The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

Director: Andrew Dominik

Screenplay by: Andrew Dominik (based on Ron Hansen’s novel of the same name)

Starring: Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell, Sam Shepard, Mary-Louise Parker, Paul Schneider, Jeremy Renner and Zooey Deschanel.

Runtime: 153 minutes

Allied

‘Allied’ Poster

What strange battlefields love has to traverse to get to its happy ending? And stranger still is the path to true love during wartime? It’s said that the path to true love never does run smooth, and Allied is a film that charts such a love story out of the unlikeliest beginnings. Romance, spy thriller, detective film, tragedy; this film is potentially many things to many people, but do too many narratives crowd the plot here? Well, that’s in the eyes of any given beholder. Interpretation can be a curious thing, never twice the same.

Set in the midst of the second World War, and moving from German occupied French Africa, and the romantic climes of Casablanca back to the blitz damaged world of London, the movie charts the developing passionate romance of two unlikely lovers in the form of Canadian RAF agent Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) and undercover French resistance fighter, Marianne Beauséjour (Marion Cotillard) as they meet and team up for a co-op assassination operation on a German ambassador. After successfully completing their operation, they make their escape and, having fallen for her charms during the mission as her fictional husband, Max asks Marianne to move with him to London and become his wife for real, something she duly obliges him. As the two settle into a domestic life, the idyll is pulled apart by a suggestion from his superiors that Marianne isn’t who she pertains to be, and is in fact a German spy, a fact that throws Max’s life into a spiral of anger, distrust and desperation. As his world crumbles, he undergoes his own personal rogue mission, breaking direct orders at the considerable risk of being held in high treason (an act punishable by death), to prove that his wife and mother of his daughter is innocent of the charges labelled against her. This is all carried out unbeknownst to Marianne, and so Max is forced into the challenging task of committing double subterfuge, against both his wife and his employers.

The Big Short

‘The Big Short’ Theatrical Release Poster

Given the recent rumblings of worry and uncertainty about financial stability and drops in the stock market, perhaps it is curiously an ideal time for The Big Short to hit our screens. Telling the almost inconceivable story of a number of smart financial market brains who foresaw the biggest global financial crisis of all time before it happened, and finding their concerns falling on willingly deaf ears within the increasingly corrupt and greed driven banking industry, they decided to take a stance and bet against the housing market which was the backbone to their own national economy, ironically becoming very wealthy at the end of a process that left so many in dire straits worldwide. In its style it takes on the nature a black comedy/docu-drama, traversing the tragic and farcical levels of corruption that brought one of the world’s biggest economies to its knees and global financial industries to the brink of complete collapse.

David Fincher Series #7: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2009)

Theatrical Release Poster

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is something of an enigma in David Fincher’s back catalogue, a film which, on the surface, is wholly unlike anything in his recent work, and a truly unique piece of modern directing, a fact that finally registered enough with the panel at the illustrious Academy to nominate Fincher for Best Director. This also marked the third time that Fincher teamed up with Brad Pitt as his leading man, solidifying the type of working relationship that has proved so successful for a number of Hollywood’s best directors. From Martin Scorsese teaming up with Robert De Niro to Steve McQueen’s more recent work with Michael Fassbender the joy of finding a leading man who understands your methods is a rare gift, and one which Fincher and Pitt, like those before them, have embraced.

David Fincher Series #4: Fight Club (1999)

‘Fight Club’ Theatrical Release Poster.

“The first rule of Fight Club, is don’t talk about Fight Club; The second rule of Fight Club is don’t talk about Fight Club.” It’s my intention to talk about Fight Club, so I understand I’m consciously breaking the first two rules of Fight Club, I’ll have to deal with the consequences when they arise.

After developing a growing reputation for handling complex thrillers, and equally complex characters, David Fincher chose as his next project, the cult literal stylings of Chuck Palahniuk, and his foray into the neurotic and anarchic unravellings of an insomniac’s mind with Fight Club.

David Fincher Series #2: Se7en (1995)

‘Seven’ Theatrical Release Poster.

“What’s in the box!?” is the chilling question posed in the finale of David Fincher’s second feature Seven; the question is the culmination of a build-up of tensions during the course of the film, and represents the beginnings of the filmmaking style that has become synonymous with David Fincher as a director. Coming three years after the disappointing and heavily studio interfered Alien 3, Seven became Fincher’s chance to make a film free of such interference and with greater creative freedom, and it’s an opportunity he relished.