Day 68: July 7th, 2010

Panic Room.



It was supposed to be the safest room in the house.

Fincher is a director who knows what he wants and he will stop at nothing to achieve that goal. He is so detail oriented that it in some way reminds me a bit of Kubrick. I've loved everyone of his films in one way or another, I always found that each one had something to offer. Panic Room is no different, sure it is one of his weaker films, but not every director can have masterpiece after masterpiece.

Panic Room stars Jodie Foster, who moves into this new house with her teenage daughter, new comer Kristen Stewart. She discovers that the house comes with a panic room. A safe room wired with camera monitors, separate telephone and a thick steel door. No one can get into it. Sure enough they need to go into it because some bad guys want inside the house. What can the film be without a little bit of a twist? What they want is actually inside the panic room.

Kristen Stewart does a pretty good job here, she was roughly 11 years old when she acted in this film. I don't really know what happened to her acting ability, but this film shows that at some point in her life she did have some talent. Maybe given the right material she can work something out. It's even more impressive that she is able to hold up well against Jodie Foster. To be honest, I've never really been a big fan of her. I find her too cold in all her roles for me to be able to connect to her, even in this one. She does a decent enough job for the film as a thriller, but as a mother with her daughter, I needed more.

Fincher's usual style is here, brooding and dark. He uses the camera to gives us a unique view of things and blends it with the use of CGI to go through inanimate objects, like a chair or coffee pot handle. These small details are why Fincher is one of my favourite directors working today. He loves the craft of filmmaking and it shows in all his films. He doesn't make a film for the sake of it, he wants to tell a story and contribute some form of art to the history of cinema.

The three bad guys all do well and each have their own little conflicts with themselves. The thrills are here, but the final act of the film tends to fall apart. The cliches show up and the finale doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the film. Sledgehammer to the face, yet still have the ability to wrestle another human being down to the ground is a bit far fetched, specifically for a film so dead set on being based in reality. There are many little things littered throughout the film that frustrate me that lower the film in my opinion. Panic Room is mild entertainment, don't expect another Fincher film here. While it does have his style here and there, Panic Room lacks the originality and dedication of his other films. He does show care for it though, it just feels like the lonely kid in the corner that the other kids make fun of.

5.5/10

Day 32: June 1st, 2010

The Game



The Ending Did Not Ruin The Film For Me.

Nicholas Van Orton is given a strange birthday gift from his brother. It's a card that tells him to go to this place called CRS, Consumer Recreation Services. They give Nicholas a chance to be a participant in a game. Things get a little too out of hand when the game itself becomes life threatening and Nicholas can't seem to stop it.

The Game is never really mentioned when talking about Fincher and his body of work, good or bad it gets left on the cutting room floor. I guess it's because the film is the middleman sort to speak. You have Se7en, and Fight Club, his two most popular and fan favourite films. Then you have Panic Room and Alien 3, considered lower calibre. Zodiac and Benjamin Button seem to be in a totally different class here, but The Game deserves to be mentioned because it is a well written, thought provoking thriller that manages to peel away at it's mysteries and never have the viewer bored. Even the film's ending, which many people seem to complain about, did not make me hate the film, or think the first 80 or so minutes were a waste.

The film looks and feels just like Fincher's others. It's cold, dark and unforgiving. He manages to craft his most suspenseful film to date and having Michael Douglass run around trying to solve the mystery helps the case. I'm a sucker for films full of mystery, that slowly but surely peel away at those mysteries to reveal the truth. A lot of crime films are like this, but The Game is something different. A bit more psychological, another reason why I liked it so much. Much like Memento, we are lost like the lead character. We know it's a game, he knows it's a game. But we, nor him, know exactly what the game is or what is happening next. We are trying to solve the same mysteries and Fincher makes us care about these things.

Complaints for the film are ones that would have me base the film is reality. To believe the stuff that happens in the film is for one to suspend a lot of belief. The film ends in a way that made me think whether I liked it or not. I would have preferred the first ending, as opposed to the second one, but the way they did it didn't ruin the film. I'm not sure how I will feel on repeated viewings, but as it stands, the thrills were still there and I still enjoyed them. I'm still left with some character motivation questions, some that I will not go into for the sake of spoiling things in the film.

Douglass, whom I usually hate, does a great job here. He is a jerk that slowly begins to unwind his sanity. His Gordon Gekko demeanor works here and yet we still root for his character. Sean Penn has a small role, one too small for me to really comment on and the supporting cast usually only have a scene or two to do anything. Deborah Kara Unger plays a good role in which we have to decide whether or not we trust her. She usually plays wackos.

The Game is something that might frustrate you with the ending, but that's what films are all about, getting some kind of emotional response. I'm not a fan of the last 3 or 4 minutes, to me it seemed to be tacked on by pressure of the studio and would not be something Fincher would normally do. But in the end, The Game is a worthy film if you are looking for a suspenseful thriller.

8/10