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Films: Gone Girl and Charlie's Country

Are movies supposed to give the audience pleasure?

I didn't enjoy either film. Charlie's Country was boring. It confuses the dramatic tradition of tragedy with a victim-narrative, that is, one of those stories where the main character is a victim of a fallen, shitty world. This is not drama. This is a polemic.

Gone Girl is a mess. The characters, foolish. Was this supposed to be a satire? The whole thing is so completely ridiculous, I am tempted to enjoy it on a spoof-razzie level. But I don't think the filmmakers intended it that way. I actually have no idea what the filmmakers intended. A comedy? A horror? A thriller? A procedural? I wasn't bored during the movie, but I wasn't enjoying it, either. The dialog in the opening scenes were a giveaway -- some of the worst movie writing in history -- I had no idea what either character was saying or alluding to or what the hell was supposed to be happening. And then the various twists. I don't want to expend the mental energy to poke holes in the entire exercise. All I can say is that Fincher has an ability to create tension with the camera simply by a character opening a door, but in the guy's recent work, the narrative storytelling seems to have regressed to the level of TV and Lifetime movies. Narratively speaking, The Social Network is a TV movie, Gone Girl is a Lifetime movie, and House of Cards is a daytime soap opera. The only difference is the presence of movie stars and heavy-duty craft.

Although thinking back, maybe Se7en is really just a straight-to-DVD movie idea with the same elements.