Gone Girl a mark of Gillian Flynn’s screenwriting genius

The adaptation of the novel Gone Girl to the big screen represents a master class in screenwriting.

Ben Affleck is on the hunt for his missing wife in Gone Girl.

When the studio behind the Alien franchise decided to release a box set of the films on DVD, it approached the maker of each of the four to create a director’s cut of their movie.

Ridley Scott, now riding a wave of acclaim for the box-office success of The Martian,responded in an unconventional way by creating a version of the first film, 1979’s Alien: The Director’s Cut (Sunday, 8.30pm, Fox Classics) that is actually a few minutes shorter than the original.

Nothing major is missing, he just tightened up some sequences that he felt warranted it. If anything, the film is even more suspenseful, and a tribute to Scott’s keen sense of pace and place.

The subject of war has been a fruitful one for the cinema, and two vintage films demonstrate various approaches to armed conflict and its toll. Director Fred Zinnemann’s first film is the gripping 1944 drama The Seventh Cross (Monday, 6.35pm, TCM), which stars an excellent Spencer Tracy as one of seven escapees from a concentration camp making his way across a hostile Germany with both help and hindrance.

Seven years later, legendary director Sam Fuller took just 10 days to make what many consider to be his best film, Korean war drama The Steel Helmet (Thursday, 10.40pm, TCM). Gene Evans plays the hard-bitten sergeant who escapes death when a bullet pings off his helmet. He goes on to join forces with other soldiers to survive the combat. Grim yet enlightening, the film was designed by Fuller to represent a cross-section of American men under fire, and it succeeds succinctly and with a flair that overcomes its low budget.

Credit author Gillian Flynn for making all the right decisions in adapting her 2012 novel for the film that became director David Fincher’s 2014 revenge thriller Gone Girl (Saturday, 5.55pm, Premiere). Her script is largely faithful to the book but focuses the action on Ben Affleck’s character and his “missing” wife (Rosamund Pike) to a greater degree.

Aspiring screenwriters would do well to study her methodology, as it is a model of economy in the service of good storytelling.

Viewers who haven’t experienced it already are once more advised to carve out the time necessary to see the one-of-a-kind 2013 anthology film Tim Winton’s The Turning (Monday, 1.35pm, Masterpiece).

Conceived by Melbourne-based producer-director-writer Robert Connolly, the three-hour collection of 17 short films follows the various characters of Winton’s thematically linked 2004 short-story collection as they grapple with what Winton describes a “a kind of bruised middle-aged puzzling” on the West Australian coast.

The players include Cate Blanchett, Richard Roxburgh and Hugo Weaving, with each director turning in an aesthetically unique take on the material.

Gone Girl (MA15+) 4 stars

Saturday, 5.55pm, Premiere (401)

Tim Winton’s The Turning (MA15+) 4.5 stars

Monday, 1.35pm, Masterpiece (402)

The Steel Helmet (PG) 3.5 stars

Thursday, 10.40pm, TCM (428)