While inclined going in to treat this as a throwaway film, Anne Hathaway’s bare-it-all performance was so compelling that I was mesmerized right up to the cliche of an ending. Jake Gyllenhaal’s low-key charm was also easy on the eyes and mind, seducing the viewer along with every woman onscreen. The corporate shenanigans verged on Up in the Air or even The Office, but representing a real company, Pfizer, gave the proceedings a patina of credibility. What kept this, though, from being a standard Julie Roberts/Hugh Grant rom-com, and belied the publicity poster, was the fundamental question it posed: should two people commit to a relationship when one of them has a debilitating physical condition that will only get worse.

A very skillful adaptation of the book, with only Dr. Teleborian disappointing my mental image. One wonders how someone who had not read the book would appreciate, or follow, the complex story, but then again there probably aren’t many people who fall in that category. For those of us who had read it, it was fun to see how various scenes would be portrayed. It was also instructive to see whole subplots that were omitted – notably Erika’s entire newspaper career and Blomkvist’s affair with Monika – without compromise. For similar reasons, it will be interesting to see the Hollywood versions, although I can’t imagine any other reason to see them. We skipped the second instalment, but I’m sure the critics were right when they said this was the best of the lot. In a way, it is sad to think that Blomkvist and Salander are now leaving our lives.

A casually clever countryside caper, the kind the British do so well, mostly about love – or is it sex? There are no car crashes – albeit a stampede of cows – and no patent absurdities – albeit a number of stretches. There are, however, a number of fun characters, all gracefully identified in cameo credits, and various morals to choose from. It’s not Gosford Park or even Cold Comfort Farm, but it passed the time pleasantly, and without the pretensions of, say, City of Final Destination.

This had more the feeling of a short story – by O.Henry, say – than the movie equivalent of a novel. Not because it was short, which it was, but because it offered a slice of life, a la Woody Allen, without reaching any conclusions. Yes, it was a comment on the human condition, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing, as the narrator intoned. Also a comment on the difficulty of relationships, the instinct to rationalize, and overall self-centeredness. Helena was the worst at not noticing others around her, but not by much. By the film’s end, every character had made a major attempt at improving their lives, all without success; and for some it amounted to courting disaster.

Less a plotted melodrama than a fascinating character study for which Jesse Eisenberg should get an Oscar nomination, at least. He does more with his eyes than most actors this year have done with their entire bodies. Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin is good, too, but I can’t say as much for the rest of the cast. The Woonsocket twins are absurd caricatures, made tolerable only by their putdown at the hands of Larry Summers. We know, of course, the outcome of the movie before we go in; so Sorkin and Fincher are probably justified in not bothering to build suspense. Instead, they concentrate on portraying how an individual such as Mark Zuckerberg can be so brilliant as to invent the social product of the decade, yet personally so inept that those who know him either hate him or sue him. Curiously for a “true story,” the movie spends a lot of time on locations that never existed: depositions in which the antagonists square off and a party scene that makes Harvard look like Animal House.