Hello, Science!:
Drama

The opening minutes of Anton Corbijn’s The American provide a near perfect taste as to the style and sensibilities of the movie that will follow. Against a backdrop of gorgeous scenery in an isolated European locale, a man commits an act of violence so sudden and detached that it seems as though it did not happen at all. The man (played by George Clooney) is a weary hit-man on the run from unknown pursuers who are hunting him for down for some previously committed deed. Fleeing to a small Italian village, our protagonist, now going by the name of Edward, befriends a local priest and beds a local prostitute, and is soon convinced by his shady employer to take one final job building a custom-designed rifle for another assassin. Despite doing almost nothing to escape the narrative pitfalls of the hit-man genre, The American is a film that still manages to stands out because of its refusal to descend into either cheap thrills or overstated melodrama, resulting in a quiet and restrained thriller with a deep undercurrent of yearning eroticism and unmistakable regret.

Based on the 1978 novel of the same name, Darren Aronofsky’s follow up to his debut feature Pi is a dark and distressing tale about the perils of addiction, and is undoubtedly one of the most visually and aurally distinctive movies of the early twenty first century. Requiem for a Dream follows four Coney Islanders – Harry, his girlfriend Marion, best friend Tyrone and mother Sara – over three seasons – summer, fall and winter – as they attempt to live with their addictions before finally being overwhelmed by the unforeseen yet inevitable consequences of their decisions. Dealing with themes of desperation, delusion, selfishness and human weakness, Requiem for a Dream is at times unflinchingly bleak - it’s nighmarish depiction of the horrors of drug use will put you on the straight and narrow faster than any afterschool special. In all honesty, it may well be one of the most depressing movies ever made. It is also one of the best.

While it was his frenetic visual style that made Fight Club one of the definitive pictures of the nineteen-nineties, recent years have seen David Fincher take on an increasingly controlled and reflective approach to movie-making. His latest undertaking – a follow-up to the Academy Award nominated The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – is The Social Network, an enthralling tale of betrayal and intellectual property theft based loosely on the real life founding of the massively popular internet website, Facebook. Adapted from perhaps one of the best scripts in living memory by West Wing scribe Aaron Sorkin, the movie is a stunningly absorbing and superbly acted drama with a flawless pace and mesmerizing aesthetic. It is a film that offers a brutal critique of one of its most influential figures of the internet age, and one that sees Fincher’s evolution as both a storyteller and an artist come magnificently to a head.