Best David Fincher movies
Originally best known for helming memorable music videos for the likes of Madonna, George Michael and Don Henley, David Fincher has gone on to direct some of the most critically acclaimed and beloved movies of the past three decades.
Forty Academy Award nominations and more than US$2 billion at the box office are testament to the quality and popularity of his tales, many of which have been psychological thrillers.
However, a CV that includes Mank, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, Alien 3 (where he was drafted in to replace Kiwi Vincent Ward) and The Game is a testament to his diverse sensibilities and skills.
To celebrate the release of his latest film, The Killer, on Netflix, Stuff to Watch has come up with a list of our six favourite Fincher flicks (and where you can watch them right now).
Fight Club (1999, Disney+, Netflix, Prime Video)
Based on Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, even more than 20 years on from its original release, this is not for the faint-hearted. Fincher created a nightmarish world which was perfect for the globe’s pre-millennial tensions and now feels just as unsettling in these troubled and isolating times.
While the graphic violence and extremely dark sense of humour leave the viewer exhausted as much as entertained, there’s a message in the madness – in 1999 it might have been a denouncement of consumerism, but now this feels like an unsettling, excoriating and quite brilliant examination of toxic masculinity. Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Meat Loaf and Helena Bonham-Carter star.
The Social Network (2010, Prime Video)
Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake star in Fincher’s Oscar-winning drama which looks at Harvard University student Mark Zuckerberg’s creation of a website that would ultimately become Facebook.
The taut, tension-filled script was co-written by The West Wing’s Aaron Sorkin, while the memorable score was the first big-screen collaboration by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Mank, Soul).
Mank (2020, Netflix)
Fincher’s first movie in six years was well worth the wait.
Having previously come up trumps with detailed and grippingly dramatic looks at San Francisco serial killer Zodiac and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (The Social Network), the now 58-year-old film-maker may have topped them both with this audaciously told look at 1930s Hollywood’s “court jester” Herman J. “Mank” Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) and his role in creating cinematic classic Citizen Kane.
Shot completely in lustrous, crisp monochrome, it features a terrific ensemble that also includes Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, Charles Dance and Tuppence Middleton.
“You cannot capture a man’s entire life in two hours. All you can hope is to leave the impression of one,” Mank says of biopics. Well, this one leaves one hell of
a mark.
Zodiac (2007, iTunes)
Fincher once made a terrific thriller about a serial killer. It was called Se7en.
This tale, however, is less about the San Francisco-based murderer and more about those trying to stop him. Even more surprising is how the cops end up playing second-fiddle to increasingly obsessed newspaper cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) and disintegrating investigative reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jnr).
A well-acted, fantastically executed, fascinating study of how all consuming an ongoing story can be.