David Fincher's brutal, efficient thriller

     

     It's not easy to make a movie about a man whose survival depends on anonymity and obsessive attention to detail, so much so that he's constantly replaying a manual of instructions in his head. "Stick to the plan. Anticipate, don't improvise." 

      That's the profile of the nameless character who occupies the center of David Fincher's The Killer, a plunge into the life of a high-paid assassin who plies his lethal trade with exactitude and indifference to anyone else's causes or concerns.

      A major irony triggers Fincher's movie. 

      After a tense and artfully shot opening scene in which the killer (a trim Michael Fassbender) waits for his prey, he misses. Having botched the job, the killer flees the empty Parisian office he'd been occupying as he prepared to shoot someone in the apartment across the street.

      Once he misses his mark and the movie finishes some wily flirtation with Rear Window voyeurism, the killer embarks on a globe-hopping trip spurred by the story's core mystery.

      Fincher has made terrific real life crime movies (Zodiac) and movies that rely on a mixture of fantasy and bristling cynicism (Se7en and Fight Club). He's never made a movie that wasn't steeped in style and directorial competence. 

      Put another way, Fincher knows what he's doing and we feel his confidence.

       Post his assassination attempt, the killer heads to a retreat he keeps in the Dominican Republic. When he arrives home -- a very nice place, by the way -- he learns that his lover (Sophie Charlotte) has been a badly beaten. 

       Then it's off again, this time to get to the bottom of what  brought his lover to the brink of death. He travels to Chicago, New Orleans, Illinois, and Beacon, New York.

        Fincher introduces the movie's chapters with title cards based on the characters the killer tracks: The Brute and The Expert, for example.  Sala Baker plays The Brute; Tilda Swinton appears as The Expert.

       Fassbender has been given some amusing dialogue and his character uses a string of fake credit cards issued in the name of TV characters, Archibald Bunker to cite one example.

       It's as if Fincher is inviting us to play a cinematic game that's willing to wink at us from time-to-time.

       But when it comes to the killer's MO, Fincher pulls no punches when the killer confronts the go-between separating clients from killer (Charles Parnell) or his frightened secretary (Kerry O'Malley).

       The performances are crisp but I wouldn't regard The Killer as an actors' showcase; it's a director's movie -- with help from  cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt, an edgy score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and tunes from the synth-heavy group, The Smiths.

        Based on a French graphic novel, The Killer slides through a world without either God-given or human morality. But this isn't Dostoevsky, it's a thriller that keeps us in a state of agitation as Fincher displays efficiency void of judgment.

        Oh, and for good measure, he adds a brutally extended fight scene that includes an encounter with a pit bull.

        The Killer may not be Fincher's best work but, within its narrow constraints, it nails its moves.

How a great movie was written

    

     In 1940, screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz found himself sequestered in Victorville, California. He’d been sent to a remote ranch by Orson Welles to write the screenplay that turned out to be Citizen Kane. 

     Director David Fincher has taken on the task of telling Mankiewicz’s story, a look at a caustically cynical wit who could be amused by Hollywood's emptiness while still knowing how to navigate its treacheries.

     Beautifully filmed in black-and-white by cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt, Mank peers into the corrupted soul of  Hollywood of the early 1940s, a time when the movie industry tried to establish its right-wing bona fides in California even as Hitler rose to power across the Atlantic and the country had yet to recover from the Great Depression.

     Built around an intriguing performance by Gary Oldman as Mankiewicz, the movie sometimes feels like a breezy collection of bold-faced names from yesteryear -- from Ben Hecht to George S. Kaufman to S.J. Perelman. 

    The story eventually draws its energy from tension resulting from Mankiewicz's real-life inspiration for the character of John Foster Kane, none other than media titan William Randolph Hearst, played with surprising subtlety by Charles Dance. 

    Mankiewicz knew Hearst and was a frequent guest at Hearst’s San Simeon retreat, a lavish pleasure palace where Hearst entertained friends and where he and his mistress, Marion Davies (a terrific Amanda Seyfried), dwelled in isolated splendor. Hearst seldom found himself in agreement with Mankiewicz but thought him amusing.

     Working from a script by his late father Jack Fincher, the director includes plenty of famous Mankiewicz bon mots.  After a display of drunken vomiting at a dinner party,  Mankiewicz supposedly excused himself by saying that at least the white wine had come up with the fish. Not quite enough for redemption, but bad, either.

      A quick Google search will show that Mankiewicz looked nothing like Oldman, which may distract aficionados or provide further proof of Oldman’s versatility. Credit Oldman with fashioning a character who tried to balance a need for success and money with an underlying desire to ridicule and dismiss the powerful barons who held the purse strings. 

      Mank will be of particular interest to those familiar with the controversy about who deserves credit for writing Citizen Kane. Officially, Welles and Mankiewicz shared credit, as well as an Academy Award for best screenplay. 

     But in 1971, New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael wrote  a provocative two-part story that awarded the lion’s share of credit to Mankiewicz. Kael’s conclusions have been disputed by others and I have no interest in stepping into waters that have been roiled by deep research and critical partisanship.

     If you care, the movie seems to favor the idea that joint credit for the Kane screenplay was undeserved.

     Notice needs to be taken of the many supporting roles that enliven Mank: Arliss Howard turns up as a doltish Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM; Toby Leonard Moore portrays David O. Selznick, and Ferdinand Kingsley offers his version of Irving Thalberg.

      If you don't know who any of these folks are, Mank may require you to spend some time with Google, which means it's a bit of a film buff's night out.

     What about Welles, you ask? He’s played by Tom Burke, but you won’t see much of him until near the movie’s end when Welles and Mankiewicz fight about who’ll receive credit for the Kane screenplay, which everyone acknowledges to be brilliant.

      Others in the cast deserve at least cursory mention.  Lily Collins portrays Rita Alexander, the British secretary  hired to type the pages Mankiewicz — bed-ridden with a broken leg — dictated. Tuppence Middleton plays Sara Mankiewicz, the writer’s wife, a woman who abided Mank's alcoholism, gambling, and womanizing. Tom Pelphrey appears as Herman’s bother, Joseph — who went on to write and direct any number of memorable movies himself, All About Eve among them.

     Sam Troughton takes a turn as producer John Houseman, who Welles occasionally dispatched to Victorville to check on Mankiewicz’s progress and to monitor his drinking. 

     Perhaps inspired by Kane’s complex structure, Fincher moves his story out of Mankiewicz’s Victorville retreat by flashing back to better and worse times. He highlights Mankiewicz’s relationship with Marion Davies, supposedly the model for the woman Charles Foster Kane embarrassingly attempted to turn into an opera diva in Citizen Kane.

     I’m not sure if Fincher was trying to give the movie topical zing but he spends a fair amount of time on the California 1934 gubernatorial race in which Hollywood's upper echelon rallied to defeat author Upton Sinclair,  the Democratic candidate who was smeared as anti-American and a communist. 

       The screenplay suggests that the race may have marked the  beginning of manufacturing news to seduce a gullible public.

      By making a movie about the making of a movie, Fincher has taken on a gargantuan task  — not to mention that he's dealing with what might be the greatest American movie of them all. Don’t fret. Kane is a far better movie than the movie about Kane and Fincher's effort occasionally goes slack. 

      Citizen Kane remains a great movie even if you know nothing about Hearst or any of the other so-called models for its  characters. Kane may have been of its moment, but it's too damn good to stay there.

       Still, don't sell  Mank short. Fincher takes us back to a time when smart, literary types invaded Hollywood, collected some big paydays, and, in some cases, wrote fine movies. I'm not sure whether to view it as a footnote to a masterwork or an entertainment in its own right, but Fincher's Mank proves a dense, gossipy pleasure.

Hitchcock/Truffaut, an illuminating duo

A documentary that takes us inside the mind of a master.

Most serious film lovers are familiar with Hitchcock/Truffaut, a book first published in France in 1967. The book offered a meticulously edited version of a week-long conversation between two very different directors, Alfred Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut.

In this essential volume, Hitchcock not only reveals his ideas about cinema, but engages in detailed discussions of how he achieved some of his most notable effects.

Unlike many books, Hitchcock/Truffaut can be opened almost anywhere and still yield abundant rewards. Credit Truffaut -- who began his career as a critic for the vaunted French publication Cahiers du Cinema. Truffaut venerated and understood Hitchcock, and was intimately familiar with his work.

Now comes director Kent Jones's documentary of the same name, another essential work that either will serve as a welcome amplification for devotees of the book or an introduction to it for cinema newbies.

Using segments of the recorded conversation between Hitchcock and Truffaut, well-selected clips from Hitchcock's films and commentary by a variety of current directors, Jones has assembled a film that deserves to become part of every film lovers collection.

Happily, those commenting on the films are not the usual suspects, aside from director Martin Scorsese, who always adds something valuable to any film about film in which he appears.

Jones also includes insights from other directors, notably James Gray, David Fincher, Richard Linklater, Wes Anderson, Olivier Assayas, Arnaud Desplechin, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Peter Bogdanovich and Paul Schrader.

Of course, few can do a better job of describing Hitchcock's work than Hitchcock himself, and he does so with the kind of candor and generosity that he might only have been able to achieve with another filmmaker.

At the time of the book's initial publication, Truffaut hoped that a comprehensive look at Hitchcock's work would help change the view that some held of the "master of suspense." Truffaut believed that in the U.S., Hitchcock was regarded as a talented entertainer who made commercially successful thrillers. No more.

That view seems remarkably dated now: Few knowledgeable filmgoers would dispute the inseparability of Hitchcock's visual and narrative mastery, and most of us are willing to acknowledge that art and commerce needn't be irreconcilable enemies.

It's encouraging to hear a new generation of filmmakers talk about what they learned from watching Hitchcock's movies. Gray marvels at the perverse genius of Vertigo, for example.

But perhaps the best thing about Hitchcock/Truffaut is that it reaffirms what it means to take a serious approach to film -- not pompous, overly academic or self-impressed, but one that delights in rich analysis and deep appreciation.

As a result, Hitchcock/Truffaut provides us with abundant and durable pleasures.

She's gone -- but to where?

Director David Fincher takes on a bestseller with lots of trashy but entertaining twists.

In the beginning, the marriage seems idyllic. An attractive young magazine journalist teams up with a gorgeous woman who earns her living writing quizzes for magazines. They live in New York City, and appear to be clued to a power-couple track.

Then, comes the derailment.

He loses his job: She doesn't have a whole lot happening in her life. They decide to abandon New York City and head for his hometown in Missouri. There, he'll run a neighborhood bar, and she'll have entirely too much time to wonder what happened to her life.

So goes the setup for director David Fincher's eagerly awaited adaptation of Gillian Flynn's 2012 best-seller, Gone Girl, which stars Ben Affleck as the husband and Rosamund Pike as his wife.

Gone Girl is the kind of movie about which much can't be said. To discuss the plot in any detail puts one knee deep into spoiler territory.

For those who haven't read Flynn's book, all that really needs to be known is that Affleck's Nick Dunne arrives home from work on the day of his fifth anniversary to discover that his wife is missing.

Signs of violence suggest that he should call the cops: The rest of the movie concerns the search for Pike's Amy as Fincher provides us with various views of the marriage at the film's tricky heart.

After a slow and somewhat awkward start, Fincher eventually gets down to business, playing with our sympathies as Nick comes under suspicion in his wife's disappearance.

One minute, we feel Nick may be getting a raw deal. The next minute, we're leaning toward Amy's version of things and wondering whether Nick isn't a monster who killed his wife.

Each character gets a turn at narrating the story. We hear Nick in voice-over fragments: Amy's view is presented in the form of excerpts from her diary (read by Pike).

Affleck's performance isn't showy, but it's effective. He's playing a guy whose life is spinning out of control. Affleck's Nick does his best to cope and to combat what seems to be a long-standing depression.

Pike confronts a different problem: Amy tends to be more of a sketch than a fully drawn character -- albeit the sketch gets more interesting as the movie progresses.

The supporting cast is first rate. Kim Dickens, familiar from HBO's Treme, does nice work as a detective in the Francis McDormand, Fargo mode, and Patrick Fugit (who starred in Almost Famous as a kid) plays her skeptical sidekick, Officer James Gilpin.

Tyler Perry nails his role as an attorney whose confidence stems from his unquestionable slickness. He specializes in defending accused husbands. Neil Patrick Harris portrays one of Amy's former boyfriends, a preppie type who never gave up his crush on her.

Carrie Coon deserves special mention: She plays Nick's twin sister, a woman who's entirely devoted to him, but who also knows his weak spots.

Fincher (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Social Network, Zodiac and Se7en) is not a breezy director: He moves deliberately, and he may be guilty of letting an hour and half's worth of movie stretch into two hours and 25 minutes.

But in the end, Gone Girl's many twists and turns -- Flynn wrote the screenplay -- carry the day, turning the movie into fun with a trashy tilt.

Beyond that, Fincher lands some nice -- if obvious -- satirical blows to the media solar plexus: In the 24-hour news cycle, commentators often treat crime stories as morality plays that demand constant blameworthy targets.

To be honest, I wasn't sure that Fincher didn't take the material more seriously than is warranted: In some ways, Gone Girl struck me as glorified and bloodier version of some episodic TV shows, and it's probably unwise to generalize about the state of marriage from what see of Nick and Amy.

Still, Gone Girl provides enough mordant humor and intrigue to keep us engaged right up until the movie's provocative and, I suppose, cynical finale. It's a movie for anyone who's ever said the words "I love you" through clenched teeth.

A chilly 'Girl With The Dragon Tattoo'

Director David Fincher's Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is good, but may not ink an indelible mark.

It’s fair to say that The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo qualifies as one of the most eagerly anticipated movies of the holiday season. Given the groundwork that already has been laid, how could it not?

The late Stieg Larsson’s trilogy of novels -- of which Dragon Tattoo is the first – still sells off the charts. We’ve already seen big-screen Swedish versions of all three books, and there hardly seems to be a person attuned to popular culture who hasn’t heard of Lisbeth Salander, the tech wizard and ace hacker who harbors deep secrets and who remains Larsson’s most memorable character.

The new and beautifully crafted version – from director David Fincher (The Social Network, Zodiac and Se7ven) -- has been made with consummate care, and – most importantly -- Fincher has found an actress in Rooney Mara who matches the brilliantly edgy work done by Noomi Rapace in the Swedish original -- and that's saying a lot.

Salander’s appearance – spiky hair, multiple piercings and a pallor that might make a vampire jealous -- feels both familiar and strange. She’s like a human porcupine with quills fully extended. Touch, and you'll probably get hurt.

(An FYI: Mara appeared briefly in the opening of Fincher’s The Social Network, playing the young woman Mark Zuckerberg insulted in the movie’s first scene.)

Like Rapace, Mara also shows occasional flashes of beauty, traces of softness beneath the hardcore exterior. She’s one hell of a character, and you definitely wouldn’t want to cross her.

So what else do we get?

We get the kind of richer, more varied look that stems from having a large Hollywood budget. We also get scenes that are shocking and ghastly.

We also get the same kind of labyrinthine (a nice way of saying overly complex) plot that marked the first movie, a story full of former Nazis, wealthy aristocrats, and skeptical journalists -- not to mention serial killing, rape and revenge. And even more than his Swedish predecessor, Fincher falls prey to the furrowed-brow seriousness the material seems to evoke, pulp striving for art.

This march toward artistic legitimacy is abetted by a fine cast.

Daniel Craig brings the expected gravity and a touch of vulnerability to the role of journalist Mikael Blomkvist; Robin Wright portrays Blomkvist’s journalistic partner and sometime lover; Stellan Skarsgard appears as a member of the wealthy and highly dysfunctional Vanger family, and Christopher Plummer plays Henrik Vanger, the ranking member of the Vanger clan.

Plummer’s character summons Blomkvist to the Vanger island retreat, and hires him to investigate the long ago murder of a favorite niece, Thus, the story begins.

Two strands lace throughout the opening chapters of the story: Salander’s and Blomkvist’s, and these eventually are joined in Steven Zaillian’s script, which one imagines to have reached phone-book-like proportions to accommodate the story's two-hour and 38-minute length, not all if it fleet.

Now if you’ve read the book and seen the Swedish movie, you may inevitably find yourself playing a game of compare and contrast: It’s not easy to watch Fincher’s movie without trying to remember how the same situations were handled in both the book and the earlier film. This either becomes a distraction or a source of enjoyment, depending on your temperament.

The bottom line: I thought the Swedish movie was fine (with an exceptional turn from Rapace), but I liked Fincher’s English-language version a little better, maybe because I found myself caught up in the mood and atmosphere created by Fincher and cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth. I wouldn't call The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Fincher's best work, but he definitely knows how to serve up a chilled and even classy dish of deviance and menace.

Broadcast Critics honor 'Social Network'

The Broadcast Film Critics Association Friday evening picked The Social Network as its best film of the year, beginning what's likely to become a steady stream of top awards for the much-admired movie about the founding of Facebook.

The movie also won awards for David Fincher (best director); Aaron Sorkin (best adapted screenplay); and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (best score).

Here's a list of the major Critics Choice awards:

Best actor: Colin Firth, The King's Speech

Best actress: Natalie Portman, The Black Swan

Best supporting actor: Christian Bale, The Fighter

Best supporting actress: Melissa Leo, The Fighter

Best original screenplay: David Seidler, The King's Speech

Best animated film: Toy Story 3

Best documentary: Waiting for Superman

Best foreign-language film: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Best song: If I Rise, 127 Hours

Best Comedy: Easy A

Best action movie: Inception

Best cinematography: Wally Pfister, Inception

Best art direction, Guy Hendrix Dyas, Inception

Best young actor/actress: Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit

For more on the awards visit the Broadcast Film Critics Association web site.

How Facebook conquered the on-line world

The temptation in reviewing a hot-topic movie such as The Social Network is to try for a big statement. One could, for example, bemoan the illusion of intimacy that a massive social network such as Facebook seems to create. Or one might marvel at the technical savvy and sociological prescience it took to establish Facebook as a game-changing player in the world of communications.

Truth is I'm not ready to see Facebook as the mark of the devil or as a precursor of everything that's great about the unfolding century. For me, Facebook provides a way to keep in touch with old friends and relatives. I share tidbits (newsy or otherwise) that strike me as intriguing and may be of interest to others. I follow suggested links that seem worth a mouse click. I check Facebook at least once a day or (heaven help me) during breaks from Twitter.

Maybe it is just an illusion, but Facebook sometimes makes me feel as if I'm in the loop.

One thing's for sure: I'm not alone. With 500 million people using Facebook, it's a sure bet that a lot of them will want to see Social Network, a well-researched fictionalized and entirely captivating account of the founding of Facebook. The movie also exposes the various bruised egos and lawsuits that floated in the wake of this Web-based revolution.

Directed by David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and written by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing). Social Network might have been subtitled Revenge of the Nerd. Once the brunt of movie jokes aimed at characters with thick glasses, buck teeth and pocket protectors, geeks have morphed into major playahs, potential billionaires who have revolutionized nearly everything - from the way we buy music to the way we watch movies to the ways in which we keep up with world events.

The undisputed champion of the New Geek Order - at least according to Social Network - is Mark Zuckerberg, the kid who began Facebook at Harvard, spread his fledgling enterprise to a variety of other colleges and universities and eventually built it to the point where everyone from college kids to octogenarians have jumped on board. And, oh yeah, Zuckerberg turned himself into a billionaire in the bargain.

In the hands of Fincher and Sorkin, Social Network opens a window into the social structure of a prestigious university - we're talking Harvard and its culture of manic achievement. The movie also draws energy from the rollicking kick associated with invention and seat-of-the-pants entrepreneurship. From dorm room to billionaire isn't exactly an everyday journey, so Social Network passes the interest test with flying colors, particularly when you remember that Zuckerberg's now a ripe 26 years of age.

Of course, downs usually follow most ups, particularly if we're talking the stock market or drama. In this case, the down side involves the break between Zuckerberg (Jessie Eisenberg) and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield). By its end, Social Network suggests that somewhere deep inside, Zuckerberg feels the pain of having thrown friends under the bus as he rose to the top of the teeming Web heap.

No point recounting the details of Facebook's founding. Know, though, that the movie draws on Ben Mezrich's book, The Accidental Billionaires. The word "accidental" is important. Zuckerberg doesn't seem to have an out-sized plan to conquer the world. As portrayed in the movie, he's an avid programmer and a conniving friend. He talks at high speeds, and spares no one's feelings. He's a tech genius who catches the social-network tiger by the tail and has the good sense not to let go.

These days success has many consequences, not least among them lawsuits. Social Network tells its story in flashbacks from two deposition sessions resulting from suits filed against Zuckerberg.

Saverin sued Zuckerberg after he was dumped as the company's CEO. Then there were the Winklevoss twins (both played by Armie Hammer). The Winklevosses invited Zuckerberg to join them in creating something they planned to call The Harvard Connection. They wound up suing Zuckerberg, claiming he stole their idea and turned it into Facebook.

The Winklevosses were the antithesis of the avid, socially inept Zuckerberg. They belonged to one of Harvard's elite clubs; they rowed crew; they considered themselves gentlemen. When's the last time you heard a college kid refer to himself as a "gentleman."
 

But it's Zuckerberg who remains the center of this energetic, fascinating and smartly written movie. As played by Eisenberg, Zuckerberg becomes a true movie oddity: A main character who also comes off as a class-A jerk.

You don't have to wait around for Social Network to put Zuckerberg's thoughtless cruelty on display. The movie's first scene establishes the boy genius as the kind of IQ snob who dumps on his girlfriend (Rooney Mara) because she attends Boston University. He evidently regards BU as such an unchallenging institution that none of its students should have to waste time studying.

Zuckerberg's insult reflects his idea of an entitled "brainocracy," a group empowered by the kind of super-intelligence that aces the SATs. You get the impression that Zuckerberg's ego revolves around always having been the smartest guy in every class. Look, if you're constantly at the top, it's easy to spend a lot of time looking down.

It's a tribute to both Fincher and Sorkin that we get caught up in a movie about characters who don't exactly warm the heart. We're enveloped by the ceaseless whirl of Zuckerberg's success machine, which increasingly takes on a life of its own. This isn't a story for the bygone dial-up age. It's full of high-speed connections -- in every sense.

Special note should be made of Justin Timberlake's contribution to this frenetic code fest of a movie. Timberlake appears as Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster, chick magnate, entrepreneurial renegade and fellow brainiac. Zuckerberg found a conspirator in Parker, who - at least in this version of the story - taught him how not to feel guilty about screwing his friends during his conquest of the on-line world. Not that Zuckerberg was particularly guilt-ridden before he met Parker. Parker didn't start Zuckerberg's raging fire; he just poured gasoline on it.

When Parker convinces Zuckerberg to move to Palo Alto, the newly minted Harvard dropout starts to live a kind of dreamy nerd fantasy. Computer code mingles with a party atmosphere in the house Zuckerberg rents. He also runs into his first serious money, a $500,000 investment in his new company.

Fincher's final image leaves little doubt that Zuckerberg - the character in the movie, not necessarily the real guy - knows that all's not right, a message Eisenberg communicates with a drawn expression that makes him look as if he's on the verge of tears. Cynics among us might say, "What a shame; he can cry all the way to the bank."

It's a reasonably strong moment, but my first reaction after the movie - for all its depictions of business machinations, personal betrayals and brainy condescension -- had to do with Facebook. I wanted to drop my account, to withdraw from the ranks of those who have helped turn Zuckerberg into a high-tech titan.

The feeling passed. I'm still on Facebook.

If I had dropped Facebook I wouldn't have seen an old photo my cousin Richie dug up of my parents and most of my aunts and uncles, seated at a table at some long-ago wedding. I wouldn't know what foods are building the waistline of a food-obsessed "friend." I wouldn't know that another friend just found a new job, that still another is looking for a new house or that a page called "I'd Rather Have a Root Canal Procedure than Listen to Sarah Palin Give A Speech" has sprung up on Facebook.

I learn things - both trivial and significant - by participating in Facebook. But how you get from that to billions of dollars is beyond me. For that kind of action and savvy, you'll have to ask the real Zuckerbeg. Judging by the movie (and by a recent New Yorker profile), it's one bit of information Zuckerberg may not be sharing.