MYST #3: Gone Girl

When I heard that David Fincher was coming out with a new movie, needless to say I got excited. And when I saw the trailer, that feeling only moved up to ecstatic. I got the first chance I could to see the new Gone Girl, and to say the least, I was not disappointed.

Gone Girl, 2014
Director: David Fincher
Starring Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike
Click here to watch official trailer

David Fincher has made his fame with such psychological, dark and twisting films as Fight Club and Se7en, and after seeing this, his fans can proudly add Gone Girl to this very successful list. As stated in the trailer, the movie starts out following the story of Nick Dunne, played by Ben Affleck, whose wife goes missing at the beginning of the film; and he soon enough becomes the prime suspect in the case. What the trailer doesn't show is the other side of the story, what ends up happening to the wife Amy, played by British Rosamund Pike--and that is where the story becomes really Fincher-worthy.

Because the movie takes so many crazy twists and turns I'm going to avoid the rest of the plot line so I don't spoil anything, but let me just say it is an absolutely amazing story in itself, keeping you on the edge of your seat the entire viewing.

Rosamund Pike, playing Amy Dunne

As for acting, Ben Affleck was as usual great as Nick Dunne, pulling off the two sides of him that seem to come out at the beginning, when we don't know whether to trust him or not. It's a very honest performance, playing the part of a man conflicted in his marriage, life, and relationships with those around him. As for Rosamund Pike, it was a phenomenal role played exactly right. During the first half of the movie, I hated her acting, finding it cold and one-dimensional, but once you really get to know Amy the character, you see how amazing of a job she's done. She finds just the right angles of Amy's personality to exploit and bring out, and, once again I'll hold back from plot as not to spoil anything, but she she plays the character you remember to hate with the acting you can't forget. I'd definitely be expecting to here her name again at this year's upcoming Academy Awards.

 The one acting job in this movie that I actually didn't like was that of Neil Patrick Harris. Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of his. I loved him in How I Met Your Mother for nine seasons straight, and he was hilarious the entire time through. But it seems that, coming out of that iconic role, that's the only thing he knows how to play anymore. His acting is shallow and his romantic or dramatic lines are almost insincere. Quite frankly, it felt like he was playing his HIMYM character of Barney but in an awkward, sarcastic serious kind of way. I was disappointed, and I hope he can make a comeback in his career and really improve with it.

Notice the ironic resemblance to the famous
Rolling Stone cover of John Lennon
wrapped around Yoko Ono 

To avoid ruining any plot line, I'm not going to choose a specific scene to mention but instead a certain cinematic technique. The movie is set up in a back-and-forth kind of way, changing scenes from two different perspectives of the story: between the present and future. The scenes switch from telling the story of Amy's disappearance and the days that follow, in the present, and the story of Amy and Nick, from falling in love to getting married to falling apart, all told through her diary entries, in the past. I absolutely loved this technique of juxtaposition. It begins the current conflict while setting up the backstory at the same time; as we follow the story of Amy disappearing and how Nick is dealing with it, we also get insight into what kind of a couple they were, formulating our ideas of the two as well as our interpretations of what is going on and our guesses of what will happen. It certainly keeps the audience thinking and interested in where the movie will go.

Overall, I'd say I definitely loved this movie and STRONGLY advise anyone who is interested to go see it. I'd say it is, hands down, the best movie I've seen of 2014. Fincher's directing is amazing as ever, and I'd definitely expect a few Oscar nominations.

Overall, I'd give this a solid 8.7/10.

MYST# 2: Drinking Buddies

I came upon this movie completely by accident, browsing on Netflix and realizing that it had an actor I liked in it (Jake M. Johnson, from New Girl,) as well as the recently famous Ana Kendrick in a supporting role. Although I don’t particularly like her as an actress I was interested after noticing the surprising 83% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, because I had personally had never even heard of it. What I was expecting from this was a somewhat original but still overused formulated Hollywood love story, but it took a refreshing, very untraditional route that is definitely worth noting and watching.

The movie follows the friendships of the main two characters, Luke and Kate, played by Jake Johnson and Olivia Wilde, and how, despite both of them being in happy relationships, have an unspoken but surely, awkwardly there chemistry towards each other. Typical, you’d think. But what was so amazing was not the story itself but the way it was presented.

            Young director Joe Swanberg put an untraditional spin on this time-old story, by making it so utterly and painfully real. The writing, acting, cinematography, editing—it's all put together in a way that makes you feel less like you’re watching a movie and more like you’re experiencing this awkward sequence of events for yourself. The actors are very relaxed with one another, acting only in response to each other and probably adding a lot of improvisation. The dialogue is not faked or Hollywood-esque in the way that you’d expect a romance to be. The actors will pause, seem unsure of themselves, hesitate, and look painfully uncomfortable in appropriate situations. Sometimes there’s no important dialogue at all, just the minor chit chat that bring people closer together. The camerawork is not significantly flashy or glamorous, just natural shots conveying the subjects at hand. With all of these components put together, the film achieves a certain realistic quality that makes it so relatable and lovable.

There was one specific scene that stood out to me, in which they juxtapose the relationship of the main two best friends, Luke and Kate, to the new friendship of Luke's girlfriend and Kate's boyfriend, who decide to go on a hike together when Luke and Kate both decline. The camera cuts between scenes of the hike and Luke and Kate sitting around playing cards. I doubt any script was written for this scene--the two are just sitting around, joking and laughing and just being natural with each other, which is all the scene is trying to convey, as well as their chemistry. Meanwhile, the two on the hike find many more sophisticated similar interests. They don't talk much but when they do it's something meaningful, and a chemistry builds between them as well. By going back between the two couples, the camera is pointing out the differences in the relationships, letting us put together the pieces of the conflict of the story: that Luke and Kate, and their respective partner, are more meant for each other than the person they're currently with.

This movie overall was much better than I expected, although it did still have some flaws, one of which being that it sometimes felt as though there were something missing, a big scene that explained it all or a scene that felt normal-hollywood, scripted with lots of acting to wake us up from the strangeness of the movie and bring us back to plot line. But overall, I did like it, and I'll give it a rating of 7 out of 10.

FFS: Noir Films Over Time

For my Formal Film Studies project, I thought it might be cool to watch the development of a specific genre over time--and what better genre than noir to do this, considering its style is applied in so many places we don't even realize. Little did I know that, about two weeks after I chose my (what I thought was unique) are of study concerning the films The Maltese Falcon, Blade Runner, and Brick, that we would be doing a very similar unit on noir films that included watching two of these movies in class. Nevertheless, I stuck to my assignment and even used some of what we did in class to help out with this.

The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Director: John Huston
Starring Humphrey Bogart
Mary Astor, Peter Lorre
Watch trailer here

The first movie I decided to watch was the supposed basis of all American noir, John Huston's 1941 The Maltese Falcon starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor. This movie follows the story of private investigator Sam Spade (Bogart) solving the mystery of who killed his partner Miles Archer and tracking down the fabled, priceless "Maltese Falcon." It has all the suspense and twists of any mystery movie, but with a special style innovative to the early '40s: the beginnings of noir.

The noir components are very strongly evident in this movie, and are the basis to which I compare the next two movies I watched. A major component of this is the protagonist of the movie: the "anti-hero"--the main character, in this case being Bogart's Spade, who although is the hero of the plot, in reality doesn't possess traditional hero-like qualities and is often morally questionable and shady. Spade shows this quality perfectly. He's a lone wolf, he doesn't play by the rules or the law, going against the police the whole movie in order to solve the mystery himself, and only at the end abiding with them to put the criminal in their place.

*SPOILERS*:

Femme Fatale Brigid O'Shaughnessy, played by Mary Astor

Another huge part of the noir experience is the "femme fatale," the beautiful seductress female lead who in the end proves not to be trusted: in this case, it was Brigid O'Shaughnessy, who Spade inevitably falls in love with although she ends up being the true villain and murderer of his partner (as well as Floyd Thirsby). And as for the stylistic aspects of noir film, this movie was filled with them. The black and white, the shadowy set design, the portrayal of Bogart as mysterious, shady, smokey--it was all very chic and noir. As well as the acting, the way people talked fast and hard, with lots of slang and witty comments, very unrealistic but exciting and suspenseful. I personally loved this movie, and everything about it showed perfectly why it is the father of all noir, and why I decided to base all other noir judgements after it, using it as my golden standards for comparisons.

Blade Runner (1982)
Director: Ridley Scott
Starring Harrison Ford
Watch trailer here

The next movie I decided to watch was one of my all-time favorites, Blade Runner, a 1982 futuristic film directed by Ridley Scott. Scott did a daring thing with this movie: He decided to put a spin on the futuristic, science fiction genre by doing it in a noir style
.
This movie takes place in the year 2019 (so futuristic, right?) and deals with the popular, and quite terrifying may I add, themes of artificial intelligence and the dispute against it. At this time on Earth, expert androids called "replicants" have been created but have been made illegal on Earth, due to the fact that they are so much like humans, sometimes they can't even tell. Replicants who escape and return to Earth are hunted down and killed, or "retired" by detectives called "Blade Runners"--one of which is the protagonist of the film, detective Richard Deckard played by the great Harrison Ford. And this lonesome, tired old cynic becomes--you guessed it--our noir antihero.

It is very easy to pick out how this film is noir. Just from the color scheme and cinematography of the entire thing, although not in black and white, is obviously noir. The entire movie is dark, using a lot of noir-iconic low-key lighting, taking place in run down, depressing future Los Angeles. The set is usually dark, drab, and shadowy, although there are distinctive pops of neon-ish color, adding to the futuristic feel of the movie. As comparing it to The Maltese Falcon, it is very obvious the relationship. Just looking at the detective-a trend I found to be surprisingly common in noir. The main character is always trying to uncover something, solve a mystery that connects to him/her personally (also evident in the neo-noir movies Memento, Silence of the Lambs, and Se7en). Aside from that, they are both hard, realistic men who are all too familiar with what kind of a place the world is, acting out of reason instead of love and are darkly cynical.
antihero, Deckard resembles Spade in many ways. First off, he is a

Femme Fatale Rachel (replicant)
Played by Sean Young

*SPOILERS* The female lead character of Rachel could be considered the femme fatale, because although she is one of the replicants Deckard is supposed to "retire," she doesn't know she is a replicant. This provides the question of whether to trust her or not: does he treat her like a human or a replicant? (Which also brings up the questions of AI and whether or not she can truly be considered human.) Although not a classic noir film, Blade Runner can definitely be considered neo-noir, and is probably my personal favorite noir.

Brick (2005)
Director: Rian Johnson
Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Watch trailer here

Lastly I chose to fast forward 30 years and watch the 2005 Rian Johnson film Brick, debuting Joseph Gordon-Levitt in his breakthrough role. In the same way that Blade Runner mixed the two genres of science fiction and noir, Brick mixes the unsuspecting genre of a teen drama movie with the darkness of noir, which brings about a new kind of film that really is one of the most unique things I've ever watched. Our antihero here is high school student Brendan Frye, who goes through the movie attempting to find his lost ex-girlfriend (whom he still loves), and after he does find her, attempting to find whoever killed her. Much like the classic noir protagonist, Frye is a sad, sort of quiet loner who refuses to make complete alliance with anyone but "The Brain," who in reality is less of a friend and more of a simple informant. Frye refuses to cooperate with the would-be "police" of a classic noir film, in this case the assistance principle, but also refuses to cooperate fully with those on the opposing side, in this case the big-time drug dealer The Pin.

The dark shadowy telephone booth and the trench coat
are all very reminiscent of classic noir. 

In terms of cinematography, a common trend to the film work of noir films is a certain"claustrophobic" feel created by tight angles usually angled upward, from the ground or significantly lower than the character. Brick contains many of these, achieving this along with wide shots. One thing surprisingly different from the classic noir is the color pallet of this movie--apart from the other two films I watched, this movie is not shot in black and white, like The Maltese Falcon, or extremely dark and shadowy, like Blade Runner. Instead, they use the average high school color scheme of lightness, with mostly day time shots, but incorporated a softer, toned down version of the dark color pallet, using dull pastels like light browns and grays in order to achieve a perfect blend of the two genres, represented throughout he set and costume design.

Femme Fatale Laura Dannon, played by Nora Zehetner

The obvious femme fatale here is the mysteriously delicate but in reality vicious Laura Dannon, who continuously tests Brendan's patience by going back and forth between trust and distrust. The director Rian Johnson, who apparently drew inspiration for this film from The Maltese Falcon, wanted to mirror the relationship between Sam Spade and Brigid O'Shaughnessy through his main characters of Brendan and Laura. There is even a specific scene through which he pays homage to the classic noir film, which I noticed but had to look up to make sure I was right. In the first film, Sam tells Brigid he'll send a signal by a long-short-long-short patterned ring of the doorbell, and in a similar scene in Brick, Brendan tells Laura to signal him through a long-short-long-short honk of her car horn.

Mr. D said in class that some critics have been cited to claim that modern film is most influenced by noir film, and after this project that makes sense. There is so much of noir in so many films I've never noticed and appreciated, and it's come to be one of my favorite genres.


Sources:
http://www.noiroftheweek.com/2013/07/brick-2005.html
http://screensense.wordpress.com/blade-runner/genre/genre/