287: The Killer

[00:00:00] Hello everybody, welcome back to the Film Buds Podcast and also welcome to the very first chapter of our new segment, new series, Mini Marathons. This is something I thought of kind of spur of the moment, wanted to find a way to cover

[00:00:16] a lot more movies in a shorter amount of time just because I've watched so much over the years and I watch so much frequently that I just wanted to find a way to get a wide variety,

[00:00:26] all kinds of movies and I figured this would be a cool new way to cover more but also still do our weekly shows, do our bonus shows, so just doing as much as humanly possible here.

[00:00:37] So the way it's going to work, and it may change a little bit over time and if you have any suggestions, constructive comments, anything like that, you can get in contact with us in any way that is listed in the show notes, we'd love to hear your suggestions

[00:00:52] and thoughts, good or bad. But the way that it is structured for this first part is it will be 5 episodes, 5 chapters, released all at once and each one will be a different subject or area of movies.

[00:01:09] So chapter 1, which is this episode, is new films, chapter 2 is classic films, 3 is random films, so kind of movie roulette in a way, 4 foreign films and 5 documentary films. And as always if there's something that you want to see more of, less of, something

[00:01:30] that we should include or anything like that, please let us know, we'd love to hear from you out there. And so it's probably going to be something released maybe once a month, maybe every other

[00:01:42] month, maybe twice a month, I'm just trying to figure out how long it's actually going to take to record and edit and get them all up in the right way. And I'm hoping, as you've already noticed with this episode, there will be no music,

[00:01:54] no real intro and outro, nothing aside from just the review, so that way you can start with chapter 1 theoretically and listen to all 5 in a row without really any stoppages, interruptions, anything like that. And there also won't be any clips.

[00:02:09] We will be doing a plot synopsis and the cast and all that, but no clips, no music, nothing, just straight on reviews, hence the mini-marathon nature of it. So I hope it's something people like and if there's a movie in here that you want to

[00:02:23] hear a more in-depth review of in whatever way, please reach out about that, would be happy to indulge. Well, hopefully that makes sense and I really listed all that in the show notes if you need more clarification.

[00:02:39] But without further ado, let's get into the first chapter, which is David Fincher's The Killer. This film came out in 2023, just a couple of months ago, directed by David Fincher, as I just said. Stars Michael Fassbender, Toda Swinton, Charles Parnell, Arliss Howard, Cary O'Malley, not

[00:03:00] a lot of big names in this. And the synopsis is, after a fateful near-miss, an assassin battles his employers and himself on an international manhunt he insists isn't personal. This one is also only available on Netflix, it is a Netflix original just as David Fincher's

[00:03:20] last movie was Manc, which we did review on the show formally way back when it came out, so you can check out that review. I love David Fincher starting off, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is one of my favorite movies,

[00:03:32] Zodiac, Social Network, I'm a huge David Fincher fan and so I've followed his work really ever since around the time those movies came out. I think he's amazing and we'll watch anything he does.

[00:03:45] Going into this one, I didn't know much about it other than it was about an assassin hitman and it starred Michael Fassbender, who I also love. I love Michael Fassbender and this was in some ways I guess a comeback for him because

[00:03:56] he's been a bit quiet over the last couple of years, so this was a comeback for him and a good return to form. I, overall, I like the movie, it's pretty solid. I did rank all of Fincher's films including this one on my Letterboxd profile which you

[00:04:11] can check out if you have an account there and I suggest you get one if you don't. My hot take, maybe it's a hot take, maybe it's not, since David Fincher has started working with Netflix he seems to have lost something.

[00:04:26] I really like Manc, I don't love it though and for some reason, and it goes in with the Netflix or the streaming original films and TV shows, there's something that just inherently almost always feels lesser and forgettable, not as potent or as much resonance in it.

[00:04:47] Gone Girl I think has a lot of resonance but that's partly because it came out in theaters, was released in a variety of mediums and maybe that sounds crazy, I don't know if that's

[00:04:56] how other people feel, but I think both Manc and The Killer almost don't even feel like David Fincher feature films because they are only put on Netflix. That's not really fair to the movie because there's still a lot of great things about them

[00:05:09] and there's a lot of great Netflix and other streaming service original films and shows but for some reason this and Manc I feel the exact same way about for the most part where

[00:05:20] it sort of leaves my mind after it's done and knowing that it's only on Netflix or only on Hulu or whatever, it feels lesser and I don't know the exact reason for that but that's

[00:05:32] something that kind of irks me because I love Fincher and I wish he would go back to the social network Girl with a Dragon Tattoo Zodiac days and I feel like if he keeps staying with

[00:05:43] Netflix which I feel like he will considering he loves to have creative control and Netflix is a great place for that for filmmakers, I don't blame him but that is something that is sort of turning me off to some filmmakers because that's why I appreciate someone like

[00:05:58] Christopher Nolan, he's an in-theater release guy and so I think that David Fincher, the fact that he maybe gets to do a little bit more in his own control is not necessarily

[00:06:10] a good thing because Manc and The Killer both have the same sort of to me very distant, cold, frustratingly austere kind of feeling to them almost like in a Kubrick sort of way but not necessarily always for greater effect.

[00:06:28] But anyways the movie itself, Michael Fassbender, he's great in the movie, I love the and it's very David Fincher-esque in terms of spoilers here so just be warned, he presents the character of this hitman who is this very precise, detailed, seems like he has every situation

[00:06:48] under complete control, he's doing yoga and listening to music and just keeping himself completely focused on the job and yet he's in my opinion a pretty bad hitman, he botches the job basically every single time and then lets his emotions get the better of him which

[00:07:04] is sort of the point of the movie where he's always talking about being one of the few but he's actually really one of the many and the opening sequence in the abandoned or constructed apartment building is really good where he's watching the target across

[00:07:22] the street and watching all the people down below, that's really unsettling and very, I guess for better or for worse, very David Fincher in terms of these lone killers and observers in society and usually they have a dark reason for doing the things that they

[00:07:37] do, that sequence is really good, the Florida sequence where he has the fist fight with the guy in the house is awesome, the scene with Tilda Swinton is really good, really the whole movie has very memorable, distinctive chapters in some ways and yet as I was just

[00:07:59] saying there is something sort of not boringly distant but frustratingly distant about this movie where I feel like I want to care more about what's going on and maybe it's not the

[00:08:09] point to care because he's a hitman but I feel like I was always a little bit on autopilot while I was watching this and I wanted to get latched onto things more, care about it more, enjoy it more and yet I feel like I was coasting along.

[00:08:21] I still think it's quite solid, it's well directed, very good score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, good performances, overall shot incredibly well as is David Fincher's way but not one of my favorites of Fincher's, a little disappointing I guess you could say

[00:08:36] in the big scheme of things. So one that I might revisit every so often but I feel like it's already sort of gotten lost in the Netflix catalog and it's not one that I really think about or when I'm thinking

[00:08:50] of David Fincher, my favorites, the ones that really stick with me or wowed me, this isn't really there and it would be the same thing with Mank because I think he could be doing

[00:08:58] more and maybe having other voices, less creative control in some ways could do him some service as perhaps it did for the first part of his career. So that one is a 4 out of 5.