Merrick Morton/20th Century Fox
MOVIE REVIEW
Gone Girl (2014)
After failing to inspire warm fuzzies or much Oscar gold with “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “The Social Network,” David Fincher seems to have resigned himself to familiar territory. But his ambition for recognition doesn’t seem to have subsided, as he has attached himself to genre material with a literary pedigree like “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and now “Gone Girl.”
MOVIE REVIEW
We Bought a Zoo (2011)
Neal Preston/20th Century Fox
With “We Bought a Zoo,” Cameron Crowe has more or less remade “Jerry Maguire” with cuddly wuddly animals in place of memorable one-liners. The new film is about that same foolhardy idealism that drives a man to stake everything he has.
Although based on a true story, the film has inexplicably transported the Dartmoor Zoological Park from the county of Devon in southwest England to southern California. After his son Dylan (Colin Ford) is expelled from school for various antisocial transgressions, widower Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon) decides it’s time for a change of scenery. So he quits his job at the Los Angeles Times and squanders an inheritance on a decrepit countryside zoo. While Mr. Crowe and co-writer Aline Brosh McKenna have preserved many details in the trans-Atlantic migration, they are seemingly oblivious to the fact that real-life Mr. Mee’s former employer, the Guardian, has just launched an American edition.