Mesmerizing like a Hitchcock

Rating: 9/10 (4 October 2014)

I've always loved movies that are morally ambiguous - they lead you to places Hollywood usually avoids like the plague. In "Gone Girl", director Fincher and writer Gillian Flynn boldly go there - deep into Hitchcock territory. "Gone Girl" a throwback dark mystery in which a flawed alpha male butts heads with an icy, manipulative blonde... In other words, it's Fincher's "Basic Instinct", which was Verhoeven's "Vertigo".
Like the aforementioned films, you should read as little as possible about plot or storyline, and just go see it. At the least, you'll have an opinion about it. Even if it's not a perfect film - Fincher's style gets a little too exacting at times, obscuring deeper layers - it's my top movie of 2014 so far, boldly dark and always unpredictable. The entire cast excels. It's not often 149 minutes fly by.
Oh, and a fearless prediction: Rosamund Pike will win an Academy Award.