(Interestingly, the Swedish title is Män som hatar kvinnor (Men who Hate Women) – a decidedly more apt description. Warning: There are some extremely raw scenes of sexual violence in the film.) In The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo we are introduced to the two main characters of the series – Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander. Mikael is a journalist who we meet just as he is being found guilty of libel for a story he wrote in the magazine Millennium. Meanwhile, at a classy investigative agency, an older gentleman is asking for background info on him. The Blomkvist dossier is delivered to him by a strange but clearly very bright, and very pierced girl, Lisbeth. Soon Mikael is contacted by Henrik Vanger, a retired industrialist and former head of the Vanger Group. He offers Mikael an intriguing job as an investigative journalist. 40 years earlier Vanger’s 16 year old niece, Harriet, the apple of his eye, disappeared. Every year on his birthday, he receives a reminder that he believes is from her killer. Since he is an old man, he wants to find the murderer before he dies.

Mikael resigns from Millennium and moves up to the remote island where all the Vangers live. Ensconced in a cold little cabin next to the big house, he is given all of the evidence that has been collected over these four decades. Reading through the files, he begins to understand why Vanger included his entire family in the list of suspects. They take dysfunctional to a whole new level; several of them are Nazis, most have stopped speaking to one another and there are too many secrets to name. And they are none too happy about Mikael mucking about in their strange familial past. But as he digs into the evidence, he comes to several dead ends. Then one very important clue is solved by his daughter in passing. This big break spurs him to ask his employers for some investigative help and they tell him about Lisbeth, who signs on once he tells her he needs her to help him catch “a killer of women,” soon joining him in the cottage.

Lisbeth is a brilliant computer hacker, and also one damaged girl. Not that we know what it is about, but she has to report to a state appointed guardian on a regular basis and since her old guardian has just had a stroke, she is set up with a new one who turns out to be a violent, sadistic misogynist. But the tiny wisp of a Lisbeth turns the tables on him in what is the quintessential rape victim’s revenge fantasy.

Together Mikael and Lisbeth make one of the stranger detective couplings out there. She is a 23-year-old Goth/Punk techie genius, and he is a 40-something, pretty normal, divorced journalist. But they click and as screwed up as she may be, he lets her be, even entering into a somewhat strange sexual relationship at her instigation. As the story evolves, clues lead them to multiple gruesome murders of women all over Sweden, and finally back to the island where it all comes together, and the mystery of the missing girl is solved. There is also a thread with Lisbeth taking down the man who sued Mikael for libel. And at the end a few strings are left untied, leaving openings for the next in the series.

Daniel Craig aside, this Hollywood version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo cannot compete with the Swedish film. This Lisbeth is not as detached or layered, but that is probably a nod to American sensibilities. It is also more polished and I liked the grittiness of the original, but since American audiences can’t seem to appreciate films in foreign languages (unless they are spoken by aliens or Tolkien characters), this will be the one that will be seen by a much bigger audience. It is beautifully shot, has a stellar cast, and will no doubt please many of the readers of the books. I can see it being a decent date film, and the chicks who made it a best-seller will most likely appreciate this semi-faithful adaptation. I can’t help comparing the two, but if you’re subtitle impaired, you’ll probably like this English language version. However, I’d still recommend the Swedish as the better of the two.

Mike Leigh knows how to write and direct women better than just about anyone else I can think of. He has been nominated for 5 Academy Awards for writing/directing films about women. (His male characters are also quite well drawn.) His women are complex, often tragic and frequently working class. Vera Drake was about a devoted mother who performed illegal abortions on the side. In Secrets and Lies a woman was forced to deal with the daughter that she gave up for adoption 20+ years earlier. And in his latest Another Year, he juxtaposes to two very distinct female characters: Gerri, who is successful in her career and personal life, and Mary, who is approaching middle age and is grappling with her failure to have found a man to share her life.

Another Year is structured around one year in the life of a happy couple nearing retirement. Played by Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen, Tom and Gerri are solid professionals: he, a geological engineer and she, a psychologist. They cook together, garden together and have what most people would consider a very happy marriage. But a part of their life involves several desperately unhappy people, the most striking of whom is Mary (played with amazing honesty by Lesley Manville.) Mary has worked as a secretary with Gerri for decades and clearly considers herself to be a part of Gerri’s family. On the surface she is upbeat and a bit kooky. But her life has been a series of romantic disappointments and she is just now realizing that her looks are fading along with her prospects, and so she is very much the lost puppy when she comes to see Gerri and Tom. They try to be there for her but seem to be the adults in the relationship and it is getting tiring. Mary drinks too much, acts inappropriately and risks destroying what appears to be her only relationship.

Another old friend who comes to visit is Tom’s old friend Carl, who is overweight, boozy and also kind of lost. Maybe because they seem to know how to be happy, Tom and Gerri are a magnet for damaged people. By the end of the film, they have even taken in Tom’s suddenly widowed, very taciturn brother, and there is a faint hope that he and Mary may help one another.

Another Year isn’t a film with a plot line as much as it is a slice of life. It is broken into sections as the seasons pass and you cannot say a lot “happens”, though by the end it feels like things may have shifted in a more positive direction. And I guess that is what a year in your life is. Mostly small changes, but looking back, things have altered slightly because of an incident here and a moment there. Another Year is at times very painful to watch because it is so emotionally honest. But it is also warm and funny in places because it is about how we try to care for the people around us despite their flaws.

Another Year is nominated for an Academy Award for its original screenplay and deserves it because it takes what seems like a mundane subject and makes it viscerally memorable. Lesley Manville’s Mary is a fabulously tragi-comic Everywoman, and Tom and Gerri are paragons of the married variety, but what makes Another Year stand out is its compassionate telling of this particular year in the life. I’d recommend this for every chick out there, maybe especially those of the unmarried variety.

Out in the jungle, the strongest creatures prevail by preying on the weakest. In the gritty drama Animal Kingdom, this dynamic is played out within a tight knit family of bank robbers and drug dealers in mid-1980s Melbourne. At the top of the food chain here is mama lion Janine Cody, played for all her ferociousness by 2011 Oscar nominee Jacki Weaver.

The center of the story is 17 year-old Joshua whose junkie mom was a Cody. The film begins with him sitting on a sofa beside her waiting for the paramedics to come and pronounce her dead. With nowhere to go, he calls his grandmother Janine and goes to live with the crime family his mom had kept away him from. His uncles are currently lying low because the ruthless Armed Robbery Squad has a hit out for Uncle Pope who is in hiding. Joshua is just trying to get through high school and have a normal relationship with a girl, but soon the family business ensnares him in their dirty dealings.

Mama Cody is all smiles and hugs, but beneath her chipper facade lies a calculating beast. She kissed her sons on the mouth (a little too long) and barely registers any emotion when her children die. She always has a way of looking on the bright side of the situation. But then the police arrest the brothers, and they see right away that Joshua may hold the key to bringing down the family. Detective Lecky (Guy Pearce) tries to get through to him, but he is no match for Mama Cody who has a much larger arsenal of tricks up her sleeve.

Uncle Pope is hands down the creepiest one of them all and when he thinks that Joshua might be turning on the family, he decides to leverage the only person that Joshua has on his side, his girlfriend. This psychotic family would do anything for their own survival. There are many twists and turns and killings and you’re not sure who is on who’s side. Or who is going to kill who. But you will have to watch it to find out who wins in the end.

Animal Kingdom is clearly more of a rooster flick, but some chicks would probably appreciate it, too. You must be into gritty crime dramas with a stomach for creepy characters. And if you want to see a stellar performance, Jacki Weaver’s Janine Cody makes the mother in The Fighter look like Mary Tyler Moore.

[It is out on DVD now, so watch it before the Oscars, if you can.]

A Serious Man chronicles the woes of one Larry Gopnik, a mild-mannered Jewish physics professor living in the mid-western suburbs in the late 1960s. Larry is surrounded by ungrateful, unlikeable characters and he is continually tested by their bad behavior and his bad luck. His wife is leaving him for a pompous neighbor; his teenage daughter is stealing money from his wallet to save for a nose job; his soon to be bar mitzvahed son is smoking pot and slacking off in Hebrew school; his unemployed and inept brother is living with him and hogging the bathroom to endlessly drain his sebaceous cyst; an anonymous letter-writer is trashing him to the tenure committee at the college and to top it all off the Columbia Record Club is harassing him about paying for albums his son ordered without his knowledge. Gopnik’s life is spiraling out of control and he seems unwilling or unable to do something to stop it. All he can do is ask “Why me?” So he consults three different Rabbis for guidance but they give him none. You just want to smack him and shout “Stand up for yourself man!”

I understand that the movie is supposed to be based on the Book of Job, but I for one did not find pleasure in watching Gopnik suffer… and suffer… and suffer… without questioning. It was frankly soul-sucking. And I’m not even going to talk about the weird Yiddish-language fable that opens the movie. I know some critics adored this film and obviously the Academy sees something in it. Perhaps I am not “serious” enough to get the humor in it? I see where they are going but I don’t want to go with them. The only nice thing I can say about it is that Michael Stuhlbarg did give an outstanding performance as the feckless Gopnik. Too bad I just couldn’t stand watching it.

If you are one of those people who just must see all of the Best Picture nominees, then well, I guess you must. For anyone else, I’d say don’t bother suffering through it.