The Killer

[twosclues]

I saw this today, it was pretty good! I love Fincher and I would say this is somewhere in the middle if I were to rank his filmography. Fun but quite low-key in comparison to his other films. Think it's out on Netflix in a few weeks. Anyone else catch it yet?

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I might see it this weekend. I also like Fincher's films in general, although I haven't felt compelled to watch Mank yet.

The cast certainly seems low key. I couldn't help but find the trailer funny when it lists them and I hadn't heard of anyone, bar Fassbender and Swinton.

[surreal]

I'm going tomorrow, seems to be only one place locally showing it but I don't want to watch it on a pokey TV - I hope this gets a physical release but Mank didn't so I'm not holding out much hope. 

[Thursday]

Just saw this and feel like I must have dozed off, because I'm a bit confused

Spoiler alert

The killer botched the hit, so someone decides the best course of action for his failure is to get some people to attack his girlfriend, why was that the choice? Who decided that specifically should be done?

[close]

[dissolute ocelot]

It does sound astonishingly generic. What exactly has happened to Fincher? Gone Girl was also very generic but did what you expect for a film of a famous book (as I guess did Dragon Tattoo). But this is the man who made Fight Club and Seven (and The Social Network which wasn't perfect but a lot better than any other film about a social network). Mank was OK but seemed to be something he got more out of making than anyone got out of watching, and I didn't like Oldman much.

Also, I wish he could have found a better title, though maybe he was going for generic there too. Is it his tribute to The Driver, The Professional (Belmondo or indeed Reno), all the other films called The Killer(s), etc?

I like films about assassins intent on revenge, but this does seem aimed at bored Netflix scrollers. Chris Nolan should tell him to get out of the house.

[El Unicornio, mang]

I'll watch this because Fincher + great cast and it's getting mostly rave reviews. Wasn't that keen on Mank though.

This is a great nearly 4-hour behind the scenes documentary about the making of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which is one of the few remakes I prefer to the original. Really fascinating insight into his process and he always comes across well I think, very un-Hollywood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtlRaML1Px0&ab_channel=ChannelIV

There's a similar feature length one for Social Network as well

[twosclues]

This is a great nearly 4-hour behind the scenes documentary about the making of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which is one of the few remakes I prefer to the original. Really fascinating insight into his process and he always comes across well I think, very un-Hollywood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtlRaML1Px0&ab_channel=ChannelIV

Thanks for this! Dragon Tattoo always felt like a peculiar project to me, because it came very soon after the original and so soon after Social Network which was his most celebrated film to that point (though Zodiac has caught up at this stage). The Blank Check podcast is covering Fincher currently and Dragon Tattoo is the next episode so a rewatch is definitely on the cards.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

This was decent, albeit a strangely minor feeling work. If I didn't know it was by Fincher, I'm not sure I'd have guessed.

Just saw this and feel like I must have dozed off, because I'm a bit confused

Spoiler alert

The killer botched the hit, so someone decides the best course of action for his failure is to get some people to attack his girlfriend, why was that the choice? Who decided that specifically should be done?

[close]

It wasn't entirely clear, but I think

Spoiler alert

he was supposed to be the target, but his girlfriend managed to fight off the attackers, which is why the bloke had a limp. The friend I watched it with was confused that they left her alive.

[close]

[Thursday]

Very weird unclear choices really, like they're almost besides the point bit I found it all very distracting that it was being so vague about these things... I think it's fine for the mood, and tone, and a sort of anti-revenge movie, but really was missing something.

More a made for netflix drama than a film.

[surreal]

More a made for netflix drama than a film.

This is exactly what I felt - apparently based on a graphic novel, I'm assuming Fincher has some sort of contract with Netflix to make things they put in front of him rather than he get full choice.  It was written by Andrew Kevin Walker though so maybe he just wanted to work with him again...

I saw it in the smallest cinema I've ever been in, but I did enjoy it.  I hope it gets a physical release.
John Wick, if John Wick was actually Dexter is how I put it.  The whole (small) room audibly winced when the guy sat on the table leg during the fight scene though...

[AngryGazelle]

Booked tickets to see this next Wednesday, really looking forward to it. I've heard it's not deep or ground breaking but is very entertaining and well shot.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

The product placement in this was annoyingly blatant, but kind of weird. Is Amazon happy to be associated with criminal activity like that?* Maybe next time they'll feature in a scene about a creepy stalker buying night vision goggles or something.

I wasn't expecting so many Smiths tunes either.

*Not that their image is all that great anyway.

[Mister Six]

Booked tickets to see this next Wednesday, really looking forward to it. I've heard it's not deep or ground breaking but is very entertaining and well shot.

That's about the summation of it. It's incredibly well shot with lots of lovely Finchery crushed blacks in the shadows that'll look like dogshit once Netflix's compression algorithms are done with them, and the sound design is stellar, so I think it's well worth watching in the cinema. If anything it'll be a substantially better watch in the cinema because, as you've gathered, there isn't a lot of depth beneath the stunning surface (although the surface is reason enough to see it if you're into Fincher or cinema generally).

It also has one of the best fight scenes I've seen in ages - it's swathed in shadows and darkness, but it's never difficult to follow what's going on. And it's so fucking visceral

The product placement in this was annoyingly blatant, but kind of weird.

It's just part of the dark humour, isn't it?

Spoiler alert

The WeWork reveal got a proper laugh out of me. He's a jobbing freelancer turning all the mundane things of our everyday lives into tools of death and destruction.

[close]

I imagine Amazon's fine with getting any kind of advertising whatsoever. They're not exactly worried about a bad reputation at this point, are they? And it's not like his equipment gets taken to the wrong address or nicked by a dodgy delivery guy or something.

[Oosp]

And why the FUCK isn't Netflix throwing money at another season of Mindhunter?

[Mister Six]

That's the real question. 🙃

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I'd love to see more Mindhunter, but it's just not going to happen. Whatever buzz it once had has long since faded away and Netflix are all about getting that buzz to bring in new subscribers.

Also, I thought the second series wasn't as good as the first.

[Mister Six]

Just saw this and feel like I must have dozed off, because I'm a bit confused

Spoiler alert

The killer botched the hit, so someone decides the best course of action for his failure is to get some people to attack his girlfriend, why was that the choice? Who decided that specifically should be done?

[close]

They didn't want her, they wanted him - she says that despite the Brute assaulting her, she didn't tell the assassins anything, so presumably they were trying to get information on his location out of her. The Brute has a limp, so likely she injured him. And when the Killer turns up at the apartment, one of the windows is busted out from the inside, and bloodied - the implication being that his girlfriend had thrown herself through it and fled, not that they arbitrarily decided not to kill her.

[Thursday]

I remember struggling to hear her, so that would be a pertinent thing I missed.

Still though, it's not like he'd gone into hiding. He called his boss to say it went wrong, and then went home.

[Mister Six]

I remember struggling to hear her, so that would be a pertinent thing I missed.

Still though, it's not like he'd gone into hiding. He called his boss to say it went wrong, and then went home.

Not directly. He was spooked by the guy with the patterned socks (who was just a coincidental bystander, I guess) on the plane and took a circuitous route home. The boss assumed he'd go directly home, not knowing that one random dude with loud socks would delay the Killer by a day or two.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I also had a hard time hearing the dialogue, but I thought she or her brother said that she stabbed or shoved the the Brute through the window (shoving obviously makes more sense than her plunging her own arm through the glass to get him). It still doesn't make sense that the baddies didn't kill the girlfriend, since she could have warned the killer that they were after him.

[Campbell Soupe]

The Brute having Antiques Roadshow on his telly made my lol.

It was fine...as others have said, low-key Fincher as opposed to Flashy Fincher.

[El Unicornio, mang]

This was pretty good, interesting look at how a hitman could use the things we have easy access to these days to make his job easier. I saw some praise for the concept of having the Smiths songs change audio style depending on the POV, but I found it a bit distracting. A Fincher film closing with

Spoiler alert

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out

[close]

was an unusual treat.

[beanheadmcginty]

The Brute having Antiques Roadshow on his telly made my lol.

It was fine...as others have said, low-key Fincher as opposed to Flashy Fincher.

Was it Antiques Roadshow? I thought I heard Titchmarsh and assumed it was Gardener's World.

[Chairman Yang]

I was hoping to like this but it was a real slog to get through. I feel like about half of the movie was just establishing shots. There's some real tension at the start that then evaporates into a meandering sequence of video game cutscenes about twenty minutes in.

I supposed the idea is that hitman-ing is boring and mostly just bumbling around then shooting people but fuck... make a different movie then?

[AngryGazelle]

Yep, it was exactly what I expected. Very good but not much depth.

[Chollis]

This was....fine. As others said, not really much to it.

Spoiler alert

Not sure if I missed something with the girlfriend but...two trained killers arrive at the house and fail to kill her, a civilian I presume? What? Why wouldn't they wait at the house for him? They just fuck her up enough to ensure this hitman comes and kills them, and it's not like they're luring him out, they're just swanning about their lives as usual. Worst assassins ever.

[close]

[phantom_power]

Great, another film called The Killer

[Buelligan]

Tedious.  I thought.  Watching an interiors magazine.  A Burberry ad.  No surprises at all.  When we got to the bit with the shitty little whisky glasses, I'd have happily offed everyone. 

The big takeaway?  Everyone's a cunt but if you're really rich, you get a second chance and a house on the beach.  Murder, she rote.

[shoulders]

Mediocre would be my first thought.

Desperately wanting to be a cult film. The voiceover mantra, the soundtrack. Ladled on with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

So obsessed with what it wants to be, with what it thinks it has become, but in the end, there was nothing much to write home about at all.

Hollow, cynical, knowing.

Filmmaking trapped in the late 90s.

Best bit probably was when he was in genuine mortal danger in the fight and got lucky, for an enjoyable 5 minutes things were stripped back to the essentials. Swinton was good too.
Ah and there was an absolutely gorgeous shot in the morning light by a river, a moment of pure beauty ruined by the car, the character and the vapid soullessness of it all.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Kermode seemed incredulous that they'd "stolen" the bear joke that Swinton tells from The Crown. It's an old joke, the Crown didn't invent it, and it fits with the context of the scene.

Some saying that the film is Fincher having a go at himself and his obsessive, methodical, clinical nature.