The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

This film in most places is titled Men Who Hate Women, and, indeed, it features several such men. Uber-hacker and investigator Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is investigating journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) when she gets a new parole officer. Unlike her previous guardian, this one wants to control her finances and brutally rape her. Disagreeing with his methods, she sets up a sting operation and then gets sucked into a 40-year-old mystery on a remote Swedish island. Misogynists, Nazis and a family of evil industrialists conspire to stop her and Blomkvist from finding out the truth in this incredibly tightly plotted and gorgeously photographed noir film. It seems the mystery movie has moved overseas, with France and now Sweden becoming the experts in the form pioneered by Americans, since we’ve left it behind to focus more on 3-D movies about alien super-Smurfs. But that’s OK: Our European students have learned well, and now present this perfect gem as a gift to the country that inspired them. Or at least that’s how I like to think of it.