Saltburn (2023)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Much like the tonal tightrope she mastered in her debut, Promising Young Woman, Saltburn is an aptly fitting sophomore feature for Emerald Fennell. As in that first film, this one doesn't really tread new ground; rather, it takes a familiar trope and turns it on its head. Previously, Fennell took the "rape revenge" arc and flipped the script, literally, turning the avenging angel into a self-sacrificing shell of a stalker and master manipulator. Now, in Saltburn, she takes the sociopathic class-climber and uses that lens to critique the wealthy elite and skewer their polite mannerisms that disguise cruelty and indifference.

Essentially -- and, surprisingly, without credit -- a reimagining of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, this story takes place in the English countryside in the mid-aughts. This is crucial, both in terms of geographical location (the original heavily utilized a tour of exotic Italy to contrast with the titular character's struggles in New York City) and time period (when, in the 2000s, certain vicious anxieties about acceptance of gay adolescents were reaching a breaking point). These changes make quite a difference to both aesthetics and theming, making latent queerness explicit while also making the entire plot more believable for anyone not accustomed to vacationing in romantic Mediterranean locales. We can all understand the eccentricities of an aristocratic Oxford family in their manor, if only because we know about Downton Abbey and the eventual decline of such estates.

Few actors were a better choice for the lead here than Barry Keoghan, who has made quite a career for himself in the last seven years playing possibly dangerous creeps, weirdos who don't quite fit in and are almost certainly unreliable in the most violent way. Here as Oliver Quick, his chameleonic tendencies showcase Keoghan's range in new ways, as we see him subtly shift his mannerisms and voice in almost every scene, to better ingratiate himself to his scene partner and their version of acceptable or endearing behavior; in this way, his performance reminds me a lot of Michelle Williams in All the Money in the World but with a much nastier tone. But Oliver is not just a scary social climber, oh no: he's a scholarship student at Oxford, shunned for his perceived poverty and relative lack of social graces (although he is completely unreliable about his past, even if we weren't to be introduced to his family eventually). 

While it's never quite clear what exactly motivates Oliver, he soon notices Felix Catton, an impossibly beautiful upperclassman (in every sense) whose cool suavity and seductive popularity sets him worlds apart from Oliver's reality. It's unclear in their early scenes whether Oliver wants Felix as a friend, a lover, or a role model, but his obsession is apparent. It's clear he has a long game in mind when, after their creepy meet-cute (is "meet-creep" a thing yet?), Felix and Oliver develop an unexpected camaraderie that even Felix's friends decry as weird. Part of us wants to root for the hot, popular guy to chum it up with the gutter kid, because that's sweet; part of us wants them to fall in love because if Julia Roberts can do it, these queer kids should! But the bigger part of us knows this isn't healthy or normal, and Oliver's leechlike ambitions will cause many problems to come. Jacob Elordi is making quite a big splash in highbrow cinema lately between Euphoria, Priscilla, Deep Water (also a Highsmith story), and an upcoming Paul Schrader film, and he knowingly weaponizes his good looks and mellifluous voice to devastating effect for both us and Oliver.

When Felix invites Oliver to his home, Saltburn, for the summer holiday, the latent tensions and suspected manipulations come to fruition, making up the body of the film. As Felix introduces Oliver to the sprawling property and mansion, we also meet his various family members in increasingly hilarious ways. These people are the proverbially "stupid rich," from Richard E. Grant's sweetly infantile father ("Sir James," as if he could be a knight) and Rosamund Pike's deliciously glamorous and dubiously "woke" mother ("Elspeth," if you please) to Alison Oliver's stylishly dispossessed sister ("Venetia," the sole possible reference to Italy and also a literally depressed sinking city) and Archie Madekwe's refreshingly clear-eyed but desperate-to-be-included queer cousin Farleigh ("far" as the only non-nuclear family member and effectively masking his bitchy faux-superiority from the family on "lee"ward side of politeness). Oh, and then Carey Mulligan rejoins Fennell in the most outrageous supporting role here as "Poor Dear Pamela," a houseguest for no discernible reason or rhyme, who is blissfully unaware that she has overstayed her welcome, although it's also notably possible that Elspeth's professed lesbian fling of the past is in fact not so past and might very well be Pamela.

In case it all sounds like too much at this point, don't fret. It's not. It's a perfect blend of substance and style, a wickedly blasé take on roasting the upper class while also raising questions about those of us who idolize them. The wickedly mean-spiritedness of the film is always a little murky, and we're never quite sure if we should be laughing aloud or cringing in shame. Saltburn is always beautiful to behold, though, both due to its lavish production value and especially Linus Sandgren's suggestive cinematography. The filmmakers' presentation of their world starts fairly accessibly and formally, but by our actual introduction to Saltburn itself, even the camera and edits start to lean into the characters' own perceptions of reality, addled as they are with alcohol, drugs, lust, and confused emotional states. The film is lush until it becomes garish, the summer night's dream tipping ever more into nightmare. Evening gowns and suits notwithstanding, the most shocking moments of the film involve multiple bodily fluids and nakedness of a sort that reveal the gleeful evil at the heart of these characters and the film itself.

The ending, however, frustrates me to distraction. Fennell's slyly funny project, both sumptuous and insidious, is best when it is also provocative. The same was true of her debut feature. Little is more provocative than some ambiguity, some suspense, as any filmmaker of dark dramas and thrillers would tell you since at least Hitchcock's reign. But in the final, I don't know, fifteen minutes of the film, Fennell makes a disastrous blunder in depicting -- almost like dramatized flashbacks in a Dateline episode -- exact moments of Oliver's criminality. We see him calculate and orchestrate his initial meeting with Felix, supply Venetia with razors, ruin Farleigh's prospects, poison Felix after his rejection, and ultimately murder Elspeth. For all the empowering moments of deduction and suspicion Fennell has provided her audience, in the final moments she acts as though she didn't trust us at all, holding our hand and explaining every gruesome beat that made her film so grimly compelling. Leaving all those moments vague would have been infinitely more powerful -- haunting our minds during and after the viewing -- especially given the film's final sequence of Oliver dancing nude through the halls of Saltburn.

I Care a Lot (2021)

 Score: 4.5 / 5

Spoiler alert: Marla Grayson doesn't care.

Marla Grayson cares about her clients. She cares about getting lonely, elderly folk into nursing homes. Working closely with a doctor friend who can help her identify well-off patients on the brink of dementia, Marla petitions the court for an order asserting the patients can no longer care for themselves. Acting as the new legal guardian, she spirits her wards away to a nursing home whose manager is also working in tandem with Marla. Meanwhile, as guardian, Marla can siphon away every penny from her charge, leaving the infirm destitute and any remaining family or friends at arm's length.

Marla Grayson cares about her peers. Dr. Karen Amos (Alicia Witt) takes care of the first steps, and manager Sam Rice (Damian Young) does most of the heavy lifting -- via his staff, of course. And there's Marla's partner in business and in love, Fran (Eiza Gonzalez), who researches the potential wards to make sure there aren't any troublesome kids or spouses and that there is in fact a nest egg in store. The movie begins with another success story for Marla, as the court -- headed by a friendly and naive judge (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) -- denies a challenge to her guardianship. Shortly after, though, the ward dies, and the unexpected vacancy leads Marla to make a rather quick decision.

Marla Grayson cares about money. Her doctor friend recommends Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest), a "cherry" as the vampiric women put it. She has no known family and she has a lot of money. Marla seems to be little more than the epitome of avarice, an entrepreneur who pirates booty out of people to dim to stop her and from a system too corrupt to save. She points out more than once that her methods are, largely, quite legal, implying that she's simply using the tools given to her by a culture of greed, misogyny, and ageism (it's interesting that her lesbian identity is never an issue in this movie). Despite her apparently passionate defense of her behavior to the judge early in the film, when her ward dies, she smoothly pulls her picture off the wall and trashes it without so much as a blink. Pike's cold, bitchy excellence is dazzling to behold in even these briefest of moments.

Marla Grayson cares about her appearance. Played to utter perfection by Rosamund Pike and her full star-power glory, the character is a vampire in broad daylight and light, monochromatic suits. Often shielded by oversized sunglasses, her sassy blonde bob, and smoke from her large vape pen, she nevertheless is always on the offensive, calculating her next move and searching for vulnerability. My favorite scene of hers is when Jennifer Peterson's dubious lawyer (Chris Messina) shows up, looking phenomenal in many-piece suits of vibrant hues, and the two square off in her office. It's a deadly game wherein two sociopaths slowly rip through the constraints of politeness. It's wicked fun, and the movie never quite recovers from it. At least, not in terms of performances; from here out, it's all about the plot.

Marla Grayson cares about control. She controls her clients, manipulates her fellow conspirators, and even the movie itself. From the start, we're put tightly in her headspace for most of the movie, even subjected at the beginning and end to her voiceover, a cold and ruthless diatribe about the nature of fairness in a world that has never been fair to her. But this isn't a revenge story; at least, it's not hers. Because before long, strangers start showing up looking for Jennifer Peterson. Large men attempt to break her out of the care facility. Her lawyer materializes, though he has no proof of being her lawyer. And when something terrible happens to Dr. Amos, Marla and Fran realize too late that they've finally targeted the wrong "cherry." Dianne Wiest, known for her idiosyncratic lilting voice and sickly sweet mannerisms, shifts into a terrifying creature eager for vengeance; she's a Lear raging against the ties that bind, but the difference is that she has hope of her own deliverance. "He's coming for you," she giggles darkly through blurry eyes in the nursing home, even as Marla determines to torture her in the meantime.

Marla Grayson cares about herself. And so, when Fran tries to downplay the imminent threat caused by Jennifer and the men looking for her -- I won't tell you who or why, because it's an absolute delight when it happens -- Marla rebukes her naiveté. "Don't get fooled by old people. Even sadistic, immoral assholes get old." One wonders what will become of Marla when she ages. Then again, she may not. The film begins with a cool, stylish air of pitch-black comedy, a satire of society and money and age plastered with vivid colors and underscored by synth-music that wouldn't be out of place in a John Carpenter movie from the '80s. But by about the halfway point, things get a lot darker and almost all of the comedy drops out, leaving a crime thriller that doesn't thrill so much as titillate. We watch with morbid interest as the chase becomes a standoff and the players seek the upper hand in brutality.

In the end, Marla must face an enemy she never expected, and decides that she wants to live. But her ability to care about most of the things that were so important to her before slip from her grasp. So, much as our former first lady declared to the world, "I really don't care, do u?" Marla Grayson, as we've established, doesn't care. She just wants. And it's as satisfying as it is terrifying.

Radioactive (2020)

 Score: 4 / 5

For a biopic, it's not particularly grounded in reality. But that's precisely what I so enjoyed about Radioactive, Marjane Satrapi's high-concept investigation of the life of Marie Curie. This isn't meant to be terribly realistic in terms of historical accuracy, and it's not meant to be measured by traditional standards of biographical movies. Satrapi and screenwriter Jack Thorne (known for eschewing timelines and choosing magic over the mundane) here turn Curie's life into a fascinating, time-jumping adventure into the famed woman's psyche. More importantly, they seem to consider her own opinions of her legacy, neither the glory or horrors of which she could have possibly known.

The always brilliant Rosamund Pike continues her streak of surprising us with unexpected characters and brutal emotions as the famed physicist and chemist. Working through the time jumps in Curie's story -- from her early professional career in 1890s Paris to her death in 1934 -- Pike fires on all fronts, stealing every scene even as she carries the movie. While her dialogue often pronounces its themes and motivations with total disregard for subtlety or complexity, she delivers it with enough conviction and pride that it usually sticks the landing. Relishing the pragmatism and fiery spirit of her character, Pike often squares off with Sam Riley, who plays the Polish immigrant's scientific partner and husband Pierre Curie. Some of my favorite scenes feature the two interrogating their feelings for each other as if using the scientific method to test their own emotional journeys.

Most fascinating about this uncommonly straightforward feminist project, however, is Satrapi's direction. Some might call it heavy-handed and artificial, but I'd liken it to a Tennessee Williams memory play; after all, it begins with the collapse of our protagonist shortly before her death, and the entirety of the film comprises flashbacks (and flash-forwards) as she reviews her life, thankfully without voiceover narration. As such, it features a dreamlike aesthetic wherein feelings and themes become literal symbols. When Pierre and Marie kiss for the first time, a large open flame in the background literalizes their bright, burning passion. Indeed, the picture is never less than beautiful to be hold, with much credit due to cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, whose body of major work with Lars von Trier and Danny Boyle, among others, is never less than dazzling. The many laboratory scenes, which could so easily have been cold and clinical, are rendered through gorgeously filtered light, reinforcing the dreamlike aura of memory. And then there are the impossibly beautiful moments of Marie in a dark void -- usually while in emotional turmoil -- lit by the light of radioactive, emerald stars.

Even as the dialogue sometimes lacks depth, the same cannot be said for Radioactive's dramatic structure, and it is in this that the film most succeeds as a biopic. Sure, the actual plot follows concrete points in her life like those you might read in a children's biography book about women of science or Nobel Prize winners. It's not deep, but a good refresher for those of us who don't know everything about famous physicists, if you take it with grains of dramatic salt. But interspersed with her victories and failures are the (perhaps inevitable?) consequences of her discoveries. Brief scenes show a doctor offering radiation therapy to the father of a little boy dying of cancer, x-rays saving lives and limbs on battlefields, an atomic bomb dropping towards the Hiroshima skyline, and a particularly brutal transition into the Chernobyl disaster. It is this unique, consistent attention to a very palpable legacy that sets Radioactive apart from so many others of its ilk.

A Private War (2018)

Score: 4 / 5

It only makes sense that a master documentarian would segue into narrative film through the story of someone like them. And, really, for an emotional tale of obsession and revelation, it might not get any richer than the story of Marie Colvin. Colvin's tale as depicted in this film is less an odyssey across war-torn Asia and more of, well, her own "private war," her relationship with her job, her work, and her life.

It's less a war thriller than a war drama: essentially, the character of Marie Colvin becomes the lens through which we see the world. Rosamund Pike delivers an awesome performance, and it's her gritty realism -- and arresting deep voice -- that hammers this movie home. We begin with (though we may not know it yet) the scene of her death in Homs from the perspective of a drone surveying the ungodly wreckage. We immediately fly back in time and though the beats are nominally structured in terms of time "before Homs" -- thereby creating a cinematic nihilism that's hard to shake -- the film takes on a nebulous quality in which we shift from conflict to conflict without much detail.

And I think that's the point. It's not a Zero Dark Thirty exercise in specificity, but rather an impressionistic montage of a episodes in a woman's life that shape her character. The wailing women, demolished buildings, dead bodies, men with guns: all are largely interchangeable, much like the wars that cause them. Suffering and pain and destruction are the product of all wars, and to someone determined to live in these areas, all wars thus become the same. It's the individuals she meets and the stories she tells that matter most.

Most to her, that is. On screen, she's what matters to us. Chainsmoking her way through each frame, she catalogs the psychological and physiological damage of her work. Panic attacks, a gruff demeanor, shapeless work khakis, and her iconic black eye patch all disguise a vibrant woman lusting for life. She wears designer bras and enacts apparently satisfying sexual encounters (even with Stanley Tucci!). Most tellingly, she actively hates the disasters in which she finds herself, but nonetheless feels compelled to engage. She suggests to her ex-husband that they marry again, though he says it ended badly the first time. Similarly, even after she loses her eye, she goes back out into the field knowing full well the dangers in store.

In fact, she hates the wars and violence as much as the film's director, and that's what makes this film so interesting. We're witnessing people drowning in a phenomenon they hate and yet consciously -- intentionally -- continue to throw themselves into. And while the idea that war is a drug might be commonplace since The Hurt Locker, here we see that it even affects those who hate it. Colvin's obsessive tendency is summed up when she says she looks so everyone else doesn't have to; I wonder, though, given Heineman's tendencies (he clearly identifies with Colvin), if the line might also mean they look so that they can make us look as well.

And, like from other excellent movies lately about the press, we also gain a newfound respect for this most democratic of institutions, so often vilified by the current president's administration.

IMDb: A Private War

Beirut (2018)

Score: 4 / 5

Tony Gilroy's latest political thriller (if that's even the right genre label) centers on the cultural intersection of Beirut. The story starts in 1972, where the US diplomat Skiles (Jon Hamm) lives a liberal socialite life of wealth and influence. His foster son Karim, a Lebanese boy, becomes the target of an international intelligence effort to find his brother, a terrorist in the Munich Olympics massacre.

Ten years later, Skiles, now an alcoholic widower and corporate negotiator in America, is summoned to Beirut for a mysterious purpose, ostensibly to teach a seminar. Suspicious but compelled to go, he returns to the war-torn rubble of his former home. As he attempts to piece together his purpose there, he meets a strike team (including "the skirt" Rosamund Pike and a hairy, spectacled Dean Norris) who informs him that his former CIA friend was abducted and his kidnappers have requested Skiles to negotiate.

For someone -- like me -- who doesn't know the history of wars and politics and religious strife of the Middle East, Gilroy's screenplay leaves a little to be desired. Names and titles and dates and allegiances are tossed around with abandon and we're meant, I think, to follow it all. But the mazelike construction of the script, while fascinating, don't add as much tension to laypeople's experience viewing. On the other hand, director Brad Anderson does some fine work making the film still palatable and navigable; I was never totally lost in the drama.

Hamm is endlessly watchable as a leading man, sweating and drinking and brooding but always looking fabulous. He's a star who always keeps me guessing, and this is the first time I've seen him perform in a way that isn't all about him. He feeds from his fellow actors, and he listens to them in ways that could be taught in an acting masterclass. We can see his wheels turning, and it doesn't take long to see that his character is an exceptionally skilled negotiator. His double-speak and ballsy turns of phrases are almost as riveting as the earnest power behind his voice.

Besides Hamm, the film is a fairly run-of-the-mill procedural thriller with elements of espionage and war tossed in. While with a title like Beirut I might have wished for larger scale and a more fully-told story, something more like Munich. But Anderson is no Spielberg. What we get is something a little less polished and haunting than Detroit, a sort of microcosm of a larger world, a big story told in a surprisingly intimate way. Beirut is, ultimately, a dizzying moral compass in which no character is unblemished and cruelty and vice abound in the violence of our world. The final sequence of the film features flashes of news reports of what comes after the plot has ended, revealing that the film is more or less the quiet between storms: the civil war may have been bad, but horrors are still to come.

IMDb: Beirut

Hostiles (2017)

Score: 3 / 5

In case the title didn't hit you over the head, the idea is that everyone is hostile (read: in America, in 1892, in the West, when we're different).

It's not a bad Western, really. Our brooding leading man (Christian Bale) is a captain, eager for retirement, who is commissioned on a last mission: Take the dying Cheyenne war chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) from New Mexico to his home in Montana. Despite his hatred of the man and his tribe, he is forced to undertake the journey. Not long after, his party comes across a woman (Rosamund Pike) whose family has been slaughtered by Comanches. More episodes follow as the journey becomes an adventure, many people die, many people kill, and a few even fall in love.

What else do you want from a Western? It's pretty typical stuff, though perhaps heavier than usual fare. Hostiles sets up a premise, helped by its marketing campaign, of more subversive themes that it never fully embraces. Just look at the poster, below: the cast, in grayscale to mute their skin colors into neutrality, superimposed over a colorful (if faded and torn) national flag. And then there's the tagline, "We are all...Hostiles", which suggests an almost Tarantino-esque aesthetic of "whodunnit...don't care...bang bang blood". But the film itself doesn't really play into these moral issues and curiously avoids some of the deeper thematic horrors that are as timely in 2018 as they were in 1892.

What exactly do I mean? Spoiler alert: Everybody dies. Well, everybody except the two main white people and a young Cheyenne boy who we last see on his way to white school, where we know the "Indian" will be burned out of him until he becomes "civilized". All the natives are butchered by white men, though most of the white men are then killed as well. Out of the three women in the story, two are native women with almost no voice at all who are senselessly murdered in the penultimate sequence. The third is the white woman who spends most of the film crying and shaking over the traumatizing deaths of her husband and children, unable to do much; she regains some impressive agency, especially her prowess with a gun, though ultimately we know she shouldn't have survived even a day without rescue by a hunky man. Right?

Then there's the film's ending, which ignores all the horrors of Westward expansion in favor of a love story. After the woman and child hop on a train back to Chicago, tearfully saying goodbye to the man who had saved them and she especially had grown attracted to, we see the captain also hop on the back of their train, the indication being that he, retired, will go start a life with them. What a lovely story about the inevitable death of Native cultures and the picture-perfect ways the beautiful white people responsible can live happily ever after, far away from the frontier they've washed with blood.

It's not all bad, to be sure. The gorgeous score and amazing cinematography make this film a pleasure to behold. An interesting and dynamic cast keep things really riveting, especially Rosamund Pike, who works damn hard to milk what the screenplay gave her for all its worth. And director Scott Cooper (Black Mass, Out of the Furnace) shows us again that his style is promising, if not yet excellent. Hostiles is, ultimately, watchable, if politically void, thematically problematic, and one of the longest, slowest, most serious movies you'll see this month.

IMDb: Hostiles

Gone Girl (2014)

Score: 5 / 5

After seeing the trailer for this movie, I was expecting a crime mystery and a courtroom drama, much like A Cry in the Dark; the material made me wonder if moments would feel like Taken (2008) or its ilk. I had no idea, however, that it would ultimately feel like Fatal Attraction (1987), and leave me gasping for air. David Fincher's newest thriller Gone Girl is unquestionably one of the most intense dramas I've ever seen. I gasped aloud several times -- which I don't normally do in cinemas -- not because anything leaps out at us, but because it takes us on such a violent roller coaster of emotional connections and clues to its mystery.

Fincher, who notoriously calculates every facet of his films better than his crew, seems a perfect fit for Gillian Flynn's incredible script. Her tight, provocative dialogue and genius pacing paired with his control of atmosphere and tension make this film immeasurably rich. Morbidly funny and mordantly acerbic, this film had me giggling and gasping in places I neither predicted nor particularly wanted to. Fincher and Flynn navigate the thick, heavy plot with grace and style, breaking free of chronological storytelling to present us with a thematic and logistical maze. At each turn, they challenge us to declare our sympathies and allegiances before lifting the veil on our worst fears. Add the fierce talents of his actors, and this film is endlessly watchable, if you have the stomach for it.

Rosamund Pike releases a tempest of strength in this powerhouse role. She turns from fearful victim to brilliant villain, beautiful trophy to ravenous monster, in intimately nuanced moments. Ben Affleck dominates in a role that demands -- indeed, works partly because of -- his stony visage and faraway gaze, and he gives it to us with emotional complexity and guarded virility. Neil Patrick Harris matches their energy and skill (though, sadly, not their screen time) with horrific exactitude and chilling eroticism that I've never seen from him before. And Tyler Perry (whom, I confess, I've never bothered to watch act before) presents us with disguised flair in a very funny and surprisingly direct performance as Affleck's character's attorney.

I want to take some time to talk about the film's horrific themes, though, and how they manifest particularly in the titular character. Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike), as the title explicitly implies, is our damsel in distress. She is also (SPOILER ALERT) a psychotic murderer and conniving "bitch", as she is called several times. Some have accused this film of promoting a misogynist agenda, largely because Amy is both so stereotypically female and so monstrous. She's skinny, white, blonde, and wealthy; she's artistic, domestic, and narcissistic; she's clever, manipulative, nagging, and cold. She uses especially female concerns to attack the men around her: She accuses an ex of rape, she seduces a man to harvest his sperm and kill him, and she seeks pregnancy to keep her husband bound to her.

The argument that villainous female characters are harmful to feminist art doesn't hold much water, because many people find villains intriguing (think of the recent spike in "antiheroes" in mainstream media, such as Breaking Bad and House of Cards). And consider the psychological attention filmmakers give to "bad bitches" in even more controversial films such as Fatal Attraction (1987) and Basic Instinct (1992), or even in Medea and Macbeth. Even these "evil" portrayals are arguably progressive because, in showing that villainy is gender-blind, they level the playing field. That's all a conversation for another time, but my point is that the labelling of Amy as a misogynistic image of woman is dangerously shallow. But analyzing her stereotype-laden character is wildly provocative.

I have a theory that makes this complex discussion even more mesmerizing. Several elements of the film suggest that it could be viewed as satire. Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) is as stereotypically male as Amy is female. Their archetypal union in marriage is also all too familiar. The darkly comic humor in their failing marriage and past family drama reveals a thread of biting bitterness that the graceful film broadly and suspiciously tries to gloss over. Bizarre comedy and extravagantly overwrought character tropes -- in the tried-and-true, sensitive, capable hands of both Fincher and Flynn -- suggest to me that there is a lot more going on beyond the otherwise offensively straightforward images of this film.

However, one problem remains in my estimation. Rape still seems to be largely taboo in mainstream media, and when portrayed is often simplified as a straightforward plot device. We don't often see women making false rape claims in films -- which unfortunately and damagingly happens in real life, let's not forget -- but Gone Girl surprisingly puts a stake in it. And, to my endless confusion, the woman who makes this false rape claim is a psychotic, manipulative "bitch" who seeks to ruin and kill the men in her life. I don't know that our culture needs a high-profile example of a sexual woman who uses a rape claim as a legally unquestioned weapon to punish men (for a crime, the film pointedly points out, as mean as losing sexual interest in the woman and disliking her gifts of neckties). Not to mention that the man who supposedly raped her is cast with a slight, anything-but-physically-dominant man; the implication, of course, is that an apparently weak man wouldn't rape a woman (laughably inaccurate), and now said man is sympathetic (more so when we think of his unfair punishment by a government that protects the villain) and the woman is comparatively more wicked (in part because her virulent sexuality has successfully emasculated her former partner).

As you can tell, I'm of two minds on this, and I'm actually okay with that. I think David Fincher wants us to be blown away by how complicated and subversive his new film is. In conclusion, I loved Gone Girl. And my lasting impression is that this is one of the most complex meditations on gender roles that I've ever seen. Its implications are not remotely clear-cut, and should inspire a lot of valuable discussion about feminism, marriage, misogyny, mental disorders, art, violence, and the media.

IMDb: Gone Girl