Hands down, David Fincher is one of the best directors at work today. With a sharp eye for style backed up with plenty of substance, he works a mean line in whip-cracking tension. From a career-best Michael Douglas in The Game, to Seven’s Gwyneth’s head-in-a-box shocker, through a bloody-nosed Brad Pitt and Ed Norton duking it out for Helena Bonham Carter’s attention in Fight Club, Fincher just keeps delivering. Long before Serial and Making a Murderer turbo-charged our obsession with real-life trauma, he freaked us out with serial killer chills in Zodiac, ably assisted by Jake Gyllenhaal Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr.
He showed us what Mark Zuckerberg is really made of care of Jesse Eisenberg’s startling performance in The Social Network and brought Gillian Flynn’s twisty turny shocker Gone Girl to wicked life, care of Rosamund Pike gloriously messing with Ben Affleck. Jodie rocked it with baby K-Stew in Panic Room, and Fincher even made reboots look good in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
And his less publicly championed flicks are pretty slick too. Seriously, Alien3 is legit brilliant despite its infamously tortuous production pathway to the big screen (we have to let go of fury over Newt and Hicks already). OK, so the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was pretty weird source material to begin with, and we did not need to see Gollum-Brad, but come on. Our Cate, with Tilda! Not to mention his early days delivering knock-out music vids for the likes of Madonna, Billy Idol Neneh Cherry and George Michael.
All this has probably put you in the mood for a Fincher movie marathon, hey? Well, you’re in luck. The Randwick Ritz has you back with a brilliant retrospective including all of the above (just click on the links for tickets). Fincher Fest kicks off with Seven.
Even better, it all leads up to a limited run of his latest, Mank. A black-and-white epic celebrating the oft-fraught pathway to making movies, it stars Gary Oldman as screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, knee-deep his notorious battles with Orson Welles (Tom Burke, The Souvenir) while making arguably the greats film ever shot, Citizen Kane. Throw in Lily Collins and Amanda Seyfried as leading ladies Rita Alexander and Marion Davies, plus Game of Thrones villain Charles Dance as media magnate William Randolph Hearst, on whom Kane was based, and we are so in. You can find out more about the program here. There are also season passes for the lot (minus Mank) at $100 for members, $160 for non-members. Just don’t lose your head, OK?
Reved up for retros? Check out the Ritz' David Lynch season too.
