5. David Fincher

This year the beginning of the year started with the Social Network and ended with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, both David Fincher movies. Every Time I see one of his movies it makes me want to go back and see them all again. They are so simple and yet I get totally taken in by the way he tells a story. From the high tracking shots that both instill peace and dread to the immediacy of the way he tracks his subjects whether across a campus or on an icy Swedish road, you get placed into the setting while not being at risk yourself.

His use of deep color the golds and yellows of california day or blues and blacks of a San Francisco night in Zodiac (and The Game) made me love and see San Francisco in a whole new way. Almost as much a Travelogue film for the city as Hitchcock’s Vertigo, as enchanting because of the air of menace (the same goes for the Sweden in Tattoo, take me there.)

All that and the depth and intricacy to the detail of the set dressing. It’s in extreme mode In Seven but you see it in everything the archives that are the background for research, the conference rooms in Silicon valley the settings are so rich you want to be in them AND just look at them. 

Leaving the Girl with a Dragon Tattoo made me feel both in love with film and slightly envious of the strength of his aesthetic and story telling voice.