THE SOCIAL NETWORK

Written by Aaron Sorkin
Directed by David Fincher
Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake

Mark Zuckerberg: There is a difference between being obsessive and being motivated.

With over 500 million members worldwide, Facebook has come a long way since it was just a little social networking site kicking around a few prestigious colleges in the United States. In fact, I remember quite vividly when I first heard about it. It came out of nowhere and suddenly everyone I knew was asking why I wasn’t on Facebook yet. I actually held out. I had done Friendster and Myspace. Why did I need this new network to come into my life so I could feign the idea of closeness with people I had neither seen nor thought of for years? For days, I cursed it to anyone who would listen. This made it particularly difficult when I actually joined Facebook a few weeks later and started inviting all the people I had complained about it to, to be my friend.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK, or what is affectionately known as “The Facebook Movie”, is not about a bunch of bored office workers or late night loners wasting hours of their lives on Facebook. That’s about all it isn’t about though. Screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin, has taken the real life story of how Facebook came into existence and turned it into something so much more revealing about human nature. By walking us through the two lawsuits that Facebook co-creator, Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), was served as a result of how he went about co-creating Facebook, Sorkin is able to comment on everything Facebook touches on, directly or indirectly. Suddenly, a factual account of a civil law suit is able to expose America’s class system as still going strong, our universal fascination with gossip and popularity and the increasingly blurred difference between public and private statement. Even the inclusion of the lawsuits themselves denounce an American fascination with suing to get even, even when that means suing your best friend.

Fortunately for Sorkin’s ambitious script, David Fincher helms THE SOCIAL NETWORK and I really want to add him as my friend again after THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON made me hide him from my news feed. (Kidding, David Fincher is not my friend in any capacity). Fincher has this one though. He has an incredible awareness of the implications being made by the actions and accents the perfect moments to prove the points subtly and effectively. He also drives brave, brazen performances from his three young stars. Justin Timberlake shows dramatic depth as Sean Parker, the creator of Napster. Andrew Garfield finally shows me why I should give him any notice as Facebook co-creator, Eduardo Saverin. And Eisenberg, an actor that is oft criticized for being one note, takes what is now his signature whip of a tongue and infuses it with a strong sense of character and understanding. He plays Zuckerberg as an unstoppable force, driven by a deep-rooted self-hatred. You want to hate the guy yourself but Eisenberg makes it so you think twice before you do.

One of my original arguments for not joining Facebook was that I thought it enforced a horrible falsehood. People could remain close virtually and keep up with loved ones without making any actual effort to be a real part of their lives. It would drive us further apart while making us feel like we were getting closer. THE SOCIAL NETWORK proves me wrong though. This fantastic and fascinating piece of filmmaking will unite us all through the one thing all 500 million of us can relate to, our love/hate relationships with Facebook. And by breaking it all down, he manages to find the heart behind the screen.

ADVENTURELAND

Written and Directed by Greg Mottola
Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig and Ryan Reynolds


James Brennan: I’m amazed at how small my pay cheque is.
Joel: Well, we are working the jobs of pathetic, lazy morons.

Step right up! Step right up! Toss the ring on to the milk bottle and win a giant panda for your sweetheart! Ring toss not your game? Throw a ball and knock the hat off the dummy then. Win yourself a stuffed banana with googley eyes! But if you’re really looking for high stakes risks, try this game on for size. Go to college; make plans for the summer between your graduation and start of graduate school; watch it all fall apart at the last second; and then get yourself a job running games at the dilapidated amusement park you used to frequent when you were a kid. See if you’re smiling at the end of that one. This game is just as impossible to win and the prizes are nearly just as lame. Yes, there is plenty of supposed adventure to be had inside the safe confines of ADVENTURELAND, the name of both the aforementioned amusement park and the new movie by Greg Mottola, but the real adventure is waiting outside the supposed greatest place on earth. You just don’t know it yet.


The premise just vaguely described is actually the plight of one James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg, THE SQUID AND THE WHALE). Being a young man and therefore inevitably naïve, he thought he had everything figured out. He was ready for a summer trek through Europe. He was ready to get an apartment in New York City and attend grad school in the fall. He was ready for everything except for the unpredictability of life. ADVENTURELAND may take place in 1987 but not much has changed as far as lofty ambitions being crushed by the harshness of real life goes. And this is the lesson that James must learn in what is described as one of those summers where it seems like nothing significant really happens but yet in hindsight ends up being momentously character building. For the viewer though, there really isn’t that much happening in this slice of life picture. The kids go to work, they smoke a lot of drugs and they hang out at lame yet popular local spots. Fortunately, love is in the air to make everything go that much faster.


Eisenberg and his young love interest, Em Lewin (Kristen Stewart, TWILIGHT) are two talented and compelling young actors. It is their presence that carries ADVENTURELAND from mildly bland mediocrity to slightly elevated decency. I realize that this is hardly a compliment but the remaining characters are hardly developed and ADVENTURELAND is often extremely unadventurous. Still, this lack of activity is precisely what gives the film its meaning. James and Em have put their lives on hold as though they believe that have no other choice. Their lives are just another amusement park game that is rigged and cannot be won under any circumstances but yet they keep playing because they cannot see that there are other games, other parks, other lives just waiting for them to pursue. Their childish profession only further exaggerates their halted development but their introduction to each other’s lives shows them both possibilities they had never imagined. James is a sensitive guy who never gets the girl and Em doesn’t believe she deserves a guy like James. Yet here they both are, enjoying each other. How did this happen and what else is waiting?


Mottola, who struck it big Hollywood styles last time out with SUPERBAD, took a decidedly much quieter approach with his follow up and comparisons would be entirely unfair. Like the summer that changed everything but only did so in retrospect, ADVENTURELAND is an adventure that is only fully appreciated when you realize just how much of its tone and themes have stayed with you long after the park has shut down for the night. After all, the real adventure of life only comes once you stop trying to delay it with excuses and obligations and take the themes out of the park.