The Girl Who Played With Fire

CHICAGO – With David Fincher’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” hitting theaters today, there seems to be no better time to revisit the Swedish trilogy that set arthouses on fire last year and appreciate these films from a new angle. Music Box Films recently released a lavish Blu-ray box set with extended editions of all three films along with a complete disc of bonus material. The set includes two hours of footage, detailed material from the books that fans of the bestselling trilogy probably longed for when they first saw them. Now, your vision of Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist can be more complete.

CHICAGO – Shouldn’t it be called the “Millennium Trilogy”? Or the “Girl Trilogy”? Only the first movie has the words “Dragon Tattoo” in it. Anyway, I’m being picky. Whatever you call it, the three foreign films adapted from Stieg Larsson’s uber-successful series have been now included in one box set that should appeal to fans of the books hoping to have their favorite series in one place.

CHICAGO – One of the biggest pop culture stories of 2010 has to be the various incarnations of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. As millions read the books on their way back and forth to work and David Fincher prepares to turn them into star-making vehicles for Rooney Mara, the foreign-language film versions of the books have been released in theaters and the middle story, “The Girl Who Played With Fire,” was recently released on Blu-ray and DVD.

CHICAGO – With “The Girl Who Played With Fire” currently selling tickets in theaters (check out our review here) and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” selling millions of copies all season long, the trifecta of summer thrills can only be complete with a look at the Blu-ray release of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” It’s a “Girl” Summer.

Rating: 2.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Movie trilogies often are judged on the strength of their middle chapters. The “Star Wars” franchise wouldn’t have been continually embraced by new generations if “The Empire Strikes Back” hadn’t deepened the characters to such an extent that they became more than mere Jungian archetypes. If “Empire” jettisoned the franchise’s potential, “Attack of the Clones” brought it in for a crash landing.