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 Continuing his recent streak of adapting bestsellers, David Fincher is back with psychological mystery Gone Girl to be released on October 3, 2014. The novel of the same name was written by Gillian Flynn, a former Entertainment Weekly writer whose other two books, Sharp Objects and Dark Places, are also in the process of being adapted (into a miniseries and a film starring Charlize Theron, respectively). The novel its based on centres around a writer couple, Nick and Amy Dunne, who have moved from New York to Missouri after losing their jobs in the GFC. Amy goes missing, and in the course of her search, it is revealed that both Nick and Amy are deeply flawed people who are not what they seem. It's not altogether new territory, and the writing is a little too "airport fictiony" (imo) at times, but it does build a palpable sense of dread and touch on some valuable insights on long term relationships. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have returned to do the score so expect more dark and moody atmospheric tunes. Jeff Cronenweth, Fincher's usual DP is also back on board. Who is in this thing? Cast  Ben Affleck as Nick Dunn, who the public turns on after he fails to presenting a convincing image of a grieving husband after his wife goes missing.  Rosamund Pike as Amy Dunn, the titular "Gone Girl" who was also the inspiration for her parents' successful "Amazing Amy" children's novels.  Neil Patrick Harris as Desi Collings, a dandy former ex-boyfriend of Amy's who has remained obsessed with her over the years.  Tyler Perry as Tanner Bolt, a high-profile attorney who specialises in defending husbands accused of murdering their wives. Carrie Coon plays Nick's sister, Kim Dickens and Patrick Fugit play the cops working the case, Lisa Banes and David Clennon play Amy's parents. I think this movie has been quite well-cast to the book. Nick is meant to be somewhat handsome and charming while also seeming like an insincere, punchable douchebag (Affleck has been method-acting this for years), and Rosamund Pike and Neil Patrick Harris are also perfect for their characters. Tyler Perry is probably going to raise some eyebrows but it looks like he's going to do a good job! Trailers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esGn-xKFZdU Fincher is already known for great teasers set to music, and this continues that streak. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym3LB0lOJ0o More plot-heavy second trailer that shows off the cast. The ending has apparently been changed from the novel so even book-readers are going in cold on some things. I quite liked the original ending, but can see why it would be altered for a film's pacing. BOAT SHOWBOAT fucked around with this message at 14:14 on Jul 28, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 07:14
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 13:52 |
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Honestly I love the end of the book, although I'm kind of hoping the movie plays some elements of it for very dark comedy instead of completely straight. The fact that it takes so little for Amy to decide to return, and these two hosed up, deeply broken people just decide to stay with each other and hope for the best is more interesting and darkly funny to me than if either of them killed the other or went to jail.
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Jul 28, 2014 14:08
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http://nin.com/ A preview of Reznor and Ross's soundtrack is up on the website, and its appropriately chilling and odd.
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Sep 20, 2014 07:03
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Early reviews are quite good (sitting on 85% on RT with 26 reviews).
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Sep 27, 2014 07:55
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GIllian Flynn on accusations of misogyny: "To me, that puts a very, very small window on what feminism is," she responds. "Is it really only girl power, and you-go-girl, and empower yourself, and be the best you can be? For me, it's also the ability to have women who are bad characters … the one thing that really frustrates me is this idea that women are innately good, innately nurturing. In literature, they can be dismissably bad – trampy, vampy, bitchy types – but there's still a big pushback against the idea that women can be just pragmatically evil, bad and selfish ... I don't write psycho bitches. The psycho bitch is just crazy – she has no motive, and so she's a dismissible person because of her psycho-bitchiness."
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Sep 29, 2014 10:55
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I loved the movie and thought Rosamund Pike especially, but all the actors did an amazing job of conveying things that were stated explicitly in the novel, but made a lot more implicit in their performances. My main (and perhaps only) complaint is that the movie doesn't do a good job of (are we using spoiler tags?) making Nick seem especially suspicious. The novel gets you to the point where you're almost entirely sure that they must be guilty, and that the odds are stacked against Nick before the reveal. Edit: also, lol at Fincher and Flynn claiming the ending was going to be changed, it wasn't. BOAT SHOWBOAT fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Oct 3, 2014 |
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Oct 2, 2014 22:52
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If anything, couples SHOULD watch this together.
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Oct 3, 2014 01:00
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In terms of the misogyny claims, in a lot of ways I like Amy more than Nick (although they are both terrible people). To be completely honest, I felt almost no remorse for Desi, and I loved the gore of that death scene, after how clean the rest of the film had been. The most laugh out loud moment of the film for me was Affleck's awkward "uh, you guys want to day anything?" to Amy's parents at the vigil.
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Oct 3, 2014 06:20
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Mr. Flunchy posted:My take was that he's taken the pragmatic decision to remain in a sham relationship for the sake of his unborn child. It's a heroic sacrifice. It's not. Nick is a narcissist who loves Amy's attention and allows her to be a caricature in his mind rather than truly making an effort to understand her. He was blind to her more insane qualities because he wanted to be. He's also violent and yes, did cheat on her. At the end he's fully enabling her behaviour and it's not just about the child. You can see that he definitely enjoyed her being back even I he pretended not to.
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Oct 3, 2014 13:39
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I really liked how the "cool girl" scene was handled in this movie as well. It's probably one of the most overtly feminist statements in a recent mainstream film.
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Oct 3, 2014 22:06
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Megasabin posted:The movie actually deliberately goes out of it's way to show this: 1) Nick's relationship with his mother, Nick's relationship with his sister, 3) Nick's acts of pretty seemingly genuine empathy/kindness towards townsfolk he grew up with. A lot of this is much more about Nick's identity and desire to be seen as a "good guy" than it is about genuine kindness. Nick's relationship with his sister, in the present, is more about providing him the validation that he feels his wife isn't giving him since she stopped being the "cool girl" that she was when they met (the affair serves this purpose too). Nick uses women to make him feel better about himself and gets enraged when they don't cater to his needs (note the comment he makes about "i hate when women get in my way" or something, and his treatment of Boney when she suspects hom most). A point I'd argue the film is making is that, due to the dominant power structures we have, male cruelty in relationships are part of the hegemonic norm to the point where they're almost imperceptible; this is how someone like Amy can exist and feel they need go to such extremes to "get even". It's an inherently feminist point, not a misogynistic one, though you can of course disagree.
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Oct 5, 2014 01:54
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Yeah the scenes after Amy's return are key to the message of the whole movie, I find it a bit silly to say they're unnecessary or tacked on.
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Oct 6, 2014 00:53
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Steve2911 posted:And I may be remembering wrong, but wasn't the ending supposed to be dramatically different in some way? They literally said this just to gently caress with book readers and make them feel some suspense too, but it isn't true. Uncle Boogeyman posted:The one thing that I do think the book just straight-up did better than the movie is make Nick seem like an actual, credible suspect for Amy's murder in the first half. I think Fincher et al thought the casting of Ben Affleck would kind of do their work for them - and honestly, it does for the most part - but they lean too hard on "sympathetic" from the beginning. The book is much more unsparing in depicting Nick as a guy that has major problems with women, and the twist comes at just the right moment when you're starting to think "goddamn, this guy totally did it." One of the most impressive things about the book is that it conveys the feeling from the start that there's an unreliable narrator, but it turns out it's not the narrator you think it is. This is pretty much the same response that I and the people I saw it with (who also read the book) had. I feel like had the movie carried that over better we would be getting less of these misogyny accusations. That said all of what makes Nick such a lovely dude is all there but it takes a little more attention during, and reflection after the movie to really tease it out.
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Oct 10, 2014 00:01
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Surlaw posted:Along this line, I like that Nick "defeats" her by offering her love and forgiveness, even though it's an act. Amy is exceedingly childlike. The description someone gave in the thread that she looks like "a kid watching cartoons" during Nick's TV interview is very accurate. It's one of the moments where we see that Amy isn't "performing" for anyone in any way (she isn't thinking of Desi in those moments). To really reduce Gone Girl to its core is to see it as a film about keeping up appearances. I don't know if Amy believes in love - or if the film necessarily sees Nick's love as any more real than Desi - but it's very clear that she wants to be fooled. Amy doesn't want to be right - it's important that "Kill Self?" comes with a question mark. Her meticulous plan falls apart because, really, it wasn't that meticulous - so much of it was focused on making Nick feel a certain way rather than really considering what was going to happen to her. It takes so little for her to go back to Nick. Why does losing money matter if her plan is to die? It doesn't. Amy's smart enough to know that Nick might have just been talking nonsense for the cameras - but that public display of love is enough and all she really wanted. The voices that we trust in the film are Detective Boney, Tanner Bolt, and Margo Dunne. edit: http://redlettermedia.com/half-in-the-bag-gone-girl-and-annabelle/ I'm increasingly disliking the Half in the Bag guys even though they occasionally say some good and funny stuff. They can't understand why Amy's background as "Amazing Amy" is important at all (other than that she has some minor celebrity) despite it defining her character and the themes of the movie in a number of ways. And they see the second half dismantling what's set up in the first half of the movie as a mistake rather than completely intentional. But what bothers me more is that there are people who wholesale take what these guys say as the Good Opinion(TM) to have on films. BOAT SHOWBOAT fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Oct 11, 2014 |
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Oct 11, 2014 00:09
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SpitztheGreat posted:Assuming you're being serious the only part I can see being a dark comedy was the last twenty minutes of the movie. By that point the situation was so bad, so out of control, that all you could do was laugh like Tyler Perry. I was laughing throughout almost all of T movie. It's rich in entertainment value. Mystic River is a much less sheerly watchable film.
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Oct 15, 2014 10:34
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bubblelubble posted:Oh maaaan. So either way I'll be ruining a good thing by reading/watching it beforehand? If both options are so good, I could just go for the cheaper option, which would be the movie methinks. But then I wouldn't have the book on my shelf. The book is very good and worth reading on its own merits, and expands enough on the story plus gives a direct insight into the characters that it's worth checking out even if you've seen the film. I read it in like two nights, it's a pageturner. That said, the movie is awesome and the central mystery has a lot less tension if you've read the book. The performances, direction and particularly the dark humour more than make up for that though. So I would say, watch the movie and then read it if you liked it.
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Oct 20, 2014 11:14
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Mira posted:Experienced the same effect during my screening, although it felt more like people brewing over mixed emotions and not out of any sort of gravitas for the film. You couldn't tell that line was meant to be funny? Agreed that the way it ends lends to a really particular mood of silence in the cinema, it was like a shocking event had just happened (in a good way, for me).
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Nov 6, 2014 23:31
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Cakebaker posted:Could be because there's one in the title of the thread. I wasn't referencing it, but, now I want the title to be Affleck Chases Amy All Over Again.
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Nov 13, 2014 14:46
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Nick isn't forced to stay with Amy at all. He wants to and thrives on the lie as much as she does, and the baby is just the excuse that lets him justify it to himself. Boney honestly could sink Amy with Nick's collaboration at this point. But it's no longer what he wants.
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Dec 25, 2014 07:29
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maniacripper posted:A dumb nerd like Fincher could never understand why a Boston Red Sox fan would never wear a Yankees hat, make believe pretend version or not. I'm with Affleck on that one, choose a different hat for the guy you ignorant nerd. Affleck is comfortable pretend-beating a woman in this movie but wearing a hat is the WORST
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Jan 4, 2015 01:20
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 13:52 |
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NESguerilla posted:I'm not entirely sure she was supposed to be sloppy in the fiction of the movie. If it was a stylistic choice, the movie was intentionally hammy. The holes in her plan never really came into play, at east in regards to the police. She was, Amy isn't meant to be a criminal genius, she's a narcissist who would be so sure of her plan that she would overlook basic things, hasn't done this before and had the emotional maturity of a child.
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Feb 14, 2015 06:32
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