Maybe it’s because I haven’t watched a lot of movies recently (finding two hours to string together is tough sometimes), but I thought this was totally fine and very funny. Third act was a little long.
Also, the AirCruz logo is an abomination. The “ru” in Cruz — you cannot tell me this is the logo of a serious company. It’s beyond the pale. The fix is so obvious that a lawyer could fix it, pun absolutely intended. And then at the end they’re like “I made it with crayons when I was a kid!” No. Stop. Fix it. Come on.
Real bush league graphic design bull crap right there. Hard to imagine a bigger plumber problem for me.
]]>Very human.
I don’t feel I know enough about Mexican politics to judge the way the film seems to use personal relationships to express the political state of the country, but it’s impressive how Cuarón is able to find the personal story in the midst of all that. I loved how he would occasionally share a minor character’s life story in the voice over. Philosophically different from the current Hollywood approach of treating minor characters as the film equivalent of a video game NPC.
The sound design was very jarring for me.
]]>Endlessly rewatchable.
]]>It’s a mess.
]]>I liked the first half, but this quickly became as bland as mashed potatoes. This was nominated for best picture?
]]>Comfort food.
]]>Beautiful and compelling.
]]>I liked this, but online discourse surrounding the film had hyped this up as though it were the new Parasite, which it can’t live up to by any measurement. Park Chan-Wook does some really interesting things here that I’d never seen before, but I’m not sure if his level of invention is interesting or off putting.
When the film was over, I found myself wondering if this was it. Surely there would be some other twist, I assumed. But this was a straightforward romp about a man who is willing to ensure corporate status quo continues, so much so that he and his family are willing to give up their souls to make sure that they can live a soulless existence.
The point was beaten into my head with a flower pot.
I wish that anybody in the film figured out the corporate ghouls are the problem. The whole point is, obviously, that the protagonist becomes a corporate ghoul. But it’s not executed with a level of pathos that makes me truly feel he had no other choice.
I wanted a more elegant take on this situation. I desperately wanted a midpoint twist like Parasite or Gone Girl to upend my expectations, which were admittedly far too high.
]]>Some friends shared this with us, and while it’s not for me, I respect the heck out of it. Unbelievable puppetry, effects work, and set decoration. The story, narration, and voice acting don’t work for me, but I think I would have loved this as a kid.
]]>Not for me, as in I am definitely not the target audience for this, but not bad.
]]>Loved the book and the movie is great too. Gosling is fantastic.
I think the film could benefit from 30 minutes or so extra runtime, to be honest. Parts of the film feel long, parts feel short. Easier to extend the short parts than trim the long ones, in my opinion.
There are some critical scenes the film left out of the book. Learning the language of another species is far better explained in the book. The opening sequence is very rushed in the film too. And there are several sequences in which Rocky learns about humans that are nonexistent in the film (and similarly, a lot of great scenes where Grace learns about Eridians that really ope him up as a character). These scenes are all important for character development and establishing the world. It’s a bummer they were cut (I’m sure they shot them, but had to trim them for time).
That one small criticism aside, this was pretty and delightful. Another great addition to the Competence Porn genre.
]]>One of the best films Hollywood ever made. Dollar for dollar, pound for pound, my favourite Easter movie — but also just a really good movie. The chariot scene is unreal. The speed test scene in the boat is a masterclass of tension. The finale is moving, with a real emotional arc that cuts all the cheques the first act writes. And there are real character arcs throughout.
A real treasure.
]]>Like taking a warm bath in my own depression, experiencing the cinematic catharsis that will never appear in reality. I adored what this was doing. Gorgeous filmmaking, and a lovely tribute to the tragedies the Bard wrote.
]]>This is totally fine as a movie, but the first one did everything better, and since it’s so similar in story, that’s a real knock against the sequel.
I’ll add that this smells like on those direct-to-TV sequels Disney used to make a lot of in the 80s and 90s.
]]>A masterpiece. A once-in-a-career film from a man whose entire oeuvre is filled with them.
I remember seeing this on opening night with an old girlfriend. It’s funny how some memories stick with you. She liked it, but she liked it the way people like flavours of bubblegum, which is to say that it was fine, but not extraordinary to her.
To me, I felt like I got punched in the face. Everything about Zuckerberg was repulsive to me at the time; I recall thinking the film felt kind to him. (As I’ve aged, I feel the film is far too kind to him; he is a parasitic leech and a power-hungry loser.) But despite that, I felt like the film captured the zeitgeist — the feeling that our lives were public now; in the eyes of the world, we were all suddenly living in Rashomon.
Although I hadn’t seen Rashomon yet (I can’t remember if I had seen Seven Samurai or not, let alone anything else Kurosawa made), I vividly recall the idea of this trial and our own private court scenes playing out amongst our peers, thanks to the record of social media, as a growing concern of 19-year-old me. (Yes, I was 19. Second year university student at the University of Waterloo.)
I still think Fincher and Sorkin tapped into something real here, although perhaps accidentally (as the best films do). Sorkin thought he wrote a film about a hero; Fincher believed the film was about an asshole. Sorkin was wrong; Fincher was right, but ultimately, it’s the contrast between the hero as written and the asshole as visualized that’s of interest here. The contrast between the two is fascinating to me: typically, we recognize Zuckerberg as the hero, but thanks to the private made public, we recognize him as unlikable, if not evil.
Add on top of that some of the best editing I can recall in a motion picture, as well as one of the all-time great film scores (I still maintain this is more interesting and has spawned more copycats than the Inception soundtrack, which beat it for best score at the Oscars that year), and you have one heckuva motion picture. I don’t know how many times I have seen this, but it is both less think I think and less than it deserves.
I recall the mockery before its release. People thought The Social Network would be a movie about coding. There is only one sequence about coding anything, and it’s about coding the Facemash website. There’s one mention of wget in the entire movie. The focus isn’t coding. This one sequence is technical, but in a way that normal people can complete ignore. While he’s working, Zuck drinks beer alone and blogs about his ex’s boobs. Fincher recognizes from the first moment of the movie that this guy is a loser, and that losers drink alone. It’s a masterpiece of recognition and analysis and foresight.
As far as David Fincher is concerned: Sucks to Zuck.
]]>Cute, but I checked out pretty early.
Half the academy thought this was the hotness? Maybe I’m missing something. Wouldn’t be the first time.
]]>I found myself craving David Fincher movies this week. Maybe it’s the dreary weather we’re currently having in my part of Canada, or maybe I’m in a foul mood, but I felt a desperate need to watch his movies about perverts, psychopaths, serial killers, and lunatics with zero regard for anybody other than themselves.
I haven’t watched this in at least 11 years. I don’t remember the last time I saw it; it was before I was married. My wife, understandably, has no interest in watching the events of this film. I can’t say I blame her. The scenes in question are upsetting, for lack of a better word.
This film feels three or four movies long because Fincher is stitching together three or four films. It’s clear he is interested in solving Harriet’s murder, but I’m not sure he’s interested in the film’s other mysteries. He takes great delight in (extremely satisfying) B‑roll of our leads working on the case, digging through old newspaper records and scanned images. But outside of that mystery, I’m not sure Fincher is interested in most of this. He films each scene with the attention for detail he is renowned for, but seems unable to find the connective tissue to bring it all together.
And yet, despite that, Fincher puts in so much effort that the individual pieces are all fantastic. Rooney Mara is astounding, even if she feels thinly drawn. Christopher Plummer sells every moment of his performance. In a late scene when he breaks down in tears, I believe every second of it. Daniel Craig is excellent, and at the time, I remember feeling like he was really displaying his prowess beyond Bond.
The costume design? Amazing stuff. Fincher’s sweaters are A+. Mara’s outfits are incredible. Production design? Out of the park. And the feeling of investigative reporting is aces here.
It just never comes together.
This has nothing to do with the movie, but watching this in 2026, I loved his shots of what is now vintage OS X and the original MacBook Pros circa 2011. Fincher kept shooting the laptops like he was trying to sell them. The profile shots with all those ports! USB A, Firewire, Displayport, HDMI (of course), and even ethernet! It looked so useful. I say that as I type this on a 2025 M4 MacBook Pro connected to a TS5+ Thunderbolt whatever thingymajig just so I can get the ethernet port and several USB ports back.
There’s this scene shortly after Mara and Craig finally start working together, where Daniel Craig wants to show Mara something on his laptop. He means to open a group of photographs in Finder. Ostensibly, this window is already open. But he fumbles around multiple maximized windows in OS X, muttering “where the f*** is it” under his breath, as he closes multiple windows and programs. The camera cuts to a medium shot: We are looking head on at Craig and Mara, positioned behind the laptop. Mara sits at the laptop. Craig is awkwardlty overtop of her, arms uncomfortably spooled around her so he can reach the trackpad, clicking about, eyes darting left and right.
And in this moment, Mara does this eye roll thing. It’s not quite an eye roll, but it’s more than a grimace. It looks like part of her soul is recoiling into her body. In this one moment, it is clear she has lost some respect for Craig’s character. She desperately wants to scream at him about learning how to use a computer, because she is not impressed by his technological illiteracy.
First, I felt incredibly seen by this moment.
But secondly, this film is chock full of these little moments. Moments like this are fantastic. Fincher clearly has a way of getting these incredible, subtle performances from his thespians. But as a whole, it never comes together, and this movie feels so long that I’ve seen marriages reach their conclusion more quickly.
]]>Fincher’s tone is perfect for this material, and his sick and weird sense of humour makes this a fantastic case study in irony. Some really gorgeous shots here. I had forgotten how good looking this is and said “wow” out loud twice.
The unique thing about Fincher’s aesthetic, at least to my mind, is its roots in commercial videography. He films movies the way that he does commercials. I’ve been told that many commercials have bigger budgets per second than a feature length film does, which helps explain why Fincher’s films are always so lavish and expensive.
But it also explains how he frames things and why he frames them that way. At moments, it feels like the Jeep in this thing is a commercial plant. (I’m halfway positive it is.)
But this style of filmmaking is incredibly satisfying for me. I have no complaints. It’s a pleasure to watch a film made by somebody who is exceptionally good at their job.
]]>