To Get “The Girl Who Played With Fire,” Sony Must Dump David Fincher

by Gabriel Valdez

One of my favorite films in the last few years is The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It’s one of director David Fincher’s most impressive works, a tone poem of oppression, obsession, and rejection.

Daniel Craig’s Mikael Blomkvist is an idealist who suffers at the hands of social manipulators – white collar criminals and sadistic serial killers alike – while Rooney Mara’s  Lisbeth Salander plays his cynical knight in punk-goth armor, a hacker whose only care is to aggressively deconstruct – the identities of others, the clues to a mystery, the life of her abuser, the power foundation of an international bank. She’s one of my favorite heroes on film…well, ever.

Mara recently told E! that she was very doubtful the planned sequel – The Girl Who Played With Fire – would ever come to fruition. “I’m sad never to do it again,” she told Marc Malkin, “but it just doesn’t seem like it’s in the cards.”

Where the problem lies between Fincher and Sony is difficult to say. Much has been written about Fincher’s budget demands, but these may be red herrings or negotiation tactics. The impasse may rely as much on whether the last two films of the trilogy would be shot back to back, and on seemingly endless (and costly) rewrites of the screenplay. Obviously, Fincher’s the best choice to realize the sequel, but this doesn’t mean he’s the only choice.

Sony, who admittedly have created many of the problems they now face with Fincher, has got to deliver an ultimatum. If it isn’t met, they must move on. I want this movie. More importantly, I want it with this cast. I’d like to see Fincher at the helm – if you ask me, no director has changed the face of film more since the 1980s. Yet there are other choices. Here are five suggestions:

I’ve long said that if the pair can’t figure it out, Sony should give David Cronenberg a call. The franchise would exist both inside and outside of Cronenberg’s wheelhouse. He creates darkly horrific tales of mental, physical, and emotional frailty. That’s what this franchise is. Fire might creatively constrain him, though. Could he realize the thrill of discovery and risk that Fincher did? I don’t know.

Mary Harron deserves more work. She once knocked American Psycho out of the park and while she’s experienced at horror, she’s more experienced at exactingly taking the genre apart at its seams, which is the real strength Fincher brings to the table.

Could Steven Soderbergh be coaxed out of his not-really retirement? He’s a career chameleon with a rare ability to direct from the inside-out in any genre, although he can gloss a film over where Fincher is exactingly dispassionate. He’s directed Mara to stunning effect before in Side Effects.

What about Danny Boyle? It wouldn’t be the first time he took over for Fincher, as he’s doing now for the Aaron Sorkin-written Steve Jobs biopic. Boyle is a master of changing voice, pace, and style – 28 Days Later…, Sunshine, Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours. He’s not a precise match for the tone Fincher set, but who is?

If you want an out-of-left-field suggestion: Tomas Alfredson, director of Let the Right One In and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Few are as good at setting mood. His films are paced glacially, but they always pay off. He’s also as good a director of actors as you can find, and he lends his movies that dispassionate, exacting quality I spoke of earlier while marrying them to a worldview more hauntingly sad.

These are the five who come off the top of my head right away. Obviously, Fincher is the best choice, but with the cast assembled – with core players like Mara and Craig who realized their roles so completely in the first movie…do you really want to lose those and be forced to start over? Do you think a reboot or, oh god no, a TV series (as Mara points out, Sony’s spent too much money on the rights to do nothing with them) would be better? Sony has to figure things out with Fincher. Or do the impossible, and be brave enough to dump and replace him. I don’t want to write this up one day in our Best Movies Never Made section.

Just make sure you keep Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross on the score, and bring Karen O in for another guest vocal. Because:

(Thanks to moviecritic92 for the heads up on Mara’s comments.)

Wednesday Collective — Ghost in the Cruise

This week, we’re talking about Ghost in the Shell, Tom Cruise, singing cowboys, the X-Men, Steven Soderbergh, and Indiana Jones. We’ve focused some Wednesday Collectives lately about specific interests, so we’re playing some catch-up – we’ll have even more articles in tomorrow’s Thursday’s Child.

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
There is No Ghost in the Shell
LogosSteve

The thing about science-fiction is that the world catches up to it in short order. We may not have the spaceships of early 90s Star Trek, for instance, but we’ve certainly surpassed their clunky data devices and equaled their communication abilities. Star Wars movies made 15 years ago present us with dated, impractical visions of technology (oddly enough, the 30-year old films still feel more futuristic).

In the 80s, cyberpunk sprang to the fore of science-fiction. If nothing else, it was a reaction to Reaganism and the growing power of the corporation. Yet the subgenre’s originator, William Gibson, left his own genre a decade ago, saying that reality had caught up, and it was a far more insidious one than he could have imagined.

So it’s impressive that an anime film made 20 years ago looks like a grim vision of the future and asks us questions we’re still at the beginning stages of contemplating. Above is a staggeringly complete video essay on the questions about the soul, human consciousness, and the increasingly cybernetic nature of our lives that Ghost in the Shell raises.

The Fall of Tom Cruise
Amy Nicholson

I can’t understand people’s reasoning behind hating Tom Cruise. He stood on a couch at Oprah’s behest and he has a crazy religion. You know, unlike all those perfectly reasonable religions the rest of us have.

I know people who hate Tom Cruise but will geek out over Mel Gibson being in The Expendables, or who will gladly sit down for a Roman Polanski or Woody Allen movie. I know people who hate Tom Cruise who get upset when I turn off a Michael Jackson song.

Yes, he’s kind of crazy and his personality caused Katie Holmes to leave, but to lump him as somehow worse than that bunch and less deserving of our viewership based purely on personality is mind-boggling to me. He started out dirt poor. There are countless examples of his going out of his way and taking big financial risks to help directors and stars just getting their start. Directors come away saying he’s a workaholic on-set. Cast and crew come away saying he’s generous with his time, and pitches in with menial on-set tasks that other actors won’t. When he sues tabloids, he’s always given the entire proceeds to charity. Why don’t those things hold value?

Amy Nicholson answers a few of these questions for me in painting a picture of Cruise’s infamous Oprah appearance. Nobody could have known how badly timed it was – YouTube was a week old, Perez Hilton and Huffington Post just a month. It was a perfect storm of the Internet’s as-yet-untested viral tabloid ability and a breakdown in PR.

Her article also reminds us of Cruise’s early years, spent turning down tens of millions of dollars in action franchises so that he could instead play second fiddle roles to actors like Dustin Hoffman and Paul Newman, and work with directors like Ridley Scott and Oliver Stone.

I hope there comes a time when we’re able to remember Cruise as one of our most iconic movie actors, and not for an Oprah interview that – by the way – her attending audience that day was cheering. Well, until they got home and checked their e-mail, that is.

“Hollywood’s First Black Singing Cowboy”
Dennis McLellan

I’m not one to run obituaries. If someone dies, I don’t need a recap – I’d rather celebrate their life by discussing one of their films, or by sharing how their work affected me personally.

That said, history is riddled with important figures who we leave forgotten. Herb Jeffries is one of those figures. Before Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef took apart the Western there were straight-laced cowboys played by Gregory Peck and John Wayne. But before they saddled up, cowboys merrily sang their hearts out. In an age of crooning, white cowboys like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, Jeffries was the premier black one. He provided a counter during an age when African-American heroes were simply not seen on-screen.

Interviewing Lauren Shuler Donner
Diane Panosian

Lauren Shuler Donner is one of Hollywood’s most successful producers, famed for being the woman responsible for getting X-Men onto the screen and, by extension, making the comic book movie genre viable.

I like this interview because it’s short, to the point, and all about Shuler Donner’s development process. Many producers toe the studio line and keep everyone on-schedule. There’s nothing wrong with that, but she’s known as a very hands-on producer. Her strength is her adaptability – she’s one of the few executives who regularly talks about viewing a project from the perspectives and needs of writers, directors, and actors. She gives some good advice about how to produce to the strengths of each of these jobs.

Steven Soderbergh is Terrible at Retirement
Alex Suskind

Steven Soderbergh retired from filmmaking because it was becoming nearly impossible to fund his style of modestly-budgeted narrative-heavy filmmaking. Nevermind that 15 of his 18 theatrically released films were profitable – even domestic underperformers like The Girlfriend Experience and Che made money for their studios because Soderbergh abandoned blanket overseas distributorship in favor of nuanced, sometimes individually-designed releasing contracts in foreign countries.

The thing about Soderbergh is that he can’t keep still. He’s recut two classic movies while developing and directing TV series The Knick with Clive Owen for Cinemax. He’s directed off-Broadway while starting an import business for Bolivian liquor…I know, it sounds like I’m just making up new David Mamet plots now, but Soderbergh’s a weird cat. I said a long time ago that if TV was smart, they would capitalize on the studio system’s failure by investing to keep Soderbergh employed behind the small-screen. It looks like they’re doing exactly that.

Fortune, Glory, and Evil Indiana Jones
Quint

I feel a bit dirty linking to a website like Ain’t It Cool News, but I really did enjoy this personal essay about Quint’s watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom as a kid. I like folding personal experiences into these kinds of essays – artistic analysis is nothing without being honest about how our own personal biases fit into them – and it makes me think of Temple of Doom in a light I hadn’t considered before now.

SHORT FILM OF THE WEEK
“More”
dir. Mark Osborne

Vanessa ran a short film a few weeks ago and I liked the idea. We’re going to try closing each week’s Wednesday Collective with a short film of the week. I’ll start with one of my favorites – a stop-motion animation from Mark Osborne called “More.” It was nominated for an Oscar and won best short at Sundance way back in 1999, when I was just a 16-year old twinkle in a college admission department’s eye. Ah, those were the days. The awful, awful days. “More” remains one of the most moving and effective short films I’ve seen.

Wednesday Collective — Wonder Woman, Liam’s Bond, Soderbergh’s Psycho, & Lupita’s Beauty

Wednesday Collective is a new series, so I’m still allowed to tweak the rules. This’ll be a weekly roundup of any article about movies that caught my eye. There’ll still be a section at the bottom dedicated to collecting reviews for this week’s home releases, but I’d rather devote the bulk of this series to discussion about storytelling on film:

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
On Wonder Woman, Gal Gadot, and the Nature of Muscles

This is from Chris Braak over at Threat Quality Press. It’s a few weeks old, but a very good read. When Gal Gadot was cast as Wonder Woman in Zack Snyder’s untitled Superman-starring Man of Steel follow-up, there was an internet-wide backlash against the choice. You see, she comes across as a bit petite. Fans had wanted everyone from Gina Torres (who, frankly, lacks the acting chops) to Lena Headey (one of the most underrated actors going).

Unfortunately, it’s the Internet and the tone of the argument quickly turned to replacing Fetishized Woman A with Fetishized Woman B. Instead of discussing casting and symbolism, we got commentary over which unrealistic ideal of a woman fans would like better. Braak re-frames the argument into something more useful, while not discounting the choice of Gadot:

“It is true that Wonder Woman does not actually NEED giant muscles…that it’s not required for whatever passes for realism in comic book movies that she be tall and broad-shouldered, she can have magic strength like Buffy or whatever, that’s fine. But here’s what I would like us to consider: muscles are not just a source of power for average human beings, muscles also represent power.” It’s a superb read.

12 Years a Slave Producer’s Links to Apartheid

Arnon Milchan is a producer on such important films as 12 Years a Slave, LA Confidential, and the harrowing Alvin and the Chipmunks trilogy. He revealed late last year that he had used his position in the film industry to visit foreign countries and illegally import nuclear-weapon technology to Israel. He’d often use director Sydney Pollack to do it. The most notable trade involved Milchan using his connections to promote apartheid (South Africa’s system for ghettoizing and segregating blacks) in exchange for uranium. The FBI was investigating before the Reagan administration told them to drop it. Under the Radar‘s Bryant Jordan has the most complete article wrapping it all up, but Harriet Sherwood’s Guardian write-up is also worth checking out.

Neeson. Liam Neeson.

The Hull Daily Mail has an intriguing interview between Liam Neeson and Keeley Bolger, in which he talks about turning down the James Bond role that eventually went to Pierce Brosnan because his late wife gave him an ultimatum.

Steven Soderbergh’s Psychos

The great director of Traffic, Ocean’s Eleven, and Magic Mike enjoyed perhaps the most diverse career of any modern director. He retired last year, but he’s very slyly been doing a terrible job of it. Aside from helming Cinemax’s Clive Owen-starring hospital drama The Knick, he just released online his re-edited mash-up combining Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Psycho with Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot, 1998 remake.

Lupita Nyong’o on What Makes Beauty

The speech Lupita Nyong’o gave upon accepting the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress was beautiful and inspiring, but the speech she gave to this year’s Black Women in Hollywood gathering was a remarkable commentary on the biases we still enact upon each other and how best to surpass them.

The 30-year Mystery of The Terminator‘s Score

This article from Slate gives some insight into how an accident helped create one of the most unique, underrated, and iconic scores in film history – the main theme to the original The Terminator.

ON DVD / BLU-RAY

12 YEARS A SLAVE

The Loquacionist wrote a stellar piece about confronting his own family’s slave-owning history as he watched 12 Years a Slave.

Film Threat gets angry that so few movies are made confronting the ugliest piece of foundation on which the United States was built.

Alessia Palanti, as always, portrays the emotion of a film while diving into the meaty theory behind it at Camera Obscura.

And my own response considers the ease with which cultures slip into performing atrocities and explains how the film emotionally broke me like very few others.

THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE

Bad*ss Digest raved about the film, stressing both its political and storytelling subersiveness.

Reel Antagonist thought the film strong, but that it lacked in rewatchability.

I thought it was a beautiful political statement, and that The Hunger Games is positioning itself as the science-fiction epic of my pissed off and discontent generation.

I also write about Jennifer Lawrence’s performance here.

OLDBOY

I still haven’t seen it, but Outlaw Vern has a humorous and entertaining write-up on Spike Lee’s remake of Chan Wook Park’s original masterpiece. He says he didn’t hate it or anything, but that they should’ve thrown caution to the wind, dumped Brolin, and gone full-on Nicolas Cage with it. That’s never a good sign.

2013’s Most Overlooked Films

I have two criteria to determine the most overlooked films of 2013. First, the film had to have made less than $25 million in its theatrical run. Now, $25 million is a lot of money; I certainly wouldn’t turn it down. When it comes to movies, though, 99 made more than that in their U.S. runs last year. I may champion Oblivion as a sci-fi classic and argue that The Lone Ranger is cleverly subversive, but they both made a good chunk of change last year. That means audiences saw them. They’re not allowed on this list, especially when I can sneak them into my introduction. Second, to be overlooked means the film earned no major awards consideration. Dallas Buyers Club and Inside Llewyn Davis each earned a handful of Oscar nominations, so they’ll get four straight hours of advertising on March 2. Here are my most overlooked films of 2013:

In The East, a corporate intelligence agent, Sarah, goes undercover with a domestic, eco-terrorist group. Star and co-writer Brit Marling herself spent time with an anarchist group in order to research the role. The film is both a criticism of the mega-corporations that consider undrinkable water or unthinkable side effects the costs of doing business, as well as a judgment against the groups that claim the answer is drastic violence. As is the case with many terrorist acts, Sarah reveals that the group’s ideological claims are nothing more than excuses for vengeance based on personal grudges. She is caught between two groups too invested in destroying each other, obsessed with winning rather than doing the right thing. The East is thrilling and has some profound points to make. Marling sticks to the most independent of indie films, but she’s on her way to becoming a terrifically important actress. The East also proves that Ellen Page (Juno), as one of the anarchists, can do more than just play a quirky kid. It’s rated PG-13.

In a World, one of the best comedies to have come out last year, stars Lake Bell (who also wrote and directed) as Carol, a vocal coach who trains actors how to get rid of or develop an accent. Her father, Sam, is an iconic voice-over actor whose booming voice accompanies the most legendary of movie previews. It’s a big deal for both when a new trilogy of films announces it’s bringing back the most epic of voice-over gigs, starting with the words, “In a world…” Sam insists a serious movie can’t advertise with a woman’s voice-over, and Carol does what most kids do when a parent tells them they can’t do something. It’s a simple premise done well as the two compete for the role. Unlike most movies about Hollywood, this one avoids industry in-jokes and plays more like a romantic comedy. Comedian Demetri Martin, Rob Corddry (“The Daily Show”), and Eva Longoria (delightfully butchering a cockney English accent) co-star. It’s rated R for some brief sexual references.

Mud is the very definition of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Two Arkansas kids, Ellis and Neckbone, sneak out at night to explore the swamps along the Mississippi River. They dock at a lonely island and come across a drifter named Mud (Matthew McConaughey). He’s waiting for his girlfriend, Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), but needs the boys’ help. See, he can’t go into town because cops and bounty hunters are looking for him. Neckbone comes from a broken family and Ellis’s is breaking around him, so Ellis increasingly looks at Mud’s plight as his last chance to have faith in family and love. The tension is first-rate and McConaughey delivers a spellbinding performance. “Mud” is rated PG-13, and reminds me of a less fantastical version of the slow-boil movies Steven Spielberg made when he was first getting started.

Side Effects is allegedly Steven Soderbergh’s last feature film, so I’ll bend my $25 million rule just this once. He’s the most dynamic director of our time, best known for Ocean’s Eleven, Erin Brokovich, and Traffic. Here, Rooney Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) plays Emily Taylor, a woman suffering from manic depression. Her husband, Martin (Channing Tatum), is a Wall Street banker just being released from jail. Soderbergh hits a lot of points early on. The same way convicts develop gang connections in high-security jails, Martin uses a minimum-security prison to develop his Wall Street connections. Emily goes through a retinue of pharmaceuticals, each with new side effects, before her psychiatrist, Dr. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law) decides to try her out on a new, experimental drug. Soonafter, Emily begins to sleepwalk. Tip of the day – don’t sleepwalk and try to dice vegetables with a kitchen knife at the same time.

Side Effects goes through a lot of twists and turns. It lets you outsmart it just long enough to outsmart you. What starts as psychiatric drama becomes a legal thriller, and as soon as you’ve settled into that, you’re watching a family drama turn into a conspiracy film with shades of Hitchcock’s man-on-the-run films. If there were an Oscar for Best Twists and Turns, this’d be the film to get it. Soderbergh’s career is defined by changing style from one film to the next, so if this is his swan song, it’s a fitting one. A film that changes genre, tone, and protagonist so quickly can’t just pass a genre sniff test; it can’t just be functional. It has to be a very good movie in each of its genres. That’s where Soderbergh is better than any other director, and that’s where he takes most advantage of Mara and Law – their characters suffer the drama and threat, but there’s always a hint of the actors having fun with it. It’s an approach that keeps heavy material very light on its feet. Side Effects is rated R.

Spring Breakers. I’ve already written a good amount on the qualities of the film and the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink performance of James Franco as rapper/courtroom-pickup-artist Alien, so let me preface by saying this: Spring Breakers is not appropriate for anybody. It’s a film that levies judgment on a materialistic, celebrity culture by being absolutely obsessed with it. We follow four college girls to spring break in Miami, where they’re arrested on drug charges. Alien bails them out with an offer to chauffeur them around the city for a day. He introduces them to a hedonistic lifestyle that hits on the darkly possessive side in many.

One in particular turns away from the temptation, a girl named Faith (Selena Gomez), while the others draw into Alien’s wiles. I have my doubts as to whether Gomez is capable of succeeding as a serious actor. She’s got more than enough comedic timing and popularity to lead her own sitcom, so I applaud her for taking on thankless roles when she could still be printing money out of Disney. Sometimes a role is lightning-in-a-bottle, and her last scene opposite Franco, the moral tatters of one girl being broken down by a remorseless, consumptive creature without conscience, is the terrifying, overwhelming heart to a film that’s simultaneously very difficult and disturbingly easy to watch. Spring Breakers might be the film we most deserve right now, a hard-R-rated movie so sex-and-drug filled that it numbs the viewer to either, edited the way rap songs are tape-looped, constantly recursive to the point of cannibalizing itself. It’s balanced between the repercussion-free zone of absurdism and your own conscience. It’s a brilliant achievement.

You’re Next is both my favorite horror movie and dark comedy of 2013. The set-up seems familiar. Three masked attackers invade a home and terrorize a helpless family, but there are a few things that make You’re Next different. The first is how passive-aggressive this family is. Even as they get picked off one by one, they can’t stop bickering. The second is the twist, halfway through the film, that gives the attackers’ actions their logic and turns everything on its head. The third is that one son brought a date, Erin (Sharni Vinson), who was raised as a survivalist in the Australian outback. Setting traps and fighting back, she’ll quickly become one of your favorite horror movie heroes. You’re Next is rated R.