If David Fincher’s The Social Network were solely an account of the meteoric rise and ignominious falling-out of the founders of Facebook, it would be fascinating enough. Yet, Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s film is no mere journalistic record, but rather a sociological survey of how we live at the apotheosis of the Information Age comparable to what The Great Gatsby was for the Jazz Age. Driven by a ferocious, tightly-wound performance from Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, the film unfolds along two parallel tracks: one tracing how Zuckerberg developed the idea for his zeitgeist-altering website out of the ashes of a failed relationship, the other following the various lawsuits that erupted in its wake. The result is a movie on such timeless themes as power and privilege, and such unmistakably modern ones as the migration of society itself from the real to the virtual sphere – a movie of people talking in rooms and typing on keyboards that is nevertheless the year’s most riveting thriller. (Notes by Scott Foundas).