Written by Anthony Watkins

IMDB. 2014. 25 Sep. 2014. <http://www.imdb.com>.

“M. Night Shyamalan.” The Biography Channel. 2014. 25 Sep. 2014. <http://www.biography.com/people/alfonso-cuarón-21377605>. 

Written by Steven Collier

If you lived through the 90's, then you are already familiar with David Fincher. His cinematic influence was inescapable during that bewildering decade. Like many other directors of the era, Fincher was yanked into the limelight as an up-and-comer who could save a project mired in development hell. For Fincher, his golden ticket was Alien 3 (Fincher, 1993). And while it was considered vastly inferior to its predecessor in every way, it still made enough box office to give Fincher some much-needed leverage in Hollywood. He rather successfully parlayed this to go on to direct the highly vaunted Seven (Fincher, 1993) and Fight Club (Fincher, 1999).

By the dawn of the new millennium, Fincher was poised to become one of the great directors of the aughts. However, that's when he stumbled. For a long time, he steadily released a string of movies that garnered only tepid reception. And lo, in the year of our Lord two thousand and eight, Fincher arose from the depths with a vengeful roar entitled The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Fincher, 2008), and then went for a one-two punch, with a devastating follow through called The Social Network (Fincher, 2010). After a decade spent in relative obscurity, Fincher was back on top.  He wasted no time in using his regained star-power to seize the helm of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Fincher, 2011), based upon the controversial, best-selling novel of the same name.

Now why do I bother to bring all of this up? Because today we're going to visit Fincher's latest movie: Gone Girl (Fincher, 2014). Regrettably, Gone Girl is an extremely difficult movie to review out of context. It's a film about intrigue, deception, and constant plot twists. So much so, that it would be impossible for me to detail even its first half hour without giving away some fairly major spoilers. However, in context, the matter is completely different. Fincher is the director for making psychological thrillers for a casual audience. One has only to glance at his afore mentioned filmography to see what I mean.

Fincher has a formula, and it's an exceptionally good formula, which is he cherry picks scripts and adaptations that tend to have a major reveal, a huge twist. He then structures the rest of the movie around that pivotal moment. This doesn't make him a bad director by any means, but one has only to rewatch most of his movies to realize how the bulk of his films are essentially padding. It's a cinematic magic trick, and once you already know the trick, most of the wonderment is lost. I would argue that this holds especially true of Gone Girl, which is well shot, but features little visually that would have me coming back for a second screening.

The same holds true of the writing. I'm already going out of my way to avoid detailing the plot in any real capacity, to better allow our readers the chance to get the most out of this movie. So, I will keep this brief:

On the day of their fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) returns home to find that his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) is missing. What starts out as a missing person's case quickly escalates into a tale of national intrigue that threatens to destroy everyone involved.

With that established, I don't think I'm ruining anything when I say that Gone Girl's narrative demands more than a little suspension of disbelief. In its attempt to reach a resolution, it resorts to several cheap cop-outs and at least one major deus ex machina. However in all likelihood, you won't notice any of these, due entirely to the movie's undeniable strength: pacing.

Gone Girl is a tightly coiled spring of a movie, filled with constant turns and always surging with a crushing tension, just waiting to erupt. This is a movie that will have you on edge of your seat. You will cringe. You will not be able to look away. And before it's over, you will be awed by the horror it instills. However, much like Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960) before it, the impact of Gone Girl's story will depend entirely upon how little you initially know to expect.

This is not to say that Gone Girl doesn't have anything else going for it. Its cast's performances are universally masterful. Although, I would argue that Carrie Coon especially dominates every scene fortunate enough to include her. Similarly, the score created by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross fosters an appropriately haunting ambiance,  constantly manipulating the audience, while seldom really making itself known. Gone Girl is a quality production on every level.

So please, by all means watch this movie. Watch it, and do nothing else. Do not read the reviews. Do not talk to your friends about it. Do not look at any trailers. Just watch it, and hang on for dear life. Because Gone Girl is a terrifying thrill ride packed with more scares than anything else you'll see this Halloween season. I cannot recommend this movie highly enough.

Written by John Snyder

Napoleon Dynamite (Hess, 2004) is a story that portrays social misfits authentically and, in spite of unlikely odds, gives them victory.  This is done by creating protagonists with unique contexts, making good use of the elements of visual storytelling, and by having each major character deal with and overcome their own flaws and foibles. 

Great efforts are made to establish the uniqueness and depth of Napoleon (John Heder) and his cohorts.  Unlike many other “teen” films and TV shows that take place in high school (pretty much anything on Nickelodeon or the Disney channel), Napoleon, Pedro (Efren Ramirez) and Deb (Tina Majorino) are not set apart from the crowd by an intelligence that makes them socially awkward, but rather because they seem unaware of or uninterested in conforming to social norms.  Even though Napoleon tells some tall tales to make people think he’s tough and masculine, the tales he tells are not really believable, and are definitely not “normal.”  Despite these attempts to prove his masculinity, Napoleon is not afraid to express himself through both visual art and dance, which earn him some snickers from the alpha males at his school.  The other characters also make decisions and pursue actions that, while not counter-cultural in themselves seem very unlikely or unexpected for the character’s context (Pedro being the new kid from Mexico) or the manner in which the pursue it (Deb selling key chains door to door).

The décor and costuming chosen for this movie also deepen the characters’ authenticity.  The items we see in the Dynamite household suggest eccentricity, such as a twenty-foot corded phone that enables Napoleon to talk outside and a large bobcat skin hanging on the living room wall (which perhaps inspired his tales of wolverine hunting in Alaska).  In Pedro’s house, we see an abundance of Latin American Catholic icons, including prayer candles with pictures of the “Holy Santos” that adorn the edge of his bathtub.  Additionally, his bolo ties and signature mustache make him stand out culturally and visually from the rest of the Idahoan crowd.  Contrasting Pedro’s appearance, Napoleon has a thrift store wardrobe, with shirts sporting horses, wolves, helicopters and palm trees, while most of his classmates wear polos or other nondescript shirts.  This probably has more to do with Napoleon’s economic status than an esoteric fashion sense, but it definitely says something about his ignorance of his culture’s expectations (this is further contrasted by his choice to buy a suit modeled on a female mannequin for the dance). Deb’s dynamic hairstyles, fanny pack and homemade prom dress, contrasted with the preppy Summer (Haylie Duff) and Trisha (Emily Dunn), reveal her character to be less concerned about the politics and drama of high school and more so with creativity and practicality.

The challenges that arise for each character are compelling in the context of their lives and personalities.  Like real life, each of the characters has some kind of flaw or quirk that complicates their relationships with others.  Napoleon, for instance, makes up stories about hunting wolverines and his prowess with a bō staff in order to impress people.  He uses these stories as a form of escapism, to mask the fact that he frequently gets beat up by Randy (Bracken Johnson), has to deal with his older brother Kip (Aaron Ruell) and doesn’t have anyone with whom to play tetherball.  This distance between his fantasy and reality is something he deals with throughout the story until he finally overcomes it in the climactic dance sequence.  Napoleon does not appear to have planned to dance in front of the whole school, and was doing it mostly because he and Pedro didn’t know they needed a skit to follow his campaign speech.  It was a spontaneous “follow-your-heart” moment, revealing his loyalty and friendship, and allowing his friendship with Deb to be repaired, which had become strained due to the scheming of his uncle Rico (Jon Gries).  It also gave him the affirmation from his peers that he had been seeking, so that he no longer had a need to tell lies to make himself feel strong.  Similarly, Pedro battles and overcomes his alienation from the dominant culture, becoming the class president of the school he just started attending, and Deb overcomes her loneliness and insecurity resulting in and by way of being accepted into Napoleon and Pedro’s circle of friendship.  None of these characters’ paths came without setbacks, and in fact, Napoleon Dynamite does a much better job of depicting the disappointment and strife that come with non-conformity than do those misinterpreters of Robert Frost who think the road-less-traveled is paved with gold (or paved at all). But it is in the uncertainty and unlikelihood of their quest that makes the victories all the sweeter.

Whether it involved drawing posters, dancing, offering protection, sharing tater tots, taking glamor shots or making do-dangle key chains for class-election favors, these three outsiders proved to the world that they could use what skills they had to band together and thrive in a place where they didn’t fit in. And that’s the message Napoleon Dynamite offers to its viewers—that conformity is not required for all your wildest dreams to come true.  

Written by Anthony Watkins

The supernatural genre has become extremely prominent over the years through films such as the Paranormal Activity franchise, The Conjuring (James Wan, 2013), Carrie (Kimberly Peirce, 2013), Devil (John Erick Dowdle, 2010) , and numerous others. The genre was effectively launched in 1973 with William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, which focused on a teenage girl becoming possessed with a demon.

One of the most celebrated films in the genre to be released in the couple decades is M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense (1999). The film focuses on a young boy (Haley Joel Osment) who has the incredibly unique and terrifying ability to see dead people. He ends up coming into contact with a child psychologist (Bruce Willis) who tries to help him deal with his “gift."

So what exactly made The Sixth Sense such a memorable and Oscar-worthy film? What separates it from the supernatural thrillers of recent years?

To begin, the storyline is original and engaging—something that seems to be harder and harder to come by nowadays. As is required of any film, the first scene is particularly engaging and attention-grabbing: a child psychologist named "Dr. Malcolm Crowe" (Willis) comes home with his wife to discover an intruder named "Vincent" (an old patient of Crowe’s) accusing him of failing to help him with his problem of hallucinations. Vincent then shoots Crowe in the abdomen, then kills himself.

The film shifts to a year later, where Crowe starts working with a new patient, nine year old Cole Sear (Osment), who seems to have the same issue Vincent had. Due to his failure with Vincent, Crowe is reluctant to help, but nevertheless decides to pursue Cole’s issue and work with him.

The Sixth Sense is a very character-driven film, and succeeds in part due to its unique and well-developed characters. In any film you need character development—for a character to change or transform over the course of the film and go through a “catharsis", which is an emotional purging of the main character. The film succeeds in doing this not only with Osment’s character "Cole", but with his mother's and Bruce Willis’ character as well. Furthermore, perhaps more than any other film in this genre I’ve seen, The Sixth Sense dives deep into the psychology of these characters—drawing the audience in (sometimes uncomfortably) close to them. This allows the audience to become intimate with the characters and make them relatable.

Of course even with well-written characters, The Sixth Sense wouldn’t have succeeded as well as it did without its incredible cast. Director M. Night Shyamalan wrote the screenplay having Bruce Willis in mind for the lead role, but due to the relatively tight budget of the film, didn’t expect to be able to get the high profile actor. Nevertheless, Willis was very interested in the project and jumped aboard almost immediately. 

Cole’s mother was played by Toni Collette, an actress who impressed Shyamalan with her performance in Muriel’s Wedding (P.J. Hogan, 1994) a few years earlier. She noted, “I started reading it early in the morning and I did not stop and I balled my eyes out—it was the most beautiful, scary, spiritual real story and script that I think I’ve ever read.” Collette went on to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her role as Cole’s mother.

The real breakthrough performance in the film, however, came from the youngest cast member—10 year old Haley Joel Osment. Shyamalan noted, “Cole’s role—it’s so difficult and so complex; it seemed like the most impossible task ever. And then Haley Joel Osment comes in and I’m like, ‘What a cute little kid, what a sweet kid’. So I said let's do the part…I was really beat—‘how many times have I done these scenes with these kids?’ I’ve heard my words just destroyed a million times with a million different kids and I was just so beat. And I just lean back and he starts the scene and it was like I had never heard the scene before…I never heard the dialogue before…it was a movie I didn’t write. It was just all of a sudden every word was perfect…I go ‘Who are you?’”  Bruce Willis also commented on Osment, “He’s the most talented child actor I’ve ever seen…I mean I would rank him with some of the best adult actors I’ve ever worked with. He’s just immensely talented and pretty much unaffected by his talent and doesn’t really make a big deal about it, but he really is a good actor.” Osment’s standout performance as Cole earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, the second youngest actor to ever receive the nomination.

Other areas that made the The Sixth Sense an aesthetically impressive film were its well-written script and smooth direction—both of which were performed by Shyamalan. The film’s most famous line, “I see dead people", (spoken by Cole when he confesses his secret to Crowe) is regarded as one of the greatest movie quotes of all time, and is currently #44 in the American Film Institute's Greatest Quotes. Directionally speaking, in order to complement his well-written characters, Shyamalan uses many medium-closeup and closeup shots to allow the audience to become intimate with the characters. He also uses shallow depth of field throughout the film with these shots to isolate the characters from the background and allow us to focus solely on them and their issues at hand. Of course what also made the film extremely memorable was its famous twist ending, an ending that left audiences completely shocked and wanting to return to the theatres to see more. Today, the ending continues to be regarded as one of the greatest twists ever put on film.

Below is an extremely poignant scene in the film: Cole decides to tell Crowe his secret. The closeup shots are heavily utilized here, and with good reason given the extreme importance and intimacy of the moment. Notice when Cole expresses the secret, the camera slowly dollies in to his face, revealing the inner terror he (and the audience) now feels. This is utilized in the same way when the camera switches to Crowe’s reaction, equally revealing his strong concern and terror. Enough credit cannot be given to James Newton Howard for his chilling score, which is sure to send shivers down your spine.

By
Billy Martel

Written by Anthony Watkins

With so many Science-Fiction films dealing with aliens over the years, it can be difficult to create an original screenplay with creative designs for the aliens. However, Edge of Tomorrow manages to really excel in both key areas. While the “time-loop” aspect certainly is not original (having been done most famously in Harold Ramis’ Groundhog Day), Edge of Tomorrow manages to put an interesting spin on it. I don’t want to spoil the film for those of you who have yet to see it, but the time-loop element plays a vital role not only for Cage and Vrataski, but especially for the alien race. You walk away from the film asking yourself, “Wow, what IF an alien race actually had this power? We wouldn’t stand a chance.”

The design of the aliens needs to be praised for its uniqueness from the aliens we’re used to seeing (perhaps from Predator or District 9). These are lightning-fast, roaring creatures, not the slow-moving, screeching aliens from Alien or Independence Day. Again, I won’t go in-depth on it for those of you who haven’t seen the film, but the unique power the alien race possesses is especially creative and unique to the film. 

Cohen, Sandy. “Blunt reveals new toughness in ‘Edge of Tomorrow’.” Big Story. 4 June
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Lutes, Alicia. “Emily Blunt’s ‘Edge of Tomorrow’ Role is Refreshingly &
            Unapologetically Feminist.” Bustle. 6 June 2014. 11 Oct. 2014.
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            unapologetically-feminist>.