-Won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin), Best Film Editing (Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall), and Best Original Score (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross)
-Other nominations include: Best Actor (Jesse Eisenberg), Best Director (David Fincher), Best Cinematography (Jeff Cronenweth), Best Sound Mixing (Ren Klyce, David Parker, Michael Semanick, and Mark Weingarten)
Brooke Review:
Geoff Review:
Its been roughly a week since I saw this movie, and I keep going back and forth on it. Initially, I walked away from it not being overly impressed. I thought it was a great film, with great acting performances from Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield who played Zuckerberg and Eduardo respectively, but it had been talked up to me so much I almost had too high of expectations. I am a big fan of Aaron Sorkin, who adapted the Oscar-winning screenplay for The Social Network for the big screen. He has written Emmy award winning TV shows like ABC's Sports Night (video), and arguably my favorite show ever NBC's The West Wing (video, video, video, and video). Multiple times have I watched the 2 seasons of Sports Night and the 4 seasons of The West Wing to which Sorkin contributed, and I can say with confidence that I am very used to his style of dialogue and story telling. After viewing The Social Network, it is clear it has his fingers prints all over it. Much like The West Wing, his characters are impossibly smart, with a level of ego and arrogance to match (which makes Mark Zuckerberg a perfect character for a Sorkin film). The dialogue is quick and clever, and even though it is a relatively simple story arc, he told it in such a beautiful way it made the story seem better that what it actually is. Maybe I felt a little underwhelmed with this movie at first because I have seen this before from Sorkin over 100 times. So initially I was planning on giving it a somewhat lower grade: One that says it is a great movie, but I just wasn't as impressed as I wanted to be (or as impressed as someone who isn't a huge West Wing fan). After a week away, I started thinking about the acting, directing, screenplay, everything about the move, and I can't really pinpoint anything that warrants me giving it a lower score. I ask myself, "What am I taking away from this movie?" Well first off, the screenplay by my boy Sorkin was fantastic. Second, like I said before I thought Eisenberg (Zuckerberg) and Garfield (Eduardo) were also excellent. Thirdly, the story of Facebook sticks out to me personally since I was in college when this all went down, and it was cool to have them go through the ideas of "Oh lets put up something about relationship status" and "hey check out this Wall idea!" And Finally the writing, with two scenes sticking out to me in particular; one where Justin Timberlake (who luckily didn't ruin the movie for me) tells Eduardo and Zuckerberg, "You know what's cooler than a million dollars? A billion dollars", and the other one is Timberlake telling the story about guy who invented Victoria's Secret selling too soon.
At the end of the day, I can't really say anything bad about this movie, as one of my favorite writers did his thing for a movie instead of a TV show. I will need to rewatch this film (and I want to), to make sure if my gut reaction was in fact justified and there are some things lacking in this movie, or it is really as good as everyone said it was. All I can say for now it is a great movie from top to bottom.
Acting: Overall, it is superb. Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield (Eduardo) each do fantastic jobs in particular. Justin Timberlake was good himself.
Story:The story itself isn't ground breaking, but the way it was told made it feel even better than what it was
Directing: Excellent as well
Music/Soundtrack: Honestly, the music didn't stick out to me, and it kind of surprised me to see that they got nominated for best score. I am not saying it was bad, but I think I was just focused and immersed in all the other things this movie has to offer that it didn't register for me.
Editing: Scenes moved smoothly and soundly.
Costumes: Dressing like college aged kids and Harvard rich kids isn't overly difficult. Actually, the real Mark Zuckerberg admitted that despite some of the movie's inaccuracies, they got his clothing down perfectly.
Screenplay: Sorkin took a relatively simple story arc and told it in a beautiful way
Geoff Overall Grade: A- (92/100)
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