"Termite art par excellence"
Over at The Village Voice, Nathan Lee geeks out over Zodiac. I've said it before, I'll keep saying it: David Fincher is our greatest working American director. What with the move and such, I didn't make it to any screenings of this, but this Friday, you know where I'll be.
Labels: movies
posted by Peter @ 2/28/2007 10:05:00 PM
3 Comments:
I can. And am.
Pretty much all ways.
I didn't see either of Eastwood's films this year, but even though I liked Mystic River and thought MDB was pretty good, I didn't think the direction in each was particularly outstanding. Yes, it was solid, but murky, muted color schemes and a willingness to let good actors actually act doesn't count as brilliant direction. Solid, but not more.
Fincher, on the other hand, is the star of all of his movies. He's got a better handle on tone than nearly any other director working, gets controlled performances from his actors without letting them get out of hand, moves his camera in a more interesting and (even more important) thematically useful way than anyone this side of Scorsese, has a fantastic eye for set detail, is willing to go for broke narratively--letting down his audiences or forcing them to accept the inevitable places his stores go (there's never any easy cheats or outs in the end), and basically makes the most riveting, endlessly watchable and re-watchable movies of anyone working today.
Even Panic Room, by far his weakest, ended up being a prickly, fascinating film when it easily could've been low grade family-siege crap a la Hostage.
Eastwood, on the other hand, makes stolid, serious movies bathed in gri melancholy--and they're good movies, even very good, but with the exception of maybe Unforgiven, they're not great.
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