Film of the week won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film - Argentine crime procedural THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES. It's Inspector Morse meets Love in the Time of Cholera. It's 1999 and Esposito, a Federal justice agent, is writing up as a novel a rape-murder case he investigated back in 1974. So lots of flashbacks and forwards.
There's alcoholic comedy and shades of Bad Boys from sidekick Sandoval. And a romantic sub plot that runs alongside the mystery and then suddenly it's, um, not a subplot any more. Finally, as it's the 70s we are not far away from military rule. So there's a political subplot guaranteeing lots of genuinely surprising twists and turns.
Argentine cinema is where it's happening at the moment, and this is a great example. Reminscent of the best of Golden Era Hollywood, an intelligent mystery story interweaved with comedy, romance and social comment. And all beautifully filmed. Do not miss it.
Runner up features a terrifying and repulsive species that hunts in large numbers and destroys all in its' path. That's right, American teenagers. Luckily thousands of them get dismembered, killed, or just chewed up a bit in PIRANHA 3D.
It's Spring Break on Lake Somethingorother, USA, and vast swathes of semi-naked youth are partaying all night and day. Cute MILF sheriff Elizabeth Shue from Leaving Las Vegas just can't keep them under control. So when the revived pre-historic killer fish come round hungrily looking for lunch it's kind of a shame they just laugh when she screams "Get outta the water!!!"
Not a shame for the audience though. As PIRANHA 3D is a fine example of its' genre - gore fest meets teens in peril. They don't often make exploitation movies as good as this any more. So if you like lots of death, blood and mangled bodies don't miss it. The body mangling special effects are great. While many of the obnoxious teens are, of course killed, quite a few are only half eaten. Can't wait to see the Making Of to find out how they did the scenes with kids with only head and torso left and still talking. Cool!
Rarely has so much screen time been filled with attractive young women gyrating in bikinis. Far more than the plot strictly demands. Ditto when England's sweetheart and underwear model Kelly Brook gets her kit off with a fellow porn actress for some tasteful crypto-lesbian underwater swimming shots. The camera does not so much linger as loiter with intent. But don't worry, it's all feminist really as there is an excellent, um, climax involving a porn director's penis.
PIRANHA 3D is really, really, really funny. I was wincing the whole way through.
Bronze goes to THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, second in the Stieg Larsson trilogy. Bottom line is it's not a patch on the first one ( . . . With the Dragon Tattoo), but still a decent mystery thriller. If you've read the book you'll inevitably say it's a disappointment. And if you've not seen the first one, you really have to go and see the first one, first. It's even darker than it's excellent predecessor, with greater focus on Lisbeth Salander's tortured psychology and more details of the grim childhood which was the cause.
Noomi Rapace's extraordinary performance as the eponymous heroine is worth the admission price alone. An astonishing display of brooding paranoia and hate. An injured, scared and angry animal coiled to strike. Imagine the kick-ass action capability of Angelina Jolie combined with the sheer emotional suffering of an on-form and ultra-miserable Juliette Binoche. All the more amazing given that Rapace hardly has any words to say. A masterclass (mistressclass?) in movie acting - all dark eyes and terse facial expressions in close up. Being and feeling, rather than acting.
When she's not around it's a bit clunky to tell the truth. Lisbeth and Blomqvist are hardly on screen together, so their combined chemistry of the first film is just not there. And the film has an annoying habit common to movie adaptations of crime novels. We keep being given information - tons of it - via various pairs of people meeting up and one telling the other loads of stuff. So at times the movie seems to comprise scenes like that interspersed with people traveling to meet someone for another scene like that. "Show it, don't tell it" is one of the basic rules of good scriptwriting, and this film at times shows why.
But THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE is still a good thriller and one of the best films on release at the moment.
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