Gone Girl

Southeast Missouri State University’s campus is really nice. And when us students ventured out of campus, the historic downtown area near the Mississippi river is really nice, include some nice bars for just hanging out. Unfortunately, all the bars shut down at midnight by State law, so all the students found rides across the river to the Illinois side to go to a shitty club over there called the Purple Crackle, which was open until 3 am.

What Cape Girardeau has for me nowadays is just a lot of memories. I visited back in 2009, and I was really shocked when I toured campus with an old classmate just how many of our old professors have passed away. And how every part of campus brought back so many memories, it hurt. Even though they were good memories. Funny that. Unexpected.

And he’s dodging the secret affair question. That’s just going to cause more suspicion.

Wouldn’t that mean that Ben Affleck’s bar probably isn’t a good idea and wouldn’t succeed?

— Alan

So much of what I love about this movie is how effortlessly it switches genres.

The book is even better. It starts out from the husband’s point of view and then pulls a 180 about 200 pages in when it switches to Amy’s perspective. That was a huge surprise for me.

The thing that had my head spinning constantly in the second phase of the movie was that I was trying to square what I saw with what I knew prior to that, and then realizing that a lot of what I “knew” was now questionable since it was by an unreliable narrator. This was especially relevant in the third section, when I just couldn’t square the actions of the character with what I “knew” from the first part. It was a deeply uncomfortable feeling.

Look on the bright side, if your wife is following the path of the female lead in Gone Girl, you now have a garage full of toys! Go check it out, man!

This movie is a running joke in our house. Every once in a while, my wife will say things like “I noticed the cookie sheet is still in the sink. Don’t make me Gone Girl your ass”.

It really was a chilling film. What got me about it was how, I hate to say it, realistic and unexpected the whole movie was for me. Nothing felt contrived. All of the characters had their own voice and acted in realistic ways. They didn’t need to resort to cheap shock (boiling a bunny, killing his sister, etc.) to establish her character. They didn’t use “it just happened to work out that way” kinds of retcons that you see in an Ocean’s 11-type movie.

I knew nothing about the plot, other than what I had seen in the commercials, so I went in expecting a by-the-numbers “did he or didn’t he” plot. The first 3rd of the movie seemed to prove me right, to the point that I was about to give up on it. My wife had read the book and told me to just be patient. Damn glad I stuck with it. The 2nd third of the movie hit me the same way that Momento did the first time I saw it. Just that jaw-dropping shock of the reveals.

Unfortunately, the surprise is gone for people that saw the movie already, but the way the story plays out in the book is very well done. Until the big reveal, you’re absolutely convinced that the guy killed his wife and the big mystery is whether or not he’s lying to the reader or it’s some kind of split personality or memory issue that prevents him from putting the clues together.

When the flip happens… Hoo boy.

Yeah, this is definitely one of those times I wish I’d read the book before seeing the movie. I can only imagine how great that twist was after being built up in a slower fashion, as happens in books versus movies.

Part of Killshot was filmed in Cape too. Three of my kids got their degrees at that school so I’m familiar with the area too.

I saw Rosamund Pike on the Late Show on last Wednesday’s show, and it absolutely blew my mind. She’s got this really strong British accent, and sounds nothing like the best roles she’s played, like in Gone Girl. They even talked about how hard it was to do an American accent for her because British people don’t pronounce the letter “r”.

I watched this recently, overall I liked it, fantastic acting!

One ending question… dunno if spoilers are needed , why did Nick not leave in the end, but rather decided to stay with Amy? Because of the baby ?

Book insight helps
Nick Dunne in Gone Girl | Shmoop.

>While the life Amy offers him seems awful, Nick is probably not just staying because of their child—he sticks around for a while before learning she’s pregnant, after all. Instead, he’s staying with Amy because he literally can’t exist without the tension she brings to his life. In Go’s words, the two of them are “addicted to each other” in a highly destructive way (63.30)—and looked at from this angle, Nick isn’t a victim of Amy’s so much as he just can’t quit her.

Ahh nice, yeah that makes more sense.