Film Illiterate, wherein the proprietor records movies seen, and sporadic progress through assorted lists of the "best". Originally started after regretfully renting something forgettable for the third time. I've forgotten what, but never again! A tedious endeavour since 2005. Hello. 🙂
Part of what makes Steig Larsson's novel Men Who Hate Women (sold internationally as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) so good is that it's a solid, slow procedural. When Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) begins investigating the disppearance of Harriet Vanger, he knows nothing; the eventual solution is discovered with painstaking slowness, one faded photograph and historical newspaper report at a time.
At the same time, of course, the novel is devastatingly visceral, particularly in its treatment of the titular men and the women they so painfully abuse. This is where Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) comes in, assisting Blomkvist after handling her own set of unfortunate circumstances: part victim, part rebel, vaguely sociopathic.
Unfortunately, I've only ever seen two films any good at the first of these, and only one -- David Fincher's Zodiac -- which adequately handled both the excitement of dry paperwork and the excitement of serial killers stalking a dark house.
Niels Arden Oplev's adaptation is not such a film. The script competently extracts the salient plot points, but in the process discards all the details that made the book worth reading. Not bad, but never good.