HovitosKing
Well-known member
Had no idea it was nearly 3 hours (flew right by)...it was a great film. If you get a chance, see it.
Zodiac
- Thread starter HovitosKing
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Baron Brunwald
New member
My friend saw it and said it was good. Supposedly keeps you locked in for all 160+ minutes.
Baron Brunwald
New member
Gustav said:
I'm hoping the same thing for 300, which I'm about to go see for the 2nd time right now.
Dr.Sartorius
New member
Very good movie. The comparisons to All The President's Men are very correct. Its too bad it didn't too great at the box office.
shhimundercover
New member
Loved this film.... Which is just a superbly amazingly crafted thriller from director David Fincher. ( Se7en, Fight Club) The films's run time comes in at somwhere around 157 Minutes, and yet I really didn't even notice this.
The narrative flows so well, and you are constantly on the edge. For instance, that scene with the young mother. Robert Downey Jr's character going to meet an anonymous source. That just real creepy basement scene.
Basically, Zodiac is a story of obsession. One which is a searing and singularly haunting examination of twin obsessions: The obsession of the three men, whose lives are built and destroyed by a series of endless clues, and the obsession of one's man's desire to kill.
The acting is is just top notch, with Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo (though he is playing another cop) and Robert Downey Jr. (amazing. That scene with him at the firing range. " So we're gonna get along great.") each giving top performances.
Joe Brody
Well-known member
Huge Fincher fan, but I think this film mis-fired. I did not like the length -- but think it was justifiable.
The Jake Gyllenhaal was too squeaky clean and boring. I get the attempt to be true to actual events -- but I think Gyllenhaal's character got whitewashed. I would've liked him more if we saw him rooting more through trash cans early in the film.
I'm a huge Robert Downey Jr. fan but I think he mailed it in here.
The Jake Gyllenhaal was too squeaky clean and boring. I get the attempt to be true to actual events -- but I think Gyllenhaal's character got whitewashed. I would've liked him more if we saw him rooting more through trash cans early in the film.
I'm a huge Robert Downey Jr. fan but I think he mailed it in here.
ResidentAlien
Guest
Joe Brody said:
Haha, I detest Fincher but I feel just the opposite here.
Go figure. This is the only film of his I've enjoyed.
I'm writing my term paper in 20th Century-Fox on Alien and so I may end up actually having to watch Alien 3... we'll see...
Hopefully that'll be better than Seven, Fight Club, Panic Room and whatever other garbage he's smeared his greasy prints all over...
ResidentAlien said:
You're taking a course on 20th Century-Fox, exclusively?
ResidentAlien
Guest
Attila the Professor said:
Yessir. Special Topics. My professor is writing a book on 20th Century-Fox and so he's teaching the class as prep.
ResidentAlien said:
Ah, that makes sense then. Is there a nutshell version of how the films the studio made cohere as a body of work, or if they do? Or maybe that's the wrong way of asking - what's his thesis?
Joe Brody said:
That's a bit discouraging. If anyone on this board loves Fincher more then you...well. Too boot, I read the book this movie is based on. Cultivated my love of reading. Perhaps I should leave well enough alone and wait too see this flick.
Joe Brody
Well-known member
ResidentAlien said:
A practice as old as teaching itself: academic two-timing. So is he the source of your anti-Fincher views?
Pale Horse said:
Don't get me wrong -- there are some great scenes. The period is really captured. I respect intellectual honesty and the effort put into being true to actual events -- but the film is still a misfire. Gyllenhaal irks me and the climatic 'scary' scene is very un-necessary, contrived and sadly echoing of another film which I will refrain from mentioning until you've seen it.
ResidentAlien
Guest
Joe Brody said:
Ooops, how forgetful I am. I meant to respond to this topic the other day...
Nope, actually I've never spoken Fincher with him.
The only time I've ever spoken Fincher with a professor was last semester when we studied Fight Club in Women and Gender in Film. I was the odd-man out, actually, as everyone (professor included) was into some hot-and-heavy Fincher worship.
Sad.
I won't review Seven since it's been about 3 or 4 years since I last saw it and I don't think that'd be fair.
But I feel Fincher's the very essence of mainstream postmodernist who couldn't tell his ass from his mouth. Nothing, in my mind, exemplifies that point as strongly as Fight Club. He builds a battle cry against mainstream capitalism with Brad Pitt as his posterchild thus becoming the very ideal against which the rest of the film rallies. It's this that I hate, as a whole, about postmodernism. The inherent hypocrisy in the movement is one I find to be entirely disgusting. And it wasn't always that way. Films like Blade Runner handled the concept intelligently back in the day, but since MTV got into the scene, the movement's degraded into sensationalist tripe that is at the very core of which the movement originally sought to criticize. For shame.
And worst of all, Fincher appears not to even recognize all this in his film. He develops themes, for instance, of homo eroticism that to any sane man are blindingly apparent, but he openly denies any homo erotic undertones in the film. How dense can he be?
Joe Brody
Well-known member
O.K. Let's break this down:
I'd still like to hear what you take to be Fincher's flaws -- and what you think Se7en was about. It's a rather unique film and I don't think you need to have seen it recently at least to give that summary. My thoughts on the film are likely sprinkled around on this board.
I don't know what this means. It sounds impressive and cool. . .but at best it sounds like you are saying that Fincher is sloppy. To the contrary, he is a very precise storyteller.
I'm having a problem understanding you here as well.
For one thing -- I don't know what you mean by "mainstream capitalism". What is that? In Fight Club -- there is a very strong anti-consumerist and anti-upper middle class materialist slant. Is that what you meant? Because that's not what I take to be "mainstream capitalism" -- I would submit that Walmart and Dollar General (stores that target the middle-middle and lower-middle classes) are really what mainstream capitalism in this country is all about.
Bear in mind, in Fight Club, Fincher is adapting a work by Chuck Palahniuk -- so I wouldn't be quick to make assumptions about Fincher's message. You take issue with the casting of Brad Pitt -- long-time finisher on the sexiest people lists -- in a film that rails against souless, rampant consumerism. But what is wrong with the choice? Pitt is the manifestation of the Nortan character's id -- an escapist fantasy. So what type of actor should be cast in that slot? Steve Carroll? Jack Black? I'll tell you if my id ever makes it into a fictional work, it's going to be guy with a bad-@ss-mother-F***er wallet, I'll tell you that. Brad Pitt was the perfect casting choice for Tyler Dirden (sp?) character. I see zero hypocrisy in the casting choice or the performance -- or the stylish duds given to the Pitt/Tyler character.
I don't do gay analysis. I find it very tedious how gay critics constantly deconstruct stories and inject gay themes. For me, 98% of the time, a cigar is just a cigar. But for all I know if Fincher is gay and guilty as charged -- and assuming that he is, what would you expect a gay director to do that has a huge following among the very powerful thirty-something hetero male audience? Fess up?
ResidentAlien said:
I'd still like to hear what you take to be Fincher's flaws -- and what you think Se7en was about. It's a rather unique film and I don't think you need to have seen it recently at least to give that summary. My thoughts on the film are likely sprinkled around on this board.
ResidentAlien said:
I don't know what this means. It sounds impressive and cool. . .but at best it sounds like you are saying that Fincher is sloppy. To the contrary, he is a very precise storyteller.
ResidentAlien said:
I'm having a problem understanding you here as well.
For one thing -- I don't know what you mean by "mainstream capitalism". What is that? In Fight Club -- there is a very strong anti-consumerist and anti-upper middle class materialist slant. Is that what you meant? Because that's not what I take to be "mainstream capitalism" -- I would submit that Walmart and Dollar General (stores that target the middle-middle and lower-middle classes) are really what mainstream capitalism in this country is all about.
Bear in mind, in Fight Club, Fincher is adapting a work by Chuck Palahniuk -- so I wouldn't be quick to make assumptions about Fincher's message. You take issue with the casting of Brad Pitt -- long-time finisher on the sexiest people lists -- in a film that rails against souless, rampant consumerism. But what is wrong with the choice? Pitt is the manifestation of the Nortan character's id -- an escapist fantasy. So what type of actor should be cast in that slot? Steve Carroll? Jack Black? I'll tell you if my id ever makes it into a fictional work, it's going to be guy with a bad-@ss-mother-F***er wallet, I'll tell you that. Brad Pitt was the perfect casting choice for Tyler Dirden (sp?) character. I see zero hypocrisy in the casting choice or the performance -- or the stylish duds given to the Pitt/Tyler character.
ResidentAlien said:
I don't do gay analysis. I find it very tedious how gay critics constantly deconstruct stories and inject gay themes. For me, 98% of the time, a cigar is just a cigar. But for all I know if Fincher is gay and guilty as charged -- and assuming that he is, what would you expect a gay director to do that has a huge following among the very powerful thirty-something hetero male audience? Fess up?
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