Tanner Hall

Oh, that cold old new movie THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. All excited about it, people flock to see. What for? What's so great about it? It's dark and stark and Rooney Mara had to cut off her hair for the part. An ugly, unattractive part. So, it brought her success. But it's a crappy movie. Well, to each their own, if it lights up your life, I'll try to be happy for you.

But I prefer my birds to be bright and chirpy and flying about fluttering like cute little angels. Which is not exactly the character Rooney portrays, but you get my drift. I mean, just look at lovely, lovely Rooney in the opening sequence as she gets driven to school by her mother, chewing a piece of gum, much to Mom's chagrin. She looks like a cuter version of Elisha Dushku. She has a cheekbone structure to die for. Has got to be one of the prettiest actresses on film. Hell, people, if I looked like that, and they offered me like gazillion bucks to appear in a hit movie, I'd think about what I'd miss every time I passed a mirror. And, on top of that, the even better part that would have come her way anyway, so scrooo your dragon tattoo offer...! That scene with Rooney with the guy and the car amidst the autumn leaves, makes me think of an ad campaign with the slogan 'it doesn't get any better than this.' This is a small movie, with a bad girl that really isn't well-defined, as the Georgia King portrayal turns out to be ultimately toothless. The more well-defined bad girl, the naughty one, the Brie Larson portrayal, as Kate, is more the one that does something awful. She gets banished from the script, unsatisfactorily so. Roller-skating in place, an untimely dismissal...

There are some laughable performances. Amy Sidaris and her weakling hubby should have been recast. What were they thinking, those two were a wrecking crew. Georgia King was a storm-in-a-teacup kind of adversary. She should have upped her game play at least tenfold. Brie Larson was excellent. Anybody who could come to class (barely-)dressed up for the plum female part of A Midsummer Night's Dream looking like that, wow! But apart from her obvious beauty, she was also entirely convincing.

Plot has its weak points, but for a dedicated girl-watcher, lots to cheer about. Loads more fun than TGWTDT.

The decaying, crumbling castle was an excellent choice of location. Does it really exist? No such place found on Google.

I forgot the actress's name, but the woman who played the mean mom, at the time of watching, I thought she'd have made a perfect Alexis Carrington had they done a DYNASTY remake.

Tanner Hall is one of those all-girl boarding schools set in the old, countryside serenity of New England. It's probably prestigious (since rich girls go there too), and literally gated. Locked on the inside and out – which seems not only inappropriate but not feasible either since somehow pizza delivery boys can get in. "Tanner Hall" is a teenage girl movie, and of course, our four main girls find no end of trouble in their small school.

A main indicator for how good (or how poor) a movie is, is how well they can reach their target audience. Despite competent casting directors, set directors, and cinematographers, "Tanner Hall" is just way too slow to really engage their youthful audience. We are slowly introduced to Fernanda (Rooney Mara), Victoria (Georgia King), Kate (Brie Larson) and Lucasta (Amy Ferguson). And then with poorly thought out drama (and no comedy) we venture forth as they struggle with coming of age.

Victoria is a trouble-maker, but one misplaced early scene ruined any chance for a strong moment of empathy for her character. Kate is a sexually adventurous trouble-maker and the one with the best chance for intrigue and suspense but she was only the third main character. Fernanda is supposed to be a good girl but then she falls into temptation with an older man. Lucasta, the fourth-billed, was struggling to figure out what kind of girl she was, wanting to understand what she was attracted to and what was attractive about her. Clearly, this is the most sympathetic character and the one that every girl could relate to in one way or another. But instead, the writers and directors made us spend most of our time with Fernanda whose extracurricular activities were not only immoral but illegal too and completely unrelatable to the normal school-age girl.

The grown-up, slowly maturing, adult version of me couldn't connect with any of the girls and found it awfully hard to sit through. The teenage girl version of me would have been able to connect to one of the girls, but it wouldn't really be worth my time.

Don't bother seeking out "Tanner Hall". Just because Rooney Mara is now famous, and an Oscar nominee, doesn't mean we need to start releasing her earlier, forgettable work.

I am not a teenage girl but after watching "Tanner Hall" I think I might know what it feels like to be one. The laser-perfect ensemble cast navigates the Terra Incognita of teenage love with rare & effortless authenticity. The look is elegant. The feel is timeless. The lighting is sublime. The shots are considered & appropriate. "Tanner Hall" is a first film & has its faults. But like the intermittent pools of light dappling its dark corridors, the film possesses a rare & uplifting spirit of redemption. Chris Kattan & Amy Sedaris are hilarious! The score is innovative & emotional. "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" Rooney Mara is one of the stars. She's terrific. Great performances all around. Excellent Debut Film!

As a young lad, I often fantasized about attending an all-girl boarding school in New England, or maybe someplace in Europe. However, there was always one obvious obstacle to my dream. One minor character in this movie has overcome this obstacle--he gets to attend the titular all-female institution because he is the head-mistress' son. The MAIN characters in the film though are four girls--three long-time school chums and a childhood friend of one of them, who transfers to the school and serves as kind of a catalyst for all the melodrama that follows.

There IS a goodly amount of melodrama--two of the girls get involved with older men. One (Brie Larson) flirts with her English teacher (Chris Kattan) mostly just for her own amusement, but ends up inadvertently causing great problems between him and his sexually frustrated fellow teacher/wife (Amy Sidaris). The other girl, the main protagonist (Rooney Mara) embarks on a much more serious affair with an expectant father (Tom Everett Scott), who happens to be married to her mother's best friend. A third girl has questions about her sexual identity. But perhaps the most troubled girl is the newcomer (Georgia King) whose obsession with cutting herself and history of suicide attempts are the result of childhood trauma that is alluded to early on, but not revealed until the end.

Let me say first off that if the very many high-school age girls looked like Rooney Mara and Brie Larson, pretty much all adult heterosexual men would be in jail right now. But this movie was directed by two women, so it never really veers too much into exploitation territory. This would not necessarily be a liability if it worked better as a straight drama, but all the characters remain undeveloped as individuals and never really gel as a group. The movie also really tries to cover too much in 90 minutes, going into the lives of all four girls AND several of the adults (particularly the two teachers played Kattan and Sedaris). It's hard to fault any of the actors here though. Rooney Mara, for instance, would go on to play another sexy schoolgirl in "Youth in Revolt" before hitting the big-time with the US version of "Girl with a Dragon Tattoo". She's achingly lovely in this movie, but--like everyone else--not a fully developed character you can care much about. Her character is kind of indicative of the whole movie--very pretty, but somehow not very substantial.

TANNER HALL is like a very interesting puzzle delivered to the audience in pieces so disconnected that we never get a final reward form the completion of the puzzle. Written and directed by newcomers Francesca Gregorini and Tatiana von Furstenberg it has a script that seems to want to be embellished or at least reinsert what seems to be like fragments of a longer film that still dwell on the cutting room floor. But for what it is, it is an entertaining stage for the presence of some very fine actors about whom, despite the shred of information about each, we learn to care.

Tanner Hall is an all girls (with the exception of the Head Mistress's son Peter as played by Ryan Schira) somewhere in New England: the stately buildings are crumbling just like the lives of the girls who study there. Fernanda (Rooney Mara sans piercings and tattoos!) relates the story by remembering a time in her childhood when her friend Victoria (Georgia King) committed an act of meanness - allowing an old lady's pet parrot to escape. Hold that thought.

At the school Fernanda, Kate (Brie Larson) and Lucasta (Amy Ferguson0 are best friends and when Victoria is dropped off to yet another new boarding school by her abusive mother she joins the clack. From this point the entries into love, alienation, mischief, decisions about sexuality, and adultery color the fragments of the film. Gio (Tom Everett Scott) is married and expecting a baby but falls for Fernanda and the two have a challenging relationship. Lucasta must face her conflict as to her needs and rebuffs physical advances form delivery boy Hank (Shawn Pyfrom), and Kate flirts with teacher Mr. Middleton (Chris Kattan) married to the sex obsessed and frustrated Mrs. Middleton (Amy Sedaris). Victoria is left yearning for the world of relationships to make sense but not finding the path. There is the beginning of a storyline as the girls escape confinement with Victoria's theft of a key, but that eventually goes nowhere except fizzle.

The themes of the film have been used before - and will be used again: girls becoming women is a never ending source of story material. The aspect that makes this little film shine is the presence of the fine acting of Rooney Mara, Georgia King, Brie Larson, and Amy Ferguson. They are a pleasure to watch perform. Grady Harp, March 12