Saltburn

Oh no, I haven't ignored Saltburn among the year-end releases. I've just been waiting for Saturday, which is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day.

What This Movie Needs is a Good Autopsy

or

The Talented Mr. Rip-Off

 

"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different."

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The observation of the rich is a deep well for writers to exploit, whether they're exploitative or not. Whether it's "Brideshead Revisited" or "The Great Gatsby" those of us with lesser means can always have a good chortle at the eccentricities and excesses of the very well-off (who are so well-off they don't give a rip what you think).

 

Saltburn, by the very talented Emerald Fennell (she made Promising Young Woman, which I liked) fits right into that category, while also pinging off a couple other sources that would spoil the movie before we even get started spoiling it good and proper.

It follows the adventures of young Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan—who is becoming dependably reliable for a good performance no matter the movie), freshman at Oxford, who does quite well grade-wise, but is a bit of a dullard, socially. He's on a scholarship. His clothes are cast-offs and second-hand. He's not exciting and not fashionable. Actually a literal outsider, watching the "cool kids" and the "in-crowd" from an envying distance.

Until the day comes when preppy Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi) gets a flat in his bicycle tire when he's hurrying to a class. Oliver rolls up and offers young Catton his bicycle to make the time. And Felix is floored by his generosity. And kindness. And takes Oliver "under his wing", as it were. He's taken by Oliver's story about how he grew up in a home of abuse and addiction, and how he got a scholarship by the skin of his teeth in a chance to escape and make a better life for himself.

And at the end of the year, Oliver is stunned by the news that his father has died, and Felix, out of kindness and sympathy, invites Oliver to stay the summer at his family's estate, Saltburn, spend time with his family and maybe heal a little. Oliver gratefully accepts. I mean, who wouldn't?

Saltburn being the country estate of Sir James Catton (Richard E. Grant) and Lady Elspeth Catton (Rosamund Pike)—she being a former fashion model and he, well, he's a "sir." Also there are Lady Elspeth's friend, Pamela (Carey Mulligan, all too briefly)—in the credits, she's listed as "Poor Dear Pamela"—Felix's sister Venetia (Alison Oliver) and their American cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe)—who doesn't like Oliver and probably never will. Lady Elspeth immediately takes to Oliver and Felix's sister eyes him like he's a veal cutlet. 

 

And then, the fun begins.

Oliver, who had previously been something of a staid character, begins a campaign of either seducing family members or blackmailing them, whichever will be the most effective to get them on his side or out of the house. You start to wonder if he has an evil twin that took the bus-trip to Saltburn and replaces him, but, no, it's the same guy. He's just written differently, and if, within 15 minutes of his estate arrival you haven't figured out that Oliver is not who he pretends to be, you don't know many sociopaths. Needless to say, once the first change in behavior happens, nothing else should surprise you no matter how extreme.

It must have been awfully fun to write. However, somewhere along the way "structure" was dispensed with and then just tossed as "getting in the way." That would be in the same way that, once the bodies start dropping, a semi-competent medical autopsy would raise red flags and have the bobbies put an end to the movie right then and there with a proper "What's all this, then, eh?" No amount of "let's-put-one-over-on-the-rich" sympathy can obfuscate the "rules don't apply" cherry-picking of the script. Unless it's some political parable, but even then, the sheer blinkerdliness of what's prioritized makes one think that Fennell just wanted to make it easy on herself.

One can't fault her, however, for the direction (other than her persistence in lingering on things once the points been made). She gets lovely performances out of everyone—Grant's childishness, Pike's obliviousness, and Elordi manages to sell the worldliness/naivete combination—and Keoghan fully commits to the moment, depending on what moment it is. And her shot choices are lovely with a keen eye towards detail and, at times, brutally close in a way that could betray any mis-steps by an actor. There aren't any.

Because the writing of the thing isn't their fault. And it's what keeps Saltburn from being an upper-class melodrama rather than just a pretender.

Fracture

I must confess I remember little about this film, other than Ryan Gosling wasn't very good in it ("well...he got better!"). This review—trying very hard to be spoiler-free isn't much help in remembering. It was written at the time of the film's release...

 

Fracture (Gregory Hoblit, 2007) Gregory Hoblit has had a long career shepherding quality television work as a co-executive producer/writer/director on such shows as "Hill Street Blues," and "L.A. Law." He can be counted on to lend an air of verisimilitude to his legal films (though when he strays off-court into such films as Hart's War, he brings no real style to the proceedings--even though there was an extended trial scene in the Bruce Willis/Colin Farrell P.O.W. film). 

 

But he does have an unerring eye for talent as his Primal Fear was a fine showcase for Laura Linney, Andre Braugher, and especially Edward Norton, all eclipsing star Richard Gere.

 

The cast for Fracture is just as impressive with great character actors like Fiona Shaw, David Strathairn, and Bob Gunton lending strong supporting roles. But the film is a bit too "legal procedural" for its own good. Let's see what legal cliches can we trot out:

- the cocky upstart lawyer (Ryan Gosling) just begging for a come-uppence: ✔

- the cocky genius (Anthony Hopkins) using the legal system for his own ends: ✔

- the distracting affair with a legal superior (Rosamund Pike) that throws said "upstart" off his game: ✔

- the mentor (Straithairn) who warns "upstart" every step of the way, while secretly pulling for the kid because he has such "pluck:" ✔

- the legal maneuvering that twists a seemingly open-and-shut court case into a series of technicalities that derail any sense of justice: ✔

- the tony upscale-silvery locations that serve as contrast (and siren call) to the "upstart's" stuffy offices of wood-panels and metal desks: ✔

- the red herring revealed only at the end which casts a different light on the whole proceedings: ✔

Will the clichés please rise while the judge enters the chambers?

Ultimately what it comes down to is an acting duel between old war-horse Hopkins, and "new turk" Gosling, and there it's no contest. Hopkins can do more just leaning back in his chair and stretching his neck suggesting megalomania than any actor doing movies. Hopkins has bags of tricks he hasn't gotten to yet. Gosling, then, tries to match him by going the opposite route--doing too much so that his legal eagle looks jittery and scattered; Gosling's busy performance reminds one of the bizarre early work of Nicolas Cage--too much over-thinking the part, and trying too hard to get noticed, that one is distracted by the tic's in the foreground to notice any subtleties that might be working. By the ending of the film, Gosling settles down, but it comes off as too little (finally) coming too late.

Pride and Prejudice (2005)

Pride and Prejudice (Joe Wright, 2005) One must ask oneself can there be anything more done with "Pride and Prejudice"—the much-adapted jewel in the Jane Austen tiara? It turns out that, yes, verily, there can. Director Joe Wright, in his first full length motion picture (after some shorts and mini-series work), takes some of the stuffing out of the classic novel (aided and abetted by screenwriter Deborah Moggach with some additional material stuffed into it by Sense and Sensibilty scribe Emma Thompson) and makes it move in its own frenetic dance for the first 3/4 of it. The many dances and balls are choreographed and photographed to maximum effect, in ways that, at times, are sublimely comic—the way I prefer Austen to be treated—as well as the ways in which the 19th Century mating rituals and business marriages are carried out amongst classes and stations seem to intersect naturally with Wright's searching, shifting camera moves during the film's country dance sequences.

Then, in moments that Austen would call "high dudgeon"—and what I would call "money-shots"—Wright's camera stops and Nature takes over, culminating in two eerie scenes: one, a confrontation between Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley) and her object of obsession Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen) staged in an unyielding Greco-Roman pogoda during a thunderstorm; and later during a bizarre shot where Elizabeth, locked in emotional and physical paralysis, spends an uncertain day in one spot as the sun and Nature move around her, a fascinating way to pull off her receiving Darcy's letter of regret without really receiving him.

Sometimes, Wright goes a bit too far blowing the dust off this classic—a spinning camera from Elizabeth's point of view on a swing seamlessly, and a little nauseatingly, shows the passing of time. And he can't resist a "money shot," a gorgeous, overly dramatic shot of Elizabeth on cliff-top at Stanage Edge, ensuring that her new perspective on things is in Panavision. 

But he's also aided immeasurably by extremely naturalistic performances (including those of Brenda Blethyn and Donald Sutherland as the Bennett parents) from an ensemble encouraged to stumble over each other's words to take the starch out of the formality, including outstanding turns from soon-to-be stars Rosamund Pike and Carey Mulligan, a performance by Dame Judi Dench in full "battleaxe" mode, and another of those extremely mercurial performances by Keira Knightley, whose Elizabeth Bennett goes from apple-cheeked gushing teenager to stormy-eyed character assassin in hardly a blink.

Of course, any "Pride and Prejudice" stands or falls on the chemistry between its Elizabeth and its Mr. Darcy, who is here played by Matthew Macfadyen, in what is always the toughest role—he has to play a standoffish prig but still be attractive enough to pull off the transition to ardent suitor, especially an accepted ardent suitor. And, here, Knightley's fierceness plays to the advantage of that relationship. You can believe that she's smitten by the man as much as she's infuriated by him, a fine example of the maxim (used by me a LOT) that Love and Hate are not opposites, but merely two sides of the same coin; the true opposite of love is indifference. Darcy may feign indifference, but it is pretense, given his position and family objections.

Maybe it should have been titled "Pride, Prejudice, and Pretense." That certainly works better than "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies." 

Hostiles (2017)

Outpost Traumatic Stress Disorder
or
"'Deserves' Got Nothing to Do With It"

Donald E. Stewart died in 1999 after a career as a screenwriter (you may remember his scripts for The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, A Clear and Present Danger, and Missing). Now, this is curious: he left a "manuscript" for a project for what was to be Hostiles in the 1980's and Scott Cooper (who directed Black Mass, Crazy Heart, and Out of the Furnace) took up the mantle of the film, seeing it through to completion last year.

Hostiles is in theaters now and the promotion of it, the ads on television of it, has led to a lot of questions on my part—it's a Western (a rarity these days) but what type of "Western" is it going to be? Is it going to be myth or truth? Is it going be clean or messy? Tragedy or triumph? Is it Nation-building or genocide? Is it going to hearken back to Westerns of the past or plow new ground? What sort of animal is this "Western" going to be?

It's opening quote by D.H.Lawrence doesn't help much, except in retrospect: "The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted."

Yep.

We're told it's 1892 in New Mexico and in a valley of scrub squats a naked farmhouse. Riders approach. Wesley Quaid (Scott Shepherd) is working when he sees the five horses appear over a ridge, his wife Rosalie (Rosamund Pike) is teaching adverbs to her daughters ("how where and when"), with the baby asleep in the next room, when Wesley busts in and tells her to run to the woods like they'd planned and don't look back. But, she can't. Wesley shoots, but almost immediately he is shot full of arrows and scalped. Running with the baby in her arms, she is horrified that her daughters are picked off with rifle-fire, but she still runs and hides. The Comanche raiders can't find her, but they set fire to the house. The baby is dead in her arms from a bullet that didn't reach her. 

Captain Joseph Blocker (Christian Bale) returns to Fort Berringer, New Mexico, after capturing an Apache family that has escaped. He and Master Sergeant Tommy Metz (Rory Cochrane) share a bottle and reminisce about their long campaigns fighting the South and then the Plains Indians; Metz has been relieved of his guns due to "melancholia" ("There's no such thing" says Blocker) and confesses he's going to retire, but the Army, as it always does, has other plans.

Berringer's commander, Biggs, (Stephen Lang) has orders—"a cause celehbray"—from President Harrison: one of the fort's prisoners, a Cheyenne Chief named Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi), is dying of the cancer and Biggs wants Blocker—and no one else—to escort him and his family back to "The Valley of the Bear" in Montana so he can die in his homeland. Blocker is adamantly opposed to the idea and refuses, to the point of insubordination. As a conveniently expository reporter for Harper's Weekly informs us, Blocker has probably scalped more men than Sitting Bull "himself," and while Blocker acknowledges that it is not his place to disagree, he will not carry out the orders and would just as soon cut the throats of every member of the family. Biggs tells him to sleep on it; he leaves in the morning.

After a night straight out of a Terrence Malick movie where Blocker walks out to the prairie with a thunderstorm in the distance and screams his protests about it, he gears up and takes a squad with him: Metz (of course); buffalo soldier Corp. Henry Woodson (Jonathan Majors); a rookie out of West Point, Lt. Rudy Kidder (Jesse Plemons); and a Pvt. Phillipe Dejardin (Timothee Chalamet), who everybody calls "Frenchie." Once out of sight of the fort, Blocker stops the party saying "the fuckin' parade's over," takes out two Bowie knives and orders Yellow Hawk to dismount, offering him one of the knives. The Chief scrutinizes the Captain "I do not fear death" he says in Cheyenne, and Blocker orders the two Cheyenne males to be chained up for the rest of journey to Montana.

They don't get too far until they find the Quaid farm, still smoking, the dead unburied, and Mrs. Quaid sitting in the burned out husk of her home, still holding her dead infant, with her daughters tucked neatly into bed. She demands that they not be disturbed, and Blocker, with a career of dealing with tragedies like this, places the emphasis on comfort rather than pushing the realities of the tragedy on someone still in shock. Even the offer of burial of the loved ones is dropped...immediately...when the woman, in her grief, demands she do the job herself. She digs and digs why the soldiers stand by, finally pawing in the dirt (much like Blocker raked the ground in the "Malick segment") until assistance is gently offered and she acquiesces, allowing for a service to be performed just after the sun has dropped below sight.

This hasn't gone unnoticed by Yellow Hawk and his party. The old chief goes to Blocker and requests that he and his son be unchained to better assist in any defense against the Comanche renegades. He is entirely practical and sees danger for all parties "They are snake people," he tells Blocker in Cheyenne. "They do not discriminate." The words weigh on the captain but he will not relent. The chief may make sense, but not enough to soften his caution. For him, it comes down to deeds, not words. It is only after an encounter with the Comanche that leaves Woodson wounded and Dejardin dead (and three of the Comanche dead, one by Yellow Hawk running over him with his horse and another by his son, Black Hawk (Adam Beach) strangling him with the very chains that bind him does he relent. The Captain can be practical, too.  

He's also different than most Western heroes. You know the type. Most of them are fierce subscribers to the idea of "Manifest Destiny," (as in "there's a wilderness to be tamed and, by God, I'm the one to do it"*). The wilderness is one thing, but the indigenous peoples living on it before them is quite another. Most of the time, we just get the settlers' view of things, but about 50 years after movies were created (and "the Western" along with it, scarce decades after the real thing happened), we started to get a thread of the viewpoint of the First Peoples' point-of-view which can be summed up as "there goes the neighborhood" or more contemporaneously "who let all these foreigners in here?" The making of the nation was pretty much boiled down to a governmental experiment combined with a continental race war. But, it really wasn't until John Ford made The Searchers in 1955 that we got to see the racial aspects of the Western, and it was write large when its top-billed star—John Wayne—played the character of Ethan Edwards, a complete and total (and unrepentant) racist.**

Your initial impression of Captain Joseph Blocker leads you to think he runs along the same lines—and director Cooper nudges the cine-philes in that direction by opening with a similar family massacre and a shot from the interior of the house that frames Nature in a doorway in the same manner that The Searchers did in its initial images. But, Blocker does not see things as merely black or white, but more of a shade of mordant gray. He's not a strict racist, per se (and his tearful leave-taking of Corporal Woodson is meant to dispel the notion), he just hates Indians—at least his experience as a soldier has taught him that that should be his first line of defense. He's seen too much death, and, in turn, caused too much of it to think that any business with Natives is not a good business. And it comes to him as naturally as putting on his uniform.***

And, as if to prove the point, Cooper takes it a step further; at a Colorado outpost along the way (where Woodson can be doctored) and Mrs. Quaid might take her leave, Blocker and his troop are given another task—escort Sgt. Charles Willis (Ben Foster) to Montana to be hanged for murder. He's given a couple more guards, and, despite the offer of sanctuary, Mrs. Quaid opts to continue to ride with the troop to Montana. And it is this portion where most of the reviews of Hostiles has been a might unfriendly.

Some of the accusations against Hostiles comes to its length at just this point—some folks think you don't need the Willis character, but I see it as a bit of reinforcement to shore up what might be a too-easy character arc for Blocker if it did not exist. Willis provides him a chance to look in a dark mirror, and see what might transpire of a man who goes down a wrong path. Willis—who once served with Blocker, and was at Wounded Knee with him—has taken his military experience and gone off the rails, murdering civilians, crimes for which he has been convicted and is on his way to be punished for. It may pad the movie a bit, but it does allow the alternative side to be heard from; Willis and Blocker are not the same man, but their paths are marked by similar times and occurrences, the accumulation of which have created the men they've become. Blocker could let those instances influence his choices, let the past influence the future, holding the names of the men killed under his command as a shield...or an excuse. His prisoner is the bad angel tempting him from the path he appears to be taking—made manifest (in all senses of the term) with his own destiny hanging in the outcome.

As you might be able to guess, I love Westerns. It's one of the two genres (besides science-fiction) that puts a mirror to our current age, speaking to us from the past (or the future), from the "when" about the present, about us and where we are today—about the "why" and the "how". Somehow, putting us in another frame of time puts us in another frame of mind, as well. The locale is different, but we can still recognize the human condition while it teaches us from a different perspective than the familiar, if we choose to recognize it.

Hostiles is of an age, 'way past the films of John Ford (although it pays homage to The Searchers), which dared to even bring up the matter of race in movies that were considered just "cowboys 'n injuns," to consider the Western as myth—and, as such, makes more than a passing reference to Eastwood's Unforgiven (even cribbing a line from it) and bringing a certain spin on the same director's The Outlaw Josey Wales—in how the battle to build a Nation exposes the best and worst of our natures, and, if we survive it, how, after the last echoes of gunfire fade, we choose to continue the journey—by looking back or looking forward? Do we continue it by building or by retrenching? Do we look to our bloody past or look to an uncertain future? Where is there security in either?  

Hostiles has a preference, obviously, but, in its penultimate sequence it still challenges those assumptions, by putting another challenge—another dark mirror—in the way of civilization...of nation-building. The choices are elemental, the ramifications complex, but it comes down to choosing sides...and what side you're on.

Like I said, I love Westerns, and I like them best when they're challenging. And Hostiles is one of the most challenging of the breed.

* See also: "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do."

** If you could get past the fact that the character was played by traditional Western hero, John Wayne (which a lot of people couldn't). Some people see him as a hero without noticing that the one GOOD thing he does goes entirely AGAINST his previous intentions and inclinations...and that the movie basically shuns the character and bars him from civilization.

*** Christian Bale has a funny little character "tic" when his character is thinking—he rubs his scalp at the line of his hair...as if he's valuing it and saying good-bye to it for the last time if he thinks wrong. 

Gone Girl

Keeping Up Appearances in the Tender Trap (Sir Reality in the State of Nancy Grace)
or
"We're So Cute I Could Just Punch Us in the Face"

One can see where people are enthusiastic about Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn's story of a missing person investigation.  It's so full of good ideas and banal dialogue and frightening concepts one doesn't know whether to hate it or love it.

It has gotten a comfortable fit for a director of the movie version from that master of discomfiture, David Fincher, who always manages to make movies that get under your skin and irritate, no matter the genre. Even a romance like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has its seriously icky side the way Fincher envisions it.

And Gone Girl is hardly a romance, although the subject of marriage is prevalent throughout, but not in the form of Holy Matrimony. Everything about the marriage of Nick and Amy Dunne is unholy. As attorney Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry in probably his best performance outside of Madea) says "You two are the most fucked up people I've ever met, and I deal with fucked up people for a living."

Even the first words of Nick's narration creep you out: "When I think of my wife, I think of her head...and what's inside it. I think about cracking her skull, unspooling her brains and sifting through it, trying to pin down her thoughts. What are you thinking?  What are you feeling?  What have we done to each other?  What will we do?"

"What have we done to each other?  What will we do?"

It's July 5th, the day after Independence Day (or "Co-dependence Day" as I call it) and Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) puts out the garbage, surveys his street and drives to the local bar he owns (well, not really) with his sister Margo (Carrie Coon) to talk about what he's going to get his wife Amy for their anniversary, and generally do some grousing about how lousy their marriage (five years in) is. He bitches and moans over a bourbon first thing in the morning, then drives home.

His front door is open and the cat's out. He goes into the living room and a glass table is shattered and a hassock overturned. Nothing's stolen.  

But his wife Amy is gone.

"Ready, aim...."

The police come at Nick's calling and do a forensics scan. The police investigator (Kim Dickens, who's terrific) does a cursory scan of the place, finds it suspicious and puts post-it notes on discreet blood-spatters in the house. A more thorough scrubbing of the place shows that there's been a lot of blood lost that has been cleaned up, indicating that there has been fouler play than what is immediately apparent. Nick falls under suspicion, although he is genuinely baffled by the circumstances.

"Smile for the cameras" might not be the best thing to do...

Amy's parents from New York (David Clennon and Lisa Banes) go into over-drive. Amy was the inspiration for a series of well-selling children's books—"Amazing Amy"—and their public media campaign to find Amy Dunne has plenty of opportunity for cross-promotional purposes and escalates the search to national attention. Nick's callow behavior before the cameras invites public speculation and suspicion and pretty soon, he's being pilloried in the press, especially when lookeeloo's and buttinski neighbors start sticking cameras and microphones and themselves into the proceedings. It doesn't help that Nick has been having an affair with one of his students (Emily Ratajkowski) and his public appearances pleading for the return of Amy do not sit well with her. Her revelations are (as they say in the press) "a bombshell" for which strategies need to be planned

Supermodel Ratajkowski "dressed like a Mennonite"

And Amy is still missing. The speculation fuels even more suspicions with the police. And evidence begins to mount up for motive and means that speak of Nick's secret life and their troubled marriage. "You ever hear the expression the simplest answer is often the correct one?" asks unsympathetic investigator Jim Gilpin (Patrick Fugit). "Actually," says detective Rhonda Boney "I have never found that to be true."

Arthur Conan Doyle had Sherlock Holmes say in "The Sign of Four" "...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." In the age of the 24 hour news-cycle, truth does not matter as much as filling up dead air-time. Those outlets spew as much improbability as they can in their race to get the story first. So, CNN filled their valuable airwaves about missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 with speculation about black holes and other conspiracy theories, The New York police commissioner held a press conference saying that the Aurora, Colorado movie shooter was costumed like "The Joker" (he wasn't, and what does a NYPD commissioner know about Aurora, Colorado?). Bloviating talk-show hosts opine viciously about the actions of the parents of any missing child. The regularity with which purported news organizations "get it wrong" in the first few hours of an event are legion, so much so that the NPR press-critique show "On the Media" has come up with something called "The Breaking News Consumer Handbook" that offers tips for practical cynicism.

This is the reality that Gone Girl is based in, where victims of crimes can be perceived as perpetrators (and there's plenty of precedence, as in "experts" like the ghoulish Nancy Grace (snarkily satired here as portrayed by Missi Pyle) can be allowed to batter the desperate (and even drive them to suicide) in the name of media-justice. Fincher has directed movies showing the downside of media circuses, how they're becoming more bread and circuses) and, as in The Social Network, throws cold water on the "fun" trends of public distraction that are shown to be quite personal public destructions.  Oh, what a tangled world-wide web we weave.

That sinking feeling...

But there's something else going on in Gone... The media circus shenanigans are all too familiar to anyone who "watches" news channels (and it feels a bit like a documentary at times). But, the "other" theme running concurrently in the movie can only be spoken of in general terms, lest the thickened plot be given away. It's there, disquieting, maddening and just a little ballsy and brilliant, but sure to piss people off and pull loyalties every which way (I like that).

Because running concurrently with the plot of Nick being confronted with his past, there is a parallel telling of events from Amy's perspective—her diary...in fact. It's Amy's view of things that makes things uncomfortable for awhile—for the discriminating movie-goer, not in terms of the plot—only because it starts so gushily hearts and flowers that, like Amy says at one point "We're so cute I could just punch us in the face." The dialogue is so floaty and so "daytime television" that the movie is in real danger of losing any interest several minutes into it. Stick with it, though. That sentiment turns mighty fast, as that diary becomes evidence. It is damning.

You see, writer Flynn messes with stereotypes. That's all I can say. She pulls in one direction that breaks the mold and then pushes in another that feels hackneyed and "old" and, frankly, is a bit over-the-top—then utterly perverts it to make something truly horrifying in its implications and...appearances. At the same time that she's boldly staking new ground, she's also re-enforcing sexist attitudes and tropes to an alarming degree in a dance that's two steps forward, four steps back. She does this to the women portrayed, but lest one begins to feel the need to pick sides, she's just as tough on the men, too. One watches Gone Girl with an admiration of how unsympathetic it all is—watching it, I kept thinking (as a friend once phrased) "I got no dog in this fight." Everybody is nasty, but that's okay as long as things look good for the cameras...and how you spin it, so the court of public opinion looks more like a court of law—but without the rules of jurisprudence (or even simple prudence). 

Rosamund Pike is going to get her share of laurels for her multi-faceted portrayal of the amazing Amy, but Affleck has rarely been better as the callow and callous Nick, so comfortable in his skin that he bears the stink of entitlement. You never end up rooting for him, but you never have any sympathy for him, either, for all the travails he goes through...amid the risks and burdens of the couple's secret lives and secret deaths. 

I wandered out of the theater wondering: "If Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus, what happens when a man comes up against Dejah Thoris?" Hell hath no fury, indeed...

Amy Dunne exults in a sugar-storm