The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018)

The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018): CAST AND CREDITS: The first adaptation of the post-Stieg Larsson Lisbeth Salander novels is a competent, surprisingly bland thriller. Salander, played with competence but little spark by Claire Foy, is now basically Batman or The Equalizer, but with more hacking skills and lesbian sex. Would I have cast Stephen Merchant as a computer whiz? Mmm. No. He's fine, but I kept expecting Ricky Gervais to wander in at any minute. Which would probably have spiced things up! Lightly recommended as a time-filler.

The Girl Who Played With Fire

The Girl Who Played with Fire, written by Jonas Frykberg, based on the novel by Stieg Larsson, directed by Daniel Alfredson, starring Noomi Rapace and Mikael Nyqvist (2010): Disappointing second film in the adaptation of Larsson's best-selling Millennium trilogy. Even though large chunks of the novel are (necessarily) discarded to make a 2-hour running time, what's left is still plot-heavy and characterization-light, to the extent that the ridiculous coincidences that drive most of the plot become way, way too apparent.

Rapace and Nyqvist are still excellent as super-hacker (and by this point, superhero) Lisabeth Salander and muck-raking reporter Mikael. Bonus marks for making a genetic disease with much the same effects as leprosy into the source of a villain's, well, super-strength and super-tolerance for pain. I'd only recommend the movie for people with a high tolerance for 1930's-Republic-serial level coincidence and villainous incompetence.