Post by sethan on Dec 11, 2019 13:56:43 GMT
Playlist Best of the decade
76. “The Social Network” (2010)
David Fincher has walked away from so many promising projects in the last few years—the “Steve Jobs” biopic that eventually went to Danny Boyle, the sequel to “World War Z” — that his fans often find themselves wondering if he’ll ever direct a classic again (“Mindhunter” will have to do for now). While there are many in the tank for the trashy fun and deception in “Gone Girl,” “The Social Network”— Fincher’s brainy, characteristically menacing collaboration with Aaron Sorkin that details the rise of Facebook, and the moral fallout behind its inception— remains the master director’s last indisputably great film. It’s a pristinely observed dissection of tech-obsession and male pettiness, as well as another one of Fincher’s gloomy studies of spurned outsiders yearning to break away from what they know and enter a rarefied ecosystem that doesn’t initially accept them (in this regard, there are shades of Fincher’s prescient and widely misinterpreted “Fight Club” in the narrative). This film that moves like a speeding bullet train, and makes rat-a-tat-tat dialogue scenes feel deeply engrossing. The fact that Fincher can take countless shots of Harvard undergrads tittering at their laptops and render them genuinely thrilling is a testament to his undeniable skill. – NL
David Fincher has walked away from so many promising projects in the last few years—the “Steve Jobs” biopic that eventually went to Danny Boyle, the sequel to “World War Z” — that his fans often find themselves wondering if he’ll ever direct a classic again (“Mindhunter” will have to do for now). While there are many in the tank for the trashy fun and deception in “Gone Girl,” “The Social Network”— Fincher’s brainy, characteristically menacing collaboration with Aaron Sorkin that details the rise of Facebook, and the moral fallout behind its inception— remains the master director’s last indisputably great film. It’s a pristinely observed dissection of tech-obsession and male pettiness, as well as another one of Fincher’s gloomy studies of spurned outsiders yearning to break away from what they know and enter a rarefied ecosystem that doesn’t initially accept them (in this regard, there are shades of Fincher’s prescient and widely misinterpreted “Fight Club” in the narrative). This film that moves like a speeding bullet train, and makes rat-a-tat-tat dialogue scenes feel deeply engrossing. The fact that Fincher can take countless shots of Harvard undergrads tittering at their laptops and render them genuinely thrilling is a testament to his undeniable skill. – NL
