comment #1

Spacesheik says ...

(Gets the popcorn out)

comment #2

Craig Kennedy says ...

Hmm...I liked Munich and United 93 so where does that leave me? I guess I'll have to see Zodiac to find out.

comment #3

jesse says ...

You've nailed Poland's screenwriter-y affinity for movies with "good structure" (as evidenced by his comment -- which I also recall from his trashing of the wonderful 25TH HOUR -- that ZODIAC "has no clock" ... while we're speaking in cheesy screenwriterese, why don't you just complain that the "beats" are unevenly timed?). However, I'd say MUNICH has more in common with the movies you tend to like way more than Poland (CHILDREN OF MEN, for example) than, say, DREAMGIRLS. You seem to assume MUNICH isn't subtle or ambiguous or beautifully shot or a "grower" simply because you don't much like it.

comment #4

Colin says ...

So, in essence, Poland is saying:

1. Why isn't Fincher repeating himself?
2. Why is there no standard story arc?
3. Why didn't Fincher make a commercial movie?
4. Why isn't Fincher repeating himself?

My anticipation level just went up a few notches.

comment #5

MASON says ...

Poland obviously has a strong opinion on how stories should be told. He seems to have a real problem getting behind anything that doesn't follow screenwriting 101 structure. Who knows? Maybe he read a lot of screenwriting books back when he was writing for Aaron Spelling.

Or maybe he just hates Wells and is predisposed to hate anything Wells likes.

Or hey, maybe it's just different strokes for different folks.

comment #6

malibugigolo says ...

the malibu gigolo finds it funny that people subscribe to the notion that there is a proper screenwriting structure, as the one that Mr. Poland is basing his certainty on, Casablanca, was made up on the fly.

comment #7

wayne76 says ...

Yeah, way to write an actual review there, Poland. Why even bother to write that?

comment #8

JD says ...

Jeff, United 93 is a 100% aggresiively plot driven film... and I love it. Where are you getting this peculiar idea that it's some kind of mysterious mood piece? It's a friggin horror film. And I'm not sure how you're missing the dozens of parallels between Zodiac and Munich. They're both epic 70s movies (in period and aesthetic) about a series of murders and the futile search for closure. I can almost guarantee you that Fincher loved Munich.

comment #9

wayne76 says ...

More often than not, I read Poland shaking my head, but I must confess to loving Munich, clunky cross-cutting notwithstanding.

comment #10

ROTC says ...

Nobody but nobody should ever take Poland seriously as a film reviewer. My favorite recent example of how clueless he is? He proclaimed The Family Stone - an ABC Family Network feature if ever there was one - to be an out-and-out landmark film. Just pathetic.

comment #11

PaulJBis says ...

Actually, I remember that Jeff liked "The family stone" too. And so did I. It didn't reinvent the wheel, not by far, but it did what it did (a Christmas family movie) with assurance and good craftmanship. What's wrong with that?

comment #12

Ju-osh says ...

Factory Girl was blah, but Jeff loved that. He also got 'fumes' from Miami Vice and went on and on (though not at an Eddie Murphy level) about brilliance and originality of The Wedding Crashers. Does that mean we shouldn't 'take him seriously as a film reviewer'?
(Okay, so for the Eddie Murphy stuff we probably shouldn't...)

comment #13

thorsen1nk says ...

David Poland is a giant, sopping wet douche of a human being. To paraphrase a great line in State of Grace, every breath he takes insults me.

comment #14

storymark says ...

"David Poland is a giant, sopping wet douche of a human being. To paraphrase a great line in State of Grace, every breath he takes insults me. "

Wow. Hyperbole overload. At least I hope.

otherwise, how sad for you that the mere existance of a critic you don't like has such a profound effect uppon you.

comment #15

wayne76 says ...

The Family Stone sucked. How sad that Diane Keaton is a red flag now.

comment #16

le corbeau says ...

"Jeff, United 93 is a 100% aggresiively plot driven film... and I love it. Where are you getting this peculiar idea that it's some kind of mysterious mood piece?"

Imagine Bruce Willis as a passenger on the plane. That's the United 93 that didn't get made*-- the one where we get to know each of five or six key characters, we're introduced to something about them that might be useful later (he knows how to fly! She has a cell phone! He had to use the fire extinguisher on a plane once!). Where United 93 seems to all take place in the moment, nothing is ordained to work out in any particular way.

* Except maybe as that A&E TV movie.

comment #17

Colin says ...

Has anyone here actually seen A&E's Flight 93? I'm wondering if it's any good and/or if it would make me appreciate Greengrass' film even more.

comment #18

ROTC says ...

PaulJBis. Poland didn't simply "like" The Family Stone, He went ga-ga, raving, whipped-out-his-dick lunatic over it. He actually went so far as to openly declare it to be one of the "landmark comedies":

http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2005/08/masterpiece_of.html#comments

He also proclaimed, "Tom Bezucha wrote and directed this old-fashioned family comedic drama with a mastery of skills mostly forgotten in Hollywood. ... One of 2005's many Rorschach test movies, either you accept the Stones or you skip them. Me? Loved 'em madly."

http://www.thehotbutton.com/today/hot.button/2005_thb/051230a_fri.html

So it's not merely a matter of him having enjoyed that piddling little trifle, as I'm sure many people did. It's that he believed it belonged in the pantheon of great films that really matter, the ones that are an essential part of cinematic history and all that goes with it.

Objectively, that makes Dave Poland nothing more than another twittish naif with a website.

comment #19

JD says ...

Mgmax, that may be true, but United 93 is still completely plot-driven. And that's not a bad thing. Why does everyone pretend to hate plot? Many great movies are plot-driven.

comment #20

Josh Massey says ...

Ugh, Wells v. Poland again?

Both are hit-and-miss, just like any other person you compare films with.

I loved Munich, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, United 93, and consider Children of Men the best film of 2007.

I think Wedding Crashers is insanely overrated, think Eddie Murphy should already have his Oscar (for Nutty 1), and forgot about every detail of Dreamgirls by the time I got to the theater parking lot.

And I hit both sites every day, somehow failing to love or loathe either writer with any consistency. Is there something wrong with me?

comment #21

le corbeau says ...

JD, nobody's arguing that it's two hours of impressionistic scenes of flying, they're saying it's not plot-driven when what they mean is "it's not structured in terms of recognizable character types acting in predictable ways according to the standard storytelling devices of commercial cinema circa 2006."

comment #22

Ju-osh says ...

This is a re-post of something Nicol D posted over at Poland's site. I think she/he makes some pretty valid points (except I like Se7en a bit more than he/she does).

"The problem wth David Fincher is that he has never been DAVID FINCHER.

What I mean by that, is that he has never been the genius auteur that so many want him to be and he has always been scattershot.

Alien 3 is a huge miss that does not age well.

The Game is an inconsequential popcorn muncher.

Seven is a good thriller but I find the deaths very...cheesy and not scary at all.

Panic Room is a good thriller but also just a popcorn muncher.

As for his 'classic'. I really like Fight Club but it also has some huge detriments . It was the first DVD I rented and how disappointed I was to hear a commentary of the creative types (including Fincher) saying how so much of it was fluke and not intended. They sounded like frat boys. The film immediately cheapened in my eyes. It is also a film with a message plagued by the messenger.

Do you real want a lecture on oil consumption by an oil company? No. Do you want a lecture on chastity by Jimmy (I hired teen prostitutes) Swaggart? No.

Why would I want a lecture on materialism and corporate greed by uber-wealthy Hollywood actors and directors?

I will see Zodiac and am sure it will be interesting, but I take all of the 'it's genius' talk with a heay grain of salt. Fincher is a great visual stylist but he is no genius.

He is the 'fan boy auteur' with a visual style that makes them wet themselves. He is not particularly deep and other then walllowing in darkness, his films say very little about the human condition.

Understand I think he is talented, but I see no great depth there. And just as there are 'suits' who will balk at his 'uncommercial' choices, there are just as many fans who will wet themselves just by virtue of them and be equally uncritical."

Posted by: Nicol D at February 16, 2007 10:14 AM

comment #23

Josh Massey says ...

I've loved every Fincher film, including Alien 3. I like it more than The Game, in fact.

Seven and Fight Club are all-timers, classics that will still be talked about in 50 years. Not many directors have two of those in their resume.

comment #24

Colin says ...

1. I'm not going to argue with Alien 3. I remember liking it well enough when I saw it at 15 in theaters in 1992, and I haven't seen it since.

2. The Game as inconsequential? I'd have to disagree. There's a lot of themes packed into that thriller, some of which are further developed in Fight Club about society becoming emasculated zombies. Also, the lead character tries to commit suicide near the end. I wouldn't call a movie with that development an inconsequential thriller.

3. The killings in Seven aren't "scary." In my mind, that misses the point. But then, it's tough to say too much without knowing what Nicol D means by scary.

4. I would agree that Panic Room is for the most part a popcorn muncher. There's some deeper stuff in there, but it's much more of a standard thriller than The Game.

5. So, Fight Club is weakened by...the commentary track? Hollywood actors/directors making a film about materialism? That seems like a pretty weak argument to me. And, yeah, I know that some people call Fight Club too preachy, but you have to consider who (what?) exactly is doing the preaching.

comment #25

ROTC says ...

Like many viewers, I was completely bowled over when Fight Club premiered in theatres. Then I watched it again when the 2-disc DVD hit the stores, and I thought it was still pretty fantastic. But when I viewed the DVD again a few months ago, I found that it sucked a lot more than I remembered. It's very much a zeitgeist movie, but the zeitgeist has changed a lot (at least as far as it affects me personally) since the movie came out pre-9/11. IMHO, once you are familiar with all of Fight Club's lunatic plot twists, pretty much all that's left is the film's in-your-face visual style. That's still impressive, but it's not as much of a lasting artistic achievement as I used to think it was.

On the other hand, I think Se7en gets better with every viewing. And Panic Room is an underappreciated piece of whiz-bang commercial filmmaking.

comment #26

Craig Kennedy says ...

I dig Wells' positive reviews, even if I disagree with them. His negative reviews are another story. They usually gripe about things that are irrelevent to whether the movie was actually any good or whether it accomplished what it set out to do. They reek of having some kind of agenda independent from the film itself (ie Poland liked it, Time magazine liked it, Peter Jackson is big hairy and unsubtle, etc.)

I'm not ready to proclaim Fincher a genius, but I like all his stuff to one degree or another with Fight Club being at the top and Panic Room being at the bottom. As Nicol D said, I think of him as primarily a visual stylist. That would be bad if that's all he was, but usually he brings more than that to a film and he's one of a handful of filmmakers I'm curious about whatever they do regardless of the subject, cast or reviews.

Zodiac is one of the big ones for me in 2007.

comment #27

Colin says ...

ROTC, how has the zeitgeist changed?

comment #28

JD says ...

I have to agree with Colin. Much of what you hear on commentary tracks is reverse pretentiousness: actors, writers, and directors pretending their work has no depth or complexity (a la John Ford), though I dont remember noticing this on the Fight Club DVD. Also, The Game is complex, if a bit misanthropic (like all of Fincher's work). It basically argues that humans are robots whose every move, thought, and impulse can be predicted and anticipated. It would actually be a far more provocative film if it challenged and/or satirized this perspective. Of course, given Fincher's background in advertising (not to mention his somewhat robotic, anti-spontaneous approach to filmmaking), it makes sense that he would perceive people as programmable and predictable.

comment #29

ROTC says ...

"ROTC, how has the zeitgeist changed?"

Mostly, I think nobody is talking as much about angry white males as they were back then.

comment #30

Colin says ...

Hmm...ROTC, I'd have to disagree with that. There are a ton of movies about how there has developed an extended adolescence in men. Sure, it's mostly done in the comedy genre, but I would say that the theme isn't all that different from some of the stuff touched on in Fight Club.

comment #31

DavidF says ...

I'll throw in my 2-cents.

Alien3 is a deeply flawed movie but well worth watching to see what Fincher salvaged of it. It's a crime that the recent DVD documentary dances around all the problems that went on with that movie but, having not worked in the film industry I'm still guessing that the lack of script was a factor.
The funeral/alien birth scene is still as cinematic and "beautiful" as anything in any of the Alien movies.
I think it ages well (especially in the semi-director's cut now available) as a curiosity piece if nothing else.

Se7en (even typing it out that way makes me feel pretentious) is genius. Like Silence of the Lambs it's been copied to ill effect so many times since it's easy to forget how troubling it seemed at the time. Don't let Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd ruin these movies for you.

The Game is entertaining but not GREAT. Same with Panic Room. Both show slivers of greatness.
Didn't Fincher get in a fight with his DP because he actually wanted to shoot Panic Room with no lights?

Fight Club is genius and I don't see any pretentiousness on the commentary. On the contrary, I think it's fascinating to see that Edward Norton and Brad Pitt actually have IDEAS about the movie. It gives me new respect for them.
Norton tells a great story about how Richard Schickel slammed the movie; Norton compares it to Schickel attacking all the critics who slammed The Wild One while it meant so much to his own generation and then utterly failed to percieve the same thing when he got old.
As a general rule I trust Ebert but his description of the movie as "facist" is misguided and well-countered in the commentaries.

I have high hopes for Zodiac. Because of Fincher and the cast he's assembled (when will Ruffalo be a superstar?!) and the look that it's been in the trailers/stills.

It seems wonky that shooting in daylight is considered some kind of artistic progress for a director - whatever. Fincher has REAL talent and it remains to be seen when/if he achieves some broad mainstream success instead of being regarded "As That Guy Who Does Edgy, Dark, Stylish Movies That Are Cool In Their Way."

Plus I love that everyone (including Sigourney Weaver and Jodie Foster only call him "Fincher.")

comment #32

ROTC says ...

"There are a ton of movies about how there has developed an extended adolescence in men." I think there's a profound difference between recent films' typically light-hearted portrayal of "extended adolescence in men" and Fight Club's explosively violent, angry white males. They may be flip-sides of the same coin, but I think the cultural zeitgeist has flipped to the opposite, less confrontational side.

Or maybe it's just me. All I can say is, watch Fight Club again and see if it still works for you the way it did before. It doesn't for me.

comment #33

sweet_billy says ...

god, would you 2 just get a room already and screw each others brains out?

comment #34

Craig Kennedy says ...

To me Fight Club was about more than just angry white men. It was about existence in an empty, dead-end, consumerist culture and doing something...anything...to snap yourself out of that. Maybe that's only a white male problem, but I don't see it that way and, if anything, the problem has grown worse since 9/11.

I think ROTC is right and Fight Club is very much a product of its time, but so is Dr. Strangelove. It doesn't have the exact same power it must've had even up through the 80's, but it's still a classic.

comment #35

le corbeau says ...

"ROTC, how has the zeitgeist changed?"

Blowing up a bunch of skyscrapers because you don't like comfy materialism maybe isn't as cute as it was before 9/11?

comment #36

le corbeau says ...

By the way, if you want to ruin The Game, just watch John Frankenheimer's Seconds, and see everything that they stole from that 60s masterpiece and turned into a make-Michael-Douglas-a-better-yuppie movie.

comment #37

ROTC says ...

cjKennedy, I like your comparison to Dr. Strangelove, and you could even throw in A Clockwork Orange as well. But that only goes so far because IMHO Fight Club nowhere near approaches the brilliant, eternal wit and insight of those Kubrick classics.

And, yeah, you're right about Fight Club's take on consumerist culture, but I think it now feels like the script carries it too far into a noxious artifice of its own.

But like I said, maybe it's just me.

comment #38

dre says ...

mom and dad are fighting again.

comment #39

Craig Kennedy says ...

ROTC you're right about Fight Club vs. Strangelove, of course. And in fairness I haven't watched Fight Club in quite a while and I might have the same reaction as you.

I hate it when you watch a movie you love and it kind of disappoints. That happened to me the last time I watched Brazil. Hopefully I was just in the wrong mood.

comment #40

ROTC says ...

"Blowing up a bunch of skyscrapers because you don't like comfy materialism maybe isn't as cute as it was before 9/11?"

My point exactly, Mgmax. The members of Fight Club are now all too unavoidably comparable to Al Queda. Some might argue that that makes the movie prescient in a variety of ways, but I don't buy it. It just makes the movie feel like more of a visceral jerk-off than it did before.

comment #41

Craig Kennedy says ...

All this talk, good and bad has got me wanting to watch Fight Club again.

comment #42

le corbeau says ...

You could also argue that it puts al-Qaeda in perspective-- what is Bin Laden, after all, besides another pouting, spoiled rich kid blowing up things out of self-disgust, and to get attention from Daddy and his new wife?

comment #43

ROTC says ...

"You could also argue that it puts al-Qaeda in perspective-- what is Bin Laden, after all, besides another pouting, spoiled rich kid blowing up things out of self-disgust, and to get attention from Daddy and his new wife?"

No doubt that argument can be made. But that doesn't automatically make the film's perspective any less banal.

comment #44

The Movie Man says ...

Nice thread guys, wish I could've gotten onboard sooner. I am very excited about ZODIAC and am looking forward to a talented director embracing the 1970s film vibe without putting quote marks on it.

PANIC ROOM is the only Fincher film that doesn't work for me, I'm not sure why he couldn't have held out for a good script to try some of those masturbatory camera moves on. I think ALIEN 3 is criminally underrated.

comment #45

jeffmcm says ...

I'm glad to see I'm not along in thinking David Poland's movie tastes are overly screenwritery. He has a knack for not noticing the visual, odd but not uncommon for a film writer.

comment #46

Craig Kennedy says ...

Is it a safe generalization to say the people who like Fincher the most tend to like Panic Room the least?

I thought it was a serviceably entertaining thriller, not on par with his other stuff, but not bad at all. But then I haven't seen it since it came out, so maybe I'd think differently if I saw it again.

comment #47

Colin says ...

cjKennedy, I would say that is an accurate generalization.

comment #48

Colin says ...

For those who have seen the alternate version of Alien 3, is it much better/different than the theatrical version?

comment #49

The Movie Man says ...

I'm flinching at that "criminally underrated" in my lost post, that's what lots of coffee and boring work can do for you. ALIEN 3 really is a misunderstood, beautiful,daringly counter-franchise movie, and should be re-evaluated (though I guess it sort of already has been.)

As for the review thing, I agree that Poland's tastes are very lame, and his reviews usually follow suit. CJ's got Jeff's reviews right, he can do a hell of a positive notice (his ZODIAC was good, as was his mini-review of BREACH) but his pans tend to be shrill and bitchy. Of course it doesn't help that when Jeff pans a film, he usually pans it over a period of four or five weeks.

comment #50

L.B. says ...

PANIC ROOM is a decent potboiler. If it was directed by Jonathan Mostow it would have less baggage. Fincher's in a realm where "decent" turns into "bad" really fast. For good reasons. We expect more from some.

comment #51

Craig Kennedy says ...

LB, that's kind of the point I was indirectly aiming at and I agree.

Movie Man, I think he's finally stopped panning Marie Antoinette and Stranger than Fiction. Tbank god there won't be sequels to those or it would go on for years like with Lord of the Rings. I'll be curious to see what the target of his wrath becomes when he drops this Murphy thing.

comment #52

Josh Massey says ...

"Is it a safe generalization to say the people who like Fincher the most tend to like Panic Room the least?"

I think most people would say Alien 3, though my least favorite is The Game.