Come anticipate David Fincher's "Zodiac"

Bugger me this film was boring.

do i give you the ass or the...oh, wait.

Def. the best 'mainstream' movie I've seen this year (Inland Empire was its own special thing) - the time lapse sequence of the building going up, accompanied by Marvin Gaye = cinematic bliss

Ed OTM

Sometimes it slips my mind that this movie came out this year, but yeah, it's probably my favorite. Well, that and Superbad which I saw in previews and hasn't come out yet and is a totally totally totally different kind of movie.

omg a character named Pepsi Cheyenne?!

hey, people who loved this movie: how much did y'all already know about the Zodiac before you saw the movie? I ask 'cause 1) I really like Fincher, but 2) I didn't love this movie - it looked great, for sure, and was well done, but I already knew all the stuff well enough and it didn't seem to really do much with it to me

I didn't know anything about the case really, apart from its being unsolved. I am familiar with almost all the locales in the movie tho (last scene takes place in Ontario Airport lolz)

j0hn i knew zippo.

but my appreciation of the film wasn't exactly... documentary.

the Ontario airport scene just kilt me 'cause that was my home airport for so long and they got it exactly right! the rest as I say was like a less intense version of the book

I want to see a movie of The Devil (in? and?) White City. ZODIAC book was great, I am fully stoked to see this movie. I still hart the Gyllenhal too.

It's good, and if it ends up the best studio film of the year, what an evermore sad world. (It's the ONLY one I've seen unless Idiocracy -- also ludicrously overpraised in some quarters -- counts.)

i knew nothing about the zodiac killer. it's not the point, it worked as drama.

this would be the best studio picture in most years, certainly since the '70s.

It was weird, I saw some "amazing killers" style show on TV a few weeks ago which included a short piece on the Zodiac, I had never heard of him before. And then I read about the film and it was fate.

still movie of the year.

-- s1ocki, Tuesday, 12 June 2007 16:35 (Yesterday) Link

the rest as I say was like a less intense version of the book

-- J0hn D., Tuesday, June 12, 2007 6:37 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

i haven't read the book but i don't believe you

I knew a fair amount about the Zodiac (every SFer born in that period heard a bunch about those murders) but I never read the Graysmith book or anything.

My favorite complaint of the movie (I can't remember where I saw this) was that the overhead shot of Geary St right before the taxi cab killing was factually inaccurate because Geary didn't have a bus only lane in 1969 haha!

roflz

There was a Zodiac Killer flick released in 2005, starring Justin Chambers (Grey's Anatomy glowering intern bohunk as glowering drunk cop), Robin Tunney (his wife, mailing in her Drunk Cop's Wife role from the East Coast), & Kieran Culkin (son of Drunk Cop, doing some REAL investigative work). Except for the very last scene (where the actor playing the ZK reads from the last letter the ZK sent to the press, with only an artist's rendition of the ZK onscreen & no music in the background - very creepy & effective!), the flick's a pisspoor Son of Sam ripoff.

-- David R., Wednesday, February 21, 2007 5:29 PM (4 months ago)

^^fuck i thought i was finally watching the fincher one but apparently its this one. that kid does look a lot like macaulay. anyway it wasn't very good

ANIMAL CRACKERS

the movie makes it look like the main reason he wasn't caught was cuz the murders were all in different jurisdictions.

And because no one had text messaging.
-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 19 March 2007 22:19 (3 months ago) Bookmark Link

(finally saw this yesterday)

I think you meant that as a joke, but I thought that stuff really resonated! Especially after Graysmith's 4th or 5th time telling one of the detectives from the 'other' towns some major fact that has always been there but that they were never made aware of.

And that first major 'evidence' exchange:

"I'll send it to you, via the telefax machine."
"We don't have telefax yet."
"Okay, I'll stick it in the mail."

The mail! I mean, Fincher shot this movie straight to hard drive.

And yes, the Lake Berryessa sequence was the scariest murder scene I can think of, from any film. Just horrifying.

Willing to forgive some of the more on-the-nose lines/quirks (yes, "animal crackers"; see also Gyllenhaal going wide-eyed and saying "Not many people HAVE basements in California" during Cellar Roger Rabbit Herringfest); I haven't been this engrossed in anything in a long time.

it was just one of those films where i knew from the first shot i'd love it. i'm totally irrational about this stuff. also the music, it was funny, my college roommate played that kid loco album all the time so i recognized the first bar but had never heard the whole song...

the one by the lake was v scary but, when he first appeared in his zodiac killer costume, I laughed! it was just after the first (in the movie) murder and, for a second (or more), I thought it was going to be someone dressing up as a "zodiac killer" to scare the people, to shortcut robberies. actually, it was more than that...as he was talking to them and then tying them up, I was still thinking "is this actually the same guy??"

it's weird when you immediately misunderstand something. I mean, I do think it was supposed to be slightly comic, that he appeared in a black outfit w/ a big logo on his chest

the bit right at the start of the transformers trailer where the kid shouts "DAD! NO NO NO!" or something is v weird when you realise what is actually happening

it was supposed to be a bit comic, which made it even horrid-er. there is a bit of banter about the guy's qualifications or something?

oh, yeah, the girl is like "he can help you--he's a psychiatry major" or something

I've noticed zodiac watches in lots of shops, recently

oh man, this was amazing. from the very first shots: the fireworks were just so luscious and full of dread. the lake murder and the roadside abduction sequences were horrifying and great. i loved the red herring and the winking ridiculous basement spooks. oddly thought jake, chloe and downey were all so-so, but more than made up for by the amazing supporting cast and mark ruffalo's terrific performance. between this and Eternal Sunshine i think he might be one of my favourite actors. way more notes in his stuff than you'd think. has he done anything else i should see?

i loved fight club and liked Se7en (but too scary for me), but i think this is pretty obviously his best film. gripping and true-feeling: reminds me oddly of Good Night and Good Luck (both newsroom dramas?), but i liked so much more the way this made cinema out of a historical timeline, while still treading very lightly at the end.

watched it Friday night, it was ok.

there's a big ad at the beginning of the DVD about how the superduperfancypants director's cut 2cd bonanza will be out in 08.

jonesing already

has he done anything else i should see?

If you haven't seen "You Can Count On Me," you need to. Ruffalo is amazing in it.

looking forward to giving this a second viewing tonight

I enjoyed this film but I don't think I quite get why so many people think it is SO great.

well personally I found that after seeing it various elements of it kept coming back to me, and my associations with a lot of the locations in the film (SF, Lake Berryessa, Riverside, the Ontario airport) gave it some weird kind of resonance for me. I expect I'll have a more nuanced appraisal of it after seeing it again.

People getting their Kubrick on with the director of "Janie's Got A Gun"

I don't like acting much, usually. And Robert Downey Jr is the worst of them.

xpost

perhaps it underwhelms because, as this review maintains, the quality of the DVD transfer is "shameful"?

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/dvd_review.asp?ID=1178

But it could just be that the style and execution is quite good, and the material utterly Old News.

(that's for adam)

Yeah I guess it is what I would call a great rainy afteroon movie, and certainly there aren't enough of those. But I have this feeling that it only stands out (for me) because everything elwe is so terrible!

else

RD needs to show us a new, less prattly side soon.

Mark Ruffalo was using a reedy voice (not his usual one) that was reeeeallly familiar, but I can't figure out who he might have been imitating.

Haha I think it might have stood out for me because everything else by Fincher is so terrible!

"terrible" = not like a million overrated gritty cop shows of the last 25 years

lol well okay.

I read the (first/original) Graysmith book when I was a teenager, so I did sort of know how everything panned out beforehand. I may well have been more gripped if I knew less about the case.

I like gritty cop shows, Morbius! =)

But seriously I thought it was just fantastic. Great acting, great mood, great pacing. I admit that maybe it might have resonated more with me because the case was such a part of the undercurrent of the Bay Area when I was growing up, but it's still probably the best movie I've seen this year.

Alex OTM

Maybe this is why I like This Is England so much then! Not that it is set anywhere near where I am from or features people like those I grew up with, but it certainly draws from a larger culture that was all around me during my childhood.

Fincher decorates background walls with classic movie posters and includes a self-indicting, pre-opening credit visual clue (elucidated during the third act) that speaks to cinema's potent cultural impact,

wait what is this "clue" he's referring to here