This past week, I have seen two Swedish films which have become blockbusters in their own country. They are the first two installments of what has come to be known as the Millennium trilogy - The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and The Girl who Played with Fire. The third film in the trilogy, The Girl who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, has been released in Sweden, but has not made it to the U.S. yet. I will be reviewing the first two films here because it is almost impossible to write about each one separately.

My movie reviews for this magazine have, so far, been exactly that - reviews, not editorials. But over the past two weeks, I have encountered a situation that infuriated me to the point that I decided that I would try to cover something that is terribly wrong with film distribution in the United States. And yes, it concerns a film that many will find hopelessly "highbrow", though its director's intention was to make what many consider to be a limited art form accessible to a general audience.

Back in 2006, actor-writer-director and general wunderkind Kenneth Branagh, who has been responsible over the last twenty years for excellent new film versions of Shakespeare plays, made a new film version of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's German-language opera The Magic Flute. Yes, I said opera. Branagh filmed it with all of its music intact,  and he cast it with full-fledged opera singers, not pop singers disastrously trying to sing classical music. And he made the film in English, resetting the mythical fantasy to take place during World War I.

With Avatar, which I finally saw yesterday, director James Cameron has succeeded in creating a  science fiction world so completely believable that there is not a single moment when we don't believe that its blue-skinned humanoid tribe, the Na'vi, do not really exist in some corner of the universe that we have not explored.  The word "breakthrough" has been used in describing it, and for once it is not hype or exaggeration. The fact that the film has been made in 3-D adds immeasurably to the illusion of reality. (Yes, you do have to wear special glasses, but once the film starts you will hardly care.)

I finally got a chance to see  The Reader this week, and after seeing it, and asking myself the question “Does the oft-nominated Kate Winslet really deserve her Best Actress Oscar for this performance more than Meryl Streep does for the film Doubt?”, I would have to grudgingly say “Yes”, despite the fact that I think both actresses are terrific. Ms. Winslet successfully brings to life an immensely complicated, somewhat unlikable character and even generates a certain amount of pity for her. The film itself raises some deeply troubling questions and paradoxes about guilt and innocence, and has even raised howls of protest from some critics.