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OT: Movies/TV Shows

Montana said:
I’d love to hear your more in depth review of if.
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I've got a feeling, some might get annoyed at the constant voice-overs by Fassbender about his random stats/facts of life. But it worked for me. Movies about assassins at this point feels unoriginal and cliched, but Fincher puts his stamp on it to feel somewhat original and thrilling. Fassbender is an unnamed character, yet fully-developed and fascinating. There's more thrills here than in his last thriller, Gone Girl.
 
The main problem with Jingle All the Way is that it portrays Arnie as a workaholic dad with backwards priorities, and Phil Hartman as the creepy DILF who is absolutely wrecking shop with every lonely housewife on the block, married or otherwise.

Personally i'd have preferred a casting switch.
 
JackBurton said:
I've got a feeling, some might get annoyed at the constant voice-overs by Fassbender about his random stats/facts of life. But it worked for me. Movies about assassins at this point feels unoriginal and cliched, but Fincher puts his stamp on it to feel somewhat original and thrilling. Fassbender is an unnamed character, yet fully-developed and fascinating. There's more thrills here than in his last thriller, Gone Girl.
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Fascinating, I find our tastes are usually fairly aligned….but I found it to be unoriginal and cliched….to the point that in the days since seeing it Ive been considering rewatching it as much more of a black comedy/satire/parody, thinking I had the perspective wrong when I watched it….because for how open I was to it being great going in, I was surprised by how flat it landed.


Like Fassbenders Killer, is kinda the
inspector Clouseau of Assassins…..

misses his shot, switches planes therefor not being home in time to protect gf, claims to be outside normal society while eating McDonald’s, using WeWorks as his makeshift office, rents air bnb’s, uses a fitbit, streams The Smiths, uses FedEx, and Postmates…just like any normie would…. mistakenly kills the professor with the nail gun believing he’d have 6-7 mins before he’d die, only for him to die within 1-2 mins…pulls a cheese grater out of the kitchen drawer….flubs the assassination of the big guy by taking a massive shit kicking first….breaks his empathy rule for the women (did love her death tho)….he uses extremely obvious names from sitcoms while flying that would stand out like a sore thumb for anyone trying to track him……has cornball lines like “I. Do. NOT. GIVE. A. Fuck. and “they should have a 30 day waiting period on creatine”

A part of me even wonder if it’s satirizing the Joe Rogan bros who live by all these “rules” they learn off the show…..only eating protein, pseudo nihilistic philosophizing like the size of the world population not being impacted by his dozens of assassinations?….using a Fitbit to track his heartbeat relative to his job…having these set rules he lives by…his exercise routine, etc etc

I’ve only seen it the once so I’ll need a few more to formulate a better take on any of the satire, but I think that’s much more the crux of Finchers intent than just a straight forward assassin movie that I otherwise found to be extremely subpar for Fincher this deep into his career.


I want to track down the original French comic as well, to see if that shines any light on what Fincher may have been going for…

There's more thrills here than in his last thriller, Gone Girl.
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Haha. Again I came away with the opposite take….I wasn’t even a massive fan of Gone Girl but I thought for those who loved the book it must have been a remarkable adaptation for them because of how well it was executed, how well it kept your interest built tension, and provides moments of genuine shock & surprise……none of which I thought The Killer pulled off. Nearly every single thing that occurs, feels like the most predictable outcome based on the preceding scenes.


Hoping I find more in it on future viewings, and hope the majority come away enjoying it as much as you did…..but I’m still perplexed at how void of anything worthwhile it felt for me. (Aside from one phenomenal scene with creatine dude).
 
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MyNameIsJonas said:
The main problem with Jingle All the Way is that it portrays Arnie as a workaholic dad with backwards priorities, and Phil Hartman as the creepy DILF who is absolutely wrecking shop with every lonely housewife on the block, married or otherwise.

Personally i'd have preferred a casting switch.
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I always joked that San Andreas movie would have been amazing if the Rock and Giamatti switched roles.
 
Montana said:
Fascinating, I find out tastes usually fairly aligned….but I found it so unoriginal and cliched that in the days since seeing it Ive been considering rewatching it as much more black comedy/satire/parody…because on the first viewing I just found it so remarkably shallow & empty. For how open I was to it being great, I was surprised by how flat it landed.

Like Fassbenders Killer, is kinda the
inspector Clouseau of Assassins…..

misses his shot, switches planes therefor not being home in time to protect gf, claims to be outside normal society while eating McDonald’s, using WeWorks as his makeshift office, rents air bnb’s, uses a fitbit, streams The Smiths, uses FedEx, and Postmates…just like any normie would…. mistakenly kills the professor with the nail gun believing he’d have 6-7 mins before he’d die, only for him to die within 1-2 mins…pulls a cheese grater out of the kitchen drawer….flubs the assassination of the big guy by taking a massive shit kicking first….breaks his empathy rule for the women (did love her death tho)….he uses extremely obvious names from sitcoms while flying that would stand out like a sore thumb for anyone trying to track him……has cornball lines like “I. Do. NOT. GIVE. A. Fuck. and “they should have a 30 day waiting period on creatine”

A part of me even wonder if it’s satirizing the Joe Rogan bros who live by all these “rules” they learn off the show…..only eating protein, pseudo nihilistic philosophizing like the size of the world population not being impacted by his dozens of assassinations?….using a Fitbit to track his heartbeat relative to his job…having these set rules he lives by…his exercise routine, etc etc

I’ve only seen it the once so I’ll need a few more to formulate a better take on any of the satire, but I think that’s much more the crux of Finchers intent than just a straight forward assassin movie that I otherwise found to be extremely subpar for Fincher this deep into his career.


I want to track down the original French comic as well, to see if that shines any light on what Fincher may have been going for…



Haha. Again I came away with the opposite take….I wasn’t even a massive fan of Gone Girl but I thought for those who loved the book it must have been a remarkable adaptation for them because of how well it was executed, how well it kept your interest built tension, and provides moments of genuine shock & surprise……none of which I thought The Killer pulled off. Nearly every single thing that occurs, feels like the most predictable outcome based on the preceding scenes.


Hoping I find more in it on future viewings, and hope the majority come away enjoying it as much as you did…..but I’m still perplexed at how void of anything worthwhile it felt for me. (Aside from one phenomenal scene with creatine dude).
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Good observations. I took it as a had a long career of success and this was the one time it went sideways. But that's my assumptions along with, what appears to be how much $ he made as an assassin.
 
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I didn't realize the great Jack Kirby did a miniseries version of 2001:


mb1v0ldmwni41.jpg
 
Montana said:
everything about The Killer on paper looks like a film made specifically to my taste….Fincher, Fassbender, sociopathic assassins, meditative passing, meticulously shot, script from the guy who wrote Seven, based on a popular French graphic novel, metatextual commentary on Fincher as a perfectionist Director….


…..and I couldn’t have been less impressed by it. All style, no substance, extremely paint by numbers and predictable….it’s few good moments feels completely lifted from another currently popular franchise. No clue what Fincher saw in this script that enticed him to make this….felt like completely empty calories compared to the rest of Finchers filmography.

Maybe I’ve completely misread this flick, and there’s remarkable subtext to mine here that completely flew over my head…..but on first pass it felt like a remarkable dud of a flick.


I can only assume it’s Fincher pumping out a non-passion project flick to fulfill his Netflix obligations?
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Watched The Killer last night. I enjoyed it a fair bit, even though some of your criticisms are valid. I guess I will Spoiler Alert the rest of my comments:

I liked the film, and want to defend it, but I guess there was a level of anticipation throughout that was not adequately satisfied in the end. It's one of those films/books where I quite enjoy the first half or two-thirds, and am a little too forgiving when they don't hit the landing. I also liked it more than Gone Girl though.

You mentioned "style over substance", and I can't argue the point, other than to say the style is fucking great. No surprise to a Fincher fan but it's incredibly well made. It doesn't feel like a parody, and also does not appear to be a "non-passion" project. From IMDB Trivia section:

The graphic novel "The Killer" (written by Alexis Nolent, illustrated by Luc Jacamon) has been a passion project for David Fincher for nearly 20 years.
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I see where you're coming from with the "paint-by-numbers" comment, though it didn't bother me during the film. I thought the aliases he used were pretty dumb as well, I will chalk that up to being something in the source material that Fincher just decided to leave in even though it makes no fucking sense (this character is all about not drawing attention to himself). Ambiguity regarding his motivations & situation was interesting enough that I wanted to learn more about him. I don't think Fincher nailed the third act though, and the ending was weak.

I'll end with a review from a Matt Craig newsletter (No Content For Old Men) because this made me want to watch the film in the first place, and I think he kind of nails it here - Fincher's characters are usually chasing and analyzing killers, but this time he goes inside the killer's head, and it's kind of empty. And Fincher definitely enjoyed playing around with the "unreliable narrator" motif. This is a character study about a Type A perfectionist who goes off the rails.

The Killer​

Few people in the history of pop culture have done more to shape the popular imagination around serial killers than David Fincher. Se7en, Zodiac, and “Mindhunter” are seminal texts. But in all of them, the murderer is always being chased, his psyche analyzed through bits and pieces of evidence. He’s always the mouse of the story, never the cat.

The Killer flips that on its head, taking place entirely inside the head of a hitman played by Michael Fassbender. The primary narrative device is this hitman’s inner monologue, told though voice over, part stream of consciousness part Ted Talk on how to be a good hitman. It’s a little annoying, and it’s meant to be. He’s a psychopath. And he insists to the audience that the only way to be a good hitman is to be a psychopath, through a series of mantras. Stick to your plan, he thinks. Anticipate, don’t improvise.

What makes the story interesting is that Fassbender’s killer is an unreliable narrator. He often doesn’t take his own advice, and usually his utterances come just before screwing up in some hilarious way. It’s not that he’s bad at his job, he seems quite good, it’s just that he’s human. And that’s a problem in his line of work.

It’s illustrative to be talking about Fincher this week after going long on Scorcese last week, because I think it shows how the line between “good” filmmaking and “bad” filmmaking is not linear. There is no right and wrong way to do things, strictly speaking, and both of these directors are total masters of the craft in very different ways. Fincher is an icy cold filmmaker, precise, detail-oriented, a minimalist to Scorcese’s three-and-a-half-hour maximalism. In each case, the styles service the material. Fincher loves process — how people get things done — and the look and feel of his movies match the stories he’s trying to tell.

As much as this is a strict genre thriller about the hitman going on a revenge mission after his employer tries to kill him, it’s really a story about perfectionism. Being a robotic control freak might lead to optimal efficiency in one’s work, and in the telling of our story, the hitman insists that the disciplined few will always prey on the weak compromising many. But what’s the point of all this efficiency if you can’t enjoy it?

It’s a theme that I feel any Type A personalities out there can identify with. Even though it’s a seemingly cold, emotionless movie explicitly, it would be utterly wrong to call it heartless. The heart is kind of the whole point.

Needless to say, I loved it. On the whole the movie comes together nicely but even if it didn’t each individual scene is completely riveting. The story progresses across the globe, as various missions tilt straight ahead in a way that’s easy to follow but constantly surprising. It’s actually very funny, in a wry and clever sort of way, and the dialogue sequences are often as tense and exciting as the action set pieces.

The whole movie hangs on Fassbender’s physicality, and he’s nothing short of incredible here. Not only has he not lost a step from only making one movie in the last six years, I think it’s his career-best performance. He plays an entire spectrum of emotions within like one to two degrees of expression. (And if it wasn’t weird to say I want to dress like a serial killer, I’d tell you his looks are such a vibe…I’d buy his closet.)

I saw this movie in theaters, which obviously I’ll always recommend, but it’s hitting Netflix next Friday (Nov. 10). I was planning to hold it for next week’s newsletter, but was too excited to share. After updating my rankings, this is my No. 3 movie of the year (behind Spider-Verse and Past Lives). Can’t wait for you all to see it.
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Habspatrol said:
I didn't like The Killer. It wasn't terrible... It looked nice, but mostly meh.
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yeah I'd have to agree with Montana, I don't really get why David Fincher would make this movie.

It was ok.

honestly the fact that Fassbender's wooden character listened to the Smiths obsessively was the only interesting thing about him

also,

A guy who "doesn't give a fuck" and walks away and doesn't get attached etc. doesn't proceed to do what Fassbender's
nameless protagonist then does for the rest of the movie. Also why would he spare the client at the end after all the pity is weakness stuff, not
to mention the side murders including the poor cab driver to make sure every loose end is eliminated. I don't get it.
 
I included a review from Matt Craig in my post, but for some reason it doesn't always show the full quote, so re-adding it here.

The Killer​

Few people in the history of pop culture have done more to shape the popular imagination around serial killers than David Fincher. Se7en, Zodiac, and “Mindhunter” are seminal texts. But in all of them, the murderer is always being chased, his psyche analyzed through bits and pieces of evidence. He’s always the mouse of the story, never the cat.

The Killer flips that on its head, taking place entirely inside the head of a hitman played by Michael Fassbender. The primary narrative device is this hitman’s inner monologue, told though voice over, part stream of consciousness part Ted Talk on how to be a good hitman. It’s a little annoying, and it’s meant to be. He’s a psychopath. And he insists to the audience that the only way to be a good hitman is to be a psychopath, through a series of mantras. Stick to your plan, he thinks. Anticipate, don’t improvise.

What makes the story interesting is that Fassbender’s killer is an unreliable narrator. He often doesn’t take his own advice, and usually his utterances come just before screwing up in some hilarious way. It’s not that he’s bad at his job, he seems quite good, it’s just that he’s human. And that’s a problem in his line of work.

It’s illustrative to be talking about Fincher this week after going long on Scorcese last week, because I think it shows how the line between “good” filmmaking and “bad” filmmaking is not linear. There is no right and wrong way to do things, strictly speaking, and both of these directors are total masters of the craft in very different ways. Fincher is an icy cold filmmaker, precise, detail-oriented, a minimalist to Scorcese’s three-and-a-half-hour maximalism. In each case, the styles service the material. Fincher loves process — how people get things done — and the look and feel of his movies match the stories he’s trying to tell.

As much as this is a strict genre thriller about the hitman going on a revenge mission after his employer tries to kill him, it’s really a story about perfectionism. Being a robotic control freak might lead to optimal efficiency in one’s work, and in the telling of our story, the hitman insists that the disciplined few will always prey on the weak compromising many. But what’s the point of all this efficiency if you can’t enjoy it?

It’s a theme that I feel any Type A personalities out there can identify with. Even though it’s a seemingly cold, emotionless movie explicitly, it would be utterly wrong to call it heartless. The heart is kind of the whole point.

Needless to say, I loved it. On the whole the movie comes together nicely but even if it didn’t each individual scene is completely riveting. The story progresses across the globe, as various missions tilt straight ahead in a way that’s easy to follow but constantly surprising. It’s actually very funny, in a wry and clever sort of way, and the dialogue sequences are often as tense and exciting as the action set pieces.

The whole movie hangs on Fassbender’s physicality, and he’s nothing short of incredible here. Not only has he not lost a step from only making one movie in the last six years, I think it’s his career-best performance. He plays an entire spectrum of emotions within like one to two degrees of expression. (And if it wasn’t weird to say I want to dress like a serial killer, I’d tell you his looks are such a vibe…I’d buy his closet.)

I saw this movie in theaters, which obviously I’ll always recommend, but it’s hitting Netflix next Friday (Nov. 10). I was planning to hold it for next week’s newsletter, but was too excited to share. After updating my rankings, this is my No. 3 movie of the year (behind Spider-Verse and Past Lives). Can’t wait for you all to see it.
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