{"id":13068,"date":"2014-10-22T18:46:45","date_gmt":"2014-10-22T18:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/fall-movie-season-kicks-off-with-the-excellent-gone-girl\/"},"modified":"2014-10-22T18:46:45","modified_gmt":"2014-10-22T18:46:45","slug":"fall-movie-season-kicks-off-with-the-excellent-gone-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/fall-movie-season-kicks-off-with-the-excellent-gone-girl\/","title":{"rendered":"Fall movie season kicks off with the excellent \u201cGone Girl\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

By Thomas Kika<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Contributing Writer<\/em><\/p>\n

artsent.asp@gmail.com<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> \u201cGone Girl,\u201d adapted from the wildly successful Gillian Flynn novel of the same name, is a brutal portrait of love and marriage in the 21st century as only Hollywood\u2019s favorite cynic, David Fincher, could bring us.\u00a0<\/span> Sleek, tense and pitch-dark, it\u2019s a frightening work that is sure to inspire conversation.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> To start, our story follows Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), a failed sports writer living in Missouri, whose wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), mysteriously vanishes on their fifth wedding anniversary.\u00a0<\/span> In contrast to Nick\u2019s almost comically ordinary, corn-fed Midwest boy, Amy is a native of New York City\u2019s upper-crust, who served as the basis for her parents beloved series of \u201cAmazing Amy\u201d children\u2019s books.\u00a0<\/span> This notoriety puts a sizable media spotlight on the investigation of her disappearance, blowing it up from a small-town missing-persons case to a media sensation.\u00a0<\/span> As clues come to light, police begins to suspect Nick had a hand in whatever has happened to his wife.\u00a0<\/span> Things are not helped by Nick\u2019s suspiciously nonchalant reaction to the whole affair, and revelations about their less than amazing marriage.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> That is only about half the movie, though.\u00a0<\/span> To say any more would give away the real hand that \u201cGone Girl\u201d intends to play, and what really makes it such a head-spinning doozy of a thriller.\u00a0<\/span> While it begins to unspool as a sharp investigative drama, the film eventually flips the table and becomes something else entirely.\u00a0<\/span> Suffice it to say, \u201cGone Girl\u201d is best enjoyed without prior knowledge.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> The film finds celebrated director David Fincher in the perfect setting to exercise his best tendencies, as Flynn\u2019s novel gives him much more fascinating and twisty material to work with than his last best seller adaptation, \u201cThe Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.\u201d The result is a much more effective, on-point film.\u00a0<\/span> His signature dark color palette and cold, distant shot compositions are right at home in such a dark atmosphere.\u00a0<\/span> The story\u2019s thematic exploration of marriage as a prison, a carefully managed fa\u00e7ade, or both, give Fincher (the dark-hearted social critic) the opportunity to put the modern state of marriage and monogamy under the microscope, or, perhaps on the cold slab for dissection of what\u2019s left.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> Flynn herself wrote the screenplay here, and in her it seems that Fincher has found a collaborator on his exact wavelength.\u00a0<\/span> Beyond Flynn\u2019s magnificent gift for sharp, hilariously mean-spirited dialogue, she seems to share Fincher\u2019s coldly critical view of society.\u00a0<\/span> Her story is populated with characters who are varying degrees of dishonest, stuck-up, blood-thirsty, simple-minded, or easily-manipulated, and in certain strokes, some of these traits almost seem necessary for the characters\u2019 survival in the 21st Century.\u00a0<\/span> It\u2019s a mind set perfectly matched to director who found the petty humanity at the center of Facebook in \u201cThe Social Network,\u201d or the emptiness of anarchic platitudes in \u201cFight Club,\u201d and one can\u2019t help but get excited to see what is in store for them in the future as creative partners.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> Ben Affleck, here making a quick pit-stop between acclaimed directorial efforts and punching Superman in the face, sets a high watermark for his career as a performer.\u00a0<\/span> While his Nick starts out as the kind of affable oaf Affleck excels at, conflict soon reveals him as an elusive creature.\u00a0<\/span> Is he the sociopath people suspect, or is he really just that stupid?\u00a0<\/span> Through it all, Affleck never lets you completely side with Nick thanks to his layered and nuanced portrayal.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> Still, Affleck at his best here can\u2019t help but get blown away by Rosamund Pike as Amy.\u00a0<\/span> This is a revelatory turn for Pike, finally getting a major leading role to sink her teeth into after a decade of supporting work, and sink her teeth she does.\u00a0<\/span> Amy is a quietly vicious character, and Pike revels in every minute of it.\u00a0<\/span> To elaborate further would again spoil the fun, but know that this is the kind of work that reshapes careers irrevocably.\u00a0<\/span> It is difficult to imagine a scenario in which Pike does not get a Best Actress nod come Oscar time.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> The rest of cast is aces as well.\u00a0<\/span> The big standouts are Carrie Coon as Margo, Nick\u2019s sympathetic twin sister and the closest thing the film has to a moral center, and Neil Patrick Harris as an unnerving figure from Amy\u2019s past.\u00a0<\/span> Also worth noting is Tyler Perry, finally finding a foothold in the world of serious drama as Tanner Bolt, a hotshot attorney known for defending suspected wife-killers who takes on Nick\u2019s case.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> If the film has any fault, it is that things occasionally get just a bit too lurid and pulpy to gel with the grounded tone Fincher maintains throughout.\u00a0<\/span> As things progress, the story goes from thoughtful meditation to something like vicious satire, and it would have benefitted from a shift in style to reflect that.\u00a0<\/span> Fincher is certainly capable of stylized reality, as evidenced by \u201cFight Club.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0<\/span> This is hardly a deal breaker, but it is noticeable.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> At two hours and 29 minutes, \u201cGone Girl\u201d is a lengthy sit, but it is difficult to notice as it effortlessly moves forward, expertly paced and able to hit the audience with provocative ideas and images at each new turn.\u00a0<\/span> It comes highly recommended and bodes well as the start of the fall 2014 movie season.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


\nThe Albany Student Press<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Thomas Kika Contributing Writer artsent.asp@gmail.com \u00a0\u00a0 \u201cGone Girl,\u201d adapted from the wildly successful Gillian Flynn novel of the same name, is a brutal portrait of love and marriage in the 21st century as only Hollywood\u2019s favorite cynic, David Fincher, could bring us.\u00a0 Sleek, tense and pitch-dark, it\u2019s a frightening work that is sure to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[983],"tags":[3965,508,3923,1820,1011,1789,3966],"class_list":["post-13068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-albany-student-press","tag-excellent","tag-fall","tag-girl","tag-kicks","tag-movie","tag-season","tag-gone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13068"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}