Sunday, November 9, 2014

Gone Girl (2014)

Jack and I liked this thriller about a man whose wife seems to have been abducted on their anniversary. Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike turn in good performances for director David Fincher from a script adapted by Gillian Flynn from her bestselling 2012 third novel (we didn't read it). The story is satisfactorily complex but the author's having written the screenplay may explain why it was 149 minutes long--we writers sometimes love our own words too much.

Affleck (last blogged in Argo) and Pike (mentioned in The Big Year and linked to her previous work in Made in Dagenham) are convincing as Nick and Amy falling in love and then becoming a bickering couple in various flashbacks. Fun trivia: Nick is a New Yorker and was supposed to wear a Yankees cap in one scene. Affleck, a Yankee-hating Red Sox fan, refused, and compromised on a Mets cap. Carrie Coon (haven't been following The Leftovers, nor have I seen her on Broadway) is wonderful as Nick's sister and Neil Patrick Harris (most recently in these pages in A Million Ways to Die in the West) excellent as a nice guy who gets creepy later. Also noteworthy are Tyler Perry (we haven't seen a single Madea movie) as a savvy lawyer and Scoot McNairy (after Argo I liked him in the AMC series Halt and Catch Fire) as a scam victim.

Fincher (after The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo remake he produced all 26 episodes of House of Cards and directed two) is quite the powerhouse and his power is on the screen with high production values and another compelling soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (also did Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) (listen to the whole Gone Girl score here with occasional commercials). Apparently Fincher asked the composers to create music that's supposed to be relaxing but is unsettling, like something he had heard at a massage parlor. There are plenty of songs, too, but I think you'll remember the Reznor/Ross score.

That said, we saw this three weeks ago and my memory isn't all that sharp. Rotten Tomatoes is good with 88% critics and 90 from audiences.

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