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Facebook’s nativity story told, “The Social Network” movie in theaters all over the world. What about “The Social Network” What’s in the movie, actors, roles, trailer. In other words, everything in this article about film The Social Network. Total of four, “The Social Networking” review.

Review 1: The Social Network

Here’s a poke to users and nonusers of Facebook: The Social Network isn’t some yawny visual aid on how the website grew from a few hundred users at Harvard in 2004 to a 2010 global reach of half a billion. The Social Network is a hard-charging beast of a movie with a full tank of creative gas that keeps it humming from start to finish (hell of a middle, too). Sure, it gives you the facts about how then-Harvard undergrad Mark Zuckerberg (a never-better Jesse Eisenberg) made billions by helping technology win the battle against actual human contact. But it’s also about the nation of narcissists we’ve become, reshaping who we are on Facebook in the hope of being friended by other users who may or may not be lying their asses off. Bracingly smart, brutally funny and acted to perfection without exception, The Social Network lights up a dim movie sky with flares of startling brilliance. Director David Fincher (Fight Club, Seven, Zodiac) puts his visual mastery to work on the verbal pyrotechnics in the dynamite, dick-swinging script by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing), and they both do the best and ballsiest work of their careers. The Social Network gets you drunk on movies again. It deserves to go viral.

In the film’s wow of an opener, set in 2003, Sorkin speculatively places Mark at a campus bar, where he is driving his girlfriend nuts by avoiding eye contact, juggling a dozen topics at once and ignoring her reaction to virtually everything. She is Erica, and as played like a gathering storm by Rooney Mara, winner of the coveted title role in Fincher’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, she is steaming. It’s a setup for disaster: tech nerd versus the real live girl from Boston University he uses to unload on. Fed up with his condescension and his obsession with getting into one of Harvard’s elite “final clubs,” Erica calls him an asshole and splits. A shattered Mark returns to the dorm he shares with Dustin Moskovitz (Joseph Mazzello) and Chris Hughes (Patrick Mapel), and, beer in hand, blogs out his festering rage, attacking Erica as a flat-chested bitch, hacking into photo files of female Harvard undergrads and ranking them on a hotness scale. Out of anger over being socially rejected, a social network is born.

Who gets the credit/blame? There’s no doubt Mark is the CEO of a Facebook complex currently valued at $25 billion. But don’t forget his BFF, Brazilian student Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), who provided the business plan and early financing. And then there’s the memorable Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler (both played by Armie Hammer, with Josh Pence doing duty as a body double). The Winklevi, as Mark calls them, are blond vikings on the Harvard rowing crew and, in their eyes, the originators of Facebook. They were the ones who asked Mark to help them build a Harvard computer-dating service. They all successfully sued for a piece of the pie they claim that Mark the Judas screwed them out of when he took his idea to Silicon Valley and global dominance. Not a drop of blood is spilled in The Social Network, but you can’t miss the scar tissue.

As advertised, it’s a tale of sex, money, genius and betrayal. But can a script based on what Zuckerberg calls “fiction” dig out the truth? The film’s maverick producer, Scott Rudin, paraphrasing a line from Sorkin’s A Few Good Men, argues that “there is no such thing as the truth.” He has a point. That’s why Sorkin, using research compiled by journalist Ben Mezrich for his book The Accidental Billionaires, written concurrently with the script, went to court depositions of Zuckerberg, Saverin and the Winklevi and created a fact-based structure that gives the movie multiple points of view. The Rashomon idea is inspired, and Fincher directs it with thrilling cinematic fervor. How? By effectively giving each character his own Facebook page. Watch the movie and decide who you want to add as a friend.

It won’t be easy. Sorkin and Fincher come down hard on these characters, without skimping on complexity and sympathy. Eisenberg delivers a tour de force, nimbly negotiating Sorkin’s rat-a-tat dialogue and revealing how alienation and loneliness actually fuel Mark’s ambition. More crucially, Eisenberg lets us see the chinks in Mark’s armor, unearthing long-buried feelings when Napster co-founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) enters the scene, ready to take Facebook to the next level even if it means leaving Eduardo behind as roadkill. Timberlake is phenomenal, a revelation, even. You expect him to nail Sean’s charming hustle, and he does, working a restaurant meeting with Mark and Eduardo like a twentysomething Dr. Evil. “A million dollars isn’t cool,” he says. “You know what’s cool? A billion dollars.” Sean, with a rep for drugs and very young women, sinks his hooks in. He’s a seductive Iago to Mark’s ego-bruised Othello. It’s a role to die for, and Timberlake the mesmerizer just crushes it.

Trailer: The Social Network

Note to Oscar: You need to step up big time for Garfield, who plays Eduardo with a vulnerability that raises the emotional stakes in a movie that is built on ice cool, a fact reflected in the haunting visuals achieved digitally by gifted cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth and the hypnotic musical road map laid out by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Was Mark jealous that the Harvard final club that rejected him accepted Eduardo? Keep your eyes on Garfield — he’s shatteringly good, the soul of a film that might otherwise be without one. The Social Network is the movie of the year. But Fincher and Sorkin triumph by taking it further. Lacing their scathing wit with an aching sadness, they define the dark irony of the past decade. The final image of solitary Mark at his computer has to resonate for a generation of users (the drug term seems apt) sitting in front of a glowing screen pretending not to be alone.

By: Peter Travers

Review 2: The Social Network

Our thoughts: Who thought a movie about Facebook could potentially go down as the year’s best film? David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin made it happen, and thanks to their expertise, we can head to the theater and enjoy “The Social Network,” which just happens to be one of the most entertaining cinematic experiences I’ve ever had. That would certainly make for a solid status update.

Yes, these are indeed big words, but I’m not going to lie. “Network” instantly stole my complete attention and pulled me into the movie without ever giving me the opportunity to look away or think about anything besides what’s going down on the big screen. When the end credits started rolling, I was disappointed, because I just wanted this movie to go on and on and on. In my book, it really is that thrilling.

What you should know about this flick is that it’s an unauthorized account of how Mark Zuckerberg launched the social networking site that would eventually boast more than 500 million users. The film is based primarily on two lawsuits Zuckerberg had to deal with back when Facebook became popular, and Sorkin also turned to Ben Mezrich’s book for help with the structure of the story.

Here’s the thing though: it really doesn’t matter how real this film is. I’m sure not everything we see in this thing is accurate, but I couldn’t care less. As a movie, this is an utterly compelling experience following a smart guy’s journey from a Harvard student to a billionaire, and everything from the writing to the acting and direction in this film is pretty much as flawless as it can get.

“The Social Network” starts with Mark (Jesse Eisenberg) being dumped by his girlfriend. Right away, we learn he’s quite the eccentric character. Call him a nerd or a weirdo or whatever, but his presence, attitude and entire posture are instantly fascinating to us spectators. Next thing we know, Mark is sitting in his dorm cooking up a Website that lets users compare people and pick the hottest ones.

Following the unexpected success of that site, Mark is approached by Tyler Winklevoss (Armie Hammer) and his twin brother Cameron, who ask him to help them set up a cool social online site exclusively for Harvard students. Mark loves the idea and wanders off to play around with it, and a few months later, he launches Facebook – all without really telling the Winklevosses about it, of course.

The plot: The film takes a look at what happened when Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook.

Our thoughts: Who thought a movie about Facebook could potentially go down as the year’s best film? David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin made it happen, and thanks to their expertise, we can head to the theater and enjoy “The Social Network,” which just happens to be one of the most entertaining cinematic experiences I’ve ever had. That would certainly make for a solid status update.

Yes, these are indeed big words, but I’m not going to lie. “Network” instantly stole my complete attention and pulled me into the movie without ever giving me the opportunity to look away or think about anything besides what’s going down on the big screen. When the end credits started rolling, I was disappointed, because I just wanted this movie to go on and on and on. In my book, it really is that thrilling.

What you should know about this flick is that it’s an unauthorized account of how Mark Zuckerberg launched the social networking site that would eventually boast more than 500 million users. The film is based primarily on two lawsuits Zuckerberg had to deal with back when Facebook became popular, and Sorkin also turned to Ben Mezrich’s book for help with the structure of the story.

Here’s the thing though: it really doesn’t matter how real this film is. I’m sure not everything we see in this thing is accurate, but I couldn’t care less. As a movie, this is an utterly compelling experience following a smart guy’s journey from a Harvard student to a billionaire, and everything from the writing to the acting and direction in this film is pretty much as flawless as it can get.

“The Social Network” starts with Mark (Jesse Eisenberg) being dumped by his girlfriend. Right away, we learn he’s quite the eccentric character. Call him a nerd or a weirdo or whatever, but his presence, attitude and entire posture are instantly fascinating to us spectators. Next thing we know, Mark is sitting in his dorm cooking up a Website that lets users compare people and pick the hottest ones.

Following the unexpected success of that site, Mark is approached by Tyler Winklevoss (Armie Hammer) and his twin brother Cameron, who ask him to help them set up a cool social online site exclusively for Harvard students. Mark loves the idea and wanders off to play around with it, and a few months later, he launches Facebook – all without really telling the Winklevosses about it, of course.

To cut things short, the movie then explores how Tyler and his brother decide to sue Mark for stealing their idea, while the other half of the film follows the mess that ensues between Mark and his best friend and business partner Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield). Essentially, the majority of “Network” is told through depositions and flashbacks, and that concept just works marvelously all throughout.

Sorkin’s script is so wonderful because it features nothing but goodies. It’s got fascinating dialogue and complex, interesting characters, and of course, it tells the story of a worldwide online phenomenon, which is always nice. Most importantly though, it tells that story in the most exciting way possible, because the plot’s pacing is what impressed me most in “The Social Network.” This one’s just as fast as it can get.

That leads me to Fincher, whose direction is an inspiration. I hear he expected a whole lot from his actors to make this a perfect flick, and to tell you the truth, it was all worth it. There is not a boring or unnecessary/weird moment in the movie, and things couldn’t move along any better. Fincher got lucky though, because in the end, it’s his fabulous cast makes everything else come together so beautifully.

Jesse Eisenberg is a terrific actor, and I can’t think of anyone else who could portray Zuckerberg’s eccentric character with this kind of energy and passion. He owns his character at all times and he owns every scene he’s in. The same goes for Garfield, who looks and acts the part and has a huge career ahead of him. Justin Timberlake does a great job as Sean Parker, and Armie Hammer is remarkable in the Winklevoss double role.

Freaky quote: “If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you’d have invented Facebook.” – Jesse Eisenberg

The final word: I could go on and on, but it’s time for you to friend this film yourself. Facebook hater or lover, go see it. It’s a superb film that works so well in so many ways, and it’s definitely an experience I will revisit at least once more. Timely, fast-paced and beautifully shot and edited, “The Social Network” earns an easy spot among 2010’s best films! If you haven’t already, join our Facebook fan page below.

Article by Franck Tabouring

Review 3: The Social Network

“The Social Network” is about a young man who possessed an uncanny ability to look into a system of unlimited possibilities and sense a winning move. His name is Mark Zuckerberg, he created Facebook, he became a billionaire in his early 20s, and he reminds me of the chess prodigy Bobby Fischer. There may be a touch of Asperger’s syndrome in both: They possess genius but are tone-deaf in social situations. Example: It is inefficient to seek romance by using strict logic to demonstrate your intellectual arrogance.

David Fincher’s film has the rare quality of being not only as smart as its brilliant hero, but in the same way. It is cocksure, impatient, cold, exciting and instinctively perceptive.

It hurtles through two hours of spellbinding dialogue. It makes an untellable story clear and fascinating. It is said to be impossible to make a movie about a writer, because how can you show him only writing? It must also be impossible to make a movie about a computer programmer, because what is programming but writing in a language few people in the audience know? Yet Fincher and his writer, Aaron Sorkin, are able to explain the Facebook phenomenon in terms we can immediately understand, which is the reason 500 million of us have signed up.

To conceive of Facebook, Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) needed to know almost nothing about relationships or human nature (and apparently he didn’t). What he needed was the ability to intuit a way to involve the human race in the Kevin Bacon Game. Remember that Kevin Bacon himself need not know more than a fraction of the people linking through him. Same on Facebook. I probably know 40 of my Facebook friends well, 100 glancingly, 200 by reputation. All the others are friends of friends. I can’t remember the last time I received a Friend Request from anyone I didn’t share at least one “Mutual Friend” with.

For the presence of Facebook, we possibly have to thank a woman named Erica (Rooney Mara). “The Social Network” begins with Erica’s date with Zuckerberg. He nervously sips a beer and speed-talks through an aggressive interrogation. It’s an exercise in sadistic conversational gamesmanship. Erica gets fed up, calls him an asshole and walks out.

Erica (a fictional character) is right, but at that moment she puts Zuckerberg in business. He goes home, has more beers and starts hacking into the “facebooks” of Harvard dorms to collect the head shots of campus women. He programs a page where they can be rated for their beauty. This is sexist and illegal, and proves so popular, it crashes the campus servers. After it’s fertilized by a mundane website called “The Harvard Connection,” Zuckerberg grows it into Facebook.

In theory, there are more possible moves on a chess board than molecules in the universe. Chessmasters cannot possibly calculate all of them, but using intuition, they can “see” a way through this near-infinity to a winning move. Nobody was ever better at chess than Bobby Fischer. Likewise, programming languages and techniques are widely known, but it was Zuckerberg who intuited how he could link them with a networking site. The genius of Facebook requires not psychological insight but its method of combining ego with interaction. Zuckerberg wanted to get revenge on all the women at Harvard. To do that, he involved them in a matrix that is still growing.

It’s said there are child prodigies in only three areas: math, music and chess. These non-verbal areas require little maturity or knowledge of human nature, but a quick ability to perceive patterns, logical rules and linkages. I suspect computer programming may be a fourth area.

Zuckerberg may have had the insight that created Facebook, but he didn’t do it alone in a room, and the movie gets a narration by cutting between depositions for lawsuits. Along the way, we get insights into the pecking order at Harvard, a campus where ability joins wealth and family as success factors. We meet the twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (both played by Armie Hammer), rich kids who believe Zuckerberg stole their “Harvard Connection” in making Facebook. We meet Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), Zuckerberg’s roommate and best (only) friend, who was made CFO of the company, lent it the money that it needed to get started and was frozen out. And most memorably we meet Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the founder of two legendary web startups, Napster and Plaxo.

It is the mercurial Parker, just out of work but basked in fame and past success, who grabbed Zuckerberg by the ears and pulled him into the big time. He explained why Facebook needed to move to Silicon Valley. Why more money would come from venture capitalists than Eduardo would ever raise with his hat-in-hand visits to wealthy New Yorkers. And he tried, not successfully, to introduce Zuckerberg into the fast lane: big offices, wild parties, women, the availability of booze and cocaine.

Zuckerberg was not seduced by his lifestyle. He was uninterested in money, stayed in modest houses, didn’t fall into drugs. A subtext the movie never comments on is the omnipresence of attractive Asian women. Most of them are smart Harvard undergrads, two of them (allied with Sean) are Victoria’s Secret models, one (Christy, played by Brenda Song) is Eduardo’s girlfriend. Zuckerberg himself doesn’t have much of a social life onscreen, misses parties, would rather work. He has such tunnel vision he doesn’t even register when Sean redrafts the financial arrangements to write himself in and Eduardo out.

The testimony in the depositions makes it clear there is a case to be made against Zuckerberg, many of them sins of omission. It’s left to the final crawl to explain how they turned out. The point is to show an interaction of undergraduate chaos, enormous amounts of money and manic energy.

In an age when movie dialogue is dumbed and slowed down to suit slow-wits in the audience, the dialogue here has the velocity and snap of screwball comedy. Eisenberg, who has specialized in playing nice or clueless, is a heat-seeking missile in search of his own goals. Timberlake pulls off the tricky assignment of playing Sean Parker as both a hot shot and someone who engages Zuckerberg as an intellectual equal. Andrew Garfield evokes an honest friend who is not the right man to be CFO of the company that took off without him, but deserves sympathy.

“The Social Network” is a great film not because of its dazzling style or visual cleverness, but because it is splendidly well-made. Despite the baffling complications of computer programming, web strategy and big finance, Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay makes it all clear, and we don’t follow the story so much as get dragged along behind it. I saw it with an audience that seemed wrapped up in an unusual way: It was very, very interested.

BY ROGER EBERT

Review 4: The Social Network

Could it be that the person who founded Facebook, the man who connected so many individuals that the total defies belief (500 million and counting), is himself incapable of close personal friendship? Is it possible that the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, a 26-year-old whose creation unites people in 207 countries using 70 languages, is the loneliest guy on the planet?

If that sounds like a hell of a premise, you don’t know the half of it. Smartly written by Aaron Sorkin, directed to within an inch of its life by David Fincher and anchored by a perfectly pitched performance by Jesse Eisenberg, “The Social Network” is a barn-burner of a tale that unfolds at a splendid clip.

Yet, while nothing is more au courant than the Facebook phenomenon, “Social Network” succeeds because its story is the stuff of archetypal movie drama. It marries the tradition of present-at-the-creation epics like “Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet,” “Madame Curie” and “Edison, the Man” with the familiar story of the corrupting power of ambition and success that allows audiences to feel, and not for the first time, that their ordinary lives have more meaning than those of the rich and famous.

Where “Social Network” departs from those earlier biopics is that, as played by Eisenberg, protagonist Mark Zuckerberg is introduced as extremely unlikable rather than heroic, a self-absorbed and arrogant 19-year-old Harvard sophomore who is as socially maladroit as he is fearsomely smart.

An actor who has nailed every discontented role he’s had, including “Roger Dodger,” “The Squid and the Whale” and “Adventureland,” Eisenberg excels as someone whose success is fueled, in classic movie fashion, by resentments of all shapes and sizes. His Zuckerberg is so consumed by the drive to get even and gain status that no one is a match for the combination of ruthless focus and disinterested frigidity he brings to the table.

The opportunity to simultaneously portray and dissect this kind of compelling yet distant individual is an ideal fit for Fincher. Presented with an involving central character cold enough to suit his chilly but considerable filmmaking talents, the director does his best work, convincingly presenting a story about conflicts over intellectual property as if it were a fast-paced James Bond thriller.

“Social Network” is fluidly shot by Jeff Cronenweth with convincing production design by Donald Graham Burt, both Fincher regulars, and the director also has the benefit of working with Sorkin’s strong and persuasive script. As fans of TV’s “The West Wing” well remember, Sorkin writes great crackling dialogue that dramatically represents the dynamics of power relations, and he puts that gift to great use here. Both his writing and the unnerving music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross bring so much propulsive energy to the project that resistance is all but futile.

Although the film is based on Ben Mezrich’s “The Accidental Billionaires,” Sorkin did his own research into the story and his treatment doesn’t have an ounce of fat on it. Though there has been talk of “Social Network” having Rashomon elements, that is something of a red herring. The film’s characters naturally have differing viewpoints and details are argued over, but the basic thrust of this tale never wavers, no matter whose eyes events are being told through.

“The Social Network” begins by positing that it was a very specific social resentment that got Zuckerberg started on his road to billions. The film opens at an undergraduate bar near the Harvard campus in the fall of 2003 with Zuckerberg getting dumped by his girlfriend Erica ( Rooney Mara, soon to be Lisbeth Salander in the Fincher-directed versions of the Stieg Larsson trilogy). Going out with him, she says tartly, is “like dating a Stairmaster.”

Furious at this rejection, Zuckerberg stomps back to his dorm and, with the help of roommate and best friend Eduardo Saverin (the gifted shape-shifter Andrew Garfield), takes revenge by doing some adroit hacking and coming up with Facemash, a site that enables students to vote on which Harvard women are the hottest. It gets 22,000 hits in two hours and crashes the university’s system.

That stunt attracts the attention of two of the school’s elite, rowers and identical twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (played, with the help of computer wizardry, by two unrelated actors, Armie Hammer and Josh Pence). They and friend Divya Narendra (Max Minghella) hire him to work on a university dating service they have in mind called Harvard Connection. Almost simultaneously, Zuckerberg, funded by best friend Saverin, starts “thefacebook,” which eventually morphs into you know what.

After these dynamics are established, “Social Network” jumps us a few years into the future, to separate but equally acrimonious lawsuits brought against Zuckerman by the Winklevosses and by Saverin, all of whom, albeit for different reasons, are upset enough with their erstwhile colleague and friend to drag him into legal proceedings.

Part of “Social Network’s” energy comes from the alacrity, courtesy of the brisk editing of Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter, with which it jumps between the taking of two sets of depositions and the film’s depiction of the events that led to Facebook, and Zuckerberg, getting rich and famous. This includes the eventual involvement of Napster co-founder Sean Parker (a quite-convincing Justin Timberlake), a personality as seductive as he was divisive.

Another red herring about “Social Network” is how true to life these characterizations and this film are. It’s a red herring because movies, even well-intentioned documentaries, distort reality by their very nature. Zuckerberg’s adherents say the film is unfair to their man, and it may or may not be, but given that a New Yorker writer who interviewed him characterized the Facebook founder as “distant and disorienting, a strange mixture of shy and cocky,” Eisenberg’s characterization doesn’t seem that far off the mark.

All that really matters about “Social Network” is that it be convincing in movie terms, and it very much is that. Very likely gritting his teeth and agreeing is Zuckerberg himself. Someone who donated $100 million to the Newark, N.J., public schools just as this film was opening the New York Film Festival is probably worried that with all his billions he may forever be a prisoner of the film’s uncharitable portrayal, just as gifted actress Marion Davies was similarly blindsided by the talentless character based on her in “Citizen Kane.” Facebook may be powerful, but impressive movies have a force that cannot be denied.

By Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Film Critic

Movie Review: Facebook: The Social Network