Not What I Expected, but in the Best Possible Way

Rating: 10/10 (27 June 2011)

When I first heard the concept for The Social Network I rolled my eyes. "The Facebook Movie" is what they were calling it, and what many are still calling it; a nickname that gives the impression that this is nothing more than Hollywood cashing in on a fad. I mean really, a movie about facebook? What a joke. However, this is not "The Facebook Movie;" sure there may be a bit of cashing in on a fad, but that's mostly just being cynical.
What this movie is is a well written, beautifully shot film, featuring great performances, and led by wonderful direction from David Fincher. The film tells the story of Mark Zuckerberg and the process he went through creating and eventually defending facebook. The film jumps back and forth between two time lines and does a great job building suspense by showing you the consequences of actions that you aren't yet aware of. There's no real twist to the movie, but the film constantly keeps you guessing by referring to events that haven't been revealed to the audience yet through the structure of the narrative. Fincher and Aaron Sorkin (the writer) did a fantastic job putting this film together, both the writing and the direction are impeccable and they are able to tell the story at a mile a minute without leaving the audience confused in the wake of the rapid fire dialogue and the abrupt changes of time line.
There was some great cinematography in the film utilizing dynamic use of focus to center in on what's really important to the moment, and even using some trick photography techniques like tilt-shift. While everything is set in the real world, in close to present day, the film has a distinct visual style because of it's use of photography.
Also, I have to mention that the acting was great as well. Every character felt completely natural in their roles and while dialogue was a big part of the film, the subtleties of facial expression and physical acting were not forgotten. I can't pick out just one performance that stood out because they were all great, but Andrew Garfield, Jesse Eisenberg, and Justin Timberlake shine the most because they had the most prominent roles.
My only complaints with the film are minor; we all know that sex, drugs, and alcohol are part of the stereotypical college image, but in a way I think that making the party image so prominent in this story it may have taken away from some of the grounded reality of the film and even lessened the impact of certain scenes near the end. Also for once I want to see a movie based on true events not conform to the clichÃ© of using "and they went on to..." paragraphs of text at the end of the film to wrap up the loose ends. We payed to see a movie, so if it's important enough to the story to mention show us, don't tell us, otherwise we're perfectly capable of reading the Wikipedia page ourselves.
The Social Network was one of the better movies this year; that's not a great honor considering there haven't been that many great movies to choose from so far this year, but the movie was good regardless. There's nothing terribly groundbreaking and if you look back in a few years on the films that came out in 2010 you're much more likely to remember Toy Story 3 or Inception than this, but despite that, it's still a good movie with great performances, great writing, and a great cast. Definitely worth going to see (besides, it's not like anything else good is coming out in October).
Rating: A-