i'd definitely check this one out again if i had the opportunity. B+.

Man On A Ledge - nice enough working class tower heist-esque little movie. the big problem here, though, is that they cast elizabeth banks when they meant to (or at least should have) cast vera farmiga. every line that banks delivered had me thinking that farmiga was the one who should have been the one delivering it. other than that this is a good enough flick to pass the time. B-.

01/24/12
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - more like extremely obnoxious and incredibly gay. the kid is annoying and not well acted, though not helped by the poor screenplay. overly long and cheap in its use of september 11th. not at all worthy of nomination. not the kid, not the movie, not max von sydow. the one thing it had going for it was the mystery of finding out what the key is for and then we find out it's for a stranger's safety deposit box and we never find out what's inside. a waste. D+.

01/23/12
Iron Lady - total piece of junk with no soul and no discernible narrative structure. streep, of course, is very good, but her performance alone doesn't save this from the scrap pile. a total bore. another shitty british film. please, someone take away their cameras. D.

01/20/12
Addiction Incorporated - addiction incorporated primarily a talking heads documentary that covers the downfall of the tobacco industry. in my college years i did a fair amount of research on the anti-tobacco lobby and the tobacco settlement around which the movie revolves, i've also seen the insider a few times, so it's a not unfamiliar topic to me. despite, not because of, that i found the documentary to be engaging and informative. it not only illuminates the tobacco industry and their fight for survival, but also the special interest and political system we have. by now all this stuff is fairly old hat for a cynic like me, but it served as a good reminder that sometimes the truth actually makes a difference. a rare feel good story in the world of politics. B.

01/11/12
Silent House - uruguayan horror film supposedly based on real events. basically it's paranormal activity with the academically interesting twist that the whole thing is shot in one take. it's the second longest take i know of in film history, with the first being russian ark. i must say that both films are not entirely interesting beyond the gimmick, however. plus, like hitchcock does in rope, there are some cheats in the film that allow there to be a few cuts, though i'm unsure whether they used them to cut or not. i just kept wondering why she was wandering around this house aimlessly as things got more and more terrifying around her. the ending reminded me of high tension, but it made even less sense. C-.

01/05/12
Bellflower - the trailer is really good and enticing, unfortunately it's not entirely indicative of the feel of the film. the film wanders about as does its protagonist. i kept waiting for something inspiring or weighty to happen and then the ending finally delivers, only it doesn't. acting and directing showed promise, but really uncertain how i feel about the story as a whole. i get what happened and what didn't and i think i understand why everything was portrayed as it was, i'm just not sure it was worth the build up. B-.

01/02/12
It's Kind Of A Funny Story - pretty good the second time around as well. funny and touching with a nice style to it. it's like one flew over the cuckoo's nest meets 500 days of summer or catcher in the rye or something. B+.

01/01/12
Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - better than original overall. it told the story better and the music and direction were better. both are overly long, but the books are long and detailed from what i've heard so i understand why. i almost feel like the ending of both should be an epilogue instead of the final act. summarized over the credits using news reports would suffice. one aspect where the remake fell short was the ending wherein the girl feels let down by blomkvist who continues his romance with another woman. i just didn't buy the sentimentality from her character. the way she first comes onto blomkvist, for example, isn't the sign of a woman who is an emotional wreck going out on a limb. rather it's a sign of a woman who takes what she wants and evidently wants blomkvist at that moment.
i can't recall all the other differences between the two films, but the american version had a better feel in my estimation and i attribute that largely to fincher. it follows in the mold of se7en (and, to a lesser extent, zodiac) more than any of his other films. it's not his best work (that's behind him at this point), but it's a nice enough film and i'll be watching the others as they come out. B+.
grading scale:

A+ 4.3

A 4.0

A- 3.7

B+ 3.3

B 3.0

B- 2.7

C+ 2.3

C 2.0

C- 1.7

D+ 1.3

D 1.0

D- 0.7

F+ 0.3

F 0.0

F- -0.3

A+	4.3
A	4.0
A-	3.7
B+	3.3
B	3.0
B-	2.7
C+	2.3
C	2.0
C-	1.7
D+	1.3
D	1.0
D-	0.7
F+	0.3
F	0.0
F-	-0.3