The Social Network review

How does one make interesting the dull story of the creation of a website that has in many ways defined a generation? Some would say lie, but others might say you need not but re-analyze the truth. "The Social Network" isn't so much about facebook as much as it's about it's introverted, egotistical founder Mark Zuckerberg and his various relationships he had with people around the time of the sites creation and rise to fame. It is a 120 minute dramatic, funny, intelligent and sometimes tense ride through the modern business world as seen through the eyes of college kids. And it may also be David Fincher's best film to date. I'm not 100% on that as I do strongly LOVE "Zodiac", but this is a damn fine piece of work that deserves all the acclaim it's gathering currently.

Interestingly enough though still so many people write off the film simply as 'that facebook movie' and so on. Can I call you closed minded? I'll call you closed minded, but perhaps it isn't your fault. For all I know you could have some... issue or brain dysfunction that impairs you from putting the various pieces together that this isn't something that simple. This isn't a movie of the week, here now gone tomorrow. The point isn't simply to tell us of the creation of a website that has for better or for worse changed the internet. I don't feel like I'm spinning wheels here either. Realize that facebook is such a giant that it is used as a contact more often than just people exchanging numbers. Business' will create profiles on there to easily reach out to the consumer and let them 'feel' like they're part of something special by getting online exclusive offers that otherwise they might have never know about. You can nearly skip entire conversations and avoid bringing up the wrong subjects just by paying attention to someones listed interests, their status updates and so on. Hell the only way you might know about this review is through fucking facebook (or possibly twitter and tumblr). It is the dominating social networking site.

Now onto the flick. Jesse Eisenberg has been doing the small, indie scene for sometime, but had a big mainstream hit last fall with "Zombieland". Basically he can play the awkward teen much like Michael Cera, but with a little more cockiness to him. Much like Cera in "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" however Eisenberg steps up his game A LOT as Zuckerberg. Is he awkward? Yes, but not in the conventional movie terms. His version of Zuckerberg (or Citizen Zuck as he's been renamed) appears to have more a disorder than simple shyness. He's cocky in his own way, smart and unfortunately knows it, but appears uncomfortable around large groups and even after a while close friends. He seems like an asshole and honestly probably is one. You can youtube some of his real life interviews and make your own assessment as well. Andrew Garfield (who has been getting some killer work lately) plays Eduardo Saverin, Mark's best friend, co-founder of facebook and later on someone who would sue him for everything. Garfield plays Saverin with a careful ease. It's not as playful of a type of character like Zuck, but one built more off of his diction and manners. Of course having a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin doesn't hurt you either.

Sorkin (who also has a brief cameo in the film) in my mind may have clinched a Best Adapted Screenplay victory with this. It is occasionally showy diolouge in the David Mamet way, but it's delivered with a careful flow that is perfection to listen to. You know when you hear film speak and it's just like beautiful music? This is it. Speaking of music we have something interesting and damn near the best score I've heard all year. Now... yes I AM a Nine Inch Nails fan and thus do already like Trent Reznor and all, but as a stand alone piece of work, he and Atticus Ross (who also did a great job scoring 'The Book of Eli') have made a score that perfectly compliments the visuals, enhances them at times, has fun with them at times and as a musical piece apart from that is also beautiful and emotional. In fact there isn't much of anything I didn't enjoy in "The Social Network".

From the opening scene between Eisenberg and Rooney Mara you see the pace and the tone of the entire picture. It's serious, but funny. It's fast, but methodical. It's got whimsy, but it's pretty damn dark. When we start getting into the flash editing between the Harvard days and his court cases with him against Eduardo and with him against Cameron & Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra (who claimed Mark stole the idea of facebook from them) we see the dark humor and the dramatics coming out in spades. When we're introduced to Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) the darkness sets in more and more and there's this added foreboding to entire situation that was there for a while, but never this quietly intense. There are a number of scenes that might include humor and other emotions that still maintain a subtle intensity due to the acting, music and directing.

This is VERY much a David Fincher film. You get some visual echos of past Fincher films like "Se7en" and "Fight Club", but you also get that newer and more matured simplification of style that we saw in "Zodiac" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". These are strong characters and there are strong themes that run throughout the entire film. They aren't messing around when they say things about it's elements being as old as storytelling itself; they're right. These are strong and basic themes that make stories interesting and here they are so fucking interesting that I could hardly believe it. Furthermore it works as a tech movie by filling you up with shit you have no idea about (or at least I didn't), but making not the words important, but the meanings and emotions behind them. It's very similar to Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" films in that sense. I don't know much of anything about the stock market and yet those film are FILLED with stock jargon and even though we don't know all the definitions we still care about what happens. It's the driving emotion.

Simply put I can't tell you how much I honestly love this film. I've been finding some really good and some great stuff lately, but hands down this exceeded my exceptions. Sure I thought I'd like or love the movie, but I wasn't sure quite how much. When I watched "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and reviewed it I remember writing that it was my least favorite of Fincher's great films. I imagined loving that film to no end, but that simply wasn't the case. Here though I might have found the best movie I've seen all year and possibly the best from Fincher. But I don't know fully just yet. Rest assured I will be watching it again soon and might even offer further insights and thoughts on it. However for nearly four in the morning on a Friday I'll have to leave it by saying that this is a great, entertaining film and also a very important one.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps review

A great performance drama is as exciting, entralling and flat out entertaining as any action movie or genre film. Sometimes all you need is just the right combination of performers and creators to have find pure, unfiltered cinematic enjoyment. "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" does it proper from square one and keeps it's tempo all the way through the closing credits with the Talking Heads melody. It's an important film because it does tell of the inner secret thoughts of wall street fat cats come the time of the market crash in 08' and it's an Oliver Stone film because it gleefully plays with the humanity of it's characters through moral and logical dilemmas.

If you're an avid reader of this (which is to assume I have avid readers, pft!) or simply know my tastes then you know that Stone ranks among my favorite filmmakers and that's heavily thanks to "JFK"; which I saw at a young age and I can honestly say changed my life to a certain extent. Beyond that however are a number of other greats by him ('Platoon', 'Born on the Fourth of July', 'Nixon', 'Natural Born Killers', 'The Doors', 'Any Given Sunday', 'W.' and of course the original 'Wall Street'), but they all enjoyed playing with their characters moral compass. Interestingly it's something that got Stone criticized back then, as he allowed for a lot of emotion to overrun logic in his characters. However something we all know is that human beings aren't particularly logical by and large and when put under hard situations become even less logical. But hey those films were also angry as hell. That was his angry phase; now Stone appears to be in his older, more centered, somewhat more forgiving, but not forgetting phase. It's a nice evolution where it never feels quite like he's delivering a lighter package to us, but simply a different one angled to effect you slightly differently.

With the new 'Wall Street' the rules have changed much since the 80's, but the objective is still the same. Get more money than somebody else and do it the best way you can without getting caught. Michael Douglas' Gordon Gekko (the character for which won him his Oscar) is released from prison and into the new world where he's seen the writing on the wall and knows where the market is heading. So he writes an explosive book prophesying a new market crash soon and starts in up doing college tours. At the same time Shia LaBeouf is young stock trader Jacob Moore who's just made his first million and is preparing to marry Gekko's daughter Winnie (Carry Mulligan... who apparently can do no wrong). As the market crash nears Jake's company takes some major hits and is refused any help by the other company heads which leads to it's founder and Jake's mentor (played by Frank Langella) to commit suicide. Jake believes it was caused by Britten James (Josh Brolin), who has had it out for them since the early 2000's. And wouldn't you just know it, but Gekko believes that James might also have ratted him out to the feds back in the 80's. And thus the stagings for a wall street revenge plot are erected.

The plot grows much more personalized throughout as it deals heavily with Gordon and Winnie very estranged relationship and also how far Jacob gets into this backstabbing, cut throat world. Through this the film sheds some of it's docudrama feel as well as some of it's general spite towards wall street. Overall though I can it was for a reason and I suppose a rather nice one. Who is Gordon Gekko in the year 2008? Has prison changed him or made him worse? It's worth finding out for yourself. But Douglas does play him with less edge and subtle villainy and I'll say that's what makes the final act work so well. You generally like him this time. Shia LaBeouf has had to deal with the oh so shitty public backlash pretty much since Indy 4. I don't think he was the problem with the film so much as the lackluster script. Generally I really like the dude. I've seen him and read him in interviews and he comes off as a hard worker and someone who's down to earth rather than obsessed with making a name for himself or being a celebrity. Here he gives probably his best performance and more than holds his own next to Douglas, Mulligan, Brolin, Sarandon and Langella. I mean seriously despite liking the dude even I thought he was outmatched, but damn if Stone isn't able to bring out a full fledged performance.

The film is completely structured to give even the smallest character bits just the right amount of screen time and just the right amount of info to know where they lay in the world at that time. This helps keep the tempo fresh and moving along without too much lag time. Even cameos by Stone and Charlie Sheen are paced out in a brisk, but never rushed fashion. We also get a great piece of Stone film editing the day of the market crash. I won't say what the scene looks like or how it's set up, but if you've seen his films then you'll know what I'm talking about. It's a bit piece, but one that definitely made me crack a smile.

"Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" is and isn't a sequel. Yes we get some of those characters from the original and all, but it never feels like a return so much as us viewing a new world that playing the same old games. Generally we don't get a lot of in depth looks at wall street anymore sans for documentaries here and there or the news. The downside of there is that 99% of docs are going to give one perspective to that world and more than likely it's negative. This cuts down the interviews and dampens the reception you might get when you come knocking and wanting things from the people you're calling white collar thieves. When it comes to the glorious world of fake movies however... people are a little more forthcoming. They don't always know how they'll be portrayed thus they might be willing to chat just a bit longer or let you poke around the business floor a few minutes more. Dramatizing certain events also makes it easier to explain complex and bad events without naming the real criminals or victims personally. Yes Wall Street is all about the money, but that's not always evil. The morality (or lack there of) is in what you do with it. It's can also be about who's the better liar, but really that's a lot like general life too. That's just how this human chess game works I guess. This is one of the most entertaining dramas I've seen all year and one made through it's ability to keep us constantly interested while watching it. Whether it be from rich man excess, business jargon or a character's emotional break down, we're right there and with it all the way.

Green Zone review

Oh the joys and follies of telling friend you're going to go see a film like "Green Zone". Follies being when you have friends that would say things like 'it just looks like another 'Bourne' movie' or 'it's just another anti-war movie'. The joys being that you know that they've probably only seen Greengrass's two 'Bourne' films and otherwise don't know shit about what their talking about, because you have seen his other films and know how powerful they are. Of course if "Green Zone" wasn't a good film then perhaps there would be some validity to their statements. By the way it is a good film, a damn good entertaining as hell film, that allows past politics within war to ride shotgun with an enthralling thriller that's nothing like either 'Bourne' film Paul Greengrass has done and is a far more suspenseful and entertaining Iraq picture then most of the dozens we've gotten since 2003.

Matt Damon plays Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, whose job in Iraq is to track down WMDs. The problem is that time after time his Intel leads he and his team into busy civilian zones and resistance zones where they end up finding nothing. When looking into the matter Miller is constantly turned away, talked down to and told that everything is looked into and that it's not his concern where the information came from. It's not until Miller meets a grizzled CIA man (Brendan Gleeson) and a Wall Street Journal reporter (Amy Ryan) that things start to make some sense and the government created charade starts to crumble. Greg Kinear plays a government official who has the task of making sure the right people get into power and things are set up in place the way we want it for the new Iraq. This would mean keeping the charade going and thus making Miller, but more importantly the mysterious information man known as "Magellan" a huge threat.

I think I kind of summed that up nicely, although it's still a pretty damn complex series of moves in the picture. Screenwriter Brian Helgaland (one of my top three favorite screenwriters) worked hard to craft an interesting thriller set during the most controversial time of this controversial war and director Paul Greengrass once again displays his attention to characters, storytelling and craftsmanship in the use of gritty well done shaky-cam with the films few action sequences. One of which being a twenty minute chase sequence which is as tense and gritty and exciting to watch unfold. The night photography grain gives it an almost news reel look and feel and every edit is seamless. Few working directors can handle an intense look as well as Greengrass and even fewer can have it all make sense even when geographically it's hard to tell where you are.

The politics of "Green Zone" are something that's sure to arise controversy as did the book it's inspired by. What it boils down to is the same thing is boils down to with this war itself. Why do you believe we went to war? I've met plenty who buy into the official story and think it was to liberate a country and do some good in the world. I've met plenty that believe it was for oil and cooking up stories of nukes and all that was a good way to get our foot in the door without people asking too many questions. I don't judge people who believe either, I think both are very, very possible. But at the end of the day it's somewhat the rule of Chinatown, which is that helping one group can also be severely hurting another group and that sometimes the best policing is to do nothing, but keep an alert eye. It's harsh, but often it's the best way to keep your hands clean. There are ideas brought up in "Green Zone" that now probably would've made things go easier over there (for example NOT disbanding the Iraqi army and attempting to use those not loyal to Saadam to help us), but that's all in the past now and time can only tell how things will end up.

This is Greengrass's third docu-drama, but the first one that A: didn't make you want to cry in the end and B: was blended with the entertainment factor he controlled with the second and third 'Bourne' films. I extremely urge people to watch "Bloody Sunday" and "United 93" and you'll see a heavy side of what "Green Zone" is like. He goes back more to that style of film making and just dashes in a bit of that action sense that he's developed. The man's got one more docu-drama coming along and that's the long awaited "They Marched into Sunlight" which is sure to be tragic and heartbreaking as his other pieces of work. But for now he's just trying to deliver a fun as hell thriller with some brains and he has definitely accomplished that.