Just watched The Social Network.
Short review: In a good year, Social Network would probably that offbeat movie that wins Best Screenplay as a consolation prize for being excellent but not really deserving a top Oscar. But this is an uncommonly weak year, and Social Network an uncommonly stylish film. That might give it a chance at trophies it ordinarily would not be aiming for.
TLDR review:
Just watched it. It is hard to remind yourself that the film is fictionalized, because the narrative is so skillfully put together, and makes so much sense. If anything, one can sense that the "Erica Albright" character is a fictional character, and the film does let you see the Zuckerberg side of the story (that the Winklevoss twins really were just kind of dopes who should have gotten serious about their website instead of pitching it casually at a club and watching Z leave with it), but the viewer is definitely encouraged to take a side.
Thing is, though, the film is really well-made. I held off watching Social Network because I thought, blah, guy founds website, gets sued, unfilmable vanity nonsense. Oops. Aaron Sorkin is, as always, a genius - what a terrific script - and David Fincher's directing is unobtrusively brilliant. My favorite shot unites the best of the two: when one of the Winklevoss twins accidentally breaks a doorknob, the camera pans across the room, but at doorknob height, so you don't see either twin's face, and then the offending twin delivers a classic Sorkin line.
People will have to stop that stupid canard that Jesse Eisenberg = Michael Cera now, too. There's a lot of weird dumping on Eisenberg, claiming he plays the same character every time and that his character is identical to Cera's. It was always false, but now it hasn't got a leg to stand on. In its weird little way, Eisenberg's Z. is a powerhouse performance, scarily intense, but not in the way that scarily intense people are usually scarily intense. There wasn't a single supporting actor who wasn't excellent, but props to the Winklevoss brothers and Justin Timberlake especially.
