With David Fincher’s long-awaited “Mank,” about screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz’s quest to finish the screenplay for “Citizen Kane,” finally on Netflix, this weekend’s a great time to revisit the director’s other work. You can take a look at David Ehrlich’s ranking of all of Fincher’s films here, and read on to find out where to watch them all below.
“Alien³” (1992)
Sigourney Weaver returns as Ellen Ripley in this 1992 film that turned the “Alien” movies into a franchise, and also served as 27-year-old Fincher’s first big-budget studio directing gig. ($65 million big, to be exact.)
“Se7en” (1995)
When a serial killer (Kevin Spacey) begins targeting people that he thinks represent the seven deadly sins, a retiring police detective (Morgan Freeman) and his new partner (Brad Pitt) team up to investigate the string of elaborate and gruesome murders.
“The Game” (1997)
A rich, lonely banker (Michael Douglas) is gifted an all-consuming, personalized ARG by his estranged brother (Sean Penn). Things quickly grow more and more personal — and more and more dangerous as our protagonist begins to fear for his life as he tries to evade the game’s organizers. Ehrlich calls it “a more grounded precursor to ‘The Matrix,’ a stress test for reality at a time when pop culture was really starting to push back against the runaway train capitalism of the ’90s.”
“Fight Club” (1999)
Before it became a ubiquitous poster plastered on the dorm room wall of every Millennial man in the 2000s, “Fight Club” was the first of Fincher’s bestseller adaptations (based on the book of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk). Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter star in the film about a discontented corporate drone (Norton, the narrator) who starts a “fight club” with a charismatic man named Tyler Durden (Pitt).
“Panic Room” (2002)
A woman whose home is invaded by armed robbers (Jodie Foster) holes up in her specially designed “panic room” with her 11-year-old daughter (Kristen Stewart) but end up in a deadly cat-and-mouse game anyway.
“Zodiac” (2007)
A precursor to Fincher’s TV work with “Mindhunter,” “Zodiac” is an ensemble thriller about a group of San Francisco investigators (Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards) and reporters (Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr.) who become obsessed with finding the Zodiac serial killer in the 1960s and ’70s.
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (2008)
The uncanny valley special effects to de-age stars Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt aside, this film about a man who ages backwards has since become somewhat of a punchline. But it contains some of Fincher’s most touching onscreen moments in the 166-minute film, a bittersweet love story “about the brevity and unlikeliness of all love stories,” writes Ehrlich.
“The Social Network” (2010)
This Aaron Sorkin-penned script is loosely adapted from Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book “The Accidental Billionaires,” and follows Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and the founding of Facebook — plus its subsequent lawsuits. Writes Ehrlich, who ranks it as Fincher’s best feature, “’The Social Network’ is one of the great American films of the 21st Century because it recognizes that changing the world means changing the world.”
“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” (2011)
Though a film based on Stieg Larsson’s 2005 novel starring Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist hit theaters in 2009, Fincher’s take on the bestseller, starring Rooney Mara as a rape survivor hacker and Daniel Craig as a journalist investigating the mysterious disappearance of a wealthy woman 40 years earlier, would go on to earn five Oscar nods (and one win).
“Gone Girl” (2014)
Fincher teamed up with author Gillian Flynn to adapt her bestselling novel for the screen, starring Ben Affleck as a man suspected of wrongdoing when his wife (Rosamund Pike) goes missing.
“Mank” (2020) Screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) races to finish “Citizen Kane” in Fincher’s take on 1930s Hollywood. Stream on Netflix. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
