Now here's a thought: a movie with dragons and vampires in it. How come nobody's done that yet? When it happens just remember you read it here first. 😉

Continuing on with our cinephilic year last year, we've seen a couple more in this past week.

Last week we went and saw the US version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I haven't read the book nor seen the Swedish film, so I can't comment on how faithful it is to its source material or not, but I did enjoy the movie. It was very intense and confronting at times, but after all the talk and hype about that part of it, it wasn't to the extent that I had anticipated.

Rooney Mara was exceptional in her role (and very deserving of her Oscar nomination), but I didn't buy Daniel Craig's Swedish accent: for me it drifted from him making an effort at it, to him talking in his normal British accent. In the end I was confused as to whether he was supposed to have an accent or not...

Last night we saw Underworld: Awakening in 3D. I'm a huge fan of the first two movies (and also of Rise of the Lycans to an extent), and I was thus very apprehensive of them making another movie with Kate Beckinsale after so long.

Overall it wasn't as bad as I was fearing it to be, but it was only ok-ish without being that great. The plot felt very half-baked and thin, and the movie really missed characters like Bill Nighy's legendary Viktor. They wrote off characters from the previous movies for convenience, using the old sleep/time-travel/cryogenic-freezing technique as an explanation of shifting the whole plot and setting elsewhere from the original movies.

The action was very good and the 3D a bit average, but overall the movie was a lot more action-oriented than the previous movies, largely at the expense of the plot. Kate Beckinsale, whilst still in very good shape, for me was visibly older than in previous movies (unsurprising considering it's been five years since her last Underworld movie), and that sort of ruined the illusion of her character being an immortal un-aging vampire.

It's definitely worth a watch, but overall it's largely forgettable, which is unfortunate when I remember how I felt after watching the first two movies.