2010--The Year in Review

Back in 2010, when this blog was a little less than two years old, my favorite movie of the year was Noah Baumbach's incisive character study Greenberg, about a failed NYC musician who, while temporarily transplanted to Los Angeles, continues with his exhausted aim to simply do nothing in life. It deeply struck me with its sterling dialogue and especially with its achingly revealing performances from Ben Stiller, Rhys Ifans, and the stunning Greta Gerwig, an ultra-indie star who really broke through this year with her sweetly smart, dejected party girl who falls for the troubled title character against her questioning judgment (I still see Gerwig as one of the most exciting actors working--to me, her inclusion in any film's cast continually makes that movie a must-see). Mainly, I loved Greenberg because it seemed to be peering directly into my own brain in expressing Roger Greenberg's immense dissatisfaction with the way the drab world has turned out for him and for everyone else hailing from the utterly abandoned Generation X. But, nowadays, I feel like giving a movie Best Picture for this penetrating achievement is a little egotistical, and probably simply not justifiable (though I reward Greenberg in the two categories it absolutely deserved to be victorious in). Maybe this is just another chink in the self-destructive armor of my aimless generation. Sorry. Ultimately, I had to side for the movie that captured the zeitgeist to a tee.

David Fincher's The Social Network, with its dazzlingly fast-paced Aaron Sorkin script, is the complete package: immaculately photographed, acted, written, scored, and edited. This quasi-biopic of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg got lightly raked over the coals for straying from the facts (Zuckerberg himself just saw it as a good movie, and didn't really put up a fight), but the film is still a perfect example of how screenwriterly inventions can enhance the retelling of an ostensibly "true" story rather than hamstring it. In the face of such a gripping movie, the facts don't matter: The Social Network is radically successful in illustrating how this lonely genius and nascent billionaire codified life on the net in order to win friends and lovers, and yet ended up driving those closest to him far, far away--and let's remember: much of the movie is quite accurate. Fincher's film deserves comparisons to Orson Welles' Citizen Kane--that's how good it is (and this is by knowing design). Even so, I didn't get too upset when Tom Hooper's more traditional biopic The King's Speech ended up winning Best Picture at the Oscars; it, too, was a beautifully crafted piece, with some of the finest acting of the year, led by Colin Firth's superb take on the stuttering King George VI, and banked by Hooper's gorgeous direction and David Seidler's supreme scripting. It wasn't the best movie of the year, but at least it was a true contender.

2010 was another exceptional year for world cinema (led by Apichatpong Weerasethakul's otherworldly Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives and by one more wonderful Mike Leigh film, Another Year, commanded by Leigh's longtime collaborator Leslie Manville, gutting us with her rich performance as a drunken, romantically desperate friend testing the patience of a happy London professional couple). There's also another impressive slate of documentaries this year, with Charles Ferguson's outstanding dissection of the 2008 economic meltdown Inside Job easily trumping its impressive competitors (documentaries are clearly getting more knowing in this era). But 2010 was also a year that made it increasingly clear that Hollywood studios were abandoning adult audiences in their over-catering to childish tastes, all in service of the big buck. The Social Network, Inception, Toy Story 3, and The Fighter, with Christian Bale's transformative supporting performance, would stand among the smartest studio product of the year, but the rest of 2010's most notable output largely hailed from indie and foreign outlets. And so the period's prime movies would become harder and harder for the masses to locate at theaters. This vexing issue's only gotten more seriously gnawing since, as it effectively lowers the tastes of a worldwide moviegoing public who'd already rather mindlessly be happy chomping popcorn on a rollercoaster instead of being eternally affected emotionally or intellectually by a work of art. NOTE: These are MY choices for each category, and are only occasionally reflective of the selections made by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (aka The Oscars). When available, the nominee that actually won the Oscar will be highlighted in bold.

PICTURE: THE SOCIAL NETWORK (US, David Fincher) (2nd: Greenberg (US, Noah Baumbach), followed by: Another Year (UK, Mike Leigh); Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Thailand, Apichatpong Weerasethakul); Inside Job (US, Charles Ferguson); The King’s Speech (US/UK, Tom Hooper); Inception (US, Christopher Nolan); Tiny Furniture (US, Lena Dunham); Mysteries of Lisbon (Portugal/France, Raoul Ruiz); Tuesday, After Christmas (Romania, Radu Muntean); Marwencol (US, Jeff Malmberg); Of Gods and Men (France, Xavier Beauvois); The Fighter (US, David O. Russell); Never Let Me Go (UK, Mark Romanek); Carlos (France, Olivier Assayas); The Illusionist (France, Sylvain Chomet); Let Me In (US, Matt Reeves); Exit Through the Gift Shop (US, Banksy); Boxing Gym (US, Frederick Wiseman); The Ghost Writer (US/France, Roman Polanski); Easy A (US, Will Gluck); The Trip (UK, Michael Winterbottom); Poetry (South Korea, Lee Chang-dong); Please Give (US, Nicole Holofcener); Heartbeats (Canada, Xavier Dolan); Aurora (Romania, Cristi Puiu); Silent Souls (Russia, Aleksey Fedorchenko); The Kids Are All Right (US, Lisa Cholodenko); Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (US/UK, Edgar Wright); Certified Copy (France, Abbas Kiarostami); Black Swan (US, Darren Aronofsky); Blue Valentine (US, Derek Cianfrance); Frozen (US, Adam Green); Meek’s Cutoff (US, Kelly Reichardt); The Tillman Story (US, Amir Bar-Lev); Biutiful (Mexico, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu); A Letter to Elia (US, Martin Scorsese and Kent Jones); The Town (US, Ben Affleck); You Don’t Know Jack (US, Barry Levinson); Winter’s Bone (US, Debra Granik); A Little Help (US, Michael J. Weithorn); Toy Story 3 (US, Lee Unkrich); Catfish (US, Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman); Film Socialisme (France, Jean-Luc Godard); Smash His Camera (US, Leon Gast); Rabbit Hole (US, John Cameron Mitchell); Restropo (US, Sebastian Junger and Tim Heatherington); The Oath (US, Laura Poitras); Louis C.K.: Hilarious (US, Louis C.K.); Solitary Man (US,  Brian Koppelman and David Levien); Four Lions (UK, Chris Morris); Animal Kingdom (Australia, David Michod); True Grit (US, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen); Barney’s Version (Canada, Richard J. Lewis); Senna (UK, Asif Kapadia); I’m Still Here (US, Casey Affleck); Cold Weather (US, Aaron Katz); Red (US, Robert Schwentke); Submarine (US, Richard Ayoade); Temple Grandin (US, Mick Jackson); A Cat in Paris (France/Belgium, Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol); Monsters (UK, Gareth Edwards); Buried (Spain/US, Rodrigo Cortés); Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Germany, Werner Herzog); Tangled (US, Nathan Greno and Byron Howard); Splice (Canada/France/US, Vincenzo Natali); Salt (US, Philip Noyce); Insidious (US, James Wan); 127 Hours (UK/US, Danny Boyle); Leaves of Grass (US, Tim Blake Nelson); Iron Man 2 (US, Jon Favreau); Multiple Sarcasms (US, Brooks Branch); Tabloid (US, Errol Morris); Somewhere (US, Sofia Coppola); Stone (US, John Curran); Shutter Island (US, Martin Scorsese); The Strange Case of Angelica (Portugal, Manoel de Oliveira); Tamara Drewe (UK, Stephen Frears); How to Train Your Dragon (US, Dean de Blois and Chris Sanders); Kick-Ass (US/UK, Matthew Vaughn); The Killer Inside Me (US, Michael Winterbottom))



ACTOR: Colin Firth, THE KING'S SPEECH (2nd: Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network, followed by: Edgar Ramirez, Carlos; Ben Stiller, Greenberg; Ryan Gosling, Blue Valentine; Javier Bardem, Biutiful; Steve Coogan, The Trip; Al Pacino, You Don't Know Jack)



ACTRESS: Leslie Manville, ANOTHER YEAR (2nd: Emma Stone, Easy A, followed by: Yun Jeong-he, Poetry; Natalie Portman, Black Swan; Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine; Juliette Binoche, Certified Copy; Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone; Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right)



SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christian Bale, THE FIGHTER (2nd: Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech, followed by: Andrew Garfield, The Social Network; Peter Wight, Another Year; Rob Brydon, The Trip; David Bradley, Another Year; Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right; Jeremy Renner, The Town)



SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Greta Gerwig, GREENBERG (2nd: Amy Adams, The Fighter, followed by: Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom; Haylee Steinfeld, True Grit; Julianne Moore, The Kids Are All Right; Dianne Wiest, Rabbit Hole; Helena Bonham Carter, The King's Speech)



DIRECTOR: David Fincher, THE SOCIAL NETWORK (2nd: Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, followed by: Mike Leigh, Another Year; Noah Baumbach, Greenberg; Tom Hooper, The King’s Speech; Lena Dunham, Tiny Furniture; Christopher Nolan, Inception; Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan)

NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE FILM: UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (Thailand, Apichatpong Weerasethakul) (2nd: Of Gods and Men (France, Xavier Beauvois), followed by: Mysteries of Lisbon (Portugal/France, Raoul Ruiz); Tuesday, After Christmas (Romania, Radu Muntean); Carlos (France, Olivier Assayas); The Illusionist (France, Sylvain Chomet); Poetry (South Korea, Lee Chang-dong); Heartbeats (Canada, Xavier Dolan); Aurora (Romania, Cristi Puiu); Silent Souls (Russia, Aleksey Fedorchenko); Certified Copy (France, Abbas Kiarostami); Biutiful (Mexico, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu); Film Socialisme (France, Jean-Luc Godard))



DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: INSIDE JOB (US, Charles Ferguson) (2nd: Marwencol (US, Jeff Malmberg), followed by: Exit Through the Gift Shop (US, Banksy); Boxing Gym (US, Frederick Wiseman); A Letter to Elia (US, Martin Scorsese and Kent Jones); Catfish (US, Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman); Smash His Camera (US, Leon Gast); The Tillman Story (US, Amir Bar-Lev); Restropo (US, Sebastian Junger and Tim Heatherington); Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Germany, Werner Herzog); The Oath (US, Laura Poitras); Louis C.K.: Hilarious (US, Louis C.K.); Senna (UK, Asif Kapadia))



ANIMATED FEATURE: THE ILLUSIONIST (France, Sylvain Chomet) (2nd: Toy Story 3 (US, Lee Unkrich), followed by: Tangled (US, Nathan Greno and Byron Howard); A Cat in Paris (France/Belgium, Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol); How to Train Your Dragon (US, Dean de Blois and Chris Sanders))



ANIMATED SHORT: MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON (US, Dean Fleischer-Camp and Jenny Slate) (2nd: Day and Night (US, Teddy Newton), followed by: Dock Ellis and the LSD No-No (US, James Blagden))



LIVE ACTION SHORT: GOD OF LOVE (US, Luke Matheny) (2nd: Successful Alcoholics (US, Jordan Vogt-Roberts), followed by: I’m Here (US, Spike Jonze)



ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Noah Baumbach and Jennifer Jason Leigh, GREENBERG (2nd: Mike Leigh, Another Year, followed by: David Seidler, The King's Speech; Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg, The Kids Are All Right; Lena Dunham, Tiny Furniture)



ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Aaron Sorkin, THE SOCIAL NETWORK (2nd: Robert Harris and Roman Polanski, The Ghost Writer, followed by: Alex Garland, Never Let Me Go; Debra Granik and Anne Rossellini, Winter's Bone; Michael Bacall and Edgar Wright, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World)

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES, followed by: Mikhail Krichman, Silent Souls; Jeff Cronenweth, The Social Network; Wally Pfister, Inception; Matthew Libatique, Black Swan)

ART DIRECTION: INCEPTION, Alice in Wonderland, The King’s Speech, Shutter Island, True Grit

COSTUME DESIGN: ALICE IN WONDERLAND, Mysteries of Lisbon, Heartbeats, The King's Speech, True Grit  

FILM EDITING: THE SOCIAL NETWORK, The King’s Speech, Inception, The Town, Greenberg



SOUND: INCEPTION, The Social Network, Black Swan, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, The King’s Speech

SOUND EFFECTS: INCEPTION, Salt, Toy Story 3



ORIGINAL SCORE: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, THE SOCIAL NETWORK (2nd: Hans Zimmer, Inception, followed by: Alexandre Desplat, The King’s Speech; James Murphy, Greenberg; Rachel Portman, Never Let Me Go)



ORIGINAL SONG: “Chason Illusionist” from THE ILLUSIONIST (Music and lyrics by Sylvain Chomet) (2nd: “Never Let Me Go“ from Never Let Me Go (Music and lyrics by Luther Dixon), followed by: “We Belong Together” from Toy Story 3 (Music and lyrics by Randy Newman); “We Are Sex Bob-Omb“ from Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (Music and lyrics by Beck Hansen); “Country Strong” from Country Strong (Music and lyrics by Jennifer Hanson, Tony Martin and Mark Nesler))

SPECIAL EFFECTS: INCEPTION, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, The Social Network

MAKEUP: THE WOLFMAN, Alice in Wonderland, Black Swan

The Top 25 Movies of 2010

Not many movie years out there like this one. It started off godawful slow, but once the summer was half over, it felt like we were in the midst of a full-time parade of landmark cinema. Per usual, there were a few crashing disappointments come December, but overall, there were lots of breathtaking pieces sprinkled throughout these past 12 months, and a shocking number of them were about REAL PEOPLE and REAL EVENTS! 2010 gave us a hefty package of comedy, drama, action, horror, news, romance, spectacle, and mystery, and I haven't even seen everything I need to take in (as usual on filmicability, these lists are a work-in-progress, changing as I catch relevant titles). And, is it me, or are a bunch of these films about letting go and accepting reality? Or am I in that point in my life where I'm only reading this into stuff? (Ahh, pshaw...come to consider it, I think it's all there in the movies.)

1) The Social Network (US, David Fincher) 

  2) Greenberg (Noah Baumbach)
Doing nothing requires a lot of effort.

3) Another Year (Mike Leigh)
Passage into old age, with a great filmmaker's coterie of MVPs.


4) The King's Speech (Tom Hooper)
A leader finds a voice in a brilliant piece of old-time entertainment.

5) The Fighter (David O. Russell)
An old story made anew by a top-flight acting ensemble under inventive direction.

6) Inside Job (Charles Ferguson)
How the mess we're in happened.

7) Inception (Christopher Nolan)
Time, dreams and movement vivisected. The visual experience of 2010.

8) Boxing Gym (Frederick Wiseman)
Punches thrown and footwork nailed in a Texas locale run over with rhythmic soul.

9) Let Me In (Matt Reeves)
No mean feat, this--to take a much loved movie and best it.

10) The Illusionist (Sylvain Chomet)
A final script from Jacques Tati, beautifully realized through animation.

11) The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski)
We're up against a comedy of errors if we want to get to the truth.

12) Please Give (Nicole Holofcener)
NYC upper-class guilt gets a honest workout.

13) The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Chodolenko)
The comedy of the year, the heartfelt sort of which we rarely see.

14) Easy A (Will Gluck)
The OTHER comedy of the year, with a captivating, hilarious lead performance from Emma Stone.

15) Carlos (Oliver Assayas)
Gangster or freedom-fighter? You decide.

16) My Dog Tulip (Paul and Sandra Fierlinger)
The best animated film of 2010 is also the year's greatest love story.

17) Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (Edgar Wright)
Put your quarter in and spar to see if you can love again.

18) Never Let Me Go (Mark Romanek)
After Tarkovsky's Solaris, the saddest science fiction movie ever made.

19) Frozen (Adam Green)
Real tension, literally, found in icy climbs.

20) A Letter to Elia (Martin Scorsese and Kent Jones)
The fan letter all us movie geeks would like to compose for our filmmaking idols.

21) Mother and Child (Rodrigo Garcia)
Conceptions made in innocence, regret and hope.

22) Marcel The Shell With Shoes On (Dean Flischer-Camp and Jenny Slate)
The most cuteness-laden and addictive film of the year: I've seen it thirty times.

23) Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance)
Romance, born and snuffed out.

24) Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy) 
A great joke, well told.

25) Lebanon (Samuel Maoz) 
Unfair wartime, seen through the lens of a tank's gunsight.

OF NOTE: Buried, Winter's Bone, Catfish, Cyrus, Day and Night, Dock Ellis and the LSD No-No, Dogtooth, Fish Tank, Four Lions, I Am Love, I'm Still Here, Insidious, Leaves of Grass, Louie CK: Hilarious, Lovely Still, The Oath, Rabbit Hole, Red, Solitary Man, Smash His Camera, Splice, Temple Grandin, The Tillman Story, The Town, White Material, Who is Harry Nilsson (And Why is Everybody Talkin' About Him)?, You Don't Know Jack, Youth in Revolt

GUILTY PLEASURES: Death at a Funeral, Hot Tub Time Machine, Monsters, Multiple Sarcasms, Salt, Stone 

My 10 favorite classics I saw for the first time in 2010: A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger, 46); Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen, 2003); Edvard Munch (Peter Watkins, 74); Nuremberg: Its Lesson For Today (Stuart Schulberg, 48); Nights and Weekends (Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig, 2008); Disneyland Dream (Robbins Barstow, 56); Catalog (John Whitney Sr., 61); Our Day (Wallace Kelly, 38); Hausu (Nobuhiko Ohbayashi, 77); Deep End (Jerry Skolimowski, 70) 

Best Picture: The Social Network
Best Director: David Fincher -- The Social Network
Best Actor: Colin Firth -- The King's Speech
Best Actress: Lesley Manville - Another Year
Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale -- The Fighter
Best Supporting Actress: Greta Gerwig -- Greenberg
Best Original Screenplay: Noah Baumbach and Jennifer Jason Leigh -- Greenberg
Best Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin -- The Social Network
Best Cinematography: Grieg Fraser -- Let Me In
Best Production Design: Eve Stewart -- The King's Speech
Best Costume Design: Jenny Beavan -- The King's Speech
Best Editing: Lee Smith -- Inception
Best Sound: Black Swan
Best Special Effects: Inception 
Best Music Score: Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor, The Social Network
Best Thriller: Frozen
Best Comedy: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
Best Documentary: Inside Job
Best Animation: The Illusionist
Best Action Film: Inception 
Best Entertainment: The Social Network
Most Promising Director: Matt Reeves -- Let Me In
Most Promising Actor: Andrew Garfield -- The Social Network and Never Let Me Go
Most Promising Actress: Greta Gerwig -- Greenberg
Most Underrated Films: My Dog Tulip and Easy A
Most Neglected Films: Greenberg, Let Me In, and Never Let Me Go
Most Imaginative Film: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
Best Re-Discovery: The Outsiders (director's cut)

MOST OVERRATED MOVIES OF THE YEAR: 127 Hours, Toy Story 3, Animal Kingdom, Get Low, Gasland
BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENTS: Shutter Island and Nowhere Boy
WORST MOVIES I SAW THIS YEAR: Kick  Ass, Unstoppable, and Macgruber
WORST STUDIO FILMS I DIDN'T SEE IN 2010: Alice in Wonderland, The Last Airbender, and Sex and the City 2
WORST INDIE FILMS I DIDN'T SEE IN 2010: The Human Centipede and Babies

PERSONAL HIGHS THIS YEAR: Getting to meet my favorite filmmaker in the world, Mike Leigh, after watching his newest, Another Year, at the New York Film Festival (and meeting a lot of my film blogging colleagues there, to boot). Also, getting to sit a couple hours with Player Hating: A Love Story and War Zone filmmaker Maggie Hadleigh West. Having my 150 Best Movie Endings article twittered about by Roger Ebert in May. Being given, as a token of friendship, my first personal film print of a movie I love, Thanksgiving, by its writer/director Alex R. Johnson. And last but not least, participating in the Movie Geeks United podcast and hitting more than 160,000 hits on filmicability!

BEST MOVIE-WATCHING EVENT OF THE YEAR: Seeing some amazing experimental Super 8mm, 16mm, and video work at the Millenium Film Workshop's monthly first come, first serve "show your own movie" show, along with my friend, celebrated documentarian Richard Sandler (who did The Gods of Times Square and, most recently, the 8mm footage for Winter's Bone; he was unspooling for the first time his newest experimental work, Forever and Sunsmell, based on the piece by John Cage and the poem by e.e. cummings). Saw some incredible work: a piece on food modification by Lily White and an absolutely astounding piece of 70s-era NYC pixilation by a man who introduced himself only as "Mr. E". Seeing all of this in the East Village's historic Millenium, where Stan Brakhage attended many a premiere, was overwhelming!

NYFF Review 1: THE SOCIAL NETWORK

Like most memorable movies, David Fincher's The Social Network hooks us with its first scene, which begins, unusually, while the studio logo is still on screen. Mark Zuckerberg (a beautifully intense Jesse Eisenberg) and his date, Erica Albright (the magnificent Rooney Mara) are ramping up to rage through Aaron Sorkin's juggernaut dialogue. Though Erica is trying to be friendly, Zuckerberg is so busy with his nervous sanctimoniousness that he fails to notice he's both ignoring his girlfriend and slashing her to shreds. And she's had enough of trying to keep up. "Dating you is like dating a Stairmaster," she says, right before revealing that they're NOT dating anymore; Zuckerberg never gets his chance to backtrack. She's one of the few characters in the movie who will no longer give this guy her energy, because she knows who Mark really is.


This dexterous, though disingenuous opening (surely Erica knew what kind of guy Mark was before this date) echoes all the way to the final moments of The Social Network (I think this is why the movie is getting compared to Citizen Kane; at least, that's the only similarity I can now see between the two films). Rather being about the advent of friend-finding website Facebook (a subject which is really a red herring), Fincher's movie is actually about one boy's inability to connect to anyone. The irony is obvious, but it never feels overplayed. (Though, again, how DID he land such a beautiful babe like Erica?)

So, over the credits, Zuckerberg stomps home to his dorm room at Harvard's Kirkwood Hall, while all around him life is happening happily. With the nattering, melancholy title theme by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross interplaying with the film's immaculate sound design, we share in Zuckerberg's low-self-esteem frustration. And so it's inevitable: his sadness and regret erupts into a night of drinking and angry blogging, while scads of other 19-year-olds are partying down with little regard to their futures. In Zuckerberg's mind (this bitching party may or may not be actually happening), his Harvard peers already revel in the good life. Revenge is, however small, then placed on the menu, and this night of wired-in coding becomes historical as Zuckerberg hacks into sorority databases to crate Facesmash, a Hot-or-Not comparison of Harvard girls that reduces college girls, as Mark unwisely blogs, to "farm animals." This one-night effort is over before it begins, and once the morning sun arrives, Facesmash has become so popular on campus that it crashes the Harvard mainframe.


Thus the phenomenon that is Facebook is birthed. The ubiquitous site is a tool that you (probably) and I use every day to keep up with what loved ones around the world are up to. But Zuckerberg, as portrayed in The Social Network, strangely has no loved ones (he's not a "hugger," as we soon find out). The very concept of closeness is Alpha Centari to him--that is, barring his relationship to Eduardo Severin (a big-black-eyed innocent played impeccably by Andrew Garfield). Eduardo sees something worth being friends with in Mark, and he sticks by him no matter how strange he begins to seem, and no matter how little Mark returns the devotion. Eduardo, ultimately, loves too much and dreams too small. And this is okay, until business comes into the picture. (By the way, I could have done with more demonstration as to what, exactly, Eduardo sees in Mark; this is my one complaint with the movie.)


The Social Network is being called a decade-defining movie. But I think that's too limiting. It's a Movie of the Now, yes, but it's also a Movie for the Ages. To that end, it has a few heavy, ancestral themes: fraternity, loneliness, loyalty, truth, and the pressures of being at the top of the class. (I'm now remembering that great exchange in James L. Brooks' Broadcast News: "Paul Moore (Peter Hackes): It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you're the smartest person in the room. Jane Craig (Holly Hunter): No. It's awful.") Throw technology and "progress" into the mix and you come close to describing this picture in full.

David Fincher's movie is also being called a departure for the director, but how is this so? In his best movies--Se7en, Fight Club, and Zodiac--male characters negotiate thorny friendship boundaries while bigger issues nip at their heels. This film fits into that framework perfectly. I will say, though, in the "departure" defense, that Fincher has never had better words to work with than those Aaron Sorkin has provided. Sorkin's screenplay is so incredibly dense with one-liners, ironies, and information that it would take two or three viewings to excavate them all. Of course, this is what makes for a monumental movie; we all love a picture that can withstand numerous viewings before it's been fully mined.


The sly editing (by Kurt Baxter and Angus Wall) will give Inception a run for its money come Oscar time. Instead of loading all the trial stuff at the end of the film, Fincher's editors have peppered the Harvard-to-Palo-Alto tale with scenes from a variety of mercenary depositions that clarify the characters of both Severin and Zuckerberg. One such memorable scene has Zuckerberg losing interest in the well-lawyered proceedings. He turns his back on his opponents and stares out the high-rise windows to a gray day that's turned watery. "It's raining," he says, and the prosecuting lawyer calls him out. "Mr. Zuckerberg, are you listening to me?" he asks. Mark turns around and the question wisely becomes "Mr. Zuckerberg, do you think I'm worth listening to?" And then Mark lets loose with a volley that makes it clear: no, I don't, because I already know the outcome; I've already done the math in my head. And the whole room goes silent, because they know he's correct. Still, there's that moment, in the boardroom, where Mark refers to his best friend, Eduardo, and Fincher cuts to a shot of an empty chair. So how smart is this dude, really?

There's the intrusion of three very great characters into the melee. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (both played with much energy by Armie Hammer) are towering examples of the status to which Mark aspires. Twins, both 6 foot 5, blonde-haired, and well-toned from their positions on Harvard's rowing team, Tyler and Cameron are the guys who surreptitiously lead Zuckerberg to the idea for Facebook (Eduardo, meanwhile, provides the start-up money and the valuable algorithm that's scrawled on a dormroom window). The Winklevosses (or Winklevii, as they come to be called), do everything they can to keep from looking like villains. This includes, in the film's most entertaining scene, searching for justice regarding the Facebook filching by appealing to Harvard president Larry Summers (played, in a hilarious, revelatory one-scene performance by show-biz manager Douglas Urbanski). But this leads them nowhere except to the depositions. (There, Mark puts them squarely in their place: "If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook.")


And then there's Sean Parker, the smacked-down inventor of music-file-sharing site Napster (ironically played by musician/Napster victim Justin Timberlake, who's terrific). Parker runs into the site by accident, after a drunken night of sex with a girl who's name he doesn't know. He see's she's logged into something called Thefacebook, and he immediately sees dollar signs. Thus, with a scheduled bacchanal of rich food and appletinis, and girly company (the film is very much about stunted sexual desire), he seduces Zuckerberg away from his best friend Eduardo--who has Parker's number immediately. Parker seals the deal with the flippant addition of key advice that leaves Mark without breath. Later in the film, in a brilliant club scene that perfectly demonstrates the sound of talking while ear-splitting music is being played (not since Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me have I experienced anything like this scene), Parker tells Zuckerberg how he came up with Napster after being dumped by a girlfriend. After the story drops, Zuckerberg asks him "Do you ever think about that girl?" Parker laughs the question off with a drunken "No."


There is one more way, I now realize, in which The Social Network resembles Citizen Kane. It, of course, is nowhere near the art transformer that Welles' movie was (Jeff Cronenweth's excellent camerawork is no match for Gregg Toland's, and said camera isn't pointed at the Mercury Theater). But, like Kane, Fincher's film does obsesses over a successful man who, in order to achieve his goal, ignores everything that would make success meaningful (even if, as with the Zuckerberg, that goal is the emotional equivalent of completing an algebra assignment). That said, in many ways, The Social Network, however true or untrue to the real-world story, is often more outright fun, while being just as forlorn, as Welle's monumental 1941 movie. Does that make it a decade-defining film? Well, no more than Kane defines its decade. As prodigious as The Social Network is, it ultimately leads us to one scorched earth conclusion: some things never change.

The Social Network is the Opening Night film for the 48th New York Film Festival, and is playing at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. September 24th, at the Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, 1941 Broadway (at 65th Street), New York, NY 10023.

For more ticket information regarding this or any of the festival's many other great offerings, go online here, or call (212) 875-5050

David Fincher's The Social Network opens nationwide on Friday, October 1st.

Notes on the 2010 NYFF: THE SOCIAL NETWORK press conference

The New York Film Festival has been kind enough to provide, for those of us without cameras, full coverage of the post-screening press conference for The Social Network, with writer Aaron Sorkin, star Jesse Eisenberg, director David Fincher, and stars Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake in the hot seats. I was there in the third row, middle seat, but I couldn't get my question in (I really wanted to ask about Erica Albright, the character played by Rooney Mara in the very first scene, and whether she was a real person and, if so, if she could somehow be considered the "inspiration" for Facebook). At any rate, I thought I'd provide the full press conference here on filmicability. By the way, I found David Fincher to be a very funny guy (there's a tiny bit that's cut out of the video below: at the beginning of the second part, a question is lobbed about Fincher's technical prowness, and the reporter mentions that Never Let Me Go director Mark Romanek said Fincher can recite the back page of any manual, and Fincher playfully said under his breath "What a dick!"). Anyway, here we go:

THE SOCIAL NETWORK trailer is so damn good, it might make you cry with anticipation

I rarely post new trailers on filmicability. In fact, only the one for Inglourious Basterds predates this. But the new preview for David Fincher's upcoming Facebook epic qualifies almost as a film unto itself; it does what every preview wants to do but can't, because it's too busy trying to shock you with flashes, booms, and dynamic changes. Feeling that Fincher himself may have overseen this piece's creation, I cannot let this achievement, in the age of piss-poor trailers, go unnoticed. Promo producers: this is how you do it, alright? That's a heartfelt suggestion. You're welcome.