Movie Reviews: Girl With A Dragon Tattoo & Red Tails

I like to go to the movies -- a lot.  Reading whole books takes too long and movies are a great way to just chill after work.  I tend to go by myself cuz I often do go after work and then I can see what I want.  But I digress.  So there's always the critic's picks and then there are normal people's choices (which is why I always seem to have seen almost all the movies nominated for The People's Choice Awards and usually a maximum of 2 Oscar-Nominated films). 

Girl with a Dragon Tattoo

I bought this book and it was really damn long in the beginning so I stopped reading it and just went to see it.  There's a lot of talk about which is better -- the latest Hollywood version of the international bestseller or the Swedish version.  I kind of want to see the Swedish version because something makes me think it may be better but I'm not sure since I didn't bother to read the book anyway. 
Rape is a heavy subject throughout the story and mixed with graphic images of women who've been violently murdered, this film earns its "R" rating.  I had heard that the rape scenes in this film were graphic and I've always felt that while obviously not in anyway pleasant, rape was harder to depict for its emotional damage than straight up gore.  This film proved me wrong.  There were 2 very disturbing scenes of rape to add to the other disturbing images.  So while the subject matter was heavy, our tattooed girl was still fascinating.  Enough that I would have liked to have gotten a bit more focus on her alone.  I distinctly remember the scene that really hit me was when she is clicking through a series of violent murder pictures on her laptop with such strong emotional disconnect to the horrors in front of her you'd think she'd have been clicking through Disney Resort options.  While they say she's "insane" she's also incredibly brilliant.  You really pity her because you see how living from one foster home to another has created such a broken person.  I also kept thinking "oi vey, someone feed the woman."  But that's neither here nor there.
Consensus: See it, if you are up for a drama and don't mind hearing about the various twisted and horrific ways you can kill people.


Red Tails

People: "Have you seen Red Tails, yet?"
Me: "No."
People: "It's really good!"
Me: "Ok."

I wondered how much George Lucas had to pay Tyler Perry for this one.  Being a LucasFilm production, it had camera work that was reminiscent of a Star Wars action film.  But basically it was Remember the Titans meets World War II.  I was surprised to find that it wasn't more violent.  Granted I had my jumpy moments, but this film was far more mild than the Saving Private Ryan type of film I thought I was getting into.  Not to mention a pretty good-looking cast.  Familiar faces of Ne-Yo, Cuba Gooding, Jr. & Terrance Howard made me wonder what happened to Denzel & Morgan Freeman but they did need to pay the rest of the cast...
Again, I digress.  Long story short: it was a good movie.  I wouldn't buy it on DVD, but it's a good movie to see with a boy because he can enjoy the camaraderie & typical George Lucas explosions and you can enjoy the eye candy.  Oh yeah, and minus Titan's classic, on-field dance sequence it too shows that racism is bad -- in case you weren't sure.  (The Help, what?)