Post: #51

I enjoyed this. Absolutely hated and cringed at the dialogue when they first met though, but overall a good film.

Post: #52

I thought the first half was excellent.

Once Amy became narrating it turned into an episode of Desperate Housewives. I could barely finish it.

Post: #53

This movie is incredible. Fincher's direction is incredible as always, and I know right from the start that I was going to feel dead at the end of this. Sould sucking and brilliant.

Post: #54

(10-13-2014 01:58 AM)LeBeau Wrote:  

(10-12-2014 11:10 PM)iknowexactly Wrote:  I saw Ben Affleck in a video of important recent directors.

One thing that was fascinating to me is it was clear the 4-5 other directors there were clearly starstruck with Quentin Tarantino.

^ That sounds interesting, do you have a link to that video?

Or any ones similar?

I'm always curious where different directors/actors shake out from a respect/status perspective among each other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAK3aUq25fo

Post: #55

SPOILER


I watched about the first half hour and just felt so uncomfortable with the guy complying with his own setup. I ONLY WATCHED THE FIRST HALF HOUR because I thought it was toxic.

Also, I've recently seen the video about "never talk to the police" so it seemed unbelievably dumb for him to cooperate with the cops when they were obviously setting him up as a suspect. I mean, they were unbelievably sardonic and mocking with him, obviously acting like they thought he did it.

Having worked in the criminal justice system, I also know that the first, second and third suspect is always, always, always the husband or BF so it was unbelievable to me that he was so naive.

It made me paranoid as hell and I stopped watching it. There was no relief from the downward slide of Affleck's characters fortunes. I thought it was heavy handed and claustrophobic.

You can't kick a protagonist, and kick and kick and kick without it becoming boring. There needs to be respite, the sister was helpful but she was just a cheerleader with no power. If a side kick was developed earlier that tried to help him it wouldn't have been so obvious.

You need CONFLICT to keep interest, not a MASSACRE.

His wife being the engineer of her own disappearance was too obvious, I really liked Finchers ZODIAC and I think some others, but this movie seemed clumsy and obvious to me...

Post: #56

Yesterday I saw "A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas" and now this, both for the first time. Neal Patrick Harris did a lot with very little screen time in both. He should do more darker roles like "Gone Girl" (not a spoiler), in a Robin Williams-like career arc.

Post: #57

(12-23-2014 08:17 AM)iknowexactly Wrote:  SPOILER


I watched about the first half hour and just felt so uncomfortable with the guy complying with his own setup. I ONLY WATCHED THE FIRST HALF HOUR because I thought it was toxic.

It just started getting good after 30 minutes. After that it became one of the best thrillers in recent years.

Post: #58

What the fuck did I just watch?

Post: #59

(12-20-2014 05:25 AM)Kieran Wrote:  I enjoyed this. Absolutely hated and cringed at the dialogue when they first met though, but overall a good film.

Yeah, very contrived--I've heard dialog is a talent and you can't force it as a writer.

In an interview with Billy Wilder he discussed the "meet cute" which they tried and failed to do in this movie. The meet cute is the screenwriter's handling of the situation where the male and female leads meet and start their romance.

It's a very difficult thing to write because the situation is so artificial-- man and woman meet and you try to depict the establishment of rapport as natural, when it's completely fake--- a setup in a movie.

So if you portray the people as overly glib-- the error they made here--it seems phony, and if you depict something like a REAL meeting between strangers it would be excruciatingly boring and awkward.

Takes real talent-- Like Wilder's-- to make it work.

Post: #60

The initial conversation of first meeting stood out as pretty bad as well. Maybe the dialogue was taken directly from the book? It did seem like something a female author would write. It wasn't even especially bad or stilted dialogue, but it's the kind that doesn't translate well to film. These are the moments the director has to step in and make a freer adaptation. But since the author of the novel was screenwriter for the film, I'm not surprised Fincher left it alone.

I also didn't like the diary voice-overs, the way the lines sounded such as "Amazing fucking Amy is so crazy fucking happy", but given they had to save the reveal till halfway through, I don't see how they could have done it otherwise and still have Amy's presentation of the narrative in there.

Rosamund Pike killed it. Even with the shorter hair (it's still slightly longer than the stereotype length, though not by much), she looked beautiful. She evoked the image of the ideal housewife and I think that was part of why she was chosen for the role.

It's not epoch-defining, but I definitely thought it was 2010s-defining. It had something to say just by existing in a relatively unmeddled-with state. That a woman psychopath can be the villain and the man a pretty clear-cut victim. The false rape accusation not only being mentioned, but the actual victim being shown on screen. The sheer anguish on his face and in his voice when he talks about not being able to find work, not being able to meet a woman ever since.

First, how did Gillian Flynn manage to write that in without it getting forced out by the editors? Not only did she not get blacklisted , the book managed to be a huge bestseller despite it. I'm guessing there's enough things like the Cool Girl and dialogue on marriage, and Nick being the first to cheat, to confuse the feminists.

Then for one of the most high-profile directors to not got strong-armed by studio executives or feminist lobbyists into cutting it.

It was so on point on marital relations and how both the male and female brain obey the law of attraction.

When Amy returns after killing Desi, she tells Nick "I would never hurt you." It's a pretty ridiculous bullshit statement, until you realize it's true. She won't hurt this Nick, the idealized version of him that is witty, driven, romantic, and loyal to her. In her mind, the person he had been for the preceding months was a completely different entity, one she had no compunctions against consigning to death. She never hurt the ideal Nick. In fact, she killed for him and improvised a crazy gambit on the fly to return to him after seeing his interview.

Even though Amy is a psychopath, she is representative of the average woman in what she finds attractive and what she doesn't find attractive. It's the good-looking, charismatic cool guy she falls in love with and marries. Desi, like she says, can converse fluently on matters of Greek literature and classical symphonies. Women don't care. No one cares, at least when it comes to attraction. He's a millionaire, but when she's a millionaire herself and when her actions will drive Amazing Amy book sales through the roof, that's not such a SMV boost anymore.

The film would have been No Country for Old Men if they had handled the plot after Amy fakes her death better. It was so perfect, the scene where she's driving off - throwing away the pens, the Cool Girl speech, the trippy image of her corpse sinking in the water with all the other discarded women.

Then she kind of loiters with the rednecks at the rental property. This was the best they could come up with??? This thriller that keeps unfolding with continually-rising tension grinds to a complete halt. It all comes unravelling because she has her money - all of it - on her person when she's playing mini golf. This is her undoing? I get it, ordinary pragmatic criminals are able to beat this sophisticated mastermind who's outwitted the police. You get a little irony out of it, but that was just horrible, especially for the standards the movie had set for itself.

I thought the ending was too clean just to set up that bad end for Affleck's character. The lakehouse security footage surely would have implicated Amy? I'm guessing before she staged her dramatic arrival at their house, she tampered with the tapes?

I could believe that. But the lawyer and the detective abandoning him to a killer was pretty unbelievable. No offer of support to wait for Amy to implicate herself?

Even so, 9/10 film. The acting was great, the score was great, and the Fincher style made it so memorable. The scene toward the end where Nick wakes up, goes downstairs and Amy is making breakfast for him, makeup and everything done, and the cat posing beside her as they both stare at him. The surreal women's corpses sinking in the lake. The sudden sex-murder scene. Even the perfection and dread of the ending credits scrolling past with Trent Reznor's score playing eerily. This is why David Fincher is one of the greatest living directors, matched only by Scorsese and probably no one else.

Post: #61

^You should write SPOILERS next time.

The cinematography was almost identical to the one in The Social Network. I could swear it's the same directors even if I didn't know who directed these 2 movies. This was the first thing I noticed.

SPOILERS

I didn't read the book, so I won't be able to make a comparison and critique. I loved the movie, loved the plot twists, and I adored the ending. Naturally I hated the poorly scripted part when they met and he -what was that- picked her up? By what, giving her oral sex? It was cringeworthy to watch.

Ben Affleck nailed the role of the ''clueless husband''. There was a moment when the murderous wife was tucking Ben Affleck in bed and comforting him like a kid and he was just sitting there staring at her like a scared puppy I got deeply affected when his sister was crying and saying she can't take anymore of seeing him being trapped into a marriage with her for another 18 years. She genuinely cares about her brother. Too bad I don't have such sister.

If you don't count the first part, the movie is extremely red-pill between the lines, especially about how female mind and male mind work, how they respond differently to the exact same events, what they want differently etc. I can clearly see how this movie pissed off the feminists. Even without a murderous psychopathic manipulating main girl, the things the movie suggest about men and women are harsh red pill truths, such as;

-Men want to have sex with ''younger bouncier'' girls,
-Men are outcompeted by the insidious minds of women.
-Witchhunts are real and they are conducted by despicable women and all men can do against witchhunts is be politically correct, apologize and admit to things they didn't do.
-The golden red-pill truth: A woman only values you as long as she is attracted to you. You lose that attraction and she will go as far as destroying your life. When she is attracted to you however she will go out of way to win you (Notice how she changes her mind about him completely after seeing his interview)
-Women's hamster brains will spin hard enough to justify the murder of a cheating husband.
-Misandry is real. You will be torn apart by the public for leaving a woman, cheating on a woman or doing anything that offends a woman. And women stick together against men (remember the blonde TV host and her friendliness to Amy and her hatred against Ben Affleck) while men are too busy busting white-knighint (remember the male police officer)
-Justice system turns into a joke when a case draws public's attention and media coverage. The verdict is based on what the public thinks instead of what the evidence is.
-Women can literally get away with murder in a society that worships women and think that they are incapable of doing wrong.

Some Blue pill moments that might make the feminist hesitate before calling the movie misogynistic:
- The pick up scene followed by oral sex that glorifies women
- The overly-adequate woman detective (to the point where she becomes the voice of sanity throughout the movie) and her overly-inadequate male assistant (the voice of prejudice).

One last thing that you might like. After watching the movie by myself, I thought my gf would love to see it because to me she is just a less criminal version of Amy. So we watched it together. During the movie she completely related to the mindset of Amy and made spontaneous predictions before they occurred in the movie, like;
- (Before Amy revealing her plans and diary for the first time) ''If I was her and my husband cheated like this, I would fake my death to get him in trouble '' (she scared me when she said that).
- (Before she decides not to kill herself) ''She doesn't need to kill herself''
- (When she loses her money and calls someone on the phone, before it's revealed it's Desi who she called) ''Who on earth can she call? Ah! I know! It's Barney (Stinson)''
These just tell me how spot-on David Fincher is about female mindset. It's because he so successfully captured the female mindset that this movie is so successful, my gf was relating and predicting Amy's next movies and it's for the same reason that the feminists are going apeshit over it.

To David Fincher

Post: #62

I just finished watching this movie. What in the fuck... I'm going to sleep

Post: #63

Absolute garbage. Laughable movie.

Post: #64

(01-06-2015 12:45 AM)Todd LeFondler Wrote:  Absolute garbage. Laughable movie.

Such a great movie review, thank you for taking so much of your precious time to write it.

Post: #65

(01-06-2015 10:35 AM)FretDancer Wrote:  

(01-06-2015 12:45 AM)Todd LeFondler Wrote:  Absolute garbage. Laughable movie.

Such a great movie review, thank you for taking so much of your precious time to write it.

The movie wasn't worth more than a 2 second review.

Post: #66

Did you review The Godfather II by saying "Great movie"? If it's that evident, why'd you bother posting?

Post: #67

(01-07-2015 07:18 AM)CactusCat589 Wrote:  Did you review The Godfather II by saying "Great movie"? If it's that evident, why'd you bother posting?

So we are supposed to water down our thoughts on subjects now to appease everyone? that really sounds awfully familiar doesn't it? My opinion is just as valid as anyone elses in this thread if you don't agree with it you are more than welcome to ignore.

Good day.

Post: #68

Here is the DVD/HD of the movie.

(link has popups.)

http://www.promptfile.com/l/44B366F691-B6178FA2B5

For other links, check out this site:

http://www.primewire.ag/watch-2752146-Go...nline-free

(also have pop ups.)

enjoy.

Post: #69

[SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK GONE GIRL IN THIS POST]



I just finished the book and it was a good read, I churned through 200 pages tonight. I say it was a good read because it made me feel a lot of things. In a lot of ways I feel like the Amy character is basically the worst of modern feminism and a lot of the things she says in there wouldn't be out of place on Jezebel. Maybe that's why that lot don't like the story.

My biggest problem, and it's one endemic with a lot of writers these days, is that they can't fucking give us the satisfying ending. They have to be edgy about it and do something "different" and now it's honestly not different anymore. That cunt Amy basically won because it would be somehow bad to let Nick win after everything he went through? It's just not satisfying as a reader. There's nothing sophisticated or new or edgy about that as a writer and it's a shame that Gillian Flynn went that route because she's put together a very fun story and instead of going with the "boring" end of the story that would've satisfied people, she had to go with the one that will leave people feeling like it's the hopeless end of a Twilight Zone episode.

Have Nick kill her, and write that from Amy's perspective. "He'll let go. I know he will. Why isn't he letting go?"

Then Nick kills himself, to finally be freed from everything Amy ever did. Let him do that while she's pregnant with their kid, ironically just like she framed him for doing.

I'm pretty upset at the ending. It's one of the least satisfying endings I've ever had for a book, and that's from someone that slogged through Dark Tower. Interested to see how it turns out on screen though.



[END SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK GONE GIRL]

Post: #70

[DISCUSSION OF ABOVE SPOILER]



I'd leave the ending as is, though I see what you mean. It's not truly a shock, gratuitous ending, because I had become inured enough to the dark tone. It fit. It was edgy. It earned the right to the edgy ending with Amy's brilliant improvisation of setting up Barney. That was cool.

The way it came together (albeit in a villainous way), with her deviant intellect and her iconic status as Amazing Amy basically shielding her. Like the Feds legitimately have a tough decision in going after her even if they figure it out. I think Nick killing her and then himself . But on the other hand, I think it'd be cheap. It'd be like "Oh! He killed her just like he was framed for that's so clever."



[END]

And damn, you read Dark Tower till the bitter end too? There are some wounds time can't heal.

Post: #71

[FURTHER DISCUSSION OF ABOVE SPOILER]


Maybe you're right, but I just feel like in this day and age real life is soul emptying enough that in my fiction I want to be satisfied. I wouldn't have even needed a clean cut ending like that. Maybe Nick, in his despair kills himself finding it the only way to get away from Amy, and at least that way she's being deprived of the perfect molded husband and she's left to raise her hellspawn on her own.

I just feel like after 400 pages of him being tortured, it's wrong for us to be left with him being continued to be tortured. This was a story, and I know you can have them, but this is one that I felt the bad guy simply couldn't get a clean "win" from.

[END]

And yeah, I had to. It enthralled me from the beginning. The ending sucked, but that was a series that I could at least enjoy because of the journey even if the ending was unsatisfying in sort of the same way this one was.

Post: #72

(01-03-2015 09:24 PM)turkishcandy Wrote:  One last thing that you might like. After watching the movie by myself, I thought my gf would love to see it because to me she is just a less criminal version of Amy. So we watched it together. During the movie she completely related to the mindset of Amy and made spontaneous predictions before they occurred in the movie, like;
- (Before Amy revealing her plans and diary for the first time) ''If I was her and my husband cheated like this, I would fake my death to get him in trouble '' (she scared me when she said that).
- (Before she decides not to kill herself) ''She doesn't need to kill herself''
- (When she loses her money and calls someone on the phone, before it's revealed it's Desi who she called) ''Who on earth can she call? Ah! I know! It's Barney (Stinson)''
These just tell me how spot-on David Fincher is about female mindset. It's because he so successfully captured the female mindset that this movie is so successful, my gf was relating and predicting Amy's next movies and it's for the same reason that the feminists are going apeshit over it.

But seriously, that was a damn fine review.

It also seems like we're seeing a different attitude these days regarding cheating men. My understanding has been that a man cheating on his wife is much less of a big deal than a woman cheating on her husband, mainly due to the differences in which we regard sex.

A man getting some side pussy exemplifies his quality to her. Women instinctively know this. A fisherman who can't catch fish sucks at his job. Social proof is extremely important to a woman's perception of you. So this attitude seems to go against everything we know and have experienced in the real world.

Mistresses used to be thing, and as long as you weren't completely abandoning your family or parading your infidelities in public, you could expect to get some side without your wife going batshit insane and nuking your family unit, much less your wife contriving a complex murder plot against you.

But today, women empathize with murderers on this issue and even cutting off someone's dick (like in that other thread). Something has changed in a significant way. Perhaps it's because we're now indulging the fantasies of narcissists, maybe it's something else, but this revenge/spiteful behavior from women seems new to me. If this trait were instinctive, wouldn't we expect to see strict monogamy in all societies?

Just an observation.

Post: #73

It's not just that a quasi-crazy GF (or other women) can predict what will happen, even I - sitting alone in the dark in a theater - could predict!

That's a FAILURE of suspense. Instead, it's telegraphing the plot. Which is why I almost left the theater TWICE, because I was getting bored with it.

I only stayed it out, continually laughing at the obviousness of the "plot" developments, knowing that this train is smashing, and all I'm interested in is seeing the mechanical destruction seen from different perspectives.

People here (opining in this thread) are too easily led to believe an incredibly dumb and unbelievable set of plot premises are veridical with reality. They are not.

"The cinematography was almost identical to the one in The Social Network. I could swear it's the same directors..." because they are the same directors and production staffs.

And like the disappointing "Social Network," also as disappointing as "Gone Girl." I wanted to like both a lot (based on word of mouth and general critical plaudits), but I found myself terribly disappointed with both.

A Denver area critic, Walter Chaw, states that David Fincher is the master of garbage cinema. Like the great director David Lean (eg, "Dr Zhivago" and "Lawrence of Arabia") doing Jackie Collins trash novels or biographies. His analogy is quite correct.

Or think of Davinci doing menus, or Michaelangelo designing dinner plates.

There ain't no depth here - it's all your projection. David Fincher, concludes Chaw, "makes as much as anyone possibly could out of Gone Girl, but ultimately you could've told me that people are complicated and marriage is a lie of convenience in fewer than the four days it took Fincher. Quintessence of dust, indeed."

Here is a lengthy review-essay, that is a take-down of "Gone Girl," finding it inferior to other bad girl/psycho-bitch pics of the 1980s like "Disclosure" and "Fatal Attraction." And the failure is entirely in the surface settings, the style versus the substance of people and motivations.
http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectu...ie-review/

Post: #74

(12-15-2014 11:43 PM)Bacchus Wrote:  Just watched it, and I can see why the movie generated its controversy. Amy Dunne was a memorable psycho bitch, but she has nothing on Linda Fiorentino's character in "The Last Seduction." Check that one out below:

Good catch, and a great reminder to add to this one: John Dalh's (the same director as above) doing "Red Rock West," with Nicholas Cage giving the triumphal digitis infamus to psycho-thief Lara Flynn Boyle at the very end. (1994, I think.)

Post: #75

From Wesley Morris, LINKED above (in my post), we have an interesting take down on why "Gone Girl" is bothe less believable and less interesting than films like "Basic Instinct," "Disclosure," and "Fatal Attraction" - all Micheal Douglas starring vehicles.

Douglas also took a turn for an early Fincher film, "The Game" - one which I've never seen because of the obviously torturous and incredible underlying premise (thus proving that that the herd can drive a man like me to question his own independen judgment - but I digress.

Now comes the long block quote for you to consider Morris' critique:

Quote:Douglas starred in a version of one of these films with David Fincher: 1997’s The Game, in which a San Francisco tycoon spends a couple of days and nights running for his life. He’s caught in a prank set up by his brother (Sean Penn) that requires the participation of what must be half the city.

Fincher’s a more sophisticated filmmaker now; he’s got Reznor and Ross’s funeral music and Jeff Cronenweth’s cinematography, and Flynn’s screenplay has more going on. Still, Douglas and The Game crossed my mind while watching Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl. It’s not just that Douglas is playing a Nick, or that the conniving blonde in The Game (Deborah Kara Unger) bears an uncanny resemblance to Pike. It’s that the movie has bogus ideas about femininity and marriage. As a movie character, Amy feels like a composite of women who terrorized Michael Douglas.

Pike’s performance is not the problem. She throws herself into this part. You can feel her trying to gather all the twists and use them to break into something coherent. Hers is a better Amy than what’s on the page, her voice deeper and her manner less flighty. Pike is more like Faye Dunaway playing Renée Zellweger than I was prepared for.

The trouble is the way the film’s portrayal of Amy comes across in the current political climate. For reasons known only to Flynn, Amy tries to frame her husband for her murder. Rather than divorce him for his imperfections, she wants him to suffer. Suicide was part of the original plan, but her severe narcissism leads her, murderously, back to him. She needs both to see his suffering up close and to feel his bewildered love. On her way, we learn of the other people whom she has made suffer. We watch her manipulate that ex that Harris plays, Desi, with stories of how Nick abused and degraded her, only to watch her abuse and degrade Desi. Nothing about Amy is real except her psychosis.

There’s some stuff in the book about women turning their men into trained monkeys, and in the film, every time Nick signals his goodness to Amy, he puts two fingers over the cleft in his giant chin, and it’s like watching Caesar calm the troops in those new Planet of the Apes movies. Nick, calm. Gone Girl would seem like an ideal prism through which to see Affleck. He spends the movie trying to seem less like an asshole. He’s had a lot of practice. Now’s he a star with some gravity as an actor. This is a passive, reactive part. He colors it with rage, volatility, and foolishness, but there’s something gentle and failed about him here, too. He’s got a paunch, and he has puffed out his big frame so that his arms never fall parallel at his side. In his T-shirt and sweats, he’s like a lapsed football player.

“I’m tired of being picked apart by women,” Nick says. The difference between "Gone Girl" and movie Douglas starred in is that this one doesn’t provide the thrill of violent closure. Gone Girl is a murder mystery, but it’s also a perverse, yet limp, comedy of remarriage. When Amy returns into Nick’s life, his part of the relationship is barely consensual. Successful remarriage comedies involve two equal partners consenting to sublimate their differences. Amy simply intends to mete out passive-aggressive punishment until death do them part.

Yeah, I'll buy that and sell you the Brooklyn bridge too! [Emphasis mine]