Jake Gittes

It's a smooth and enjoyable ride but I agree with a lot of what Dash and JohnnyG said here. The novel's ending works better because Nick is painted quite a bit more negatively there; I don't know how an Affleck voiceover would have worked in the film, but I think they should have attempted it. The whole story works much better with two unreliable narrators instead of one. While Fincher and Flynn do try to compensate for it by only revealing Andie halfway into the film, that's not enough. In general I thought that stylistically this was Fincher on autopilot. It's true that the narrative is hard enough to adapt as it is, but I think more risks should have been taken here. Fincher basically just glides through the movie and it ends up so slick and smooth that it's not very memorable direction-wise (I had the same issue with TGWTDT). That was made especially clear when we get to Desi's glorious murder whereupon I thought, fuck yeah - this was the one scene where Fincher really let go and had fun. Considering the trashy nature of the whole thing (which is not to say it's shallow) I wanted the film to be more outrageous. Less like this slick and well-oiled twist machine and more like something directed by Paul Verhoeven circa 1990. All that said, most of the novel's content ends up safely in the film and it's certainly valuable at least for how much conversation it provokes. (Evidenced by this board, for one). Overall it's a sharp satire with strong performances and I love how Fincher made everyone's narciccism the main theme of the movie. It's not immediately obvious, but practically every single scene in the film has characters putting on masks to achieve their goals or simply to create the best possible impression of themselves. In the book it's just one of many angles, but the film pushes it to the forefront and I think it explores that idea better than it does any others. Last note: as far as I'm concerned, Gone Girl is neither feminist nor mysogynistic. What it is is beautifully executed pulp. If it's mysogynistic then so is Double Indemnity.

I loved Cuckoo's Nest when I was about 14, but then I read the book and thought they took the easiest and safest possible approach in adapting it. I haven't had any desire to rewatch the film ever since.

I always thought Unbroken would be "more commercial than critic darling". Not to say it can't turn out to be a very good movie, but it's a big studio-financed biopic that I'd expect to be done in broad, crowd-pleasing strokes.

Guardians, Hobbit, Into the Woods I guess. No idea who wins. Guardians would be cool considering they did award Star Trek '09 here.

Well, let's see. How mainstream is A History of Violence?

I still think he gets in. He was almost nominated for TGWTDT which is 10 times the trashy airport novel that Gone Girl is, and was a much less successful and talked-about film (at least after people saw it).

I might have understood the logic if they'd done it before seeing the movie, but after? Seriously?

I'd certainly expect Fincher to get in before Eastwood and Nolan.

These days it's a lose-lose situation every time a "prestige" film doesn't get any critical support. Both arthouse and multiplex audiences are going to bail on it and inevitably find other films to watch. MW&C seems like a textbook case.

Under for sure. With luck it'll be sitting at just over $500k total after this weekend. And next weekend it'll lose a shitton of theaters.

What's surprising here is that TDKR placed #80 last year. Either this is the best argument against the new point system, or people are insane.

"If you cut off my head, what would I say... Me and my head, or me and my body? What right has my head to call itself me?" Excellent, underappreciated film that combines sinister atmosphere, terrific dark comedy and a Polanski performance in the center that holds it all together. (I haven't yet seen The Double, but just from the trailers it seemed to me that Polanski's work here was a huge inspiration on Jesse Eisenberg's more timid and shy character. They even look nearly identical). The ending is the delightfully creepy cherry on top. Besides Lost Highway, I haven't seen any other films that pull off a literally circular narrative nearly as successfully as this one. As far as Polanski's filmography goes, I'd rank it below Chinatown, Macbeth and Rosemary's Baby, but above everything else I've seen.

What's sad is that White apparently used to write legitimate, thoughtful criticism back in the day. I read his Criterion essay for David Gordon Green's George Washington after watching the movie, and it was both beautifully written and eye-opening in some respects. If /when he bothered, he could really make you see a film from an interesting, unique angle; unfortunately, he took that ability to a laughable extreme ultimately becoming nothing but a troll.

It's not an opinion, it's worthless contrarianism.

Felicity Jones is your best bet for the fifth slot.

Claire Danes might have won for Temple Grandin over Portman (or over Bullock in 2009 if the film had been released two months earlier). Douglas vs McConaughey would have been interesting too.

Well, Rey = the dog. And like the dog, he develops a connection with Eric and subsequently needs to die to reinforce the film's main theme. I understand that you could find the way he was killed forced if you hadn't been onboard before that, but for me it worked well enough that I never questioned it.

What about the ending doesn't make sense?

Emma Stone - Birdman Carrie Coon - Gone Girl Patricia Arquette - Boyhood (winner) Keira Knightley - The Imitation Game Laura Dern - Wild / Meryl Streep - Into the Woods

Tale of Princess Kaguya sure looks like it's in.

Proposition is one of my favorites though I saw it before I read any McCarthy. I can see the similarities but back then I thought it was inspired first and foremost by Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now. Pearce's journey is very similar.

It's got Rooney Mara in the lead so it can't be all bad.

The dialogue makes it what it is. I'm certainly not against Shakespeare adaptations that don't keep the dialogue, but I can hardly comprehend criticizing those that stay faithful to it. It's like saying Tarantino's films would be "so much better" without all the witty speeches and digressions and references, or classical Hollywood noirs would be "so much better" without all the wit and innuendo and cool one-liners.

I want someone to do a major Shakespeare film, period. We're getting Macbeth with Fassbender and Cotillard soon, which is cool, but I'd like to see someone like PTA or Andrew Dominik adapt Shakespeare with a well-sized budget and a killer cast and great production values.

It's great to witness guys like Fincher, Scorsese and Tarantino (and, on a smaller scale, Wes Anderson and Kathryn Bigelow and others I'm surely forgetting) have their biggest financial successes ever. Even if the films themselves are not the peaks of their respective filmographies, they're still head and shoulders above 95% of everything else in wide release.