The Girl Who Played With Fire

Rated R; 129 minutes.

WATCH THE TRAILER

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times, (excerpted):

The girl is an enigma. She has a dragon tattoo, she plays with fire, she kicks a hornet's nest. These are not personality traits. Noomi Rapace returns as Lisbeth Salander, electrifying in last year's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." She didn't look like your average young heroine. Lean but not skinny, taut but not muscular, solemn rather than gamine. Her mastery of computers allowed her to hack into almost any information, and the hatred of men's violence against women gave her a motive.

We learn in the second movie based on a Stieg Larsson thriller a little more about her childhood, and her fiery relationship with her father. What we don't learn is why she is content to live the life of a hermit, requiring very little human company. Even when she lends a woman her apartment for a year and makes love with her the night she moves in, it seems more like a social gesture.

If you saw the earlier film, or have read the novels, you'll recognize some of the key players here. But you can walk in as a first-timer and understand. Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is back as an investigative journalist, his Millennium magazine is negotiating with a researcher and her boyfriend to learn the names and details of trafficking in women between Russia and Sweden, and famous men are implicated as clients.

film website

Countdown To Zero

Rated PG; 90 minutes.

WATCH THE TRAILER

John Anderson, Variety, (excerpted):

"Countdown to Zero" boasts a cast of international superstars -- Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Pervez Musharraf, Tony Blair -- and a convincing argument that the human race is on borrowed time: Given the number of nuclear weapons in existence, the ease with which they can be made, the eagerness of terrorists to possess them and a worldwide cluelessness about nuclear security, it's only a matter of time before something terribly ugly happens. A politically urgent picture, it will also literally scare the breath out of what will certainly be a worldwide audience.

Among helmer Lucy Walker's credits are "The Devil's Playground" and "Blindsight," and "Countdown to Zero" is another example of highly creative documentary-making.The near-operatic opening, narrated by actor Gary Oldman, uses reverse footage of the '40s Los Alamos A-bomb tests, suggesting nostalgically that time might be turned back to a pre-nuclear world -- and indicating, as well, that such a fantasy perspective has infected the entire issue of destructive nuclear power.

As put quite bluntly by Valerie Plame Wilson -- the lone female and certainly most photogenic of "Countdown's" talking heads -- Al Qaeda wants the bomb, and has been actively seeking to make one. As put by President John F. Kennedy -- in a speech to the U.N. used throughout the film for dramatic effect -- a "sword of Damocles" has hung over every living person, because "accident, miscalculation or madness" might well cause a disastrous nuclear event.

It certainly registers as a visceral way of scaring sense into people: Being a Participant Media production, "Countdown" emphasizes its interactive aspects and provides audiences with ways to enter the debate -- information they will likely ingest, as soon as they can catch their breath.

film website