Gone Girl: A thriller for the ages

Gone Girl (2014) • View trailer 
Five stars. Rated R, for strong violence, profanity, sexual content and nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.3.14

Thrillers rarely get the respect they deserve.

Oh, sure; it’s a popular genre that sells plenty of tickets, but such public approbation is viewed with suspicion and scorn, when it comes time to hand out awards. The implication is that thrillers represent empty, pop-culture calories unworthy of serious recognition. Academy Awards go to historical dramas and intimate character pieces.

Back in the day, Nick (Ben Affleck) and Amy (Rosamund Pike) enjoyed a storybook
courtship in their beloved New York City surroundings, notably the bookstores both loved
to frequent. Sadly, many relationships cannot survive a crisis ... and this one is about to
be hit by several.

Oscar hasn’t given its Best Picture prize to a thriller since 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs.

That may be about to change.

Director David Fincher’s masterful handling of Gone Girl is much, much more than an impeccable translation of its wildly popular source novel (so rest easy, readers; I’m sure you’ll be pleased). This also is a tour de force of cinematic craft: one of those rare films that ingeniously utilizes every aspect of movie-making magic.

Fincher masterminds each detail with the meticulous scrutiny of a master conductor who pays careful attention to every last instrument, even those that play but a single note during an entire symphony. This is bravura filmmaking at its finest.

Fincher wisely has surrounded himself with a talented cadre of actors, all flawlessly cast, and an equally accomplished production crew. Then, too, he has the advantage of working with novelist Gillian Flynn, a first-time screenwriter who has adapted her own book with the same cunning that turned it into a page-turning best-seller.

Even capable novelists don’t always make good screenwriters; they’re entire different sciences. Flynn, clearly, is adept at both.

And that’s what it comes down to: All the aforementioned talent would be wasted, were the core narrative not up to snuff. Flynn’s storyline is mesmerizing, and not just for its deliciously twisty — even macabre — thrillers elements. She also unerringly skewers contemporary society’s bread-and-circuses infatuation with the mindless media “talking heads” who scurry like rats from one overblown crisis to the next, passing judgment without attempting even the most basic research legwork.

Because, at the end of the day, too many of us prefer such vacuous glitter and glitz, and get a vicarious thrill out of feeling superior to the maligned victim of the moment.

This particular victim-in-waiting is Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), whom we meet on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary: a milestone that doesn’t bring the pleasure one would expect from a guy who, he always insists, enjoyed a deliriously happy courtship and subsequent marriage with Amy (Rosamund Pike). Instead, as Nick strolls into the downtown bar that he co-owns with twin sister Margo (Carrie Coon), he seems ... troubled. Not quite himself.

A neighbor calls; Nick and Amy’s cat seems to have gotten out of their house. Nick returns home, restores their feline friend to indoor safety, and then spots an unsettling mess of upended furniture and broken glass in the living room. And Amy is nowhere to be found.

We Bought a Zoo: Lions and tigers and anxiety ... oh, my!

We Bought a Zoo (2011) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.28.11


Writer/director Cameron Crowe, absent from the screen for far too long, has returned with the season’s sweetest, gentlest family film.

The care of exotic animals can't be learned from books, despite Benjamin Mee's
(Matt Damon, center) effort to do so. To his growing frustration — and the
tolerant amusement of zookeepers Robin Jones (Patrick Fugit) and Kelly Foster
(Scarlett Johansson) — poor Benjamin keeps revealing his ignorance. And so
he begins to wonder: Can willingness and hard work ever be enough?

We Bought a Zoo is adapted from journalist Benjamin Mee’s engaging 2008 memoir, which boasts the much more irresistible title of We Bought a Zoo: The Amazing True Story of a Young Family, a Broken Down Zoo, and the 200 Wild Animals that Change Their Lives Forever. The setting has shifted from England’s Devonshire to the California countryside, and the Mee family has been compressed a bit, but Crowe has retained the saga’s essential plot points and — most of all — its heart.

Thanks to an engaging ensemble cast of misfits, eccentrics and one incredibly adorable child — along with Crowe’s always excellent ear for dialogue — the result is an easygoing, crowd-pleasing charmer.

Sadly, it may get lost in the holiday glut of noisier, flashier competition. That’d be a shame, because Crowe’s film is the perfect all-ages alternative to the third Chipmunks flick (too dumb for adults) or Hugo (probably too high-tone for children, much as I hate to admit it).

Benjamin (Matt Damon) introduces himself, via a voice-over montage, as a veteran Los Angeles newspaper reporter with a thrill for adventure and the skill to finesse a story from reluctant and dangerous subjects. Unfortunately, nothing could have prepared him for the biggest adventure of all: functioning as a single parent in the wake of his wife Katherine’s untimely death ... still a raw, recent wound as this film begins.

This tragedy has left the family at forlorn loose ends, with Benjamin wondering — on a daily basis — if he’s doing anything right. Seven-year-old Rosie (the beguiling Maggie Elizabeth Jones), wise beyond her years, points out that he hasn’t lost his hair like some of her classmates’ fathers. She does this while carefully making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the next day’s school lunches: one of many details that Benjamin invariably overlooks during early-morning chaos.

Fourteen-year-old Dylan, alas, is a different story. He’s an angry, withdrawn kid whose artistic talent leans toward shocking depictions of gory decapitations. He also has been expelled from school, which gives Benjamin an excuse to attempt the impossible: eradicate Katherine’s memory entirely, by moving to someplace where he won’t be surrounded by constant reminders of their giddily happy times together.

Benjamin and Rosie subsequently take a house-hunting excursion with a newly minted Realtor (J.B. Smoove) who nervously wears his inexperience on his sleeve, but nonetheless has his heart in the right place. He therefore advises caution when Rosie, paging through scores of listings that aren’t quite right, sets her heart on a rustic home surrounded by 18 acres of California countryside (actually Thousand Oaks), nine miles from the nearest store.

There’s a catch, and a big one: The home comes attached to the dilapidated Rosemoor Animal Park, complete with scores of exotic animals and a dedicated but long-unpaid staff.