The Girl in the Spider's Web

First Hit: Although darkly shot with an overly complicated story, it was moderately entertaining.

Lizbeth Salander has been played by three people; Noomi Rapace, Rooney Mara, and in this film Claire Foy. Each brought their own edgy darkness to the role. I will say that each of them was extremely watchable because of their unique intensity.

The film begins with a young Lizbeth (Beau Gadson) playing chess with her sister Camila (Carlotta von Falkenhayn). Their father is eerily controlling and sexually sadistic, especially towards a more willing Camila. The sisters are close, but their father controls Camila and although Lizbeth tries to save her sister from her father’s clutches, she fails.

After Lizbeth dramatically leaves their home, the film shifts to Lizbeth as an adult. She’s a computer programmer, and is constantly finding someone to help or save, for a price. The first person we see her helping is an abused wife by blackmailing the executive and moving all his money to with wife’s account. It's obvious that her father's behavior has her saving people being abused.

She takes on a job to steal software that can run all the nuclear missiles in the world. This is where the story is clouded. The NSA is after the software, so is the creator. After all of them are the Swedish police and secret service. Lizbeth is being looked for my lots of people.

Then Camilla (now played by Sylvia Hoeks) shows up and she becomes someone that wants the computer code along with vengeance towards Lizbeth for leaving her with her father.

The film dances through a fair number of action scenes with people trying to hurt Lizbeth and obtain the computer program she has. Lizbeth has befriended the son of the program's creator and she takes it upon herself to save the boy after his father is killed. What makes it more complicated, is that the there is a code required to get access to the software on the computer and only boy knows it.

All of this and more pieces are thrown together and some of it was interesting to watch, but the thing that made this film really difficult to watch was just how dim and dark, in color, the scenes were. Even the day scenes are dark in tone and color. I know this was to add to the darkness of the story, but when the whole film is like this, it can almost put someone to sleep.

Foy is strong as Salander and she brought her own unique darkness and strengths to this role. Sverrir Gudnason plays the writer Mikael Blomkvist was OK in a minor role as someone who makes his living writing about Lisbeth. Lakeith Stanfield playing Ed Needham the NSA agent trying to get back the code was one of the stronger actors in this film. Hoeks was strong as Lizbeth’s sister. Steven Knight wrote a confusing script. Fede Alvarez directed this film and unfortunately it was more confusing than interesting.

Overall: This will take its place as the worst of the three “The Girl…” films.

Don't Breathe

First Hit:  A fairly good horror thriller that had me jumping in my seat a couple of times.

I’m not a big horror fan, but going to this film with my daughter, who loves horror films, was fun. My first jump in my seat happened when a dog jumped up to a window of a car, the second is when a man came through a door. There are a number of car and door type sequences, so I’m not giving anything away here.

The story is about three people; a young mother named Rocky (Jane Levy) who is living a repressed life with her mother and daughter, a nice thoughtful young man named Alex (Dylan Minnette) who cares about Rocky, and a sleazy boyfriend of Rocky’s named Money (Daniel Zovatto). Together they break into houses taking no cash, but gathering and taking as many valuables as they can to fence for cash. Tired of not making much from their efforts and Rocky promising her daughter they’ll move to California; they decide to rob a blind man (Steven Lang) who won a large financial judgement when his daughter was killed by another motorist.

Because he lives in an deserted neighborhood, they believe that robbing blind man will be easy pickings. However, they discover differently. Much of the film is shot in darkened rooms, but there’s enough light to ensure the audience sees all they need to see. The blind man is very adept at creating fear and seems to have multiple lives because just when you think he's out of the picture, he shows up again. The script is clean, simple and not overly complicated. The director got everyone to buy into the script and each played their part well. It had suspense and moments of tension which was the purpose of this story.

Levy was strong as the woman who had lived a hard life and wanted something better for her daughter. She expressed the right amount of fear and courage. Minnette was sufficiently kind and driven to participate in robberies to be close to and help Rocky. Zovatto was OK as an uneducated thief who was brutish towards Rocky and domineering towards Alex. Lang was very good as the blind old man. His unshaven face and blind eyes were intimidating. Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues wrote a strong script which director Alvarez did a great job of getting tense suspense from the actors and scenes.

Overall:  This was one of the better horror films made in the last few years.