Last Movie You Saw, Name & Review Movie • Page 25

David Fincher films >

Can't wait to see what's next from him.

 

Still bummed 20,000 Leagues fell through

 

Fincher confuses me because he has some great films, at least one excellent film, and then some inexplicable borderline awful films with no pattern on timing. I never know what to expect from him anymore.
Somebody mentioned that Zodiac came out in 2007, which makes it crazy that it probably wasn't even the second best film to come out that year. What a year.

 

Zodiac is fantastic. I watch it every time it's on HBO, Showtime etc.

 

Somebody? I thought we were like minds.

Fincher's films are hard to get interested in because of how wildly different the quality is. Between Zodiac and The Social Network is the The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. His recent trend of adapting trash novels is concerning.

 

Social Network and Zodiac are very well put together and enjoyable. Both lack a tangible theme that is broadly interesting or relevant.

His visual style and editing are what make him even close to interesting.

Seven and Fight Club are fun late night 90's movies with all of the good and bad that come along with that. Many take them way too seriously for how silly they feel or how quickly they fall apart on paper.

This guy's last film was Gone Girl. woof

 

Fight Club is hard because most of the people who are really into it are the worst

 

It's like listening to Dave Matthews. Just gotta tune the fans out.

 

I would prefer not listening to Dave Matthews or watching Fight Club.

I have not seen Panic Room since it came out, and even then it registered as being especially stupid.

 

Panic Room seemed more like a love letter to Hitchcock and an exercise than an artistic statement. The really expressive way he shoots it, the prevalence of one central set and the mounting dread are all a great Hitch imitation.

 

...but you're still listening to DMB

 

I had a dean in high school that had learned every Dave Matthews song on guitar. When I played the talent show he took it upon himself to pretend we were friends and he would call me into his office to hear what he had learned. It was nice to get a reputation for being called to the dean's office a lot, but it was a nightmare to have to sit there and pretend to be interested.

 

is it also like wearing Steve Madden shoes?

 

Tetra please tell us what you did in the talent show

 

There is a surprising range - he's consistently talented and meticulous as a filmmaker, but if i didn't like a movie of his it's likely because of the story. Occasionally his sense of style gets too oppressively present, but it's not usually the breaking point. It was definitely the biggest weakness of Fight Club, which I greatly disliked, and Seven and The Game, which I thought were okay.

That said, curiously, I really liked Gone Girl, despite being absolutely certain I'd hate the book if I read it. I thought it was a slick, cynical, and ambiguous deconstruction of relationships and public identity.

I also quite enjoyed Panic Room. It was compact, tense, and smart, very Hitchcockian and a fascinating portal to early 2000s to look through now, as well as an appreciated look at feminine power and diabetes.

I think it's probably important to look at his films similarly to Christopher Nolan's: smart popcorn flicks. I have far from total faith in going into his movies and liking them or being emotionally engaged in them the same way I am "artsier" or "more thoughtful" films, but it'll likely be among the most intelligent showings at the theater.

Curiously, Benjamin Button has a Criterion release...

I strongly disagree that Zodiac had no central theme, and less strongly disagree about Social Network. Zodiac is about human curiosity and how we become so absorbed with mysteries we don't care about the accuracy of our conclusions as much as we do simply having one. Social Network is about the human treatment that create the products and innovations we consume, as well as a look at the commodification of relationships. This fits into larger themes Fincher likes, of human darkness and power struggles.

Re Gone Girl, see above, but I get your point.

Fight Club in particularly is unduly lauded in my opinion. It's bloated, and it doesn't make its heel turn as strongly or early as it needed to, so it often is used to confirm the very behavior it condemns. Seven is fun and smart but nothing too special.

 

No one's mentioned Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in all this Fincher discussion. Thoughts?

It's the only one I've seen (if we include the Swedish ones), and I haven't read any of the series, either, so I have nothing to compare it to except his own work. I thought it was... okay. It's probably when I fell in love with Rooney Mara, but I didn't really like the story. I'm guessing it's another one of those "adaptations of shitty novels" he's been doing recently, as someone put it earlier.

 

It was my band at the time. I stole the main chord progression from The Hives but they were not big enough in my school for anyone to notice.

 

I would agree to an extent, but Fincher has made two of the great films of this century. For all the criticism I have for Nolan's films, he has enough of a visual style to one day make something great if he allows someone else to write the script and stays away from these huge productions. When people said "the Facebook movie starring Justin Timberlake" it was assumed to be awful, but when Nolan makes these hundred-million plus films the potential for artistry is smaller because of the marketing demands.

 

Did you like Following? I think that had the smallest budget he's ever worked with.

 

What movies are you referring to, and where do they sit on the scale?

Yeah, Nolan's movies make too much for him to ever go full auteur, so studios will always get in the way at the end of the day.

 

Nice

 

I would have assumed that you attempted a Mars Volta cover

 

Thanks for this. I wanted someone to tell me what was up with that. I haven't seen them in several years.

 

I started ripping them off with a band I played with in college, but I was never skilled enough as a musician to pull it off. I tried doing Billy Corgan and Bob Dylan at other points before retiring from music.

 

That is the one I have not seen. When I look at Memento, The Prestige, and even the first Batman, there is a director who is very different than the one who comes after. Even if he was the greatest director in the world he would still be trapped by how huge he has gotten.