David Fincher: "And the Other Way is Wrong"

David Fincher is, without a doubt, one of the finest, most visually precise of all living American filmmakers. With his marvelously twisty -- and twisted -- new film Gone Girl just out, editor Tony Zhou -- who's previously broken down the style of other directors like Edgar Wright and Michael Bay -- has put together this terrific, illuminating look at Fincher and what he does (or more so, doesn't do) in his work. If you haven't seen the bulk of Fincher's films, spoilers follow, so approach at your own peril.

Breaking Down "Bayhem"

Is there currently a more widely lambasted director on this planet than Michael Bay? Though critics softened slightly for his last film, the dark true-crime comedy Pain and Gain, the knives are out once again -- perhaps even sharper than before -- with the release of Transformers: Age of Extinction, the fourth entry in the blockbuster franchise that has continued to stuff Bay's pockets with ridiculous amounts of moolah. So is there anything more to Bay than what we already know, i.e. fast cuts, sexy chicks and explosions? In this video essay, Tony Zhou incisively analyses what makes Bay, essentially Bay, and love or hate him, there's no question that the man's a step above the the blander, hack-ier likes of McG or Brett Ratner, at least on an aesthetic level:
Meanwhile, the critical mauling of Age of Extinction has been so bad that talk show host Jimmy Kimmel decided to get a few critics together to say something nice about Bay: