All these titles from acclaimed directors, and plenty others I don't want to look up, had their debuts in the cinema before streaming on Netflix, where the majority of people saw them. I have always been one of those majority.
In 2023, I'm finally seeing my first movie in the theater that I could have waited just two weeks to see on Netflix.
Unlike other people, though, I didn't have to pay for it. (Thank you, critics card.)
I wasn't actually planning to see David Fincher's The Killer this week. In fact, I didn't even know it was coming out this week. All my cinema-related yearnings had been geared toward another movie with "Killer" in the title, Killers of the Flower Moon, which I wanted to review this week to inject some life into the recently sluggish ReelGood website. It eluded me last weekend in Sydney when my wife suggested I go to a movie to pass the time on Saturday before our flight, then reneged the offer when she learned I wanted to see a three hour and 26 minute movie. With my mother-in-law in town from Sunday to Tuesday, and the movie never starting later than 7:30 on any given night, it just hasn't worked out.
Since I may now wait until my opportunity on AppleTV+ to see that one, it seemed appropriate that I jump the Netflix debut on The Killer. I mean, I can't have movies by Martin Scorsese and David Fincher come out in the same seven-day period, and wait until their streaming debuts weeks later to slake my readers' thirst on what I thought of them. (Said thirst is entirely hypothetical.)
But until Wednesday, I didn't even know The Killer would be an option. That's when I saw it already listed on the marquee of the theater downstairs from where I work, a day before you could actually see it. I did end up seeing it the next day, and churned out the review that very night so I could get some new content up on the site before the weekend. (Here's the review if you want to read it.)
It may not have been the ideal movie to pop my Netflix/theater cherry. Although we do get some decent Fincher technique in this film, not to mention enough locations to make James Bond wonder why he never goes anywhere, I didn't think this was one of Fincher's most cinematic films. In fact, I am almost certain it's his least cinematic. Which is not to say it isn't cool to watch at certain points. It's just not a very interesting, original story, and the craft that is applied to that narrative skeleton doesn't stand out in a way that would justify revisiting this familiar territory. (I get into some particulars in the review if that interests you.)
More to the point, there isn't anything about it that I thought begged to be seen on a big screen. As I was watching it I kept thinking of a Steven Soderbergh movie that I found similarly underwhelming, Haywire, though I like this movie more than that one. As I also touch on in my review (I promise I will stop begging you to read my review), Soderbergh makes so many movies that you really don't care if one of them feels like a throwaway. (And it does seem to lessen the disappointment when three or four in a row feel like throwaways.) With Fincher, this is only his third feature since 2011, so if one doesn't land with you, it might be a long wait for the next.
Fincher is starting to have that in common with his most regular collaborator, Trent Reznor, though it would be more like their careers are trending in opposite directions. Reznor, as part of Nine Inch Nails, used to only put out an album every five years, only lately becoming so much more prolific and churning out about three musical scores a year. Meanwhile, it's almost unimaginable that Fincher had a five-year period that included Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. He's now become the comparative recluse.
I did enjoy hearing the works of Reznor and his buddy Atticus Ross, as I always do -- if you don't remember, Nine Inch Nails is my favorite band. (There's actually a cheeky reference to nine-inch nails in the dialogue of The Killer, as the trio of writers do their best Tori Amos impersonation.) However, I don't plan to buy the score, something I've done for both Dragon Tattoo and Gone Girl, hoping they'd do something similar for me as what the Social Network score did. Much as I love the musical genius of Trent Reznor, he can't top his own work with that Social Network score -- not to mention the majority of the band's output.
The Social Network also seems to have been a peak for Fincher. Although I've admired each of the movies he's made since then, I haven't loved any of them, and The Killer will now be tussling with the likes of The Game to stay out of the bottom of my Fincher rankings.
It may be no coincidence that he's started to shrink a bit, now two movies into his Netflix deal. Mank certainly didn't preview a receding of his ambitions, though I did wonder why he'd be willing to let the majority of people see that movie on such a small screen. So The Killer concerns me in that regard as well, because now he's making a movie that does not demand to be seen on the biggest screen possible.
I went to the cinema hoping I could urge it in that direction, but The Killer killed my aspirations.
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