A meditation on life and death that, while I don't think it has anything to say we don't already know about those subjects, has a quiet beauty about it. (7/10)
d. David Fincher
I'm not a fan of "based on a true story" docu-dramas (I'd prefer a documentary to a fake version of what might've happened), though I'll say I was engaged with the film during the entire 162 minute director's cut and I always dig scenes set in '70s newsrooms. (8/10)
d. David Fincher
David Fincher's one of my favorite directors. Even when he stumbles, his technical skills manage to create a visually interesting film.
Every-other Fincher film is a masterpiece, so I'm expecting great things from Zodiac. I have to admit, I'm not thrilled that this is his long-awaited next project. Fincher's pretty much tackled, slaughtered and mounted on his mantle the serial killer genre with Se7en. I don't know if there's any reason at all for him to revisit it. If he was interested in true-story-based filmmaking, I wish he'd stuck with The Black Dahlia. That unsolved crime story would've been perfect for Fincher's sensibility.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button sounds more interesting. A man begins aging backwards and falls in love with a woman. How can they last if she continues to grow older and he gets younger? The plot has the potential for sappiness, but I trust Fincher to infuse enough of his own darkness into it to make it worth while. Fincher is directing Brad Pitt again in this one, which has always worked out well in the past.
At any rate, I'm glad the man has settled onto some projects. It's been too long since the silver screen was darkened by his vision.
1999 - Fight Club - This frivolous, consumerist culture cracks a man's brain in two, creating an anarcho-primitivist-philosopher-sex-god. It had to happen sometime.
Unlike The Game, knowing the twist doesn't impact subsequent viewings of the film. In fact, it's fun to see how hard the film tries not to hide it. It's also amusing to imagine how insane Jack must seem, knowing the Tyler is just pretend. Unlike The Game, knowing the twist ahead of time is necessary to truly understand what's going on. With this knowledge, Jack and Tyler's real motivations can be seen.
"In the world I see, you're stalking elk through the damp canyon forest around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty carpool lane of some abandoned superhighway."By the end of the film, Tyler is well on his way to accomplishing this goal by destroying a dozen credit card company buildings (and the debt records within). At the same time, it's also one hell of a bouquet to offer Marla. Marla is repeatedly seen stealing in order to survive. At one point, she explicitly states that she's in poverty. Pushing the reset button on the US economy is one way of helping her out with that issue. The entire film can be seen this way: Tyler pushes Jack into a philosophically rebirth and, at the same time, gives him a needed connection with the female of the species to balance that rebirth out.
2002 - Panic Room - It's hard to find fault with technical aspects of this film. Beginning with the expositional real estate tour, the geography of the house is well-communicated to the audience. Using appropriately unnoticeable CGI, the camera is free to float all over and through the house, never letting us lose the positions of the players inside. Howard Shore's score is grim and fitting. The cinematography moves effortlessly from the warm, autumnal Central Park to the cold, concrete panic room. Child actors are always a gamble, but Fincher's last-minute choice of Kristen Stewart worked out very well. The story is a rollercoaster of tense moments that pushes the right buttons, as you would expect.
1995 - Se7en - I remember watching this the weekend it came out. Serial killer flick, seven deadly sins, directed by some music video guy. That's about all I knew about it. I'd gone to see the film with a friend who I was visiting at a college. Both fans of Nine Inch Nails, we'd been listening to The Downward Spiral and its remix albums at loud volumes in his dorm room and car. As soon as the tortured open credits began, backed by NIN's grinding remix "closer (precursor)", I knew I was in for something that spoke to my sensibilities.
I wasn't disappointed. Ostensibly a buddy-cop crime thriller, Se7en destroys this conventional framework by questioning the nature of evil in the world. It's here to stay, so what do you do about it? Do you try to righteously destroy it? Do you channel your anger into battling it as best you can? Or do you simply "pick up the pieces"?
The production and sound design for this film are excellent. Both come together to create a horribly depressing atmosphere for the nameless city. Rain, rust and rot abound. The poorly lit gluttony house is beautiful in its decay. John Doe's apartment is a masterpiece, as are his actually written-in diaries. Sight and sound convincingly create a city composed of the worst parts of every major city in the United States.
Howard Shore is not John Williams. He doesn't make movie music that you whistle to yourself. Instead, he creates music that can be organically woven into the sound design of the film. His simple, low string sounds make the nameless city breath with depressed sighs.
This is one of the few films to ever elicit a physical reaction from me in the theater (Begotten was another). The path to the climax, starting with the conversation in the long car ride out into the middle of nowhere, steadily and confidently builds tension. As the climax approached, much to my surprise, I felt myself getting nervous. Movies never make me nervous or jumpy, yet my heart rate and breathing quickened. Eleven years later, it's still a helluva scene and contains some of best acting Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman are ever going to commit to celluloid.
Better than my other, favorite serial killer films: American Psycho, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, M, and The Silence of the Lambs. Out of more than 500 movies over the past two-and-a-half years, this is only the fifth that I've given my highest rating to. I wouldn't change a thing about it. (10/10)
1997 - The Game - Both my friend and I agreed that this film doesn't hold up to multiple viewings. Knowing that this really is just a game forces you to watch the entire middle portion of the film with a mixture of cynicism and incredulity. There are just too many hard-to-believe pieces to the game that can't be easily swallowed. A physical and psych test could only get a company so far.
More ambiguity might have given repeat watchers something more to chew on. The fact that Claire heard Nicholas' password for his Swiss bank account could've been played with a bit. Instead of Nicholas "getting the girl" at the end, a slight implication that she was running off with his fortune might have been interesting.
This film is kind of a cruel version of Groundhog Day. Fate tortures a lonely, cynical man until he is forced to change himself. Instead of learning piano and how to love, Nicholas gets the legacy of his suicidal and distant father beat out of him. It didn't actually work that well. Being stripped of his father's fortune, having his father's mansion trashed and being forced to sell his father's watch didn't do it for him. He needed to be pushed into a suicide attempt before, presumably, he was free of his father's shadow. More interesting than therapy, anyway.
The film is technically well-shot, lit and scored. I particularly liked the depressingly nostalgic 8mm shots and Howard Shore's accompanying music. Michael Douglas plays his standard asshole character better than anyone.
This is probably the happiest film Fincher will ever make. That's one reason I like the guy. (7/10)
1992 - Alien³ - I like this film. I realize that Fincher was royally screwed with by the Fox suits while trying to make this picture. I agree that it was terribly disappointing, after promises made by the teaser trailer, to find out this didn't take place on an Earth overrun by the xenomorphs. I'm aware that this is far from a perfect film. Yet, I'm not ashamed to say that I'm an Alien³ fan.
One large reason I like this film is for the same aspect that upsets other fans. I love how depressing this entire movie is. I think it was bold and innovative for a sequel to murder the happy ending of its predecessor. Cameron's picture, in addition to containing crowd-pleasing space marine action, ends on a "happy clouds and rainbows" note. Ripley lost her real family due to the xenomorph-caused half-century hypersleep, but gains a new boyfriend, daughter and pet half-robot as a replacement. Together, they set course for home and take a nap. Aww.
The xenomorph, among other things, represents the idea that outside of this little bubble of a planet, the universe isn't friendly to human life at all. Nature is cruel. Fincher's film wisely runs with this theme, rather abandoning it for an Aliens 2: The Ripley Family and Their Space Marine Pals vs. Aliens, The Rematch movie. Ripley is alone right from the start of this film. Those happy clouds rained acid and that rainbow became a noose. As with the brilliant Alien, it was always going to be only Ripley against the monster in the basement.
All of this is not what the public expected. They generally want more of the same, over and over again. Last Crusade puts its tail between its legs and hides in Raiders' pattern after Temple. Return of the Jedi has both an exploding Death Star and a familial revelation. After Halloween III: Season of the Witch, we could've been treated to a brand new Carpenter-produced Halloween horror movie every October 31st. Instead, the public demanded more Michael Myers, eventually resulting in Busta Rhymes battling The Shape on the Internet. Hollywood is well-aware of the public's fear of change. This is the reason we're drowning in remakes right now. I suspect this is also a reason the suits sought to meddle with space marine-free Alien³.
Rant over.
Fincher is already using his unique camera placements in his first full-length film. We'll see more of the slow-motion fire and water in the future. We will also see much more CGI in his next films. However, unlike those movies, the CGI effects in this film are utterly retched. The CG alien looks like a green cartoon crudely pasted into Fincher's composition. For the few times the computer-generated critter is used, it completely kicked me out of the film. The technology was definitely not ready for anything outside of mercury men at this point.
On a personal note, this was the first R-rated movie I ever got to see in a theater. I can still remember the melancholy I felt after the credits rolled. I found Newt's death and dissection on screen particularly shocking at the time.
Although I like this Alien sequel, I hate Alien Resurrection. Ironically, part of the reason I hate it is for the same reasons people hated Alien³ : it reverses the ending of Alien³. Ripley's sacrifice is meaningless if you can clone her and she has, irrationally, fragments of the original Ripley's memories. Worse, I'll have to watch that flick for a future chronocinethon. For now, though, I get to look forward to watching the excellent Se7en next. (7/10)
David Fincher (1962 -)
"a total, unadulterated maniac"
says needcoffee.com
