The Dark Knight Rises

2012 // USA - UK // Christopher Nolan // July 27, 2012 // Digital Theatrical Projection (Wehrenberg Des Peres 14 Cine)

The third (and by all accounts final) of director Christopher Nolan's Batman films pulls off a rather curious feat, one that appears to be novel in the annals of sequel-dom. The Dark Knight Rises manages to enrich the series as a whole, even as its only intermittently successful tonal and thematic preoccupations throw the singular achievements of its direct forebear, The Dark Knight, into sharper relief. To be sure, Rises is pleasingly effective as a sequel, and it carries the ashen aura of its predecessors to appropriately dizzying heights (and depths). The film expands upon the convoluted narrative and absorbing themes presented in the first two films, wrapping up Nolan's grim, mayhem-and-exposition-stuffed trilogy in a quite gratifying manner. Appraised as three chapters in a sprawling seven-plus-hour tale, the Batman films take on an air of queasy grandeur. Together, they comprise an unsettling epic about paralyzing contemporary fears, moral codes both noble and demented, and cramped psyches straining against the fragility of flesh and spirit. Rises also returns the focus to the fundamental story at the saga's heart: that of a haunted vigilante and the city he has taken as his personal charge. In this, Rises resembles Batman Begins a bit more than The Dark Knight. Its primary absorptions are the psychological contours of Bruce Wayne and the phenomenon of the Caped Crusader. Nolan's Batman films, especially Begins, have often observed that the cowl itself is a potent symbol. Rises clarifies and complicates this observation, presenting it as a quandary rather than a strength. The Batman is now bigger than Bruce, and it will outlast him. The fresh conflict posed by Rises is: Can Bruce disentangle himself from this symbol before he makes his exit? And does he even want to?

Unfortunately, restoring the centrality of Bruce Wayne has the effect of rendering Rises a bit more personal and corralled than the blissfully out-of-control The Dark Knight. Admittedly, this is an odd complaint to direct at Rises, a film that features several outlandishly super-villainous plots, not to mention the subjugation of all of central Gotham City under a nuclear-backed, months-long Reign of Terror. However, the first-order appeal of 2008's The Dark Knight is one of mood, a mood established through a brilliant intersection of velocity, atmosphere, and performance. There is something wickedly phosphorescent about Nolan's second Batman film. Its vision of a world gone mad possesses a noxious clarity, assisted in no small part by Heath Ledger's still-mesmerizing portrayal of the Joker. The Dark Knight offers an essential portrait of early twenty-first-century American fear, and its Gotham is partly a “Nightmare Town” plucked from Frank Miller's demented headspace and partly a crumbling Ground Zero where an alien malevolence writes its rambling manifesto in napalm. Perhaps it's unfair to gripe that Rises returns the focus of the story to the character of Bruce Wayne; narratively speaking, such realignment is arguably the sensible and humane thing to do in a Batman trilogy. However, the third film unquestionably feels a bit diminished and even prosaic in the enervating, reflected light of The Dark Knight.

Summarizing the story of Rises in great detail seems patently unnecessary. Suffice to say that it is eight years after the events of the prior film, and Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is now a stiff-jointed recluse, having hung up his cowl and permitted the Batman to be vilified as a murderer. Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) is nearing retirement, the city's prisons are swelling with convicts, and crime is at an all-time low. Of course, this last fact doesn't appear to account for the nocturnal prowlings of cat burglar Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), who has set her sights on the baubles of Gotham's One Percent. The threat that is foremost on Bruce's mind, however, is a masked fiend known as Bane (Tom Hardy), a mysterious soldier-of-fortune who has purportedly arrived in Gotham in order to carry out a violent revolution. That upheaval gives lip service to the miseries endured by the roused rabble, but it is directed by Bane's glib cynicism and sociopathic personality. Similar to those of the Joker, Bane's plots are massive, staggeringly crabbed things, demanding a level of planning that strains against the supposed realism of Nolan's series. However, where the Joker veered from one unlikely scheme to the next “like a dog chasing a car,” Bane moves calmly and relentlessly towards a singular goal: the obliteration of Gotham and the Batman, in that order. This establishes Bane as a more opposable and comprehensible nemesis, in that he has a Master Plan that must be discerned and stopped. The question becomes whether the weaker, slower, out-of-practice Bruce is capable of stopping Bane. The horror of Rises is therefore not one of "escalation," as foreshadowed in Begins and demonstrated in The Dark Knight, but of diminishment, of the unstoppable march towards a day when the Batman will be defeated.

Rises develops this thematic thread splendidly, although the film surrounds it with obscurely presented plot points, questionable character actions, and a plethora of science-fiction nonsense that far outdoes anything in the prior films. (In one of the film's more laughable sights, an enormous fusion reactor-turned-doomsday device is tossed around as though it were a medicine ball, with no discernible effect on its ominous countdown.) One wonders why Nolan elected to resurrect the unfortunate Bond-villain wackiness of Begins—recall Ra's al Ghul's ludicrous “microwave water vaporizer” scheme—and meld it with the often confounding, Byzantine plotting of The Dark Knight. Regardless, Rises' story is at its most enthralling when it is focused on Bruce Wayne and his demons, rather than militaristic spectacle. Certainly, there's an adolescent thrill to be gleaned from the sight of Batman's hovercraft dodging heat-seeking missiles between Gotham's skyscrapers, or of thousands of police officers and Bane-loyal zealots clashing man-to-man in the streets within a haze of swirling snow. What truly lingers, however, is the stark drama of Bruce's tribulations in a hellish prison-pit half a world away. Echoing motifs and moments stretching all the way back to the opening scenes of Begins, it is this borderline surreal sequence that exhibits Nolan at his most evocative and persuasive. The sequence cunningly exploits both Bruce Wayne's status as a legendary hero and the thematic groundwork laid by the prior films, creating an emotional crescendo that matches the guttural chant of the prisoners: “Rise... Rise... Rise...”

Beyond the Black Rainbow

2010 // Canada // Panos Cosmatos // July 6, 2012 // Theatrical Print (Hi-Pointe Theater)

[Beyond the Black Rainbow was screened on July 6 and 7, 2012 as a part of Destroy the Brain's monthly Late Nite Grindhouse program, featuring cult and exploitation films from the past and present.]​

Writer-director Panos Cosmatos' oneiric science-fiction feature, Beyond the Black Rainbow, is deeply entrenched in a veritable encyclopedia of genre landmarks, drawing on its antecedents for theme, mood, and evocative production design detail. Particularly evident are the fingerprints of David Cronenberg's late 1970s and early 80s horror films, with all their distinctive markers: the creepy religio-political factions and cult-like self-help movements; the nightmarish "fifteen-minutes-into-the-future" technology, replete with sinister black-box devices that bridge the gap between the analog and digital; the affectless, drawn-out performances; and the pointedly Canadian atmosphere to the art direction. There's a bit of later Cronenberg in Cosmatos' film as well, in that Rainbow calls to mind the druggy disconnectedness and Wonderland randomness of the former director's William S. Burroughs riff, Naked Lunch.

Other apparent forebears abound: Ken Russel's Altered States, Mark L. Lester's Firestarter, and Saul Bass' sole directorial effort, Phase IV. There are also a plethora of stylistic and thematic echoes from the works of Kubrick and Tarkovsky. Heck, even Silent Running gets a visual nod, a jarring reference given that Rainbow is, tonally speaking, worlds apart from Douglas Trumball's eco-futurist parable of a space-faring Garden of Eden. However, the deep cinematic traditions that Cosmotas draws upon are something of a distraction from the task of approaching the film as a trippy, difficult work in its own right. And Rainbow is nothing if not keenly aware of its own unconventional character. The film isn't quite desperate about wallowing in obtuse weirdness, but it is damn determined to be as challenging and impenetrable to the viewer as possible.

The film opens with a promotional film that describes the Arboria Institute, a psychological research center devoted to ensuring the "happiness" of patients through vague technological, pharmacological, and spiritual means. The year is 1983, although it is a menacing, parallel 1983 illuminated by a baleful red LED glow and scored by a relentless electronic drone. The film posits an alternate universe where the late 1970s have simply continued and Reagan-era gaudiness and sentimentalism have yet to arrive. Inasmuch as Rainbow has a plot, it is this: Elena (Eva Allen), a young woman who barely speaks and has ill-defined psychic powers, is being held at the Institute under the "care" of the turtleneck-favoring and obviously sinister Dr. Barry Nyle (Michael Rogers). Why exactly Elena is imprisoned at the Institute and what Dr. Nyle wants from her are unclear, but there is much about Rainbow that is unclear. Suffice to say that stuff happens: Elena is subjected to a series of bizarre interrogations; jump-suited, helmeted guards menace her; she is permitted to psycho-kinetically murder a nurse who snoops through the Institute's files; Dr. Nyle meets with Arboria's elderly founder (Scott Hylands), and has a flashback to his own early days in the man's care; Elena stumbles upon a means to escape; Dr. Nyle has a kind of psychotic breakdown; a pyramidal machine emits light and smoke.

The film doesn't make much sense, but it's difficult to say whether this is by design or not. Often, Cosmotos seems to be working in an almost avant-garde mode, where narrative is an afterthought and the film occupies itself primarily with conjuring an unsettling mood and creating disturbing, potent images. In this it succeeds, for Rainbow proves to be a legitimately creepy film. It does, however, seem wildly inappropriate to term it a "thriller" when, from a purely objective standpoint, nothing at all happens for long stretches at time. The film's stylings seem designed to be oppressive, creating a haze of nauseating light and sound that echoes the psychological demolition that the Institute is inflicting on Elena. The boundaries between individual days dissolve as Elena awakens again and again in her spotlessly clean white cell to the same spinning Arboria logo on the video monitors. The performances from the two primary actors are pitched to be overtly alienating: Rogers softly moans out his lines, punctuating every word with a long pause, while Allen has exactly one expression of slack terror that she wears throughout the film. They aren't really "acting" in the usual sense, but, then again, Cosmotos doesn't seem to want acting cluttering up his bench project in mood and design.

The overall effect is that of a narcotic trance, where every detail seems significant, but slips away from the viewer with maddening ease. It's a bracingly audacious way to make a film, demanding a staggering tonal discipline that Cosmotos nearly (but not quite) pulls off. However, a film in which lots of nothing happens and the few somethings that do happen are mysterious (or downright opaque)... well, that can be wearisome for any viewer, even a viewer who is accustomed to glacially-paced experimental film. It's not a pleasant experience by any stretch, but pleasure doesn't seem to be Rainbow's aim. It is, in its way, pure cinema, but it is a cold, somewhat aimless cinema. Cosmotos lacks the talent that master surrealist film-makers like Lynch and Jardowsky demonstrate in selecting inexplicable images that seem intuitively, emotionally "correct". Rainbow, in contrast, often feels calculatingly weird, in the most joyless, serious-minded manner possible.

Cosmotos' film eventually collapses, but, surprisingly, it is not due to its unyeilding atmospherics. Rather, it is when Rainbow executes a baffling sprint into slasher-film convention and black comedy camp in its final scenes. This suggests that, oddly enough, it is a lack of dedication to confounding strangeness that ultimately defeats the film, undermining its potential as an enduring acid-trip cult feature.

The Amazing Spider-Man

2012 // USA // Marc Webb // July 2, 2012 // 3D Digital Theatrical Projection (Wehrenberg Chesterfield Galaxy 14 Cine)

Perhaps the most unkind thing one can observe regarding The Amazing Spider-Man is how much of a struggle it is to say anything notable about it at all. The film is just there, a slick, by-the-numbers recitation of the Spidey origin story in a slightly different key than Sam Raimi's Spider-Man. That 2001 feature remains curiously over-praised to this day, and it's a perverse commentary on Amazing's mediocrity that it will ultimately serve to burnish the earlier film's reputation.

Director Marc Webb's take on the Web-Slinger's tale offers an ill-advised emotional focus on Peter Parker's dead parents, as well as a few superficial changes. Here the romantic prize is Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) instead of Mary Jane Watson, and the webs that sprung from a genetic mutation in 2001 are here high-tech devices of Parker's own invention (as in the original comic tale). In lieu of Tobey Maguire, this outing features Andrew Garfield as Spidey, who at least proves more nuanced and flexible in the role. Overall, however, the tweaks leave such a slight impression that one wonders why the filmmakers bothered with them at all. Amazing distressingly suggests that Marvel and Hollywood have managed to reduce Spidey to a predictable, all-flash product, an ignoble fate for the the crown prince of conflicted, wise-ass adolescent superheroes.

The little moments that entertain in Amazing are mostly of an actorly or technical nature: Garfield and Stone's natural, sweetly awkward courtship, for example, or the eerie way that the scaly visage of the villainous Lizard echoes the face of alter ego Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans). However, the film is so weighed down by triteness and and futile pathos-wringing that it quickly fades from memory after the credits roll. For a film about one of the most recognizable and beloved of modern spandex-clad heroes, such flimsiness is disappointing, to say the least.

Your Sister's Sister

​2011 // USA // Lynn Shelton // June 27, 2012 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema)

The magnificent, cringe-provoking awkwardness on display in writer-director Lynn Shelton’s 2009 comedy Humpday invited comparisons to mainstream “discomfort comedy” works such as The Office, but the film’s secret weapon was the appealing simplicity of its scenario: What if two straight guys talked themselves into making a gay pornographic film, despite the fact that neither one really wanted to do so? Shelton complicated this high-concept premise with doses of unresolved college-age angst and subtle class envy. She also turned a one-on-one battle of wills into a nasty relationship triangle by adding a third major character, a girlfriend who wobbles between hurt, angry, and baffled in the face of such a nonsensical, sexually confused macho dare. It worked phenomenally better than it had any right to, primarily because Shelton and her performers treated the whole enterprise like a tragicomical high-wire act, studding it with unbearably drawn-out moments of unease, panic, and surrealism.

Shelton leans on a variation on this successful formula in her new feature, Your Sister’s Sister, and once again it pays marvelous dividends. The result is one of the most engaging films of the year thus far, a funny and anguished little tale that commands the viewer’s attention in a manner that no hollow spectacle of digital super-heroics can manage. As in Humpday, there are only three characters that really matter: a man, a woman, and her sister. It’s been one year since unemployed, acerbic Seattleite Jack (Mark Duplass) lost his brother. Jack’s best friend Iris (Emily Blunt) correctly discerns that he still needs to come to terms with the loss and sort out his life. Accordingly, she sends him to her family’s remote cabin on a misty, forest-clad island for some mandated Alone Time.

Unfortunately, Iris’ sister Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt) is also holed up in said cabin, attempting to clear her head after the disintegration of a long-term relationship. Jack and Hannah circle one another warily, but soon they are commiserating, downing tequila shots, and making a Big Mistake of a, um… coital nature. Naturally, the next morning Iris drops by for a surprise visit, resulting in lots of surreptitious glances, uncomfortable meals, and whispered conversations. Did I mention that Iris happens to be Jack’s dead brother’s ex? And that Hannah is a lesbian?

Duplass, Blunt, and especially DeWitt are all at the top of their game here, conveying the humanity of their characters without showily painting them with faux-humanizing detail. Vitally, each of the three characters is sympathetic when viewed from the right angle, and yet the performers permit peeks at their more blinkered and selfish tendencies. (Even sweet, generous Iris can be a clueless jerk, it turns out.) Duplass is, as always, a bit of an conundrum as a performer. His manner is agreeable and relaxed, but he possesses the sort of asshole unctuousness that only white guys from the urban Northwest can really achieve. Watching Duplass’ Jack clumsily talk his way into the sack with Hannah—and thereafter tap-dance as fast as he can to conceal this tryst from Iris—is vaguely unpleasant, just as it was unpleasant to watch his character break the news of his impending on-screen gay encounter to his girlfriend in Humpday. It’s a disagreeable spectacle, but also undeniably authentic, and even mesmerizing in an absurd sort of way.

Ultimately, Duplass proves adept at utilizing his demeanor for black comic effect, and whether it is a conscious effort or not, it works phenomenally well in Your Sister’s Sister, bouncing off of Blunt and DeWitt’s more polished styles to create deliriously agonizing comedic moments. Shelton’s script is lean and wonderfully structured, all rising emotional stakes and mounting anxiety. It finely balances its pathos between whispered intimacies and wailing histrionics, creating an emotional terrain that feels much like that of a tearful, vicious, real-world argument. Shelton’s latest feature ultimately proves to be a shamelessly absorbing story of family, relationships, secrecy, and sacrifice.

Brave

2012 // USA // Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman, and Steve Purcell // June 14, 2012 // 3D Digital Theatrical Projection (Wehrenberg Chesterfield Galaxy 14 Cine)

Arguably, Brave represents Pixar Animation Studios' first foray into honest-to-goodness fairy tale territory. Its story reverently (albeit loosely) follows the form of a Hero's Journey, and it wraps itself in the conventional "medieval fantasy" elements of the genre: castles and kingdoms, magic and battles, princesses and curses. The princess in this case is the flame-haired and quick-witted maiden Merida (Kelly Macdonald), the eldest child of Scottish monarchs Fergus (Billy Connolly) and Elinor (Emma Thompson). Merida is a master archer, and no slouch in the saddle, either, but her parents primarily see her as a valuable asset to be gifted in an arranged marriage that will preserve the fragile peace with neighboring clans. Merida is having none of this, naturally. Following her efforts to gleefully humiliate her would-be suitors (and parents), she sneaks off to sulk, and promptly stumbles upon a gnarled old woodcarver (Julie Walters) who moonlights as a witch. Spells are purchased, and things get... well, hairy.

In its broad outlines, the plot is well-worn stuff, but it's the quiet subversiveness of Brave that makes it such a delight. The film's explicit messages are fairly tame and even somewhat wooly: stay true to yourself, try to understand where others are coming from, and... try to divine your destiny from the land's mystical whispers? Something like that. It's the film's implicit messages that are really intriguing, and this is where Brave admirably demonstrates that kid-friendly genre cinema needn't engage in bloody-minded deconstruction to be bold. Most notably, romantic love is nowhere to be found in the film's story, a conspicuous absence for those who examine Disney's pop cultural products with a careful eye, but not one that draws attention to itself. Boys and romance just aren't on Merida's mind, and no handsome princes appear within the film's confines. Moreover, Merida's looks never come up in the film's dialog at all. No characters comment on her beauty, or lack thereof, and her most defining physical trait (aside from her cascade of scarlet hair) is her athleticism. Of the three suitors who appear—Young Macintosh, Young MacGuffin, and Wee Dingwall—none exhibit any interest in Merida as a romantic object. Indeed, one of the film's more fascinating turns is its late pivot from mocking the suitors to revealing them as pitiable lugs who are being bullied by their fathers. Laughably anachronistic, perhaps, but still a pleasure to see such a sentiment expressed in a Princess Tale (™).

While the film's marketing seems focused primarily on Merida's yearning for freedom and self-determination, the story is actually that of the relationship between the princess and her mother, and of their mutual need for greater empathy. As the queen, Elinor is forced to play the parental Bad Cop to Fergus' jovial, masculinity-obssessed Good Cop. It is she that is expected to prepare Merida for a life as a poised and obedient gentlewoman, and she that therefore receives the brunt of the princess' wrath. Elinor is presented as doting but also severe, demanding, and quietly despairing for her daughter's future. Strictly speaking, however, the queen isn't the villain, although neither is the aforementioned witch, nor the twisted, man-eating bear that once took Fergus' leg and still stalks the kingdom's wilds. The real Dragon that must be slain is the rift between mother and daughter. Elinor has so completely internalized the confining cultural traditions that were once foisted upon her that she no longer seems capable of expressing love save through disapproval. Merida, meanwhile, is so self-absorbed and reflexively rebellious, she cannot perceive her mother's sacrifices and pain. The inability of either woman to acknowledge the other's humanity is the film's central conflict. In other words, Brave not only passes the Bechdel Test with flying colors, it essentially repurposes the fairy tale genre for a female-centered and distinctly modern story of familial devotion and understanding.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that while Brave isn't a ground-breaking work of animation compared to Pixar triumphs such Ratatouille and WALL-E, it's still quite an extraordinary work of pop cinema, not to mention gratifyingly witty and heartfelt. It's also—as one expects of Pixar—a visually sumptuous film, from the achingly gorgeous Highland landscapes to the off-beat design of its human characters and setting details. (Regarding the latter, Brave echoes the high-water mark established by How to Train Your Dragon's dense, humorous faux-Scottish Viking milieu.) Still, the film's earnest and unapologetic absorption with a thorny female-female relationship is what truly makes it so appealing. Which is perhaps less a commentary on Brave's overall excllence than on the parched state of thematic originality in animation, even among Pixar's features. Indeed, Brave stands out among the studio's films strictly on the basis of its narrative maturity and the rich, disciplined way that its action, sentiment, and humor serve the story. The psychological sophistication of Pixar's features has grown in recent films, but Brave is not distracted by tonally off-key chase sequences (WALL-E, Up), nor is it rendered politically problematic by its affection for Übermensch (The Incredibles, Ratatouille). It's just a damn fine fairy tale, told very well.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2011 // USA // David Fincher // December 19, 2011 // Digital Theatrical Project (Wehrenberg Ronnies 20)

An argument can be made that David Fincher's adaptation of Steig Larsson's phenomenally popular pulp whodunit, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is an exercise in style over substance. Certainly, the film’s opening credit sequence lends credence to this position: Yeah Yeah Yeahs vocalist Karen O growls out a cover of Led Zepellin’s "Immigrant Song" as oily black liquid oozes over human figures that are embraced and penetrated by writhing computer cables. It’s jarringly reminiscent of a James Bond opening, and perhaps a sly inter-textual joke at that, given that leading man Daniel Craig is serving as the current 007. The rest of the film is only moderately less brash.

However, such aggressive styling proves to be a tick-mark in the film’s favor, at least when one considers it alongside both the source material and Niel’s Arden Oplev’s comparatively flat, mirthless 2009 Swedish film adaptation. Under Oplev’s hand, Larsson’s grim tale of buried family secrets and socialist democracy gone freakishly awry was many things—workmanlike, satisfactory, disposable—but stylish it was not. The most valuable card up the sleeve of the 2009 film was Noomi Rapace, who embodied waifish, wounded hacker-sleuth Lisbeth Salander with eerie precision and a curious kind of dark magnetism.

Fincher’s take doesn’t add any appreciable depth to Larsson’s tale, and in this respect it is remarkably similar to the Swedish film. Screenwriter Steve Zallian wisely excises the Scandinavian politics and finance that dominated hefty stretches of the novel. Such components are arguable crucial for understanding the wider context of Larrson’s story, but what is digestible on the page is probably unworkable in a film. Zallian also trims and tweaks the narrative in other ways, mostly to make the story a little smoother and more symmetrical. From a thematic perspective, however, the new film is unsophisticated, offering little beyond the visceral appeal of an unsolved mystery, seat-squirming tension, and a streak of white-hot pseudo-feminist rage.

Insofar as this is the extent of what any version of the The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo could offer, David Fincher’s film is an unquestionably handsome and persuasive realization of the tale. It’s visually striking, crisply conveyed, and blessed with a lucid, seductive aesthetic and mood, which is more than one can say of most murder mysteries. Rooney Mara—slinky and wide-eyed beneath ghostly eyebrows—conveys her own variation of Lisbeth, more shrinking, awkward, and defensive than Rapace’s portrayal, but also more fearsome and razor-edged when provoked. Beyond Mara and Craig the film features a cast of familiar faces—Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgård, and Robin Wright among them—as well as Swedish stars and long-lost character actors (Julian Sands!), all of whom acquit themselves well enough. (Perhaps the film’s only formal blunder is the vaguely accented English dialog, which is distracting given the explicit decision to retain the Swedish setting.)

The real stars here, however, are the craftsmen behind the film, a team of returning Fincher collaborators who manage to render a stomach-churning tale of rape, murder, and revenge as something deliriously attractive. Cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth bestows a familiar yellowish “greasy-gothic” look to most of the interior spaces, but elsewhere a chilly gray dominates, and appropriately so. The adroit editing from Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall—who have now cut the director’s past four films—keeps things humming along with enviable vigor and clarity, a necessary asset in a story so laden with exposition. Just as essential is the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, which effectively evokes an atmosphere of pure wrongness by layering plucked-out, discordant melodies over ambient droning and buzzing. These various visual and aural elements coalesce (perhaps “curdle” is a better term) into an atmosphere that is oppressive, gnawing, and eminently fitting for the tale. And therein lies the primary appeal of The Girl With a Dragon Tattoo: As a lurid, shallow thriller steeped in hideous beauty.