Saw two movies. One was pretty good. One was pretty awful. One was [b]The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo[/b]. One was [b]Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy[/b]. Guess which was which. 1. Drive - 8/10 2. The Adjustment Bureau - 8/10 3. Hanna - 7/10 4. Super 8 - 7/10 5. Martha Marcy May Marlene - 7/10 6. Horrible Bosses - 7/10 [b]7. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - 7/10[/b] 8. The Ward - 7/10 9. In Time - 7/10 10. Source Code - 7/10 11. Contagion - 7/10 12. The Lincoln Lawyer - 7/10 13. Limitless - 6.5/10 14. Insidious - 6/10 15. Midnight in Paris - 6/10 16. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows - 6/10 17. Unknown - 6/10 18. X-Men: First Class - 5/10 19. Thor - 5/10 20. Crazy, Stupid, Love - 5/10 21. We Bought A Zoo - 5/10 22. Bridesmaids - 4/10 23. Everything Must Go - 4/10 24. Conan O'Brien Can't Stop - 4/10 [b]25. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - 3/10[/b] 26. Just Go With It - 2/10 Review of [b]The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo[/b]: This is an ambitious film. Not because it breaks new ground, but because it has so much ground to cover. Like many ambitious films, it's far from perfect; and its shortcomings are sometimes easier to point out than its strengths. First of all, it has to overcome prejudice from people who not only read the novel but also saw the 2009 Swedish film. Second, it features a lot of researching and fact-finding, which has a tendency to be unexciting unless we are given some small revelations along the way. Thankfully, director David Fincher also made Se7en and Zodiac, two movies about people tracking down a killer, and The Social Network, in which he made hacking look interesting. Unfortunately, the whodunnit aspects of TGWTDT are not as well-realized as those other movies, perhaps in part because they have to share the story with so much additional material. The family web of vice and deceit that forms the Vanger family never becomes as clear to us as it does to Mikael and Lisbeth, meaning that we don't share their passion for solving the mystery. That murder tale could easily have taken up the entire running time, and while it seems like the main plot thread we also have the story of Lisbeth's fight against the abusive state official in charge of her funds. This seems like a mostly unrelated element that occurs entirely before she meets up with Mikael, and is never directly tied to anything else in the second half of the film; that leaves us wondering why we need to vicariously experience such trauma. The film's appeal seems to hinge largely on its edgy attitude and harsh subject matter, but those who watch it to be titillated by sex and violence are likely to find it a bit tame for their tastes; whereas those looking for a mature thriller may be taken aback by how luridly the scenes of sexual violence are presented. It's a tone that's very hard to get right, though to Fincher's credit he gets about as close as I would guess one could. Style is, after all, one of the most winning aspects of the movie (the opening credit sequence is an oddity, both beautiful and unsettling). The easiest thing to admire is Rooney Mara's performance as Lisbeth, in particular her dedication. Her performance is good, but her physicality is even more impressive - those piercings are all real, and she shows them off by being naked a lot. She does smart, wounded, and occasionally scary and does it all admirably. The other head-turning performance is by Stellan Skarsgard who is entertaining as one of the Vanger clan. To me this is a movie that bites off more than it can chew - it's like 1 and a half movies (one mystery story and part of Lisbeth's story, which I suppose will be fleshed out in the two inevitable sequels) instead of just one. Falls just short of greatness, but there's enough talent involved that I would call it at least very good.