Zodiac (2007)

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Anthony Edwards

Have I Seen It Before: Maybe? Probably not.

Did I Like It: This might represent the last sustained moment of the movies before the Marvel universe took over everything. Downey in this film is practically vibrating in anticipation of leaping beyond his troubles (and more his years as an indie/and into full-moviestardom. There’s even a measure of what he brings to Tony Stark within his portrayal of newspaperman Paul Avery. Although that’s probably a very long way for me to say that there is a certain amount of sameness in the roles Downey has picked in the last twenty years, give or take a Nolan film*.

But, I can only guess that providing what many would call the last gasp of the mainstream prestige film** probably not what Fincher set out to do.

So many post-modern thrillers/horror films think they can reckon with the violence of their genre by either cynical detachment (Scream (1996) and its various sequels and imitators) or by doubling down on an unearned earnestness (David Gordon Green’s Halloween (2018)*** and its sequels), but Fincher is able to just confront the violence as it likely happened. Getting shot or stabbed is a very unpleasant fate, and I’m not entirely sure why it took until the mid-aughts to bring that element into a thriller. Even Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) tried to make it a little fun.

But what I really think about as I watch this film? They pretty much figured out that John Carroll Lynch did it, there’s a whole extra hour of stuff going on before it pretty much was clear that John Carrolll Lynch did it.

*I guess the ball’s in your court, Doomsday.

**Maybe an exaggeration, although one might have trouble figuring that out if they ever expose themselves to film discourse on the internet.

***Which I still like, and you can just deal with that. Thanks.

Alien 3 (1992)

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Charles Dance, Lance Henriksen

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: I get the complaints about the film. Hell, I feel the complaints about this film. Having an opening sequence designed solely to take the air out of any positive feelings one might have had at the end of Aliens (1986) feels like an injury one is not likely to overcome over the next nearly two hours. I think it is probably pretty fair to say—and Fincher would likely to agree—that David Fincher with one arm tied behind his back is not the filmmaker that James Cameron or Ridley Scott are in their prime. Editing problems abound. Early CGI effects abound that seem less designed to wow than to try and paper over some of those aforementioned editing problems. It all ends in a bummer. For a big summer movie, it’s a sad, not very thrilling affair.

And yet…

I’ve had the weird misfortune of watching a lot of misbegotten 90s sequels lately, and the more misbegotten those films are, there’s a rash of “Where’s Skippy?” moments. A beloved—or even liked—character from previous entries is missing from the entry. Inevitably, the actor reads the script and bows out of the prospect of more-of-the-same. The script isn’t re-written to be not include the character. Instead, there’s is fifteen seconds of dialogue about why the character is just off camera (“I broke up with Jack” Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997); “Taggart’s retired in Arizona” Beverly Hills Cop III (1994)), after which we are introduced to the same type of character so that the script wouldn’t have to be re-written and… gasp… the movie might lose its release date.

That doesn’t happen here. We can be horrified by Newt and Hicks’ fate (or lack of one in this film), but at the very least the filmmakers have something akin to the courage of making Ripley (Weaver, still good despite doing one film too many) always seem as if she is in mourning. The film may not care about characters from Aliens, but at least they didn’t send them to Arizona. It’s a film about mortality and mourning, and while the mangling of a big studio movie that would make any big studio nervous dulls that theme somewhat, the theme can’t be extinguished.

Mank (2020)

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, Charles Dance

Have I Seen it Before: Never. I know. It seems unlikely that I would have dodged this one, but I’ve spent more than a few years trying to keep my Orson and Kane-related palette as clean as possible, but no longer! 

Did I Like It: On spec, I’m probably obligated to dislike a movie where Orson Welles (Tom Burke) is clearly one of—if not the—villain of the piece, but honestly? The man probably has that coming. It’s difficult to say who was more put upon by the process of writing Citizen Kane (1941) but if the version of the story supported by Mankiewicz’s supporters (I’m mainly looking in your direction, Pauline Kael) has any degree of truth in it, then Welles was indeed the villain of his greatest triumph.

Stylistically, it feels like maybe Fincher was a bit too precious about the source material here, given that the screenplay was written by his late father. The constant sluglines as a visual motif grate on the nerves more often than not, but given the subject at hand can be forgiven. That obvious not in an effort to tell us this is about a writer doesn’t need to be there, though, it’s still a pretty tight story about a great writer often interacting with other great writers.

And, ultimately we come to the big question when it comes to films who depict Orson Welles in a narrative film. Some are eerie good, others are probably counting on memory of the man being dim in the public consciousness. Thankfully, this lands squarely on the first end of the spectrum. The voice is right, and there are several moments where Mr. Burke actually does look like the Welles of the era. It’s a fate many others have failed to accomplish, although it may help that Welles is far from a main character in the piece, and indeed flits through the proceedings as an ominous phantom.

The Social Network (2010)

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer

Have I Seen It Before?: Sure.

Did I like it?: I’ve been taking a deep dive into the works of Aaron Sorkin recently. For some, that feels like a chore, but he’s always had a certain cadence and a certain type-a workaholic streak running through his work that appeals to me even in the more bewildering parts of Studio 60 of the Sunset Strip. For all of its flaws, I think I like The Newsroom, and really think a couple of extra seasons would have pissed all of the correct people off in all the right ways.

So, why did he make a movie about the invention of Facebook. What’s more, why would he make it focus not on the work of actually creating the site (that is largely act 1 material here), and instead focus on the myriad lawsuits brought about by the people that were almost involved. Sorkin is at his best when he is focusing on people—perhaps unrealistically—doing great work. And those lawsuits don’t end up with any kind of cathartic moment. How did the man who made his bones on A Few Good Men (1992) end up writing a movie that lives and dies in depositions?

Come to think of it, why would anyone want to make a movie about Zuckerberg (Eisenberg) and company? As I write this review, I come to the realization that I may not like the movie that much. It is slick and stylish, frequently amusing, but the core doesn’t quite work. Every character fails to get the things they truly wanted. The Winklevi (Hammer) get a quiet settlement and a sixth-place finish in the Olympics. Sean Parker (Timberlake) gets a one-way ticket to obscurity. Eduardo (Garfield) gets a little bit of money, but he’s a footnote in the history of the site but doesn’t get to be a player with it anymore. Even Zuckerberg, in true Michael Corleone or Charles Foster Kane fashion gets much of what he wanted but leaves a trail of injury in his wake. He is still waiting for the friend request from the girl that launched a thousand lines of code.

One might call that a tragedy, but what about it is tragic? Not one character meets their end. All of them are wealthy to the point where their great-grandchildren are unlikely to have to worry about money. Whatever injury they endure in the process of the film’s story will either be healed (or won’t) in the fullness of time. I can’t imagine the money won’t help them forget, or at least give them the opportunity to find and fund new avenues of misery. Much of this film, between Sorkin and Fincher’s work is pleasing, but none of it adds up. It makes one wish they had chosen some other subject.