Filmography: Panic Room (2002); Zodiac (2007); The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008); The Social Network (2010); The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) David Fincher has carved out a nice little section of cinema for himself. The master of a sleek digital hue that manages to preserve the cinematic aspects of movies that are actually made on film, Fincher might almost be thought of as a 21st Century Hitchcock. While he doesn't outright crib elements of The Master of Suspense's technique, like some directors have done in the past (we're looking at you Brian De Palma), Fincher's films often deal with criminal elements and the mentally unstable, as Hitchcock's films usually do. Unlike Hitchcock though, Fincher doesn't use suspense to look down on his audience or slyly wink at them, instead preferring to get right up in their face and speak bluntly and plainly. As great of a stylist as Fincher is, he's at his best when there is some thematic meat on the bone. Fincher is a master at tangentially touching on subjects dealing with cultural malfeasance without ever veering off the course of his tightly wound narratives. The most obvious example of this is The Social Network, but even when he is working in fiction (like Fight Club), or a period piece (Zodiac), Fincher's films have a lot to say about society. The man isn't infallible, as the mostly forgettable Panic Room proved, and even when he operates at his high-standards, a film's story may hold him back a bit (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), but Fincher has shown himself to be one of the most important voices of contemporary cinema.
A film fanatic at a very young age, starting with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies and gradually moving up to more sophisticated fare, at around the age of ten he became inexplicably obsessed with all things Oscar. With the incredibly trivial power of being able to chronologically name every Best Picture winner from memory, his lifelong goal is to see every Oscar nominated film, in every major category, in the history of the Academy Awards.
