Film and Episodic Content Discussion Thread

Tomorrow I trek down to the theater to see David Fincher's latest flick THE KILLER. I've seen half of Fincher's filmography in the theater.

ALIEN 3
I missed this one theatrically, I'm not sure why... despite being 12, I'd gone to rated R movies before... it may be because my sister saw it at the theater and said it sucked, so I probably lost interest and opted to wait for video (VHS back then). I concurred with her that it did indeed suck, though I've softened on it over the years and realize it has SOME merit. The direction is amazing, it's just sorely lacking at the script level (they didn't even have a finished script when filming and Fincher famously had a TERRIBLE time making the film because of studio interference, with his opinion of the experience being everything from philosophical (at one point calling it a "baptism by fire") to downright hateful (at one point saying he was "ritualistically sodomized for 2 years" during the making of it).

SE7EN
The impact this film had on me cannot be overstated. It directly led to me making the decision to become a filmmaker... I'd flirted with the idea since I was a young child after seeing E.T. (you couldn't make a more polar opposite film to Se7en), but really didn't understand enough about that industry to commit. Seeing Se7en in the theater as a teenager was like a lightbulb going off, where I was at the right age for my mind to be mature enough to understand the very deliberate nature of what Fincher was doing with the material, and it made me WANT to do the same.

THE GAME
Not sure how I missed this theatrically. I was in high school, so maybe I had a paper due or something or was trying to beat a video game, so it just slipped by. And I don't think the film had a ton of marketing behind it. But I did eventually catch it on video and it remains one of my favorite of Fincher's. Absurd premise aside, Fincher totally commits to it and actually makes you forget how implausible it all is.

FIGHT CLUB
There was no way I was going to miss this in a theater. This film was marketed within an inch of its life, and I was driving during this time, so had more freedom. I remember the hype, excitement and especially the controversy surrounding this. I think people today take for granted just how out-there and provocative Fight Club was. Not just because of the violence, but the spotlight on our consumption obsessed culture, the increasingly confusing role of men in society (way ahead of its time here) and that twist ending. I was the perfect age for this too, being 19 and on the cusp of true manhood and being similarly suspicious of societal norms. Funny story related to this is that in the liner notes on the special edition DVD (remember when SE DVDs actually meant something?) was the name of former Executive Vice President of Production at Fox Kevin McCormick, who was instrumental in getting the film made. Not long after I moved to LA to pursue filmmaking, I opened the phone book (remember those?!), got the number for Fox and got through to McCormick's office... his assistant answered and I pitched him some awful horror movie I'd written. Of course, nothing ever came of it.

PANIC ROOM
I'd been in LA a couple years and saw it at the famous Chinese theater (where Star Wars premiered) and their GIANT, palace like auditorium... I enjoyed the movie. It was tense, thrilling at times... I remember being kind of confused as to why Fincher took on such an average B-movie concept... but he was really able to make it sing. Still holds up. Another funny story is that shortly before this film came out, I was working as a telecine supervisor (telecine is the process of transferring film to tape for color correction and/or editing purposes), and in the next room over was a colorist who was working on Panic Room... I actually spoke to him and he told me about the crazy way Fincher shot it... in extreme low light, so that the audience would feel just how dark it is in the middle of the night when your home is being robbed... I was an avid reader of the movie news site Aint it Cool News at the time, and submitted this info as a "scoop" and it got published!

ZODIAC
There were a couple milestones this movie achieved for me personally.... it was the first Fincher film I got to see before general audiences, at a private screening hosted by the screenwriter of the film James Vanderbilt. Living in LA a few years finally got me some currency with friends who could hook me up with these kinds of screenings. Second, it was the first Fincher film I saw in a theater that I was disappointed by... initially at least. It felt slow, ponderous and didn't seem to have a solid throughline. It was about losing more than winning and unlike Se7en, there was no charismatic killer or twist ending. I came to love Zodiac over the years and now think it may be his best film (though I'll always love Se7en the most), because of its slow burn descent into frustrating madness... the killer remains elusive like he did in real life. And it shows that sometimes there are no easy answers.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON
I honestly don't remember why I missed seeing this in a theater or what was going on at the time. But I eventually did see it on video and like Zodiac, was initially.... well, not disappointed exactly, but it just didn't grab me... and subsequent rewatches never brought me around to it like Zodiac did. I think it's Fincher's most ambitious film in terms of subject matter.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK
Like Fight Club, this was another can't miss in the theater for me. I was there opening day. This one had a now famous trailer that seemed to really hook people into what initially seemed like a joke of a concept... a movie about facebook? But it's really the story of how that site came to be, and having seen it again recently, it really holds up as a masterful work of compelling drama.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
This continued my trend of skipping every other Fincher movie in the theater... not sure what happened here. I do remember this was a very challenging period of my life and I may just have been too overwhelmed to keep up. Despite being kind of mediocre IMO, this one has a strangely compelling momentum to it, thanks to Fincher's ability to present dramatic situations in the most exciting way possible, both visually and aurally.

GONE GIRL
Things were going much better for me personally during this time, so this was an easy one not to miss theatrically. I remember it being a top level theater going experience, as the crowd was really into the film. Gone Girl is fantastic and once again Fincher shows he has an uncanny knack for finding the most compelling way to present a story. And that murder scene is one for the ages!

MANK
This got a limited theatrical release so maybe I wasn't able to catch it because of that, but I don't even remember looking. I knew it was a Netflix film, so maybe I just didn't realize it had a theatrical run or maybe I was too lazy and just wanted to see it on my glorious OLED without dealing with crowds. Anyway, I quite liked this, though it is an odd movie that takes time to slip into its very specific tone. Though it's the only Fincher film I have little to no desire to see again. Part of it is I just really hate Netflix's exclusive policy that doesn't allow you rent their films on other services (I currently don't have an active netflix account), keeping a monopoly on art is something I just despise in general.

I know next to nothing about The Killer, and still hate that it's netflix, which is why I'm so eager to catch it while in theaters.

 

There are some powerfully good (and influential films) in this great summary of yours.

Can't wait to see THE KILLER. Fassbender & Swinton are among the best actors out there.

Required supplemental viewing: Clooney in THE AMERICAN (2010).

FWIW, I read a great many mysteries with hitmen either as stars, or as plot components. Films that focus on the inner experience of hitmen are very difficult to make: it's hard to somehow externalize and script all that internal conflict and strategy.

This "it's all happening inside the main character's head" phenomenon is the main reason the 26-book, best-selling Jack Reacher series (by author Lee Child) was only recently adapted with some success in an Amazon Prime production.

 

And by extension the OG, Le Samourai. For genre buffs, the Michael Shannon "The Iceman" shows the weird compartmentalization of a person being a mob killer and family man.

Potentially because in reality often there is no internal conflict. In the interview with the real Iceman, his abusive upbringing destroyed his empathy, but past that, he appears to have been fine with all of it and enjoyed his "job". Psychopathy is not something audiences can identify with, movie Hitmen need quirks and effective cast design so we go "he loves his cat and the other guys are ugly cat haters, so I see why he shot all of them."

 

There will always be a debate about the Iceman and the degree to which his feelings and motivations were artificially dramatized only to build interest in various shows about him. I found the whole thing rather manipulative.

But your point applies equally well to fictional assassins. Some of the best have little to no "internal conflict," at least of the moral sort. Their conflicts tend to center on optimal survival planning, best odds for success of this tactic vs that, etc. But in the end, it's all internal, and that makes it hard to narratize and film.

One of the best in class fictional book series starring a remorseless assassin are the "Viktor" books by author Tom Wood. I strongly recommend reading these half dozen propulsive, kinetic books. They will rather quickly illustrate the screenwriting challenge therein...

https://www.goodreads.com/series/98326-victor-the-assassin

I'm not sure I've ever read passages of methodical deadly action written better than here, including the other best in class series (Jack Reacher by Lee Child).

Yet it would would be very hard to successfully represent Viktor in a conventional film script. He utters so few words, and even his thoughts are so spare, stripped down & tactical, that it's hard to imagine anything but a silent film made about him. I could be wrong, but I doubt anyone has even attempted a film or TV movie adaptation of one of these Tom Wood books.

All to say I admire any director and screenwriter who takes on these difficult assignments...and can't wait to see THE KILLER.

PS: A conceptually related challenge for the film-maker is to make a film about a man so destroyed by violence (to his family) that he became homeless and virtually catatonic as a result. Yet he awakes and sets revenge plans in motion It's the same puzzle--how to get the interior mind visible to the exterior where it can be filmed. A very fine indie film did this splendidly well (BLUE RUIN, 2013), and I need to rewatch that to suss out how the inarticulate, damaged main character was rendered so compelling that the viewer sticks with him to the bitter, bloody end...

 

Blue Ruin and The American are both fantastic. THE HIT (1984) is still one of the best hitmen movies with one of the most devastating and thought provoking endings dealing with death you will ever see.

 

"Stick. To. The. Plan."
"Trust no one"
"Forbid empathy, empathy is weakness, weakness is vulnerability"
"Anticipate, don't improvise"
"Never yield an advantage"
"Fight only the battle you're paid to fight"
"Ask yourself 'what's in it for me?'"
"This is what it takes if you want to succeed"

WOW, so THE KILLER did not disappoint. A darker, more brutal and stark companion to Jim Jarmusch's GHOST DOG WAY OF THE SAMURAI. Both films present their protagonists as introspective, "awake", but brutal and efficient killers who understand and fully commit to their place in the world.

I said before that I hated netflix's monopoly on art, but they may have been the only logical choice for a challenging film like this.... I don't think any major studio would've agreed to make what is a very difficult film like this... since netflix doesn't need box office returns or ancillary sales to keep their business model intact, they can let filmmakers take chances like this.... There's no character development, no three act structure as it were, no third act reversal, no heroics, no passionate romance, no life-affirming coda at the end... none of the typical Hollywood storytelling techniques are on display. Just a brutally efficient, dark, cynical and unflinching look into the life cycle of a contract killer. It is like watching a Discovery channel documentary on a killer instead of dangerous animals in the wild... Fincher's dark version of that anyway.

And I don't think I need to say how visually stunning it is, because we're all used to that with Fincher, but this film is visually stunning and would be a crime not to catch on the big screen.

 

WOW, so I stumbled across this youtube interview with one of the writers of ALIEN 3 who was never credited, and the stories he tells about this production are kind of shocking. I've always known this movie was bad and Fincher wanted nothing to do with it afterward, but I didn't know just how crazy the behind the scenes shenanigans were. And now I know why Fincher refuses to talk about it or revisit it.

HOOKERS, COCAINE and ALIEN 3

 

Re: Fincher - quick plug for MINDHUNTER. A thorough mastery of the craft on display. IMHO of course.

 

Not sure if The Bear has been mentioned yet, but I find it stands out from a lot of current forgettable shows. S2E6 in particular (the Christmas Dinner flashback) displayed some fine acting, and meaningful cameo performances from Jamie Lee Curtis and Bob Odenkirk.

 

Candidate for worst book adaptation ever: All the Light You Cannot See (Netflix).

Adapted by Peaky Blinders guy, directed by Night at the Museum guy. Lots of liberties taken with the story, but to get the book down to 4 hour-long episodes, sure. But even given that abbreviation, we're assumed to be so stupid that most of the screen time needs to be spent beating us over the head with the main themes rather than leaving any room for nuance, and that a really intrusive score is needed to tell us exactly what emotion to engage at every moment.

The bad guys are SO one-dimensionally badly drawn and the direction is so wooden it comes across like a comedy (e.g., the main Nazi seems modeled on the leather-clad dude in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but with Marilyn Manson's haircut instead of a hat; and Etienne's death scene is so cartoonish that even Hugh Laurie can't save it).

Kudos though for them getting actual blind girls (one for the flashbacks, one for the 'present') to play the lead. And the rest of the actors were probably as good as the direction and script allowed (with the possible exception of Mark Ruffalo, who much of the time seemed to be wondering where he was).

If you saw this but haven't read the book, don't be put off: you'll likely think you're reading a different story, with different characters, than the one you've just watched.

 

It's a tough mini-review when that's the most positive thing you can identify in the production!

I wasn't even thinking of watching this one--zero interest in anything w/Nazis in it--but your comments are appreciated.

 

I forgot to mention, there's one particular line that's relevant to this community and gave me a laugh: "he won't hear you, he wears headphones."

There's also some tube p0rn.

 

The Killer is worth watching even if you just catch it on Netflix.

I'll diverge from @ColtMrFire a little that this isn't really so much a Discovery doc on observing "animals in the wild" as the film is patently absurd, but an homage laden riff on a tired genre that rewards cinema buffs with a barrage of film references while also subverting some of the usual tropes as it wholeheartedly engages with them.

The tone is quite far from the cartoon slapstick of "Bullet Train" but Fassbender's emotionless voiceovers about everything from frustrations with AirBnB's ("Too many granny cams") to how nobody really wants to talk to a German tourist routinely arc into deadpan comedy that has more in common with Anthony Jeselnik than Alain Delon. Fincher fans need only look for the re-appearance of the Fight Club Starbucks cup to know there is plenty of tongue in cheek here. And there is, by God, even an Austin Powers reference if you look hard enough.

This board will also particularly appreciate the soundtrack which is almost entirely 'The Smiths' save the dirgey synthetic interludes by Trent Reznor and Atticus Finch.

 

Where did you see it @roshambo123 ?

There is a weird phenomena that happens with home viewing vs. theater viewing that I've observed over the years, where some movies play better at the theater and vice versa.

I will say that The Killer is a film that likely plays better in a theater than on flat screen TVs... there is something about the surface level aspects of the movie that probably don't translate as well with netflix viewing and that includes the voice overs (sound is tied to picture like DACs are tied to amps). This is one of those hard to quantify things.

I've noticed this with other netflix films like The Irishman that for me played vastly better theatrically and didn't have nearly the same effect when I tried watching it again at home... it was kind of dull at home... at a theater it was mezmerizing.

On the other hand, some movies don't play well to people in any circumstance.

It will be interesting to watch the reviews now that it is out on netflix vs. when it was playing exclusively in theaters (where it got a mostly positive responses). I'll have to check imdb...

 

Some very well worn tropes in this one but still so much better than most of the tentpole stuff over the past few years. Just the visuals by themselves make it worth a look, IMO.



Also, animatics are cool.

 

Thank god for that. I really despised that film. IMO it was classic Hollywood content overshoot, overbudget, overkill (though I appreciated Bad Bunny's foray into cinema grandiosity). The movie finally ground to a halt when every possible thing was blown up.

I found it a useful corrective after seeing that botch, to rewatch my favorite Brad Pitt vehicle, MONEYBALL. "Ahhh...I needed that!"

 

At home. And my point isn't that "it didn't play," quite the opposite, I think it played very well. My point is I thought it was more comedic than you described. As you know, Fincher has gotten reactions like this before. As with Fight Club, some viewers thought it was a comedy and others thought it was a tragedy. There's a story where Pitt and Norton were in an early Fight Club viewing and they said they were the only people in the theater laughing.

You also made a statement that it doesn't have character development, three act structure, no heroics, or a third act reversal. In my opinion it has all of those. In terms of format it's a revenge film, and is tightly structured. Avoiding spoilers, the film opens with Fassbender's monolithic coda intact and it's repeatedly challenged throughout the film. We see the very clear establishment of the Hero's thematic problem, how that is shattered by the inciting incident, and then how he attempts to maintain those beliefs throughout the story across varying challenges until he finds he cannot and modifies his worldview based on how he has changed, although small change that may be. Additionally, Fassbender's motives could said to be at least partly heroic as he is protecting not just himself but another.

 

I understand.

The film is definitely funny at times and has the dry humor Fincher is known for (humor buried in intellect), I didn't do a full "review" so left it out.

The film is told in chapters, which work as "act breaks", so not a traditional 3 act structure as it were, though there may be a bare thread of one if you look deeply enough.

I'd argue his "thematic problem" is not shattered in the opening... as killing is not his thematic problem. I'll expand on that in a bit...

As far the coda, most of it is pretty much stuck to with maybe one or two exceptions:

"Stick. To. The. Plan." - the character never deviates from what he's doing as far as I could tell, though his act toward his final target may have been a deviation but may have not been (expanded below)

"Trust no one" - never does, even when they're begging him to (especially the lawyer)

"Forbid empathy, empathy is weakness, weakness is vulnerability" - this one stays intact for his targets... I don't think the final target was shown empathy, as much as the protagonist finally tackling his TRUE "thematic problem" and fulfilling his desire (which pays off the voiceovers... what good are his musings about human behavior and societal problems if none of his targets are alive to understand what he's expressing? The final target wasn't empathy as much as an expression of his dilemma as a man living in the shadows, constantly talking to himself. desperate to be HEARD.... his real thematic problem)

"Anticipate, don't improvise" - everything the killer does is planned and executed well

"Never yield an advantage" - check

"Fight only the battle you're paid to fight" - this one he definitely breaks

"Ask yourself 'what's in it for me?'" - check

Heroic? Again, I'd challenge that... the film plays with cinematic norms and everything surface level about the movie is suspect if you look deeper. The men were actually trying to kill him, not the girl, who just got in the way. Their relationship is barely "there", just a few exchanged words and we never get the sense that the Killer is a man who is able to be vulnerable enough for a real relationship... for all intents and purposes she could've been a fling while he was in the foreign country (the film never states their true relationship). Killing all those people was necessary since they would've been tasked with finding him and finishing the job... less heroic and more self preservation? Again his journey was about tackling his true "thematic problem", which I guess you could call heroic? But I don't think it has as much to do with the girl as it appears.

I don't think the film is straightforward enough for any one interpretation to be 100% correct, like the best Kubrick films.

 

True and agree. His thematic problem is the code allows him to execute jobs but scrubs his humanity. That the code's primary assumption also becomes suspect in the opening is the central (non-thematic) problem. The ending resolves both problems. Agree also the final decision was not driven by empathy, but a mixed motive that was both a humane act while also not expressly violating the code, although if we look deeper, you could argue it may violate the code's intent.

Maybe true but ambiguous given the events in New Orleans may have precluded their ability to be paid.

The scene with the brother at the hospital I recall indicated that The Killer had shown kindness to her so it seemed to me that there was something there more than a fling and his concern for her seemed to be in violation of the code as he seems to show empathy for her plight.

The question of Heroics though is actually not a cinematic question but a philosophical one. If you're a Kantian deontologist then an ill intentioned act even with good outcome cannot be good, so his act is non-heroic. If you're a consequentialist then his intent is irrelevant and that he produces a good outcome makes him a hero. If you're Aquinas things get quite complicated.

 

The Killer was enjoyable, you’re spot on about the black humor and critique on modern civilization. With regards to the tenets that he repeats, I thought the character broke all of them one way or another, and ultimately he has to in order deal with life after life went sideways.

I didn’t get the references that @roshambo123 mentioned, but then watching movies on a device is always a disadvantage if not being engrossed in the film then it’s the distraction of everything else outside of the tiny screen. I’ll probably watch out again another time.

I do feel that if the film had shown less violence than it needs to, or maybe if Fincher had been a lot more grotesque with the violence (yeah, contradiction) then the film would have been a better commentary of the mundaneness or absurdity.