Customer Reviews

The Social Network (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)

5 star:		(202)
4 star:		(90)
3 star:		(51)
2 star:		(35)
1 star:		(40)

 

 

Director David Fincher is back in fighting form! Those fearing he may have lost some of his bite with the ponderous "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" or the disappointing returns of the criminally overlooked "Zodiac" need not worry. "The Social Network" is a caustically funny and incredibly contemporary look at the evolution of Facebook. Playing like a thriller and a blisteringly dark comedy, this terrific film may be Fincher's most sophisticated piece to date (and certainly his most riveting since the days of "Seven" and "Fight Club"). On paper, "The Social Network" might not sound exhilarating but with the perfect screenwriter (Aaron Sorkin) and the perfect cast (Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, and Armie Hammer)--Fincher's tale of betrayal, pride, and avarice has become one of this year's must see films.

While I'm sure that everyone knows the subject matter of "The Social Network"--very briefly, the film's plot construction is structured as two pieces of litigation are being brought against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (played with intensity by Eisenberg). One lawsuit is from his former business partner and best friend--a co-founder of the original website who got systematically squeezed out. The other is by a trio of Harvard grads (Armie Hammer plays 2 of the 3, they're twins, in a starmaking performance!) who claim Zuckerberg stole the idea from them after he was hired to create an exclusive dating site. Seen through these concurrent cases, deftly edited with flashback footage, the full picture starts to unravel. From Zuckerberg's social ineptitude, but superior intellect, a social revolution was born. And the more powerful Facebook grew, the more disconnected Zuckerberg became to his only friends and compelled by the drive for domination (his ultimate sense of acceptance).

Make no mistake, while "The Social Network" is incredibly smart and literate, it is also grandly entertaining. Screenwriter Sorkin (creator of "The West Wing" and my favorite "Sports Night") has put together what, in my opinion, is the best screenplay of the year. Sorkin is known for his whip fast dialogue and it is spot-on here! The movie is corrosively witty and uncompromisingly in your face. The film is cast with thoroughly unlikable types in a battle for supremacy. Eisenberg has never been better--no doubt Zuckerberg is a tool (both before and after his success), but Eisenberg makes you understand why and (I'm startled to say) actually appreciate it. Timberlake (as oily Napster creator Sean Parker) is a fantastically appealing devil-in-disguise, but as much as you may dislike him--he was integral to Facebook going wide. Hammer, as I said, is the film's biggest surprise. And Andrew Garfield, as Zuckerberg's betrayed partner, is vivid and alive--and, dare I say, the only character to elicit actual sympathy. But again, the film is merciless--even though we know that Garfield is screwed, we also know that it was an essential part of the successful expansion of Facebook. Business ethics be darned.

"The Social Network" is grown-up entertainment that has much to say about success in the modern era. I appreciated that no one veered away from the heart of darkness in this morality piece--that's what makes everything seem so relevant. Can someone be both repugnant and admirable? If you told me earlier in the year that a film about computer geeks at a keyboard would be edge-of-your-seat entertainment, I wouldn't have believed it. But here, I go. For sheer entertainment, remarkable performances, and an incredibly sophisticated screenplay--"The Social Network" is easily one of my favorite films of the year! Easily. KGHarris, 10/10.

The hype that has been circling around this film is ridiculous. On Rotten Tomatoes 145 out of 150 reviews assert this as one of the year's best films, and half of them make comparisons to Citizen Kane. So to say my expectations for this film were high is an understatement, I expected it to be a masterpiece. And even with its small flaws, I can claim that The Social Network is our defining film.

The film is set up alot like Rashomon, and yes Citizen Kane. It moves back between Zuckerberg's freshman year at Harvard in 2003 when he invented facebook, and a few years later when he's fighting legal battles against his former best friend Eduardo Saverin and 3 Upper Class students who claim to have created the "Idea". I found switching gave this film a very quick pace, and in many ways deepened the stories thick layers even further. But like Rashomon we can never truly percieve who's version of the story is the truth. This also parallels our perception of the film: Did this really happen or is it complete fiction?

The performances in The Social Network are spectacular. Jesse Eisenburg is known for his likeable roles, this is not one of them. His Mark Zuckerberg is brilliant. He is unsociable, cruel, condescending, self-centered, hateful, mean,narcicistic; one could write an entire essay on everything that's wrong with this guy's personality (or lack of). This to me was one of the great ironies of the whole film, that one of the biggest social network phenomenons today was invented by a man who has no idea how to socialize with the world around him. It is easy to question whether this portrayal is accurate, but seeing that the real Mark Zuckerberg was trying to heighten his image near the time of this film's release, it wouldn't suprise me. The other impressive performance in this film was newcomer Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin. To me this was the most likeable person in the film, and Garfield portrayed him with an impressive amount of empathy and depth. The performances from Timberlake, Armie Hammer, and Rooney Mara engaged me as well.

But let's get real here, the real star of this film is Aaron Sorkin's Oscar worthy script. Log on to any critic's site, except Armond White, and most likely you will find a whole paragraph gushing over this script. It is witty, friery, and fast. From the first scene, my head was spinning from the fast conversations and at times it was hard to keep up with all of the witty sarcasms. All I could think of was that I feel sorry for any viewers who don't speak english, because those subtitles will be fast. It is also very quoteable, my favorite: "Dating you is like dating a Stairmaster."I must also mention that the Direction is fantastic, I have always been a fan of Fincher's films, Fight Club especially, and he has outdone himself here. The perfect example of this is the rowing scene set to an electronic version of "The Hall of the Mountain King", a great piece of filmmaking.

Overall I highly recommend The Social Network, and yes I do think it defines our times and some of the themes here do resemble Citizen Kane. The Overall synopsis of the film is about the creation of a social phenomenon, but there is sooo much more here then that, much that I haven't discovered yet since I just saw it today. In short, I think it is a cautionary tale about money and power. Being a billionaire is probably nice, but since Zuckerberg (The film one anyways) has isolated himself to such a degree, he will forever be pining for existensial things that will always be out of his reach, and he will pine more for them than anything he can ever buy with money. Quite sad really.


A Great film
5/5


Pros: Excellent Acting, Direction, and Writing.

Cons: Accuracy is Definitly questionable, but I wouldn't listen to anything Zuckerberg says about this.

So many times we hear about a great film and how it's the best thing ever! Only to be left so disappointed by yet another over rated movie, however The Social Network does not fall into that category, because yes the critics praise has been worthy, The Social Network is one of the best films to come along in quite a while!

The first thing to say is that this is not a film about Facebook, yes its based around its creators Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin, but what it really is about is how their invention came between their friendship. The way the film is set up works really well as far as story telling goes, Mark Zuckerberg played by the brilliant Jesse Eisenberg is involved in 2 cases at once, one involving co creator Eduardo Saverin played by Andrew Garfield and the other case involves Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss who claim they asked Zuckerberg to design a social networking site for Harvard and claim that Zuckerberg took their idea. Eduard Saverin is also involved in that case.

It says alot for a movie that features a lot of dialogue that The Social Network never becomes confusing, boring or hard to follow. This is helped brilliantly by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross amazing score for the film. Director David Fincher(seven, fight club, zodiac) really brings out the best in all the scenes and to listen to his commentary on the film is amazing.

The Blu Ray comes packed with extras such as Fincher's Commentary as well as screenplay writer Aaron Sorkin along with the cast. On disc 2 there's a brilliant feature called How Did They Ever Make A Movie of Facebook? Its over one and half hours long and shows a great insight on how they made the movie including the difficulties that they had to over come, it also show what a great director Fincher is. It shows him and Sorkin discussing what they think would work better in different scenes. You also get Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross talking about the creation of the award winning score and how tough it was to recreate "In The Hall Of The Mountain" for the famous Henley Royal Regatta scene, they include two versions, one that made the movie and an earlier version that didn't.

The Social Network is a film you will come back to watch more than once, it features a great cast even Justin Timberlake playing Napster Founder Sean Parker plays his role very well. It really is one of the best films to come along in a while and you will not be disappointed!

"The Social Network" is based on the true-life story of Mark Zuckerberg, founder/creator of Facebook, the vast social-networking site. I'm not sure how true-to-life the movie actually is but I'm going on the premise that most of it is correct.

Mark Zuckerberg is not a nice person, not a friendly person, not a sociable person. In fact, if he's at all like the movie, I would hazard a guess that he has the developmental disorder, Asperberger's. He does not deal well with social interaction; he's brilliant at a narrowly focused field which allowed him to have Facebook up and running (and expanding) very quickly; he has a difficult time separating his actions from consequences. If he doesn't have Asperger's, he definitely suffers from some developmental/social disorder.

But over and above all that - I've had this DVD for months and put off watching it because I couldn't believe that it would be very entertaining. I finally decided to take a chance and this is one compelling movie. It's kind of like watching a train wreck and being unable to look away. Amazing performances especially by Jesse Eisenberg playing Zuckerberg; Andrew Garfield as Wardo, Zuckerberg's ONLY friend; and Armie Hammer playing the Winklevoss twins.

What a world we live in that Zuckerberg could become the youngest billionaire EVER! Truth truly is stranger than fiction.

I didn't quite understand it at first. "A movie about facebook? Why?" I thought to myself. It seemed like a boring tale -- boy creates website, website goes big, boy makes billions of dollars. However, the tale is much more intriguing. This is the story of a no-holds-barred, out-for-blood internet domination.

There are very few films I will watch repeatedly, and this is one of them. In fact, the first time I watched it was late one night, and I watched it again the very next morning. Jesse Eisenberg's portrayal of facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is neurotic and spot-on. Justin Timberlake plays a slimy Sean Parker. Andrew Garfield is amazing as Eduardo Saverin, and is really the only character in the drama to elicit any real sympathy from the audience.

If you haven't seen The Social Network yet, you definitely should. I can honestly see why it was hailed as "film of the year."

Fans of the movies always seem to adopt films as defining their youth. For my folks, it was hard to beat "The Graduate." For me and my friends, John Hughes' "Sixteen Candles" and "The Breakfast Club" capture the careening highs and lows of being a teenager in Reagan's America better than any other movie. I imagine that college students of the last decade will look to David Fincher's "The Social Network" and say, "Yeah, they got it right."

"TSN" is not a documentary by any means, but despite focusing on the meteoric rise of the world's youngest billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), and the founding of Facebook, "TSN" gets to the heart of what it means to be a young adult in the age of the Internet. Zuckerberg's genius was that he could step back and recognize the desperate human need for social connections and he was able to translate it to the Internet. Older generations may see younger Americans as a batch of loners as they sit glued to their laptops or PDAs, hammering out emails and texts while seemingly ignoring the world around them. But thanks to Zuckerberg, the youth of America are connected as never before.

In lesser hands, the story of the creation of a website would bore you to tears. Instead, Fincher took a script by Aaron Sorkin, one of the most incisive, thrilling writers we have, and created a fascinating tale of the creative spark and the toll it took on friendships. The "hero" of this story could only be Zuckerberg, but Zuckerberg fails almost every test of heroism. A social outcast at Harvard, Zuckerberg should cherish the few friendships he has, but he uses blatantly lies to friends and colleagues. He willingly "trades up" from his best friend and business partner, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), when the bigger-and-better-deal comes along in the form of Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), founder of Napster. And so it is that Sorkin and Fincher are able to use two competing lawsuits to structure this complex story as well as give it a Rashomon-style changing perspective.

I'll leave it to others to recap the plot details, other than to say that this is a complex, dense story. Sorkin won his Oscar for best screenplay for telling this story with such energy and style. The early scene showing the creation of Facemash, with its hacking and e-gibberish, deserves heavy analysis by every wannabe-writer out there. The special effects are subtle but powerfully effective, including having Baltimore and Johns Hopkins step in for Boston and Harvard as well as allowing Armie Hammer to play both Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (with a major boost from Josh Pence).

All the performances are strong, but special kudos need to go to Eisenberg and Garfield for playing best friends who go to war over Facebook. Eisenberg personifies the wounded little genius who exacts his revenge on his best friend for (largely imagined) grievances, while Garfield plays the loyal friend who gets pushed too far. In a director's commentary, Fincher gives a lot of credit to these two actors, but it's safe to assume that Fincher coaxed these two actors along.

All in all, a fabulous collaboration and a defining movie for the Aughts.

Please describe the audio and video quality of any Blu-Ray you review. Thanks to those who do this.

The video quality was great. Recorded digitally, no doubt. I would say "perfect", but the faces seemed to lack detail. Maybe it was too much make-up. It looked like it was presented in 2.40:1 aspect ratio.

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 was excellent. Great surround sound and sub-woofer bass.

I thought the movie itself was very good. I don't believe the real inventor of Facebook is very fond of the movie, because it makes him look like a total a-hole.

The brilliant story of a hacking sociopath that teams up with a sleazy music pirate to become wealthy via a fraternity of faux friends.

I thiught this movie would turn out to be about smarmy tech kid spouting off a bunch of technical jargon. It actually has a pretty decent plotline and you grow to hate the lead character - meaning : a fine performance. I liked it.

How can a movie about the founding of Facebook be interesting? The answer is this movie is only secondarily about the founding of Facebook. It is primarily a riveting personal story about the founder of Facebook (Mark Zuckerburg) and his relationship with his only friend Eduardo Saverin, who helped him found the company, and who eventually sues Zuckerburg for pushing him out of the company (Zuckerberg is also sued by three other Harvard students who claim he stole the idea for Facebook from them). The movie focuses on a friendship that is quite tragically broken by ambition, the inexperience of youth, and dog-eat-dog nature of modern financial capitalism. Facebook was created by an antisocial guy who is smart as a whip, has no friends, and is desperate for recognition and acceptance. The movie definitely portrays Zuckerburg as a selfish jerk, but allows both sides to present their views and lets the audience decide who is at fault. The movie has smart dialogue, brilliant acting (the portrayal of Zuckerburg as an asocial, self-absorbed jerk is brilliant) , and fantastic directing. The film was nominated for 8 Academy Awards including best picture, best directing, and best actor in a leading role. This film is definitely a must see.