Director(s):Danfung Dennis

Plot:What does it mean to lead men in war? What does it mean to come home? Hell and Back Again is a cinematically revolutionary film that asks and answers these questions with a power and intimacy no previous film about the conflict in Afghanistan has been able to achieve. It is a masterpiece in the cinema of war.

Facing down this unfortunate strain of arthouse filmmaking, which reaches a kind of apotheosis in The King’s Speech, is the simple existence in it of Colin Firth (not to mention Geoffrey Rush, but more on him in a bit), who takes to the role of King George VI with a preternatural ease. One could grouse on for a great deal of time about the story’s twee affectations and small-ball brand of drama, but the Firth factor puts many, if not all, of those concerns to rest. In short, hammy scripting aside, Firth’s performance is the sort of superb and immeasurably humane acting that many of us go to the movies for. Qualms about it being in the service of a not particularly groundbreaking film could be just quibbling.

As for the story itself, David Seidler’s screenplay is crafted around a historical hook that fascinating to consider and is usually consigned to the brand of quality telefilms that Hooper (John Adams) has previously gotten behind. Opening in 1925, at the culmination of the British Empire Exhibition, Prince Albert (Firth) is called upon to give the closing address. The result is a stultifying cavalcade of squeaks, murmurs, and pauses, as Albert’s fearsome stutter takes nearly complete control of him, and his wife, the future Queen Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), can only watch on piteously. A bruising round of engagements with speech therapists follow, since – as King George V (a fearsome Michael Gambon) points out – in the modern age it’s no longer good enough for the royalty to simply look good sitting on a horse; “We’ve become actors.” They need to be able to speak and be heard by their subjects, who listen in to Albert’s stammerings on the BBC even as the clouds gather for World War II.

Enter Australian Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), an unconventional speech therapist and utterly miserable amateur Shakespearean actor (his Caliban is marvelously awful), who works out of a dingy basement flat that hardly seems appropriate for the future King. But desperation at the failings of all his other therapists, and the ongoing disaster of Albert’s brother Edward’s (Guy Pearce) ascension to the British throne, leave Albert with little choice.

What The King’s Speech becomes, then, is a mismatched-friends drama in which the uptight and stuffy Albert is forced to engage on a more emotional level by the slightly batty, down-to-earth Lionel. As such, the film delivers on all the expected counts, perhaps a little too well. There’s the chipping away at regal authority once Albert steps into Lionel’s office (leading to the anachronistic-sounding line, “my game, my turf, my rules”), the slow blossoming friendship accentuated by strategic drinking, and of course the floodgate-opening as Albert reveals the childhood traumas that likely inculcated his paralyzing stutter.

Both leads play all this in a spirit of good fun. Firth creates a character so palpably cloaked in self-defeating worry that his only clearly identifiable other emotion is rage. Meanwhile, Rush – who has spent too much time lately showing up in projects far beneath him – has a great time clowning while also serving as the future king’s confidant and possible only friend. While giving his actors plenty of room to operate, Hooper still nearly muffs it by overly accentuating the script’s light comic touches with an annoying fixation on using fish-eye lenses for humorous effect and under-utilizing his smart supporting cast (Pearce seems curiously muffled, while Timothy Spall, as a growling Winston Churchill, is straight caricature).

A job nicely acted all around, with numerous touching moments and a historical backdrop that can’t help but be dramatic – the titular speech, which Albert hopes to be his singular moment of triumph, is also a ringing knell of tragedy, discussing the war that is to come to his people – The King’s Speech still can’t help feeling like a film too timid for its own good, much like Albert himself.

Known to many as “The Facebook Movie,” David Fincher’s The Social Network is not about the creation of one of the internet’s most successful websites. It’s not about becoming the world’s youngest billionaire. It’s not about greed and it’s not about power. The Social Network is a film about the inescapable need for acceptance inside each one of us.

It’s the fall of 2003 and Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) is sitting in a bar with his girlfriend (Rooney Mara). He explains to her the importance of belonging to one of Harvard University’s eight prestigious all-male social societies called “final clubs”. Why? Because they’re “exclusive,” a word that Mark does battle with throughout the movie. Mark has a serious personality problem. To put it in psychological terms, he’s an asshole. Because of his intelligence, he gives off a stink of superiority and has no tolerance for those whom he thinks are beneath him (Read: everybody). He’s bullish and stubborn, which, of course, makes him unlikeable. His only option is to do something that makes people accept him.

Enter the Winklevoss twins (Armie Hammer). These 6’5” blonde Adonis’s are everything Mark is looking for: members of the Porcellian “final club”, future Olympic rowers, and holders of inherited money. They sit at the head of the cool kids’ table, shining examples of the kinds of people Mark wants attention from. He gets it after creating something called FaceMash.com, a small website so powerful it shuts down Harvard’s servers. The Winklevoss twins bring him in for a meeting with the Porcellian Club stairway and tell Mark their idea: create a social networking site defined by exclusivity, where women can find and meet Harvard men. It seems like everything Mark wants. But he’s not in a “final club,” he’s in a stairway. He’s not friends with the Winklevosses, he’s a business partner. He hasn’t been accepted – he’s been reached out to with a ten foot pole.

Whether because of his attitude or his approach, everything that Mark does to gain acceptance ends in rejection. He tells his girlfriend that being in a final club would allow her better access to the upper class, leading her to dump him. Mark’s first attempt to make a website in the film, a site where pictures of female Harvard students are posted next to each other and the users click on the girl that they think is the hottest, is wildly popular but results in every girl on campus seeing him as a sexist pig and their boyfriends repeatedly threatening him. Facebook is a billion dollar idea that winds up with Mark dealing with two simultaneous lawsuits, one of which comes from his best friend.

You may be tempted at this point to think of Mark Zuckerberg as a sympathetic character, a Willy Loman or Shelley Levene for the 21st century. Don’t be fooled – Mark Zuckerberg is a tyrant, an unstoppable force. Every effort Mark makes to gain acceptance winds up hurting someone; he is a serial bridge burner. Feeling disrespected by the Winklevosses, he morphs their idea and keeps them dangling on a string before cutting them off entirely. When his best friend and Facebook business partner, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), becomes a prospective final club member, gaining the acceptance that Mark craves, he begins to shut more and more doors, rejecting idea after idea, before Eduardo is left behind completely. Mark is attempting the impossible, trying to gain acceptance through rejection.

This isn’t a simple film. It’s not the paint-by-numbers approach that you might see from a director less talented than David Fincher. At no point during the movie is the audience meant to sympathize with Mark. There’s no emotional scene during the climax where he crawls into a corner and bawls uncontrollably because he feels so alone. While the audience may feel the occasional shiver from the cold, Aaron Sorkin’s script never lets the audience feel distanced from the material. Eisenberg, recently stuck playing the nebbish, nervous weakling elsewhere, is stronger and more captivating here than we’ve ever seen him. There’s more than a film here; there’s a comment.

All of us can relate to Mark Zuckerberg. And that’s what will keep you engaged. You and I both want that same acceptance and equality Mark wants. Plenty of movies show that heavy is the head that wears the crown. We have enough movies where money goes to people’s heads and they espouse that greed is good. The Social Network outright rejects the tropes of power and money. Instead, Fincher and Sorkin have given us something that we can all understand and relate to: the costs of the desire for acceptance when it mutates into the blind ambition of social climbing. There are a finite number of slots on a baseball team roster, only so many seats available at the cool kids table, and we all want to be offered that last spot.

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Cast(s): Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin

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Cast(s): Centurion Quintus Dias

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Cast(s): Lucy Lawless