The line between film and television -– or, at least, the one between movies and cable TV -- continues to dissipate. Cable channels like HBO are creating their own shows with budgets and production values equal to anything seen in your local cinema. Now other entities are getting into the game.
Consider “House of Cards,” an original series produced by Netflix. An ambitious political drama with a $100 million budget, it stars Kevin Spacey as a deeply amoral member of Congress deviously working the levers of power to his own end.
Rather than making the audience wait week by week to catch each new show, Netflix made the show’s entire 13-episode first season available for online streaming in one fell swoop this spring. (A second season is planned.) Those inclined could gorge themselves on the whole run in a single sitting.
“Cards” is essentially a showcase for Spacey (who is also an executive producer) at his reptilian best. As House Minority Whip Francis Underwood, Spacey is alternatingly silky smooth and slimy, charming his enemies and dominating his underlings and allies like a benevolent dictator as a climbs the ladder toward the White House.
“House of Cards” can best be seen as a sort of darkling twin to “The West Wing,” depicting a venal Washington D.C. that’s probably closer to reality than our idealized imagination. Robin Wright, Kate Mara, Michael Kelly and Corey Stoll also shine as supporting characters caught in Underwood’s web.
Now that the show is being released on video, however, it raises interesting questions about the shifting relationship between film, television and home video.
Why, exactly, would anyone shell out to buy “House of Cards” on DVD or Blu-ray (suggested retail price of $55.99 and $65.99, respectively) when the show is available to be seen with an $8 monthly streaming Netflix membership? Especially when, other than some special collectible packaging, it’s coming out without any video extras?
Those familiar with Netflix’s streaming library of movies and TV shows know that what’s available today might not be tomorrow. So it’s possible “House of Cards” might go away from streaming Netflix at some point.
And no matter how fast your Internet connection, the quality of DVD/Blu-ray will not be matched by streaming video anytime soon.
"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is extremely well-made, ably acted, beautifully shot and has a plot full of hairpin turns and twists. It is an entirely engaging and occasionally gripping film. It is also completely unnecessary.
This remake of the 2009 Swedish thriller based on the novel by Stieg Larsson contains no surprises for those who have seen the original. The identity of the killer is already known; the final disposition of the brilliant and possibly crazy title character, Lisbeth Salander, drains the character of much of the razor-sharp freshness from when Noomi Rapace played her.
Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig bring a few notes of their own to the roles of Lisbeth and investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist, but ultimately it's the same characters experiencing the same dynamic.
The really is no reason for the existence of this movie. Everything the American version does, the Swedish original already did equally well, or better.
Well, there is one reason I can think of for the remake: so Americans who don't like reading subtitles will buy tickets for it. That may be harsh and cynical, but there it is.
The story (screenplay by Steve Zaillian) wanders deep into the thickets of familial secrets and horrible behavior behind the doors of old-money mansions. So did the Swedish version, as both movies spend way too much time with Lisbeth and Mikael hunched over computer screens, staring at photos and waiting for clues to present themselves.
At just over 2½ hours, "Girl" can feel self-indulgent and sprawling.
The two main characters remain separated for nearly half the film, only joining forces when their objectives align. Recently disgraced after being found guilty of libeling a major industrialist, Mikael is recruited by a rich old magnate, Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), to track down the killer of his niece Harriet, who disappeared 40 years ago.
Lisbeth is the computer hacker hired to vet Mikael for the Vangers. Decked out in punk leather togs, multiple facial piercings and a dead-eyed stare, everything about Lisbeth screams, "Leave me alone."
(In one medium-ish change from the original movie, Lisbeth is not monitoring the ongoing doings of Mikael, but only becomes involved when he tracks her down and asks for help. This has the effect of making Mikael, who is by far the more passive person in the tale, seem more proactive and assertive.)
The entire Vanger family occuppies a lonely island in frozen Hedestad, and Mikael settles in to investigate Harriet's disappearance. With the clan filled with drunks, thieves and Nazis, the number of suspects is voluminous. Most want him gone; only Martin (Stellan Skarsgard), Harriet's older brother, is welcoming and helpful.
Lisbeth has her own problems. Formerly institutionalized, she's subject to a state-appointed guardian, who refuses to let her have access to her own money without ... considerations proffered. This extended sequence, while technically distracting from the plot, establishes Lisbeth as both frequent victim and ferocious victimizer.
Eventually, they team up to try to pierce the Vanger mystery. Mikael, the older, deliberate investigator, has a great deal of trouble getting inside Lisbeth's head. She's a bona fide genius, who eschews emotional attachments in all forms of human contact.
Director David Fincher, fresh off the success of last year's brilliant "The Social Network," adds a few wrinkles -- such as the exact way in which the final revelation plays out, and how Lisbeth and Mikael leave things between them. These changes aren't necessarily better or worse, and their only purpose appears to be something Fincher can point to in order to justify such a rote remake.
So why three stars for this movie? I respect the craft with which it was made, and can't deny that somebody unfamiliar with the original film will find it as darkly invigorating as I did the Swedish version.
What I'd really like is for this director, this screenwriter and these two stars to make another, original movie on their own. It'd have been a better use of their time, and mine.
Who would've thought a few short months ago that a verbose drama about computer nerds would end up as the front-runner for the Best Picture Oscar?
But it's true: "The Social Network," which contains zero sex or violence, and consists mostly of legal depositions and flashbacks of college kids hunched over computers, was the best movie of 2010.
It's the story of the founding of Facebook, an experiment to link college students on the Web, and became a phenomenon -- and a company worth billions. It might not surprise you that Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder who was recently named Time Magazine's Person of the Year, was not universally liked by those who knew him.
Especially those who ended up suing him.
The movie, which is a self-conscious evocation of "Citizen Kane," may not bear much resemblance to the actual Zuckerberg, in the same way that Orson Welles' opus was a fictionalized account of another media mogul, William Randolph Hearst.
But in a performance of contrasting attraction and repulsion, Jesse Eisenberg paints a portrait of a young man who would change the world by bringing friends together, even as he pushed his own away.
Extras, which are identical for the Blu-ray and two-disc DVD editions, are rife with goodies.
There are two separate feature-length commentary tracks: One by director David Fincher, and another with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and cast members Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer and Josh Pence.
There is also a feature-length documentary, "How Did They Ever Make a Movie of Facebook?". Plus several featurettes on various aspects of production, including editing, musical score and soundtrack, visual effects and more.
I cannot tell you if "The Social Network" is an accurate account of the founding of Facebook, the Internet colossus the lets people project their identity -- even create one -- on the Web.
The book it was based on by Ben Mezrich has been accused of being a highly fictionalized, one-sided affair that paints a portrait of Facebook founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a brilliant but destructive genius who estranged anyone close to him.
The irony being, of course, that the wunderkind who helped connect 500 million friends doesn't have any of his own. The few people he hadn't turned off with his abrasive, domineering personality he drove away through his obsessive need to build the millennium's Next Cool Thing.
What I can say about this film directed by David Fincher from a script by Aaron Sorkin is that it's an altogether mesmerizing tale, filled with unexpected dark humor, that plucks a lot of resonant strings about the Digital Age. On the surface it's a legal drama, but the story underneath the story is how techno-savvy nerds are using computer code to rewrite the power structures that have endured for generations.
It's an extravaganza of greed, ambition, stupendous egos and cutthroat business deals. It is certainly one of the best movies of the year.
In a bravura performance brimming with nervous energy, Jesse Eisenberg plays Zuckerberg, a computer science sophomore at Harvard who is dumped by his girlfriend in the film's opening minutes. Angry and half-drunk, Mark rushes back to his dorm and performs the Internet equivalent of a drive-by shooting, creating a nasty site called Facesmash where male students can rate the attractiveness of their female peers side-by-side.
The stunt crashes the school's servers and earns Mark academic probation from Harvard, but also demonstrates the power of social connections transported online.
When a pair of blueblood twin upperclassmen, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, pitch him the idea of creating an exclusive social networking site for Harvard, Mark immediately walks it across the street to his best friend, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), who has an affinity for business and the cash to get them started.
The site goes live and is an immediate sensation, spreading to dozens of schools. The Winklevosses -- or Winklevi, as Mark dismissively dubs them -- try to use their old-money connections to shut Facebook down. When that fails, they sue.
The narrative unfolds as a series of flashbacks framed by depositions for the Winklevoss lawsuit ... and also, Eduardo's. As we learn early on, a massive split grew between the two co-founders, leading to Eduardo suing Mark for pushing him out of the company right as it was headed to the stratosphere.
The performances are universally terrific. Armie Hammer is a hoot playing both Winklevosses -- through the magic of CGI -- portraying basically decent young men trapped by the arrogance of the bubble of entitlement in which they've lived their whole lives.
And Justin Timberlake has a sly, scene-stealing turn as Sean Parker, the rogue entrepreneur behind music-sharing site Napster. Parker gloms onto Mark like a metrosexual Rasputin, coaxing him into moving the fledgling operation out to Silicon Valley and whispering sweet nothings in his ear about becoming billionaires.
Eduardo wants to play it conservative, building Facebook through conventional advertising, but Sean senses that Mark is more of a social outcast at heart, longing to flip his middle finger at the establishment -- encouraging stunts like showing up to an investor's meeting in a bathrobe, or printing business cards that say, "I'm CEO, Bitch."
The final, compelling shot of "The Social Network" shows Mark Zuckerberg sitting at his laptop on Facebook, hitting the refresh key in search of his Rosebud. It's an exquisite moment that reveals the character's interior better than any words could. What matters if it's true?
To me, that is the central question of 1999's "Fight Club," a revolutionary movie about revolutionary men in a time of complacence.
Like a thousand cinematic rebels without causes before them, Edward Norton and Brad Pitt play young men uncertain about their place in the world. Lacking fathers, traditional male role models or even identities beyond what consumer culture dictates for them, they define themselves by rejecting the definition that society has placed upon them.
To wit: Study, work hard, play nice, climb the corporate ladder and you'll be rewarded with a home with nice furniture, a decent wardrobe, lots of cool gadgets and a woman to marry so you can replicate your experience for a new generation of men.
Norton plays Cornelius -- though that name may just be an alias -- who works for a major auto company, calculating whether it's more profitable to fix safety problems discovered in their cars, or cheaper to just let people die. Troubled by insomnia, he finds an outlet in attending therapy groups for troubles he does not have: Testicular cancer, infectious diseases, tuberculosis, etc. Only in the emotional outpouring between the afflicted can he find the release that helps him get by.
He's annoyed by the presence of Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), a chain-smoking fellow "tourist" who is also faking her way into sessions. Cornelius is a faker, but he needs to believe others' pain is real. They come to an understanding not to expose each other by splitting up their groups.
On a business flight soon after Cornelius meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a inexpressible cool guy who looks how he would like to look, fucks the way he would like to fuck, and does things he only dreams of having the balls for. They become friends and roomies when Cornelius' swank condo is blown up in a case of suspected arson, and he moves into the run-down condemned shanty Tyler calls home.
On a whim after a night of drinking, they each reveal that have never been in a fight. How can they call themselves men if they've never experienced the male ritual of combat with fists? They have a bout that's quite bloody but holds no animus. They're not fighting each other, but their status as boys who need this rite to call themselves men.
I'll stop myself right here to explain that near the end of the film it's unveiled that Cornelius and Tyler are actually the same person, halves of a split personality. It was a big reveal in 1999, but after more than a decade I believe the statute of limitations on spoilers has expired.
The film, directed by David Fincher from Jim Uhls' screenplay (based on the book by Chuck Palahniuk) was groundbreaking in that it was the first mainstream Hollywood film in which the reality of everything we'd seen is ultimately revealed to be false, or at least faulty. It was used so much in subsequent, inferior films like "Vanilla Sky" that it soon become tiresome. But back then, audiences hadn't been so gobsmacked by a turn of the plot since "The Crying Game."
This essay's opening quote comes from a brief, seemingly unimportant moment when Tyler and Cornelius board a city bus. Spying an ad for one of those Calvin Klein/Abercrombie type of outfits, Cornelius nods toward the portrait of a mostly nude boy-man, his body impossibly lean and completely hairless, like one of God's angels rendered in marble and put on a pedestal.
Is that what a man looks like? The irony, of course, is that Brad Pitt epitomizes the new standard of male beauty, a denuded figure that seems stuck in the in-between years of adolescence.
But beyond superficial indications, the question goes deeper. Does a man wear a tie and a white dress shirt and go to an office every day? Does he bring home a nice paycheck and drive an expensive car and have sex with lots of beautiful women? Are these the things that make him a man? In an era where it's no longer necessary for a male to prove his worth by strength and deed, these Madison Avenue cues have become their substitute -- and, Tyler argues, unworthy ones.
Tyler starts a movement built around underground fight clubs. There are some professional types like Cornelius, but for the most part their recruits are the disaffected and the downwardly mobile: Waiters, mechanics, bartenders -- the people in service jobs who keep things running to ensure the comfort of the comfortable, and who are looked down upon for their efforts.
The famous first two rules of Fight Club are that you do not talk about Fight Club, but of course people do and they spread all over the country. The combat is not about winning and losing, but the rush of fighting another man, just to say you are capable of doing so. The primal reasons for doing so in a modern society may have vanished, but these wayward souls want to -- literally -- get medieval on each other.
The film's chassis gets looser and looser in the second half, the suspension becomes balky and the steering grows uncertain. The movie (unlike our two anti-heroes) never drives right off the road, but it careens through the breakdown lane at times.
Tyler expands the fight clubs into something called Project Mayhem, with random acts of vandalism against corporate symbols evolving into outright terrorism. The final image, of skyscrapers of industry collapsing upon themselves in a manner shockingly similar to the World Trade Center towers, feels blasphemous now.
At this point in the story, the Tyler/Cornelius split has been revealed, so the audience isn't really sure how much of what we're seeing is real and how much the duo's collective, fermented imagination.
The character of Marla flits in and out as the plot demands. Cornelius can't stand her, but she and Tyler start having lots of wild sex, which of course is actually with him, since it's his alter-ego. It's not really so much of a well-defined character as the connective tissue between scenes where the filmmakers want to go.
"Fight Club" is one of those movies that needs the separation of years for proper perspective. When I first saw it, I thought it was a spectacular failure of a film, ambitious and unwieldy. More than 10 years later, it looks like a truly audacious movie with a lot of important ideas underneath the kooky terrorism plot and spurting blood of the club's arena. Give it another 10 for the true reckoning.
