F.I.L.M. of the Week (October 29, 2010)

29 10 2010

I feel a little corny using a movie I watched in a class at school as the “F.I.L.M. of the Week,” but to be fair, the class is Economics, which has many practical applications to life.  So on that note, “I.O.U.S.A.” is nothing like those History Channel specials you watched in your middle school history classes to provide a good nap.  In the Halloween season, this could be the scariest movie you will see because it provides a look into your future.  And the future doesn’t look bright.

I’m in no mood to spout off notes for you, and trust me, I took notes on the movie for my class.  I could easily just copy and paste from there, but that would do neither of us any good.  This documentary goes into great depth on one of the most pressing issues our great nation faces – no, it’s not healthcare.  I’m talking about our national debt.

Do you know what it is?  What contributes to it?  How much it is?  Take a wild guess.

Did it come anywhere near to $13.6 trillion?  That’s the current stat, and it will only grow the later you read this post.  If that number alone doesn’t frighten you, does knowing that you owe $44,000 as an American citizen do the trick?  “I.O.U.S.A.” takes you beyond the number you can observe on the National Debt Clock and explains in simple and understandable terms what is going on with our debt.  I don’t want to get into a political debate here, but whether you are a Republican, Democrat, or a Tea Party supporter, you can’t deny that this is a HUGE problem.  Featuring interviews and excerpts from prominent politicians and businessmen like Warren Buffet, the movie is wholly convincing to anyone no matter where they fall on the political spectrum.

Simply put, our government is overcommitting itself.  Thanks to the fiscal irresponsibility of the Baby Boomers, they put us into a terrible position in regards to our debt.  And now they are hitting retirement age, vastly increasing expenditures of Social Security and Medicare.  With healthcare on top of all that, our country simply cannot weather a debt that could grow to $70 trillion in a matter of decades.  If this movie doesn’t scare the pants off you for predicting a vast change in your quality of life in the very near future, I don’t know what will.  Thank goodness President Obama is making this a priority for the next two years; this is something all Americans can agree needs to be addressed and fixed.


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Classics Corner: “Citizen Kane”

28 10 2010

Rosebud.

It’s the secret of “Citizen Kane,” the movie considered by many film scholars and critics as the greatest ever made.  So pardon me for being a little shocked when I got to the conclusion of Orson Welles’ masterpiece and realized I knew the ending thanks to watching AFI’s “100 Years, 100 Quotes” special on CBS.

The search for the meaning of “Rosebud,” however, was still quite enthralling.  Welles’ take on newspaper giant William Randolph Hearst, here under the guise of Charles Foster Kane, is a power chronicle of greed and power are still just as resonant today as they were in 1941.  So relevant, in fact, that many people pointed out the thematic similarities between it and David Fincher’s “The Social Network.”  Curious to see the connection to the chronicle of Facebook I was so highly anticipating, I watched them both on the same day to really have a comparison.

I debated it on the LAMBcast, but I don’t see all that much similar between the two other than the main characters.  Both Kane and Mark Zuckerberg start with humble origins, setting out to revolutionize the way people see the world.  There is success right from the get-go, and there is acclaim.  So both set their sights higher and see no ceiling on their ambitions.  This causes them alienation from friends and loved ones, yet for them this a small price to pay for the success they are having with their ideas.

Perhaps the biggest difference is that Orson Welles completes the story of Charles Foster Kane, a luxury that allegories can provide.  Since Aaron Sorkin made no effort to hide the fact that “The Social Network” was the story of Mark Zuckerberg, however fictionalized, he would lose credibility if he tried to extend beyond what is already known of Facebook’s short history.  He chose to document the site’s origins and the effect that meteoric success had on its founder.

The future of Facebook as is difficult to forecast as the rest of Zuckerberg’s life.  Who knows what kind of life the world’s youngest billionaire will lead?  At 26, he still has a whole life to live, one that would be tough for anyone, let alone Aaron Sorkin, to predict.  When “Citizen Kane” was released in 1941, William Randolph Hearst was 78, and his life work was nearly complete.  While he was still influential (probably more so than Zuckerberg has been in his vehement disapproval of his cinematic treatment), there was a reasonable amount of closure Welles could provide.  Aaron Sorkin left “The Social Network” fairly open-ended, and I found a certain amount of joy in being able to interpret the movie as I wanted.  How I chose to interpret it, however, was very similar to the message that “Citizen Kane” communicated.

It’s a great sign of a movie’s longevity when it can be compared to something as modern as Facebook seven decades after its release, but “Citizen Kane” did more for movies than offer up thematic depth.  The movie was a watershed event in the development of the craft of cinema for decades to come.  It’s easy to look at the movie and notice nothing, but I had heard that the movie was a true revolution, so I looked deeper.  Since I can count the number of movies I have seen from before 1941 on one hand, I went to my good friend the Internet to find out the changes.  According to Tim Dirks, we take a whole lot of Orson Welles’ techniques for granted now.  Notable first in “Citizen Kane” include:

  • Subjective camera work
  • Unconventional lighting
  • Shadows and strange camera-angles
  • Deep-focus shots
  • Few revealing facial close-ups
  • Elaborate camera movements
  • Overlapping dialogue
  • Flashbacks
  • Cast of characters who ages throughout the film
  • Long shots and sequences, lengthy takes

Can you imagine movies without any of these of these things?  What would “The Social Network” be without the overlapping dialogue?  Could Mark Zuckerberg really be like a StairMill to Erica if they paused nicely to hear each other?  Orson Welles did cinema a huge favor with this movie.  While other people have taken these techniques to towering heights, “Citizen Kane” is a necessary watch for anyone who claims to love movies because it is the origin of so much cinematic development.


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F.I.L.M. of the Week (October 22, 2010)

22 10 2010

Tom Hardy wasn’t first on the table for discussion after anyone saw “Inception,” simply because there was just so much to talk about.  Yet once all the disagreement over the ending and what Christopher Nolan intended to be real was over, everyone could pretty much settle on one thing – that British guy Eames was a great scene stealer.  He did, after all, deliver one of the movie’s few laughs with “You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.”

Curious on what could have prompted Nolan to cast such an unknown actor in a high-profile role in a $175 million movie, I went back to Hardy’s roots and discovered his big breakout, a small British action-thriller entitled “Bronson.”   It’s a great masculine movie, filled with merciless fighting and almost ceaseless violence.  (Sounds like a great date night rental, doesn’t it, ladies!)

While he was born Michael Peterson, Britain’s most dangerous prisoner will go to the grave as Charles Bronson, his fighting name.  He’s a ball of destruction that ultimately becomes too much for the country’s jails to handle.  Strangely enough, this is a man sprung from a fairly affluent middle-class family who had nowhere to go but up.  And perhaps that’s one of the movie’s messages – it doesn’t matter where you come from if you have violent tendencies.  They will take over you.

These violent outbursts land Bronson in the slammer, which hardly calms or rehabilitates him.  He sees it like a stage where his violence is his show for a hardly-impressed audience of guards.  The film perfectly captures the theatrical nature of Bronson’s violence, even spoon-feeding it to those who don’t pick up on it from Hardy’s brilliant portrayal of obsession.  Because of this, “Bronson” is more than just your average prison thriller.  It’s a portrait of a potentially demented man who will throw a punch no matter what the consequences are guaranteed to get the testosterone pumping through your body.


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F.I.L.M. of the Week (October 15, 2010)

15 10 2010

While my struggles to choose this “F.I.L.M. of the Week” were documented in today’s factoid, I finally found a perfectly acceptable movie to feature here: Shane Black’s noir sendup “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.”  Starring a pre-anointed Hollywood savior Robert Downey Jr. and a post-Batman Val Kilmer, the movie is a hilarious and thrilling story of murder, intrigue, betrayal, and cinema.  (And, as Downey’s character reminds us, ultimately a tale of friendship.)

The very meta movie works largely in part to Downey’s irresistible narration.  A part of the events yet telling them from afar, his perspective is certainly a strange one.  At times, he is omniscient; at others, limited.  Yet almost all the time, he’s a bumbling genius flying by the seat of his pants through a set of unforeseeable events.  After robbing a game store, his Harry runs unknowingly into a casting session for a role that is eerily reminiscent of the events of his law-breaking night.  Taken for an incredible method actor, the producers claim him to be their “big discovery” and fly him out to Hollywood for the next round of preparations.

Once in Hollywood, Harry deals with culture shock at a party, a little unsure of how to act around California socialites.  However, he reunites with his high-school sweetheart Harmony (Michelle Monaghan) unexpectedly and a romance begins to bloom.  Taking him for a detective, not an actor (which he also is not), she involves him in the investigation of her sister’s curious death.  Harry, along with actual investigator Perry van Shrike (Kilmer), probe deeper and find themselves entangled in a web involving two murders and some very scary connections.

While the plot may get a little confusing at times, “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” is incredibly entertaining because of its clever blend of humor and mystery.   The performances from Downey and Kilmer are dynamic and light up the screen.  The plot is intelligent, and the fresh narrative style makes the somewhat hackneyed plot very fun to watch again.


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REVIEW: Secretariat

13 10 2010

If you had a checklist of everything that a sports movie should have, “Secretariat” would have a check in every box.  One might think that with every t crossed and every i dotted, this would be the perfect entry into the genre.  However, for every reason that it should be great, it winds up being completely average.

For two hours, the movie manages to have the same vitality as the dirt that the horses kick up while running – which is to say that it’s lifeless and boring.  Perhaps the biggest problem “Secretariat” faces is that the same dirt has been trod so many times before.  Face it, the race has been run.

It’s not just in horse movies, either.  Sure, there’s the very similar “Seabiscuit,” but it bears a resemblance to any movie that goes by the playbook.  The same formula meant to bring about buoyant inspiration now manages to incite a completely averse reaction.  There’s only so many of these movies we can have before they all just run together to create white noise, and “Secretariat” is just another also-ran destined to play late nights on the Lifetime and Hallmark channels.

Perhaps the filmmakers thought that the movie was original because it technically doesn’t fit the bill of the underdog story.  Secretariat is a horse bred to win.  His parents are both champions, and everyone who knows anything about horses could predict that he would be something special.  In a somewhat clever twist, the underdog is not the horse but the film’s protagonist, Diane Lane’s Penny Chennery.  Facing financial difficulties around the inheritance of her ailing father’s estate, she banks on one horse to do the nearly impossible: win the Triple Crown.

Yet it’s hard to rally around Lane’s performance because it feels about as fresh as a can of creamed corn.  A strong, independent woman acting independently (and even against at certain times) her husband was unheard of in the 1970s, but Lane deems this unworthy of any sort of attention or importance.  Hidden behind her perfectly settled hair and dolled-up face, Chennery is always incredibly emotionally distant, and in those rare instances that she does show some outward feeling, it feels about as genuine as a slab of fool’s gold.

Sports movies always offer plenty of opportunities to turn a good metaphor, and “Secretariat” has enough to fill an entire motivational speech.  Much of them come courtesy of wasted narration from the mouth of Diane Lane, as if the filmmakers thought they would add something to her character.  They come in excess, in a quantity deserving of the term of endearment gluttony.  I have no problem with employing the simple yet complex art form of metaphors to cater to Middle America, but there’s only a finite amount that can be packed into two hours.  (And for all the Biblical references, they missed the most obvious one in Hebrews 12.)

To bring a movie to life where the ending is already spelled out, there really has to be some element so highly elevated that it can make the sacrifice of time worthwhile.  Despite two Oscar nominated stars, Diane Lane and John Malkovich, and a plot that could really be a winner, watching “Secretariat” is like watching the Kentucky Derby in an empty Churchill Downs.  C / 


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REVIEW: The Social Network

9 10 2010

Has Facebook made us more connected to our friends?  Or does hopelessly staring at their pictures, their moments, their lives only increase our feeling of isolation?  Such has been the question for the past five years as the Silicon Valley start-up has all but taken over the world.  We have been forced to ponder how much we want people to know about who we are, using our profile pages as a façade to cover the person hiding deep inside.  We can sculpt social perfection on the site, and perhaps that is why we pour so much time into it.

That’s the story of us in the Facebook age.  However, anyone not willing to closely scrutinize “The Social Network” might have the mistaken notion that the movie is only about the founders of the site.  While Aaron Sorkin’s script concerns itself entirely with the Facebook’s early years, the perspective is not limited merely to those intimately involved in creating the predominant social networking site of our time.

If Sorkin and director David Fincher had been interested in doing that, they would have made a documentary on the birth of Facebook.  Instead, their fictionalized account is meant to challenge our conceptions of communication and friendship in the digital era, as well as the changing nature of innovation.  As the face of human interaction becomes increasingly digital, this commentary will be an important work to consult.  “The Social Network” could very well be the movie that future generations will watch to get an idea of the millenials (or whatever history will call us).  The movie now puts the pressure on us to decide how to interpret its message: do we go polish our Facebook profiles or become disillusioned with the site?

Since creator Mark Zuckerberg refused to participate with the production, Sorkin and Fincher present him as they see him: a visionary with his fair share of vices who winds being torn asunder by two people with different ideas for the future of his creation.  Jesse Eisenberg hardly makes him sympathetic, but the ultimate interpretation of Zuckerberg is left to the viewer.  Is he a hero, a villain, or an antihero?  Whatever mold he fits, it cannot be denied that he is a figure of huge importance to the digital age.  Take his social idiosyncrasies out of the picture, and his journey is not too different than our journey with Facebook.

Read the rest of this entry »


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F.I.L.M. of the Week (October 8, 2010)

8 10 2010

HungerThis week’s “F.I.L.M.” is Steve McQueen’s “Hunger,” a short volume of harrowing power.  The movie follows the Irish hunger strikers in 1981 who essentially martyred themselves after Britain refuses to recognize their rights while in prison.  The focus is specifically on Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender), the leader of these strikers who ultimately died protesting for what he believed in.

“Hunger” is an incredibly striking visual movie, and McQueen goes into great depths to acquaint us with the conditions in the prison.  There is very little dialogue save a 23-minute conversation between Sands and the prison’s priest trying to talk him out of the protest, 17 minutes of which come from a single unbroken shot.  For those wondering, it is the longest shot in cinematic history.

Beyond the film’s notorious unbroken shot, there are plenty of haunting images that McQueen fills out heads with, particularly from the “no wash” protest that precedes the hunger strike.  We see the beatings and the tortures of naked prisoners in all their graphic form, and we watch in horror as the bruises appear on their skin at the hands of their captors.  We see the walls covered in excrement and the halls flooded with urine.  Believe me, fewer movies make you want to follow the law more than this one.

On the other hand, Fassbender’s Bobby Sands makes us question how far we are willing to stick with our beliefs.  He fights for equity from prison all the way to the grave, and while there were less drastic measures with which to make his point, his message gets across loud and clear.  Fassbender is as committed to the role as Sands is committed to the cause.  He goes to the physical and emotional limits of the character, and the performance is incredibly raw and forceful.  Fassbender will go places, mark my words.  Watch “Hunger” and say you knew it before he goes big.


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F.I.L.M. of the Week (October 1, 2010)

1 10 2010

Long before there were your creepy Facebook “friends” who could stalk your photos, there were people like Sy Parrish, the creepy photo developer in Mark Romanek’s “One Hour Photo,” the “F.I.L.M. of the Week.”

Robin Williams plays the SavMart employee whose fixations drive him to violate all notions of privacy.  With no family or friends to speak of, he lives vicariously through the Yorkin family, whose pictures he has developed since the birth of their son.  Sy compulsively saves their pictures, compiling them on a giant wall in his home.

One day, obsession turns to possession, and he manages to convince himself that he is a member of their family.  We never figure out what leads him to these delusions, be it greed, envy, loneliness, depression, or some other compulsion.  And it is precisely because of his undefined motive that “One Hour Photo” is so scary; we could know someone like Sy.  Or he could know us.

Williams is absolutely frightening in the lead, and his performance is only aided by the shock value when we realize this is the man who gave us “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “Flubber.”  It’s not just his movie though.  Mark Romanek’s direction is sharp, and his script is full of many keen observations on the meaning of a photo.  In the era where we tag ourselves in picture after picture on Facebook, “One Hour Photo” is one of the rare movies that becomes more relevant as the technology in it becomes irrelevant.


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FINCHERFEST: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

30 09 2010

As part of a deal with Paramount and Warner Bros. to make “Zodiac,” David Fincher took on the $150 million production of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”  The result was his first nomination for Best Director and the most Oscar-nominated movie of the decade.

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is a masterpiece.

YES, I used the dreaded m-word.  Do I regret it?

Absolutely not.  I stand by assertion 100%, and I will argue my side until you see it.  Fincher’s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story is the closet thing I think we will ever get to a 20th century epic.  It’s a sweeping story of love, time, and life, not to mention the single most beautiful movie I have ever seen.  Aside from the typical splendor of a period piece, Fincher’s film has the greatest visual effects I have ever seen.

When I first saw “Benjamin Button,” I was under the impression that the younger (as in newly-born) Benjamins would only be voiced by Brad Pitt, not acted by him.  Yet after doing some research, I found out that aside from the last five minutes of the movie, Benjamin Button’s face was always animated by Pitt.  It’s completely possible to not notice that it actually is him because the effects are so subtly incorporated, and doing such is such an incredible achievement in film history.

I’ll address two common criticisms of the movie, the first being its similarities to “Forrest Gump.”  These concerns might be valid had the two not shared the same writer, Eric Roth.  I see no problem with an author exploring similar issues, especially when he delves deeper into more profound revelations.  “Benjamin Button” gets to the heart of what it means to be alive in the grandest of fashions.

And then there are those who claim that the movie’s 166 minute runtime is absolutely unbearable.  To those poor, impatient souls, I say that our journey is Benjamin’s journey.  We don’t just watch time go by; we feel it with him.  Glancing through an inverted lens gives us a fascinating look at the passage of time and its effect on one man fated – or perhaps doomed – to live it that way.  Just because I say this is a masterpiece doesn’t mean that I think it is perfect.  I don’t think any film can be entirely perfect, but when a movie is truly great, it has many beautiful, fleeting moments of perfection.  Some claim that the movie drags, and I’ll agree that certain scenes could have used a little more time in the editing room.  However, the pacing is not slow.  It is deliberate, and only at this wistful speed can we truly appreciate Benjamin’s world.

Everything about this movie got so much attention, but I’d like to draw attention to one element that got completely and unjustly overlooked: Cate Blanchett’s performance.  She received absolutely no awards or nominations for her performance as Daisy Fuller, Benjamin’s love interest, which is a shame because this is by far her most emotionally compelling and sensitive performance ever.  What I found particularly remarkable about her in “Benjamin Button” was her ability to turn small moments into things that can stick with us.  When I think of her in this movie, I keep coming back to a small scene where Daisy looks plaintively at a young girl with all of her physicality intact and suddenly just finds herself overcome with despair.  It’s as much her story as it is Benjamin’s, and Blanchett wins our hearts just as quickly as Pitt does.

It’s a marvel that Fincher can transition so seamlessly from his violent thrillers and dramas to this romantic vision of the 1900s.  In my mind, it’s his best and most thoughtful work, displaying more of his top-notch precision than ever (albeit in a totally different form).  There are very few movies that have the power to stun us into silence, and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is one of them.  It has the power to make us feel light as a feather and make us fly in a gentle wind, full of emotion and with a new appreciation for life.


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FINCHERFEST: Zodiac

29 09 2010

After “Panic Room,” Fincher took a five year break from directing.  He returned to the big screen in 2007 with “Zodiac,” a narrative of the events surrounding the Zodiac Killer who haunted San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s.

There’s no such thing as a simple movie with David Fincher.  On the surface, “Zodiac” looks like a movie about the hunt for a serial killer.  But much like “Seven” is not a movie about a serial killer, neither is “Zodiac.”  It’s a multitude of things, and while it’s not left open for you to interpret like “Fight Club,” you can still make of it what you want.

The movie can really be thought of as two mini-movies (which may brutalize less patient moviegoers since the running time is 157 minutes).  The first half follows the police investigation of the murders of the Zodiac Killer and the games the murderer plays with his victims and the authorities chasing him down.  There’s plenty of cop drama for all of those who faun over movies like “The Town” and “The Departed,” but once the official police inquiry into the events stops, all those drooling will face the harsh reality that “Zodiac” is no longer a police movie.

The second half concerns itself with the peculiar obsession of Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) with tracking down the Zodiac Killer through his own means.  Acting compulsively to catch him, Graysmith consults the two men most knowledgable on the subject, reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey, Jr.) and police investigator Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo).  Armed with their insights, he gets to the bottom of the case – even if we don’t have the satisfaction of certainty, as the case is still unsolved as of today.

But the overarching storyline that ties both of these aspects together is a journalistic view of the events.  Here’s how Fincher saw “Zodiac” as he made it:

“I looked at this as a newspaper movie. My model was ‘All the President’s Men.’ You piece the thing together with a bit of info here, a hunch there, and you make mistakes long the way, and maybe you end up with an supportable conclusion as to the when and where and how. … And maybe, with someone like Zodiac, even he couldn’t provide an answer, I don’t know.”

But it’s also not just about the people intimately involved with the investigation; it’s about how the fear of being killed gripped the San Francisco area.  Fincher himself was among those as a seven-year-old boy scared to go outside.  There are no strange storylines that show directly how the events impact the average San Franciscan, but it’s a very subtle undertone that could fly totally under the radar for those not paying attention.  It took me some reading to discover this angle, and the more I think about it, the more I see it.

As a movie that’s psychologically affecting, I don’t think “Zodiac” is entirely effective.  It’s not like I haven’t been scared by the prospect of a serial murderer in real life; the D.C. sniper took his toll when I was about 10 years old, and that frightened me.  However, Fincher crafts a movie quite different from his others here: a fact-based narrative that relies on true events to provide the terror.  The fact that it manages to sustain interest for two and a half hours is another testament to the director’s incredible versatility.


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FINCHERFEST: Panic Room

28 09 2010

Fincher moved onto a more Hollywood-friendly thriller in 2002 after “Fight Club” was a pretty risky studio gamble that didn’t fully pay off in the short run.  “Panic Room” was a financial success and was fairly well-received by critics.

I think that “Panic Room” is fantastic and totally unfairly derided.

Most people tend to think of it as Fincher’s ugly stepchild (when you don’t count “Alien 3,” of course) and write it off because it lacks the style of a “Seven” or a “Fight Club.”  But for what it’s worth, “Panic Room” could have been a terrible movie in the hands of a lesser director.  With the help of a good editor, such direction could make the movie an hour and twenty minutes.

But the movie succeeds because Fincher resists the temptation to give into horror filmmaking clichés.  Sure, this isn’t a highly original concept, yet it works because he treats it with reverence and respect like he would for any other movie.  While the atmosphere of terror isn’t exactly profound, it is genuinely terrifying because the idea governing it is scary.  We all consider our home a haven, a place where no one can get at us.  Thinking that someone could violate that sense of tranquility is unsettling indeed.

Fincher takes his time sweet time with the movie, and the slow, deliberate pacing just makes the tension all the more taut.  His utilization of subtle scoring and lavish cinematography sets a really eerie aura in the New York City townhouse of Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and her diabetic daughter (a classic 12-year-old Kristen Stewart caught in an awkward phase).  The plot doesn’t get much more complicated than a mother and daughter trapped inside their panic room when three robbers invade their home.

There’s a little bit of typical shenanigans with everything that can go wrong going south, but “Panic Room” still holds us in its grip because of the very real and palpable terror.  The closed-in claustrophobic sense is exactly what drew Fincher to the movie; according to him, “[he] wanted to make what Coppola called ‘a composed movie’.”  For those not willing to look deeper into the artistic darkness of “Seven,” this is Fincher’s pitch-perfect filmmaking at its most accessible.

And if nothing, the movie did manage to add a new phrase to the English jargon.  Because let’s be honest, who actually knew what a “panic room” was before 2002 and could pepper it into conversation?


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FINCHERFEST: Fight Club

27 09 2010

Fincher followed up disappointment with “The Game” by directing “Fight Club” in 1999, which would prove to be an iconic movie and cultural phenomenon.  While it didn’t do much business in theaters, it became a cult hit on video.  In today’s installment of Fincherfest, I’ll attempt to peg what has made it such a smashing success with fans for over a decade.

There are a multitude of ways to interpret “Fight Club,” and for precisely that reason, it is a great movie.  It can mean so many things to so many people; everyone gets something different out of it.  Heck, you can even see it through a Fascist light!  I’ve only seen it once, so there is a certain level of depth of the movie that I haven’t reached.

However, I don’t intend to bore anyone by reciting the plot or saying that the acting, directing, and writing is great.  That’s been common knowledge for over a decade now, and me saying that doesn’t really add anything to the movie.  The proof is in the celluloid (and now DVD and whatever other formats are out there).

I watched the movie a year ago after some residual curiosity from “Benjamin Button” compelled me to check out David Fincher’s violent side.  But before that, I had heard nothing but amazing things from the legions of male fans my age.  Sure enough, I wasn’t disappointed.  Although it still ranks behind “Button” for me, this is my favorite of Fincher’s early explorations to the darker side of human nature.

Here’s what I think has made it such an endearing classic for the younger generation: we have been so diligently trained to suppress all our impulsive emotions that eventually we want to explode.  Sometimes, our lives are so sheltered and so desensitized that sometimes we have the deep desire to feel some kind of emotion, even if it must be pain.  To quote Lady Antebellum, “I’d rather hurt than feel nothing at all.”

“Fight Club” indulges that side of all teenage boys and budding men by going back to our primordial cavemen instincts.  We have to fight for what we want.  Kill or be killed.  The movie finds a sort of catharsis in violence, using it to express all the frustration men feel at the oppression of their natural tendencies.  So in a messed-up kind of way, the movie has served as a wake-up call to boys and men everywhere to reclaim their masculinity and reassert themselves.

There’s a perfect quote from Fincher himself that sums up the movie from my interpretation:

“We’re designed to be hunters and we’re in a society of shopping. There’s nothing to kill anymore, there’s nothing to fight, nothing to overcome, nothing to explore. In that societal emasculation this everyman [the narrator] is created.”


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FINCHERFEST: The Game

26 09 2010

Fincher followed up the resounding success of “Se7en” with 1997’s “The Game,” a cerebral thriller that was received notably less well both financially and critically.

I made the slight complaint with “Se7en” that I had seen a similar premise done a little bit better.  With “The Game,” I have a similar grievance.  The movie was, in essence, the same as the 2008 paranoid thriller “Eagle Eye” with much lower stakes and much less intrigue.  Both involve people getting played by some system bigger than they can comprehend, and both follow the struggles of the people trying to escape the oppression of this omniscient system.

Michael Douglas headlines as banking mogul Nicholas Van Orton, a man who has chosen money over relationships.  He is estranged from his younger brother Conrad (Sean Penn) and let his relationship with his most recent wife fall by the wayside.  The problems can all be traced back to his father’s suicide while he was a young boy, and the effects of the life-shattering decision continue to affect him decades later.

But things all change after a mysterious birthday gift turns into an all-encompassing game designed to challenge his priorities.  Reality begins to blur in this game, although not as intensely as it does in a movie like “Inception.”  Van Orton feels mildly disoriented and wonders whether every suspect thing in his life is happening because of the game.  Eventually, his anxieties lead him to demand answers from the organization that set up this game.

By no means am I saying that “The Game” isn’t good.  The premise keeps us interested the whole time, although the ending is wholly unsatisfying because it wraps up way too neatly.  Fincher’s attempt to recreate a very tense atmosphere of terror just isn’t quite as effective as it is in “Se7en,” and the paranoia is totally missing.  This thriller lacks any sort of thrill, making it little more than just a series of events with the hope of a bigger twist waiting at the end.


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FINCHERFEST: Se7en

25 09 2010

A real review of David Fincher’s work should begin with “Se7en,” the first movie he takes full credit for.  It was a financial success in 1995 and has since become an adored movie by fans on video.  The movie currently sits at #26 on IMDb’s Top 250 movies as voted by users, and in today’s installment of Fincherfest, I will attempt to explain what has made it so endearing over the past 15 years.

I’m a big fan of “Seven,” but I hate to say that I don’t think it’s quite as good as some people think it is.  According to Lisa Schwarzbaum, overrated is a big critical no-no word; however, since this is more a look in retrospect than a review, I don’t feel quite as bad using it.

Fincher does an excellent job directing a very cerebral world of horror, and as his first real directorial effort, it’s quite impressive.  Yet overall, I wasn’t quite as affected by it as I felt I should have been.  When it comes to serial killer movies, I much prefer “The Silence of the Lambs” and “No Country for Old Men.”

Yet I acknowledge that “Seven” has a very different kind of horror.  We aren’t meant to be freaked out by the murderer John Doe (Kevin Spacey).  We never see him committing any crimes, nor does he ever give us any indication that he might flip and kill another person.  He’s just like anyone you could round up off the streets, and that makes him all the more frightening.  John Doe is like Heath Ledger’s The Joker without a makeup and without any sense of humor.  The tacit implication is that all of us have the capability to be John Doe, something quite scary to suggest and not the kind of message you want to walk away from a movie having learned.  We never see the results of the killings, inspiring the audience to imagine the murder for themselves.  Anyone who can do so has the inherent ability to be Doe.

Such a killer is the last person Detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman, pre-God) wants to deal with in his waning hours on the job.  He and his replacement, Detective Mills (Brad Pitt), are drawn into the world of John Doe, who commits murders related to the Seven Deadly Sins.  Catching him requires intellect, and they delve into the classic work of Dante, Thomas Aquinas, and others to figure out his modus operandi.  The dialectic struggle between Somerset about to apathetically walk off the job and Mills eagerly awaiting his future is a fascinating backdrop to the rest of the brutal themes of the movie.

Apparently back in the ’90s, New Line Cinema advertised “Se7en” as a movie that you shouldn’t watch in the dark because that atmosphere would scare anyone to death.  I did just that, and I found the darkness to be nothing more than a fitting complement to the universe Fincher crafts.  It’s always muggy and rainy in the unidentified city where the murders take place, and the world view the movie espouses is bleaker than the weather.  According to Somerset, the world is worth fighting for, but it’s hardly a fine place.

The more you think about it, the more you realize Fincher’s challenge to our assumptions of what is good and what is evil.  The villain is defined … or is it?  Such an idea is a little unsettling to audiences, but that hasn’t kept it from being very well received.  Perhaps its forte isn’t in being a serial killer movie; the strength is in the social critique of the godlessness of society.


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FINCHERFEST: Alien 3

24 09 2010

Kicking off Fincherfest here at “Marshall and the Movies” is the director’s first feature film, “Alien 3.”  Released six years after James Cameron’s “Aliens” and thirteen after Ridley Scott’s “Alien,” it certainly had high expectations.  After being mired in development hell, Fox managed to get the ball rolling and brought in Fincher fairly late in the game.  The result was the beginning of the decay of the franchise.

I debated whether or not to include “Alien 3” in my purveying of David Fincher’s collective work.  After all, he did disown the movie publicly thanks to Fox’s ceaseless creative interference.  Fincher had nothing to do with the editing of the movie, which in itself took a year.  According to IMDb, he was denied permission to shoot a scene with Sigourney Weaver in prison by the movie’s producers, so he stole her and shot it anyways.  Even as of 2004, Fincher still wasn’t willing to make peace with the experience when Fox asked him to do a commentary for the DVD release of the movie.

After watching the movie, I get a sense of why he doesn’t want to be associated with it.  “Alien 3” is a mixture of the action-adventure feel of “Aliens” with the horror atmosphere of “Alien.”  The result is a jumbled mash-pot of little character, simply gliding on the success of its predecessors.  It brings nothing new to the table, and watching this rip-off only makes you wonder why you aren’t watching one of the vastly superior installments that preceded it.

Sigourney Weaver’s ultra-feminist heroine Ripley just can’t catch a break here as she has to fight off the nefarious aliens for the third time (I hope she dreams well in cryo).  Instead of having the crew of the Nostromo or the Marines, she has a crew of celibate space monks led by Charles S. Dutton who feel violated by the presence of woman in their ranks.  Nevertheless, once an alien is found on board, they unite to trap it in the steaming hot pool of lead on board their ship.

The movie suffers from intense familiarity and oversimplification, even though the latter made Scott’s take on the franchise a classic.  “Alien 3” was rewritten many times; one draft reported to be far superior to the one that was produced didn’t even have Ripley in it.  But since she did make it, we can safely conclude that the movie was made simply to make more money off the franchise – and that’s all the more reason to avoid it.


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