Gone Girl

The world is a vampire. The systems society has put in place intending to protect people have been perverted by opportunists, sycophants, and psychopaths looking to walk all over the little people. Everything is broken, and anyone could find themselves with their very life in the balance at any moment. At least, that’s the world, or at least the America, that Gone Girl, David Fincher’s darkly comedic latest mystery, is set in.

Because if I told you there was a movie starring the likes of Ben Affleck, The World’s End‘s Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry, Casey Wilson, and Missi Pyle as almost exactly Nancy Grace, you’d think it was a comedy, wouldn’t you? In some ways, this movie is exactly that. One of the things that makes Gone Girl such a pleasure to watch is that it manages to showcase not just the frustration, terror, and uncertainty of a horrible situation, but the absurdity of it as well.

Ben Affleck is Nick, a regular guy who co-owns a bar with his twin sister Margo (Carrie Coon) and comes home one day to find his wife has disappeared. As the search for her begins, Nick finds himself under increasing scrutiny as the media, community, police, and even his family begin to wonder if he’s got something to hide. Nick’s just one of those guys that outwardly seems too great – he’s too smooth, too cool, too handsome – someone people basically want to hate. Which is why Affleck, who people do seem to desperate for a reason to hate, is so great for this role, and delivers one of his best performances.

As does Rosamund Pike as Amy, the eponymous missing woman. Watching her side of the story is equal parts depressing, horrifying, and infuriating, and it all works because Pike is so good at playing such a damaged character. It’s undoubtedly among the year’s best performances and deserves more positive attention than she’s been getting. One of the biggest complaints I’ve read is that people feel the movie doesn’t explain enough how Amy came to be broken the way she is, but I say that ambiguity makes her all the more interesting.

More than anything, Gone Girl is another showcase for how slick and thrilling David Fincher can make a movie. He finds something in every scene that adds the extra weirdness or humanity or memorability that helped keep me interested as a viewer. I remember a scene with Margo storming out of Nick’s house and on the way she briefly leans down to pet Nick’s cat. It’s such a bizarre touch, to throw off her dramatic exit like that, but it’s the way people actually behave. And it made me wonder how important that darn cat was going to be in the grand scheme of things.

But in the grand scheme of things, nothing really matters save the story people want to here. Gone Girl could have been a good murder mystery, but what made the movie great is the way it deconstructs the stories people tell themselves. But to try to explain that without spoiling anything would be quite a challenge, so instead I’ll say go see this damn movie, it’s not doing super great in the box office you jerks!

Destiny

Destiny is one of the most expensive games ever developed, and rightfully so, given that it is the new franchise from the biggest publisher in the industry, Activision, and one of the most successful developers, Bungie. I mean, how else do you follow Halo? That series defined a console generation and a strange flavor of Mountain Dew. The only way you can possible solve the problem of living up to that legacy is by throwing as much money at it as possible. But now that Destiny has been out for a month, a lot of people are asking if that money is actually on display.
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Love is Strange

I believe Love is Strange is a hard movie to describe and its writer-director Ira Sachs would probably agree with me, because how else does a film such as this end up with a title so unremarkable? This worries me, because bubbling under the surface of that generic title and slightly tricky to explain premise is a beautifully acted, moving story that deserves more attention than it’s probably getting. I don’t know, I don’t carefully follow these things and I’ve already forgotten what this movie was called.

Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina) have been together forever and have finally been given a chance to marry each other. This is considered unacceptable by the Catholic school where George teaches music, and he is consequently unfairly terminated. Suddenly without their main source of income, the newlyweds have to turn to their friends and family for help: they can no longer afford their apartment and need someone to house them until they can find a new place. Unfortunately, no one has a spare room in the city, which means that Ben has to go stay with nephew Elliot (Darren E. Burrows), his wife Kate (Marisa Tomei), and their son Joey (Charlie Tahan), with whom he shares a bunk bed, even though that kid’s an only child. Meanwhile George gets to party, party, party with his former neighbors, one of whom is played by Cheyenne Jackson, who, like in his role in 30 Rock, plays an interesting character I’d like to see more of but never get a chance to.

So given that setup, what kind of movie does this want to be? Is it going to be a comedy about elderly, cultured people adapting to the crazy lifestyle of their new roommates? A little bit, yeah. Is it going to be a social issues movie, pointing out problems with the way we society treats homosexual people, the aged, the artistic, or the weird? There’s some of that in here. Is it going to just go straight up romantic and show that as they grow further apart geographically, their love grows even more? That’s definitely a part of it. But Love is Strange isn’t any of those movies exactly and I left the theater not really knowing what I was supposed to get out of it.

Of course, how resonant Love is Strange is for you is not something I can predict. All I can tell you that this movie is worth your time for the acting chops on display alone. Alfred Molina gets some beautiful moments, George is the one who has to directly confront discrimination and the frustrations of losing power of your own life. But John Lithgow absolutely devours this movie as Ben, the soft-spoken half of the couple. If you think of Lithgow as only able to play homicidal sociopaths and over-the-top aliens, here’s a reminder that he can handle what’s in-between those extremes as well.

There are several subplots in Love is Strange that I can’t quite figure out. This is my problem. I’m a 25-year-old single dude who technically still lives at home – I don’t have all the answers, certainly not in regard to the big things like life, family, and real companionship. I don’t have it all figured out. After all, love is strange.