Gone Girl Review

If you take a look at my patterns of film watching, the reviews I post or my favorite films lists, it is quite clear that I have a cinematic love affair with David Fincher that may make some roll their eyes. The word that will come to the minds of many is "fanboy", and it is often used in a derogatory fashion as if being swept away by the work of a true auteur is somehow something to be ashamed of. Perhaps others won't quite understand the passion I share for the work of Mr. Fincher, and that is totally fine. To each their own is something I say often and truly believe in, but I implore you to not diminish the feelings of others as being some sort of blind, biased fandom that will not allow for an honest reaction. Hell, I would probably throw my panties at the man if he were to walk back at this moment, and even I had trouble staying awake during the painfully disappointing experience I had viewing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

The point is, I walked into the cinema to see Gone Girl anticipating something special, and it managed to surpass the lofty expectations I had set. It wasn't merely a Fincher thing, it was fucking everything. EVERYTHING. The across the board stunning performances, the gorgeous cinematography by Jeff Cronenweth, the seamless and brilliant editing of Kirk Baxter, the absolutely pitch perfect score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross that managed to suit every moment of the film, from the times we are lead to believe in true love to the blood soaked frames that successfully shake the people in the audience to their core. The brilliantly adapted screenplay by Gillian Flynn who also penned the source material the film is based on, which makes me respect her work all that much more. I can't imagine it is an easy task to take your own words and be willing to chop them up and streamline them into a perfectly paced film, but Flynn certainly was the right choice for the job.

I mentioned the performances and the casting of Gone Girl proved to be sublime, but I must zero in on one specific person and gush like a teenage boy with a crush: Rosamund Pike. I couldn't take my eyes off of her regardless of the scenario, and it occurred to me that something about her screen presence here could have worked in any era of film. Pike felt simultaneously modern and classic, like she is stunningly beautiful in 2014 and yet also would light up the screen sixty years ago the way Grace Kelly did in the Hitchcock masterpiece Rear Window. Every time she spoke, every mannerism and facial expression, all the nuance of the character and what it took to pull off the role, if her name isn't among the nominations for Best Actress at the 2015 Academy Awards I will seriously question how it could be possible for five other options to be more worthy.

The production of Gone Girl was certainly a team effort and every single player involved brought their best to their work, and the man running the show is a true genius of the medium. After witnessing the 2010 masterpiece The Social Network, I figured he had crafted that one truly enlightened work of his career that would be reflected on as his most impressive achievement, and perhaps that is still the case. For me though, Gone Girl is right there in the discussion, a defining work that will be misunderstood by some as being a simple, pulpy, sinister film about the twists and turns of a bizarre (to say the least) marriage. It is so, so much more, a thematically rich experience that delves into relevant issues like personal identity, the way we rush to make crucial judgments about others thanks to the instant access world of social media, and the comical and yet uncomfortable amount of manipulation that takes place not only by the media but also the subjects those cameras are focused on. Every word delivered is calculated, every wardrobe choice is carefully planned and every nervous tick and accidental slip up is caught by watchful eyes and used to determine the guilt of a suspect before they even have the chance to enter a courtroom.

After I saw the magnificent film Boyhood, I quickly declared it to likely be the best work of 2014 and it is certainly worthy of that distinction, but then I recall saying to someone that I should hold off on such verbose declarations because this was a year that would still deliver two films I anticipated like a kid on Christmas Eve, Gone Girl and Interstellar.

Despite my love for all things Fincher, I doubted he could actually top the Linklater masterpiece. I must revisit Boyhood because right now, still reveling in that fresh cinematic glow sprinkled on me from Gone Girl, we have a new champion of 2014.

Your move, Nolan.


5/5

Zodiac Review

The sequence in the film when Robert Graysmith agrees to follow Bob Vaughn, a man who played the organ at a silent movie house that may have also employed the Zodiac killer, back to his home to talk, is a stunningly haunting piece of cinema. I have seen the film 6 or 7 or 8 or who the hell is counting times so far and that scene in the basement doesn't lose an ounce of brilliance with each revisit.

The entire set piece of the home, every nook and cranny of each room, the way the camera so effectively uses angles and space to make the audience feel just as uncomfortable and paranoid as Graysmith, all of it is nothing short of masterful. 

You could describe that scene to someone and essentially what you are saying is, dude goes into a house, goes into a basement, gets scared and leaves, and it would seem like nothing consequential actually occurs, but my god what happens in those few minutes brings my water to a boil more rapidly than most entire horror films. 

Zodiac is an expertly crafted masterpiece, which amazingly is the way I describe five separate David Fincher films. Hopefully six after I see Gone Girl tomorrow night...

5/5

White Bird in a Blizzard Review

Shailene Woodley is fantastically talented, and she delivers another nuanced, top notch performance in White Bird in a Blizzard.

That's it. That's all I got. I spent a good five full minutes baffled at the end of this film trying to determine whether I really, really hated it, or just kinda hated it, and my mental search for positives came up with one thing: the lead performance. Everything else was pretty much horseshit.

Okay, so it has some decent cinematography during the occasional dream sequence, but who gives a flying turd when it pops up in the midst of a lifeless, seemingly pointless narrative that relies on uninteresting voice-overs and absurdly cartoonish performances? What is this film about? According to Peter Debruge from Variety, it is  "a complex take on how teens must break away from their parents to become their own person". What? Where the fuck did he pull this from?

During the first 90 percent of the running time, White Bird in a Blizzard is bland and rather boring. It is less than 90 minutes long and yet it felt like I could have watched the first two Lord of the Rings films during the same time span. Even so, I didn't quite hate the film until the very end. In a matter of moments it went from below-average forgettable to memorably terrible when the totally awful rushed ending is thrown in our faces, again delivered entirely via voice-over, because there is nothing better than 87 minutes of building up to something and then 94 seconds of quickly explaining everything to us. Oh, and the supposed to be shocking twist ending? The icing on the poop filled cake.

You deserve better than this Shailene. We all deserve better than this. Director Gregg Araki may show some potential behind the camera, but please lord, next time either adapt stronger material or hire someone else to wield the pen. A series of who gives a shit moments and characters and weird, trippy dreams all adds up to a total failure of a film.


1/5

Django Unchained Review

The first time I saw Django Unchained, I somehow both loved it and was underwhelmed at the same time. The depth of my appreciation for two specific works by Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds, cannot be properly demonstrated by words. In my cinematic world, they are both what I would deem flawless masterpieces, as I have watched them repeatedly and kept a close eye on every possible detail and yet I still can't find a single moment of either I would alter in any way.

So when it came time to screen Django, I couldn't temper my expectations. I wanted that type of experience, I craved 160 minutes of pure joy dripping from every single word of Tarantino's screenplay. I wanted laughs, I wanted heartbreak, I wanted intense personal drama blended with horrific depraved violence. I wanted the greatest Quentin cake ever baked, and God damn it I wanted to eat it too.

I recall thinking certain moments dragged, that the pacing was slightly off and it wasn't quite as tight and attention-grabbing as those two films I mentioned above, and thus something felt as if it was missing. Well, I figured it was about time for the always important revisit, as many films throughout my life have either found a spot in my heart or vanished from my thoughts forever due to that second viewing. The Social Network when I first screened it? Good but not great. After the second viewing? A total masterpiece. My Tree of Life debut? Ridiculous rubbish. Now it sits comfortably as my favorite film of all time.

I can confirm it is official. Django Unchained joins the ranks of those films I mentioned, the type of work that left me cold initially and yet now just mentioning the title makes me want to leave work immediately so I can go home and cinegasm all over again. What the hell was I thinking? What did I miss that first time so many months ago? Was it too late at night, did a fatigued mind prove to be incapable of embracing genius? Everything I hoped for when I took my first trip to Candyland, it is all here. It always was, just waiting for me to give it another chance so I could wrap my arms around it and never let go.

Django Unchained is a masterful, confident example of how to perfectly balance true comedic wit with a total understanding that the subject matter still needs to feel serious enough to make an audience care. The performances across the board were sensational, the ideal cast to deliver exactly what Tarantino wanted to showcase when he mapped out such a truly inspired screenplay. The beauty of the Quentin Tarantino - Christoph Waltz dynamic is that when Waltz was handed both Supporting Actor Oscars for their collaborations, you could feel the honesty in the gracious acceptance speeches that those trophies felt like they belonged to both of them because one would not have shined as bright without the other. Was Waltz deserving of recognition based on his scene stealing performances? Without a doubt, the way he brought those words to life was astonishing, yet without those brilliantly clever words such a character could have easily been ignored.

The first time I watched Django Unchained, I woke up the next day and lived my life and didn't think much of the film despite enjoying the experience and admiring the craft. I always knew it was great, but I needed it to be more than that. I needed it to be the third film I could mention when asked "What is your favorite Tarantino film?".

Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Three films worthy of each other.



5/5

Modern Times Review

I love animated films, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with them, but I remember when my daughter exclusively watched only that genre at a very young age and I was thinking to myself, at what point can I show her more? When will she be ready to explore cinema beyond talking animals and snappy songs?

While she has been beyond that point for a while now, something happened the other day while watching the Charlie Chaplin masterpiece Modern Times that I was not anticipating. There I am, lying on the couch mesmerized by the film when I realized I wasn't alone. Not in the literal sense, I knew the soon to be seven year old was sitting across the room playing with toys, but the playing had stopped. She couldn't take her eyes off of Chaplin, and they never wavered from the screen for the remainder of the film.

It wasn't just the slapstick comedy that did it either. She was asking me questions about the story, she was expressing concerns about the relationship between the Factory Worker and the Gamin, but yeah, sure, she was also laughing hysterically at the brilliant comedic presence of Chaplin. She asked me to rewind the film multiple times so she could see specific scenes over and over again.

Modern Times was released 78 years ago, yet it managed to fill a 30 year old man and 6 year old girl with joy on a Saturday afternoon in 2014. It's an amazing achievement, a step above the also wonderful City Lights, and I can't wait to keep exploring his work.

Never imagined I would be doing so with a first grader, which makes the cinematic journey all the more special.



5/5

Upstream Color Review

I can't put my finger on any one reason, but lately I just haven't had the urge to write about film in any regard. Watch them, sure, despite some blips on the radar from being busy or recently under the weather that aspect hasn't suffered. After a long day of work and a few wonderful hours spent with the little one, I adore the opportunity to put my feet up, take in a film and just let my mind drift away with the sights and sounds of cinema, but then the time came to do a write up and I couldn't even bring myself to turn on the laptop. Just go to sleep, I would tell myself. I can always put something down tomorrow, but when tomorrow arrived the words still didn't.

Maybe I just needed the right film to open the floodgates again.

Last year, when I first screened the Shane Carruth gem Upstream Color, I was still relatively new to the world of abstract cinema. I admired every aspect of the feature yet I couldn't wrap my arms completely around it, I couldn't show it the full love it deserved. Tonight, in my dark and quiet living room as a mild, comforting breeze hit me from every direction, I flipped through the ol' Netflix queue to try to find something to spark my passion again and I quickly scrolled passed this film, only to slow down and head back to it. It just felt right.

Technically nothing has changed since my original viewing. It is a dense, abstract, baffling film that I may not understand any more than I did the first time, yet something intoxicating swept me up tonight. The sights, the sounds, the chemistry between Kris, portrayed beautifully by Amy Seimetz, and Jeff, played by Carruth himself...I couldn't look away. I didn't want to.

At the end of a rather trying and forgettable week that lacked, well, just about everything I hope for when I wake each morning, Upstream Color was there waiting to kick off my weekend and remind me why I used to find such joy in writing about film. For a moment there a few days back I actually asked myself, "Have I lost the passion for it?".

Found it.


5/5

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For Review

When the first Sin City came out nine years ago, I couldn't stop talking about it.

I saw Sin City: A Dame to Kill For a week ago today, and just now I decided to write something about it, and really I am not writing anything of interest because I still can't find the words.

It isn't because I am baffled at how poor the film was, it wasn't. It isn't because I am rendered speechless over how amazing the sequel is, it isn't. It just sorta exists, and I watched it, and it ended, and I still don't care.

The cast was solid. I really enjoyed the presence of Eva Green. The problem is, something about the film made it feel bland and uninteresting, and I can't quite put my finger on it.

I could watch Sin City again and again, giving that glorious Blu-ray a spin and finding myself dazzled every single time. I'm not even sure I will watch Sin City: A Dame to Kill For again. I don't need to dissect it and search for any sort of thematic subtext bubbling beneath the surface. It is what it is, and what it is certainly ain't something I would kill for.



2.5/5