Tag: Rosamund Pike

Saltburn (2023) | REVIEW

Barry Keoghan as Oliver Quick with his back to the camera in Emerald Fennell’s SALTBURN — PHOTO: MGM and Amazon Studios.

Directed by Emerald Fennell — Screenplay by Emerald Fennell.

There are shades of dark comedy, satire, and horror in Emerald Fennell’s gothic erotic thriller Saltburn. The film is set in 2006 and follows Oxford University student Oliver Quick (played by Barry Keoghan), as he struggles to make friends and fit in among several snobbish borderline celebrities on campus. One day, he befriends Felix Catton (played by Jacob Elordi) when he offers to lend him his bicycle and walk back Felix’s bike with a flat tire. The immensely popular, posh, and privileged Felix proves to be more pleasant than you might expect, and he takes a liking to the nerdy, needy, and neglected ‘Ollie’ who is very polite and whose stories about being from a less fortunate and troubled family intrigue Felix. Ollie, meanwhile, seemingly lusts for both Felix and his status. Eventually, Felix invites Ollie back home to the Catton family castle — known as ‘Saltburn’ — for the summer, so that Ollie can get his mind off tragic news from back home. Once there, he becomes an object of fascination for Felix’s rich family, who, among other things, seem to be taking some pleasure from hearing about the struggles of the less fortunate, until, at some point, they find them boring. This is the case with their ‘hanger-on’ Pamela (played by Carey Mulligan). When he realizes that one day the family may lose interest in him too, Ollie sets out to make himself very popular in the family country house by any means necessary.

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REVIEW: Gone Girl (2014)

WARNING: EXPECT FULL SPOILERS FOR GONE GIRL Warning over (It’s better to be safe than sorry). Now, I always write this before my reviews, but I will try to steer clear of any spoilers – though, that may be tough with this film – we’ll see how I do.

Gone Girl, directed by David Fincher, stars Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike as the Dunnes. Affleck, Nick Dunne, is introduced right away – and is really the main character in this film. With that having been said, Rosamund Pike’s character, Amy Dunne, is essential to the plot of the film – I’ll leave it at that for now. The plot revolves around Amy having disappeared – presumably killed, or at the very least kidnapped. What follows is a witchhunt – not unlike the one seen in Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt. While this film may look like the simple ‘whodunnit’ tale, it is actually quite unique – and some twists and turns will leave you speechless. That’s the plot, really, but in getting into a review – I’d first like to talk about David Fincher.

Fincher has taken this adapted screenplay and has taken it through the Fincher-process. Fincher is one of the best directors out there, and this film is like every other film he’s attached to. It’s beautiful, it’s on-point – it is David Fincher. One of the things I worried about was the casting, though. Tyler Perry & Neil Patrick Harris seemed like odd choices for their particularly roles as Nick’s lawyer and Amy’s old ‘stalker-boyfriend’, respectively. Really, though, Perry does quite well – and NPH does fine too – however, I’ve not read the novel yet, and I’m curious to find out whether NPH’s portrayal is true to the book.

I like to compare Affleck’s Nick Dunne to Mads Mikkelsen’s Lucas in The Hunt, and the thing is – that while both characters are being chased, or rather speculated upon, their reactions are quite dissimilar. Lucas was angry, but mostly you felt sorry for him – you saw him contemplating his future, you saw people becoming violent towards him. Now, Nick Dunne is a different person – he’s aggressive, he’s angry – but he’s being told to calm down; to fit in. The thing is that he’s too calm, he’s too awkward at media events following the supposed kidnapping of his wife. Affleck does well, but I do think Mikkelsen’s acting performance is superior. The star performance in Gone Girl, comes from Rosamund Pike. She has an Academy-Award-Performance, and it might be tough to understand this if you haven’t seen the film, but her performance is stellar.

The plot is amazing – its twists and turns are mindboggling – and when you combine that with the amazing directorial qualities of Fincher – you get something amazing. Go see this film – not only because of the Oscar-potential of Pike, or the directorial performance of Fincher – but for the twists, the turns, the whodunit of it all. It’s an instant classic in that category.

Overall Score: 9.0 out of 10. Amazing performances – both in front of the camera and behind it – take you on a ride as this terrifying witchhunt transforms itself into something legendary for the whodunit-genre.