Archive for October, 2010

"The Social Network" has gotten very high praise for its writing, but is it the best written movie so far this year?

So far this year we’ve enjoyed the emergence of several very well made movies, such as Toy Story 3, Inception, Shutter Island, How to Train Your Dragon, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Cyrus, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and the recently released The Social Network, among others. Exactly what makes these movies so well made are an innumerable amount of things both big and small, not the least of which are their direction, editing, acting quality, and art direction. But with every film, when you get right down to it, what really makes or breaks everything is the writing. A phenomenal director and editor tandem can sometimes get past a so-so script, such as with Steven Spielberg and Michael Kahn with Jurassic Park, but the vast majority of the time the quality of the writing is what determines how good everything else can potentially be.

So far it would appear that the two movies that are being praised the most for their writing quality are Chris Nolan’s Inception and Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network. It seems like every review of the latter has dedicated a whole paragraph to dote upon this particular aspect, crediting both Sorkin and his source material (Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires). The former has received sterling reviews as well, though because of how intentionally ambiguous the film is some critics were hesitant to award it prematurely. In those critics’ defense, it is indeed harder to defend a story’s craftsmanship when its coherence is questionable and the overall theme and thesis lend themselves to expansive debate.

Can the stories of these two movies be compared? Read the rest of this entry »

Short Take: Cleverly written and edited, it addresses more issues about its subject matter than one would presume

Director: David Fincher

Screenwriters: Aaron Sorkin (script), Ben Mezrich (book – “The Accidental Billionaires”)

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Rashida Jones

Length: 2h

Synopsis: Mark Zuckerberg (Eisenberg), a sophomore at Harvard in 2003, found himself envious of the social elite and decided to startup a website called TheFacebook.com with his friend Eduardo (Garfield) that would allow all of his fellow students to make personal profiles and socialize with each other like they never could before. Snags occur early and often during the early stages of the site’s development, but they are nothing compared to the legal and emotional troubles to follow. Three other students claim that Zuckerberg stole their idea for the website, but not even that is as disruptive as the tension that mounts between Mark and Eduardo when Napster founder Sean Parker (Timberlake) becomes involved and tries to steer the ship. Zuckerberg is forced to make some tough decisions, and unfortunately not many people are going to like them. Read the rest of this entry »

To our beloved casual readers we would like to inform you that Movie-Thoughts has now returned from its one month hiatus and plans to once again provide you with intelligent and engaging film criticism.

The break was due to my (Cliff Bugle’s) preoccupation with grad school, as I have begun the first year of my pursuit for a Masters in Liberal Arts. School has been challenging so far, and my commute to campus (2 ½ hours each way, four times per week) has been exhausting to say the least, but nevertheless I believe I have figured out how to budget my time in a way that will allow me to continue my endeavors with this website. Let’s be honest, I love movies too much to give this up.

Not only will this moment mark the continuation of the usual high-quality content for Movie-Thoughts, but we also thought that it would be best to use this opportunity to make some changes as well.

We will continue our efforts to supply our usual brand of high-level film criticism with our reviews and various articles, but we will also now make a concerted effort to post less formal affair about random movie-related thoughts that either I or a contributor might have. These will hopefully satisfy your interests in between postings of our more official texts, as well as give our personalities a little more elbow room.

Timberlake (left), Eisenberg (right)

Thanks to those who keep coming back! We’ll make sure your loyalty and patience is rewarded.

On tap for tomorrow is our review of The Social Network, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake. It will be a week late, but hopefully it will help out those of you who are on the fence about seeing a movie about Facebook. Lord knows that that website needs more exposure.