Gone Girl (2014)

Gillian Flynn’s novel Gone Girl walked a fine line between pulpy page-turner and thematic depth, grappling with important issues while never losing the breakneck pacing shared by some of its shallower neighbors on the bookshelf.  With Flynn adapting the novel into a screenplay for director David Fincher, though, Gone Girl has well and truly arrived.

On their fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) comes home to find his house disheveled and his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) missing.  A media hurricane ensues, in part because Amy was the subject of a series of children’s books authored by her parents, but largely due to Nick’s suspicious behavior during the first 48 hours.  What’s more, Nick is oddly evasive while helping the police follow the clues Amy left for their anniversary scavenger hunt.  As the film also reveals Amy’s diary entries, it asks:  Did Nick kill his wife?

As you saw from the summary paragraph, I’m going to do my best not to spoil any of the labyrinthine twists in the plot.  In fact, the surprises in the film are so well navigated that I almost wish I hadn’t read the book first.  There’s an element of almost unsettling tension in the film, even for a book-reader, and to that end I have to give kudos to Flynn for neatly adapting the structure and narrative of her novel into a finely tuned screenplay.  At two and a half hours, I was never bored because the movie keeps turning and churning, meticulously crafted with all the tightness of a boa constrictor wrapping itself around you.

I could attribute much of the success of Gone Girl to the stellar cast, as well.  Neil Patrick Harris is divinely unsettling as Amy’s suicidal first boyfriend, and who would have guessed that Tyler Perry’s turn as smarmy defense attorney Tanner Bolt would have been very nearly my favorite performance in the film?  (He certainly gets the best line, a perfect tension-popper right near the end of the film.)  That honor, though, goes to Rosamund Pike, who I’d say is looking at a very real Best Actress nomination once awards season rolls around.  Her Amy is even better than the character I’d imagined, her uncanny stares giving her the ice queen quality for which Hitchcock would have killed.  Affleck is a fine choice, too, but he’s exactly the Nick I pictured in my head; the film is Pike’s, and she owns it.

The individualist in me squeals with delight, though, at the fact that this film ultimately feels like the vision of a single person, plainly the product of the unmistakable eye of David Fincher.  For my money (noncontroversial claim ahead), Fincher has never made a bad movie, so the winning streak continues.  I love it when filmmakers so thoroughly retain their own style across projects, and as I grow older I’m really invested in movies that have that je-ne-sais-quoi “look” to them.  Christopher Nolan does it quite well, especially with Wally Pfister (and, because of the Pfister connection, Transcendence had the Nolan-look, too), and David Fincher is the other master of a consistent, distinctive look.  Marked by half-dim lighting and a loving lather of shadows, Fincher’s work always communicates visually the themes he intends to develop in the film proper.  Of course, the vaguely unsettling score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross has become a Fincher staple; as sore as I still am about it defeating Inception at the Oscars, the Reznor/Ross score for The Social Network suited the movie snugly.

This is a Fincher movie, with all the promise and directorial grace that Fincher brings to the table, and I think we can even understand it as part of a thematic trilogy, with The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, about sociopaths and the carnage they leave in their wake.  The novel was a little bit more about the mutually destructive consequences of a dishonest long-term relationship, but the Fincher treatment is heavily inflected by the director’s own consistent theme of the banality of evil and the quotidian lurkings of the savage.  Where the novel emphasized the dishonesty of its first-person narrators to broaden the range of suspicion in Amy’s disappearance, Fincher’s adaptation focuses more on the performance of normalcy, demonstrating that the suburbs is a site for disguise and deceit.  Nick might be lying when he says he’s innocent, but so might his neighbor, who parlays a friendship with Amy into a tour of the talk show circuit.

There’s so much more to say about the movie, and maybe this isn’t the venue for it.  This is a film that needs to be discussed, among people who’ve been through it.  It’s an experience that shouldn’t be spoiled, maybe up to and including by the source material itself.  I’d like to revisit this film once the spoiler embargo is lifted, but in the meantime I’ll probably be going back to the Fincher well and hit up some of my DVDs.  For you, dear reader, if you’ve enjoyed any of Fincher’s recent work, Gone Girl demands to be seen.

Gone Girl is rated R for “a scene of bloody violence, some strong sexual content/nudity, and language.”  A throat is cut in a very graphic sequence, covering both killer and victim in blood, but the color is manipulated so it looks more black than red.  We see one woman topless twice, another nude from the side in the shower, and two male rear ends.  Language consists of a few F-bombs and one monologue revolving around a crude anatomical synecdoche for a woman.

Oh, hey, tomorrow is the Double-Oh-Seventh of the month!  Former Fincher collaborator Daniel Craig makes his MI6 debut in Casino Royale, so be back on Tuesday.

Monday at the Movies - November 26, 2012

Welcome to Week Forty-Two of “Monday at the Movies.”

Fight Club (1999) – I’ll say this for David Fincher’s Fight Club:  it holds up much better on a second viewing.  I came to it years ago under the auspices of anticipating the allegedly brilliant twist ending, but after predicting it fairly early on I found myself disappointed.  I won’t spoil the ending here, though I will say that the movie is much more successful when you know the reality-bending twist in advance, particularly since the self-congratulatory way in which it’s revealed may seem abrasive to viewers ahead of the game.  Edward Norton plays a pitch-perfect nameless sad sack (known only as “The Narrator”) who begins to find meaning in his life after the charismatic Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) begins a franchise of “fight clubs” in which men can take out their anger and recapture their masculinity in a consumerist and depersonalizing world; Helena Bonham Carter costars as Marla Singer, an intensely damaged individual whose self-hatred leads her into the path of Tyler and The Narrator.  At its best, Fight Club is classic Fincher:  dimly-lit, intensely violent, and monomaniacal in its examination of deranged, deviant personalities.  Pitt’s performance in particular stands out as one of his best; Tyler is infectiously exuberant and sadistically nuanced, allowing Pitt to show off the full range of his talents and recalling his nutty turns in Twelve Monkeys and, to a lesser extent, Burn After Reading.  What the film leaves you with is a slightly unsettling commentary on modern society that asks you to sympathize with The Narrator before abandoning you as his plans go awry; Fincher wisely avoids moralizing by leaving the ending ambiguous, asking the audience what is to be made of Fight Club and Project Mayhem.  If nothing else, it’s astounding that this is the same director who did The Social Network!

Hable con ella (2002) – It’s been a year of firsts here at The Cinema King, reviewing silent films (The Italian) and James Bond films (Skyfall) for the first time.  Now your first foreign-language film, courtesy of Pedro Almodóvar.  Hable con ella (“Talk to Her”) is an unusual film, many things at once without leaving much room for the audience to get comfortable in one genre.  Through a series of interconnected events, caregiver Benigno (Javier Cámara) and travel writer Marco (Darío Grandinetti) become friends in the hospital where the comatose loves of their lives sleep.  Marco’s relationship with the bullfighter Lydia (Rosario Flores) becomes more tragic as flashbacks and surprise reveals detail the secret she was keeping from him before her injury, while Benigno’s one-sided friendship with ballerina Alicia (Leonor Watling) becomes more unsettling as we learn more about the extent of his devotion to her.  I’m not sure what to make of this movie; it accomplishes a great deal without leaving much closer for the audience, and it seems that Almodóvar’s film is essentially a treatment of misinterpreted romantic relationships.  To that end it’s a compelling one, helped by strong performances and a willingness to let the audience put some of the major pieces together.  Grandinetti’s turn as Marco is particularly compelling, his emotional vulnerability and forthright nature reminding this viewer of Gordon Pinsent’s moving turn in 2006’s Away From Her.  The film is troubling in places (some unintentional, as I found myself a bit perturbed that the women in the film are literally reduced to bodies), but I think that Almodóvar is after just that – a destabilizing of assumptions and the revelation that everyone has something to hide, be it an emotional trauma in the past or an aberrant secret in the present.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  We had “Fight” today – tune in on Wednesday for Flight!

Monday at the Movies - September 3, 2012

It may be Labor Day today, but The Cinema King isn’t taking a vacation.  Welcome to Week Thirty-Three of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week we continue our long-promised look at the “Alien Quadrilogy,” and with our 33rd week it’s appropriate that we cover a threequel.

Alien³ (1992) – David Fincher’s first film, the third in the Alien franchise, hasn’t been treated well by critics or fans alike.  I don’t know the extent of the director/studio conflict that surrounded this film – although I am extremely curious to see the “Assembly Cut” of Alien³, more so than with the other director’s cuts in the series – but I can say that the film is more competent than its detractors give it credit.  (Is a competent “bad film” actually good?  I’m not sure.)  What fans of Aliens won’t like is the sequel element here, in which Newt and Hicks die off-screen and Bishop is reduced to a nearly-lifeless husk.  Alien³ is more a sequel to Alien, restoring the terror of the single monster and removing the cannon fodder element I didn’t like in Aliens.  In concept, then, the Alien is scarier than before, but its execution doesn’t quite work; the dog/Xenomorph hybrid is rendered with some bad special effects that look jerky and extremely unreal.  What is real, though, is the strong performance Sigourney Weaver turns in; watching her character evolve from the frightened underwear-clad kitten rescuer into a tough-as-nails full-on nemesis for the Xenomorphs has been a real delight, one that deservingly solidified her iconic status in the annals of science fiction film.  Unfortunately, the rest of the cast doesn’t quite line up, in part because the film doesn’t do a good job of distinguishing them; except for Charles S. Dutton, they’re all pudgy bald British men with very few distinctive traits (something perhaps rectified in the Assembly Cut?)  All told, Alien³ is a competent movie that does some things very well while flopping on others, striving for but never quite attaining the excellence of its grandfather.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

The Social Network (2010)

I think we can all agree on two things: David Fincher is a solid filmmaker (even though I'm probably the only person on the planet who isn't keen on Fight Club [long story], I'm considering giving it a second watch), and The Social Network is kind of a step out of bounds for Fincher, whose filmography - including Se7en, Zodiac, and The Game - reads more like a list of "creepiest movies of our generation" than an application to direct a biopic-of-sorts about the founders of Facebook. But Fincher's nothing if not dextrously versatile, and The Social Network adds another notch to Fincher's "here's what I'm capable of" belt.

The Social Network is a highly unflattering portrait of the people who claim to have "invented" Facebook, arguably the most high-profile Web site since Google - the antisocial and nominal founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), his financier and best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), Napster founder and Facebook's demi-PR guy Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), and rowing team twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (both played by Armie Hammer), who claim intellectual property rights - and the lawsuits that divided all of them. The film cuts between legal depositions of the main characters and the events they describe, methodically and deliberately leaving the audience to interpret what went wrong and who (if anyone) stole from whom.

Fincher does a solid turn directing here, deftly keeping the pace moving as characters register slights as betrayals and as alliances crumble under the weight of paranoia and profit. Though the film's first cuts between testimonials and actual events are a little jarring for those who didn't follow the Facebook news feed (pun intended), Fincher quickly sorts out who's after what but wisely refuses to spoonfeed us a good guy/bad guy dichotomy. True, the film and its Aaron Sorkin screenplay cast Saverin in a more sympathetic light than Zuckerberg receives, and the Winklevosses are portrayed as jock heavies more than intellectual heavyweights, but it's not clear by the end of the film how we're supposed to feel about the whole thing.

In particular, the film functions a great deal like Cobb's top at the end of Inception (the significance I won't reveal, so as not to spoil it for the DVD-waiters); it means whatever we project onto it, particularly the ambiguous final shot, scored at least somewhat ironically to The Beatles' "Baby You're A Rich Man." It seems, in the opinion of this reviewer, that The Social Network is a kind of light jeremiad against the ugly irony of using the Internet as a way to increase, not detract from, social interaction, and it appears more than slightly condemning of the sort of person who creates something only for public acceptance and the label of "cool." To these people, money is secondary to status, which also subordinates (again ironically) human companionship. One could, of course, read the film's ending as hopeful; title cards let us know that everyone got a little bit of what they wanted all along, but the uncertainty etched into the film's closing cut-to-black is more wobble than topple. It's a testament to Fincher's skill, then, that the ambiguity that pervades the film is more conducive to interpretation than to accusations of waffling.

Fincher also does a fine job pulling together a few "rising stars" (I use the term somewhat skeptically), giving me faith in at least some of the careers-to-be. Jesse Eisenberg, of course, is the undisputed star here, and for good reason; I've decried him as "the B-List Michael Cera" for his turns in Adventureland and Zombieland, but here he's starting to come into his own. The simultaneous wave of revulsion and sympathy you'll feel toward Zuckerberg by the end is equal parts Fincher and Eisenberg, with the latter now wielding a more promising future than his character. Andrew Garfield is more sympathetic as Saverin, pulling out all the stops on the road to pathos by plausibly depicting all the ambivalent feelings of his best friend's so-called betrayal; reminiscent of a young James Franco (wow, how old does that make me, then?), Garfield's making me less nervous about his front role in the Spider-Man reboots (that and the rumored casting of Emma Stone as Mary-Jane). Justin Timberlake's performance is a little more complicated, however, as I'm not sure if it's Timberlake or the character that's a touch hammy; while Sean Parker is flashy and flighty, my perception of Timberlake is much the same. So it's unclear to me whether what I'm seeing is either very poor or very convincing acting.

Maybe this is just me reading a little too much Gail Simone and other feminist theory, but I'm a bit disappointed with the treatment of the female characters in The Social Network. This is a boys'-club movie, with the facts forcing an aspect on the men of the story, but all the female characters are fairly one-dimensional and ultimately little more than impetuses for men to act. Case in point: Sean Parker's introductory scene finds him in bed with a Stanford girl, a fact we learn from a lingering shot of her panty-clad derriere; we learn her name (Amy), her major (French), and little else. Though Amy is an inconsequential character in the big scheme, she's indicative of the role of women at large in the story, which is a shame when you have such a talented female cast on board. I'm dying to see Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander in Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but it's a shame that all she does as Erica Allbright in this film is break up with Zuckerberg and incite him to start an online revolution after his heart breaks (well, maybe). Brenda Song finally gets a chance to break out of the Disney playhouse (after the unfortunate departure of Ashley Tisdale, I gave up on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody and Song's ditzy heiress London Tipton), but she's essentially window dressing as Saverin's girlfriend Christy Lee; while she's certainly very pretty, Christy isn't asked to do anything else but hang on Eduardo's arm. We're told that she's psychotic and controlling, but there's only one scene where she's allowed to be that - her last one, which is unfortunate considering how well she does in it. And Rashida Jones, of The Office and I Love You, Man (whose misogynistic title, curiously, gave her more material than here) fame, is credible as a second-year legal associate who delivers the film's closing monologue - and eulogy of sorts - with sangfroid and aplomb; sadly, that's the first time she does anything more than offer meaningful glances and eat a salad. Ultimately, the film hinges on what Erica Allbright will do next, but it's too little/too late for a film that's so masculine-dominated.

This is not to say that The Social Network is anti-feminist or flawed beyond salvation. It's merely a disappointing (and for this reviewer, distracting) sin of omission that doesn't really hurt the finished product. Fincher does such a good job with the rest of the movie that he almost atones for the negligible treatment of the fairer sex. What Fincher has made here is a work that examines both a particular true story and the nature of "true stories" themselves; wisely, the movie is credited as "based on" a book about the true facts rather than on the "true story" itself, which invites a whole host of questions about what's true and what isn't. Like Rashomon, The Social Network suggests that truth is subjective, and (like Lost) argues that who the characters are and how they interact with each other is ultimately more important than what they're doing.

If nothing else, the film might lead a few viewers to go home and deactivate their Facebook profile, so unflattering is the creation myth behind the social networking site. As for the movie itself, though, I can do little else than invoke the already-labored Facebook pun and state simply, "Like."
With content friendly for the Facebook generation, The Social Network is rated PG-13 "for sexual content, drug and alcohol use and language." The film implies more than one sexual rendezvous with nothing shown beyond hasty disrobing to the undergarment level; characters abuse marijuana, alcohol, and cocaine frequently, and approximately three F-bombs are dropped.

Zodiac (2007)

I've had problems lately with movies which either weren't what I thought they'd be or which somehow transmuted themselves into something different around the second act. Zodiac marks another in that popular "gotcha" genre, in that it proposes to be a true crime mystery story but ends up telling more about the kinds of people who solve mysteries. And since it's David Fincher (Fight Club, Se7en, and The Game, as well as Benjamin Button) at the helm, it's a success.

Zodiac is the true story of the serial killings that terrorized California during the late 60s and early 70s, but it's more concerned with three of the main "investigators" on the case - cartoonist and amateur sleuth Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), world-weary detective David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), and driven yet tortured journalist Paul Avery (Robert Downey, Jr.). As the Zodiac steps up his offensive and mounts a disturbing letter-writing campaign, the investigators step up their defensive, sacrificing personal and professional committments in pursuit of the killer.

I hadn't realized before watching Zodiac just how many David Fincher movies I've seen - six out of seven, and all of them quite good (though I've made no bones about Fight Club's notorious twist being extremely predictable due to ample evidence in the film's early minutes) - but I recognized an unconscious lure each of his movies possesses. They're all very dark cerebral thrillers with driven protagonists facing unseen evils. (Well, except for Benjamin Button.) In this regard, Zodiac is more of the same, but it's a good more. Where Se7en drives its protagonists to ultimate madness and psychological collapse, Zodiac is much more plausible and therefore inherently more palatable and artistically deft; our characters here don't all lose everything, though they come very close.

The characters are all very fully realized in Zodiac, a credit to the actors filling the shoes. Though I've admitted that Gyllenhaal is not a spectacularly gifted actor, Fincher seems to do for him what Sidney Lumet did for Vin Diesel in Find Me Guilty - that is, elicit a good performance from someone who shouldn't have had it in them. As Graysmith, Gyllenhaal is a fine Everyman, with whom the audience can thoroughly relate, though it takes some getting used to as the character perennially "looms" (RDJ's word) on the periphery of the action for the first third of the movie. Ruffalo is solid as the only real law enforcement represented beginning to end; his story arc falls just short of tragic, which separates him from the third name on our list - RDJ. RDJ seems to be making a career of playing well-meaning but tragically flawed characters with substance abuse problems, and I'd have a problem with it if he weren't fantastically consistent (and, as his turn in Tropic Thunder indicates, versatile beyond this character type). Paul Avery is the most compelling, the most personable, and the most fascinating character in the film, since the quest for Zodiac takes its most drastic and most personal toll on him. It's a shame that his critical character change comes behind a "X Years Later" title card, since RDJ could have worked wonders with that.

Zodiac is filled with other great character actors in supporting roles, who must be enumerated briefly. Brian Cox is celebrity attorney Melvin Belli, who's called in when Zodiac phones into a morning talk show to speak with him; this character is underused in the film, especially in light of what a fantastic actor Cox is, but I suppose that's a casualty of adhering to the historical facts of the case. Anthony Edwards of ER fame appears as Toschi's partner Bill Armstrong, a man whom I was apparently alone in suspecting to be the killer back when I thought the movie was about that sort of thing. Chloe Sevigny is Graysmith's put-out wife, and Sevigny does her usual good job of flitting in and out of the film when needed; Philip Baker Hall ("Joe Bookman" on Seinfeld) plays a handwriting expert whose credentials become suspect, and if anyone's perfected the surly professional type, it's Hall. John Carroll Lynch almost steals the show (but doesn't - remember, that's RDJ's job) as prime suspect Arthur Leigh Allen, straddling a line that makes even the most damning evidence seem uncertain, such that perhaps not every audience member will be as convinced of his guilt as some characters in this highly ambiguous movie.

The ambiguity may sound off-putting, but it is in fact one of Zodiac's best traits. The Zodiac killer inspired Scorpio in Dirty Harry (a fact alluded to in the film), but the real-life case didn't have such a clear ID on its perp. Consequently, the film never actually reveals who the killer was; there's strong circumstantial evidence, but with none of it beyond a reasonable doubt and with overtures to an arrest preceded by the could-be killer's fatal heart attack, it's up to the viewer to decide. But Fincher directs a few great scenes which overcome and indeed exploit the ambiguity of the film. The most memorable scene in the film comes when Graysmith realizes he may have stumbled upon the Zodiac killer's identity; the suspect claims a positive handwriting sample as his own, advances a strong theory for what the killer's signature logo means, and reveals that he owns a basement (a rare feature in California homes) - something the killer admitted to, as well. The slow burn of this epiphany, the gloomy lighting and ambient noises, and a taut performance by Gyllenhaal all make this a powerfully engaging moment in the film, a key example of why Fincher's such a well-regarded (and rightfully so) director.

Zodiac landed on a lot of "Best of 2007" lists, and while I'm not quite sure if it's THAT good, I'm ready to say it was a fabulous ride.
Finally, Zodiac is rated R "for some strong killings, language, drug material and brief sexual images." As a movie about a serial killer, the murder scenes are quite graphic. F-bombs litter the dialogue, and alcohol and some stronger drugs make negligible appearances, as do unrevealing covers to pornographic magazines.

The Game (1997)

It's a good thing director David Fincher is so articulate, because I can't think of a better way to describe his 1997 thriller The Game other than "a fashionable, good-looking Scrooge, lured into a Mission: Impossible situation with a steroid shot in the thigh from The Sting."

Michael Douglas is Nicholas Van Orton, an investment banker reminiscent of Douglas's turn as Gordon Gekko in Stone's Wall Street. A visit from Nicholas's brother Conrad (Sean Penn) sets into motion Nicholas's involvement in a game perpetrated by the shady and mysterious business Consumer Recreation Services. The game begins innocuously enough, but soon Nicholas finds himself fighting for everything - literally, everything - he has in order to win the game.

Kudos to Fincher - director of cult favorites Se7en and Fight Club - for keeping the film moving without ever really giving the audience anything concrete to latch onto. The screenplay is extra-strong here, its postponed questions facilitating the bait-and-switch Fincher deftly pulls on the audience. For two hours, the film careens from plot twist to surprise misdirection, without ever really revealing its hand until literally the last scene of the film. Fincher never gives the audience more than an inch in this one, keepng me on the edge of my seat while asking, "Okay, he's in on it? No, wait, she is? Is he? Whose side is she on?" Like Nicholas, the audience is kept in the dark for most of the film, and so the film is a great deal of fun as far as unpredictability goes.

Where performances are concerned, Douglas is superb as always. Having proved himself adept at thrillers in both Fatal Attraction and Don't Say a Word (perhaps the closest thematically to his performance here), Douglas is, to borrow a line from his co-star Sean Penn, "one of our finest." Penn does a great job in his first scene, which sets up a stark and immediate difference between the Van Orton brothers, but he's nowhere near the presence that Douglas is in the film (if memory serves, Penn only has about three or four scenes total). And Deborah Kara Unger, as a waitress who gets caught up in the game, doesn't do much but serve as a focal point for a few twists - the only ones I can profess to have seen coming.

The Game is not for everyone. It's not for those who like their movies cut and dry, black and white. It's not for those who can't handle top-notch suspense, and it's certainly not for those who get disturbed by movies that ask "How would you handle this?" It is, however, an excellent film for those of us who like a movie that keeps us guessing, that never lets up, and that is as finely crafted as a whittled whistle. The Game is delightfully always one step ahead of its audience.

The Game is rated "R for language, and for some violence and sexuality." Language consists of the occasional F-bomb, and violence begins to escalate only as the game gets closer to the finish line - neither of these are excessive because the real tension is all in your head. Sexuality comes with a few suggestive photographs that are used as part of the game.