Jeffrey Wells' review at Hollywood Elsewhere

Emanuel Levy's 'Preview Review'

Rene Rodriguez asks "Who is 'The Zodiac?'" at The Miami Herald

IESB.net posts nine(!) clips for ZODIAC. Spoilers, of course.

Wow - some good reviews there. After that wretched trailer they put out a while back, I didn't have too much hope for this movie, but it looks like it may be quite good, or even excellent. I only watched two of the clips as I don't like to spoil things too much. The "Murder by the Lake" clip defiinitely helped get my hopes up. Now I'm really looking forward to seeing this.

I still don't understand how one can judge a movie from the trailer.

I've had high hopes about this project from the beginning, because I'm a fan of Fincher and expected him to approach the material with intelligence. And usually when a filmmaker takes chances with their work, the publicity team works overtime to misrepresent the material.

I really didn't see any of the promotional material for THE FOUNTAIN, but I've heard people say that the t.v. ads were selling it as an adventure film.

All I'm saying is that we can now expect trailers for certain types of movies to be misleading.

When I heard the uproar around here, I avoided the ZODIAC trailer for a long time. You can imagine my surprise upon finally seeing it that when I discovered that it wasn't half bad.

I'm still not sure what was supposed to be "wretched" about it.

Overall I agree, though I often find myself correctly judging comedies by how funny the trailer is. If you can't select a couple of good yucks for the trailer, then that tells me there aren't many good yucks to be had. Most recent correct judgement: TENACIOUS D AND THE PICK OF DESTINY.

I absolutely agree, though I would go one step further and say it's a very good trailer. I liked it anyway. Most people seemed to be put off by the music, the Rod Stewart song specifically, which I thought was edited beautifully into the tone/tempo of the piece and is a pretty great song, to boot.

I agree with you there and actually intended to qualify that.

When you have trailers like the ones for NORBIT or DATE MOVIE, you know that you want to stay far, far away.

I guess I'm dealing as much in preconceived notions of what the movie is and who's involved as anyone. The reality is that I'm just as likely to avoid something like DATE MOVIE without having ever seen the trailer as I am to catch a new movie from David Fincher, Martin Scorsese or David Lynch knowing absolutely nothing about it.

There are movies where you know what you're going to get, but when a project has the potential to be challenging or different, I often find that the trailers and publicity are often suspect.

Now, while I wouldn't exactly categorize CRANK as challenging, you would've never known from the publicity that it was an off-the-wall comedy. It's a goofy, funny movie that just wants to make you laugh, but the publicity for it was hellbent on selling it as THE TRANSPORTER 3. Even the packaging touts it as "a hardcore action classic!"

In recommending it to people, the reaction I usually get is, "I don't know. It just looks like every other movie that guy does." So, they seem to be turning off people who would probably enjoy the goofy humor. And I'm sure that there were audiences who went out hoping for a hard action movie who were put off by the movie's intentional stupidity.

Why not just sell the movie as a comedy and attract the audience who might enjoy it?

Does the "bait and switch" technique every really work or result in satisfied audiences?

I guess if you're a studio executive who just wants a big opening weekend and could give a damn about a second weekend drop-off, then "bait and switch" must sound pretty satisfactory.

I was psyched for ZODIAC since I heard about it, just the sort of intense thriller I'd prefer Fincher work on instead of PANIC ROOM and the like. And, not counting the hopefully not fully rendered CGI shot of the Golden Gate Bridge, I thought the trailer kicked some terrified ass and has me really psyched.

I could grumble about how the movie was a perfect movie for the end of 2006 and awards time. But, the fact is that I'm usually waiting January-April/May for any movies that are thrilling, intellectually-stimulating, or entertaining at all. ZODIAC looks like it is all of these things, while sticking to a very grim and anti-Hollywood story.

I'm hoping the film takes time to focus a little on one of the most painful aspects of serial murder - the victims' survivors. Too many of the endless SILENCE OF THE LAMBS clones get their sadistic thrills out of the sensational kills, without taking even a moment to contemplate that these people had family and friends. HBO's CITIZEN X, another true account of serial murder, did not forget that it is first and foremost a tragedy.

While ZODIAC may touch on those left behind, I'd wager that it's not particularly concerned with either contextualizing or exploiting the murders. It appears to be a pure police procedural, with a cool, distanced perspective on the crimes themselves. ZODIAC seems most reminiscent of ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, which avoids treatises on the political outrage of it all in favor of cataloguing the steps of the investigation itself, leaving the audience to bring in whatever views they may already hold as to the issues at hand.

I spoke my mind about why I feel the ZODAC trailer is wretched back in the older thread about that trailer. If anyone cares, they can go look for it there.

In general, though, I agree with not always judging a movie by its trailer, but as I have also said before, a lot of times you CAN get the general essence of a film by looking beyond how its all cut together for the trailer. I've seen many a good trailer that I can tell right away from the clips shown that the movie probably sucks, but the trailer is still effectively put together. And vice versa. And I've been right about my assessment more times than not.

As far as ZODIAC goes, though, you are totally right as my main problem with that trailer was the rapid piece-meal editing where you can't really tell what's going on from any one clip to the next. It just felt like a random barrage of nothingness, especially if you are not familiar with all the details of the book or the case. So, yes, it's obvious that's NOT how the final film would ever be put together and it's obvious the film will be edited together to make sense. So my "losing hope for the movie" based on the trailer was definitely wrong in this case.

Here's a middling review that's sloppily written, seemingly addled about the fact that this is from a true story ("a few plot turns seem out of character"), and winds down by clarifying that the version under review is a workprint screened several months ago, which the writer admits may account for the pacing issues he takes the film to task for!

Ah, the age of internet criticism...

I can honestly say that while a good trailer might persuade me to check out a movie I otherwise wouldn't have (the trailer for THE LIVES OF OTHERS, that German flick about writers in the Cold War, for instance, or, on a much different note, 300) I've never decided not to see a movie soley because of the trailer.

I don't see anything wrong with the trailer for ZODIAC, and will certainly check this out -- I'm a big David Fincher fan too. Then again, I didn't think there was anything wrong with the trailer for THE DEPARTED.

doug

On the other hand...

Here is another example of a movie misrepresented by the trailer. When I first saw the preview for BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA, my companion who was familiar with the source material was furious. The trailer promised an epic special effects spectacular which looked like an uncanny knock-off of both, LORD OF THE RINGS and NARNIA. She said that it looked like the book, in which fantasy elements exist only in the imagination of the protagonists, had been ruined.

Well, as I suspected, this turns out to not be the case. I've linked James Berardinelli's review which indicates that the trailer is yet another example of bait and switch.

http://www.reelviews.net/movies/b/bridge_terabithia.html

NYT Piece on ZODIAC

I Cannot WAIT to See This Thing...

(Fincher's) most accomplished film to date, and his most fully contained effort since 1995's "Seven."
-The Hollywood Reporter

There's no showing off with technique this time, no pandering to the public's baser instincts, just extremely disciplined filmmaking in which the camera is always in exactly the right place.
-Variety

Boy does this flick sound promising. I can not wait to check it out Friday.

Village Voice Shouts Its Praise

Don't worry, I'll stop cheerleading soon. Probably after the NYT review. Still waiting for a pan to surface, but as of yet the closest is a short, vague dismissal from David Poland, who's not the most rigorous or dependable of critics...

Any critic who had actually read Graysmith's books on the case (or is aware of his dubious reputation) probably declined to see it :lol:

Yeah - you don't actually think that any professional critic declined to see it on those grounds. But ok.

If you're thinking that the film is in Graysmith's pocket, you may be pleasantly surprised. While it's nominally based on Graysmith's first book (probably what got the project rolling for Fincher was that there was an option on it), everything I've heard says that the film sticks to what is verifiable - not to say that there's no conjecture made, but that the film ultimately does not present supposition and hearsay as fact.

Graysmith is a leading character, especially in the last third, but ya know what? That's where he positioned himself. Like it or not, he made himself part of the story, and given Fincher's panoramic approach to the material, ZODIAC has to include him.

I attended a preview screening of ZODIAC earlier tonight and have to echo all the glowing reviews. It's an excellent movie packed with top-notch performances (Downey may be the standout in the cast). I was particularly impressed with how the film captures the look and feel of the 1970s, something many movies fail to do.

There's an awful lot of criticism of Graysmith among Zodiac researchers, but virtually every one of them acknowledges an enormous debt of gratitude to him for a) keeping interest in the case alive when it was vanishing from memory of the public at large and b ) accumulating a lot of the primary evidence and getting it out to the public. Just about all of them will if cornered admit that it was Graysmith's first book (his later ones have been roundly denounced) that got them going. People have picked apart his conclusions, his motives and some of his evidence, but without his legwork to begin with I doubt any of them would be working on it.

So my impression is that the Zodiac community isn't necessarily boycotting just because Graysmith is involved, especially since Fincher appears to not be relying on Graysmith alone. And as noted above, like it or not he's part of the case now.

I read Graysmith's first Zodiac book several times and found it enthralling, but I never got around to his second. What are some of the arguments about his books?

SOME of his evidence? That's an understatement B)

Of course, Graysmith gets credit for publishing the first book on the case, but subsequent research and interviews with witnesses have shown that he misrepresented facts and made details up out of whole cloth.

Graysmith, in his zeal to point the blame at Allen, apparantly took whatever means neccessary to get to that conclusion. A number of the surviving witnesses have largely disputed events as portrayed by Graysmith.

On top of that, Graysmith himself is one of the likely suspects as the author of the 1978 forgery (a fact that would fit in well with Fincher's theme of obsession, but one I suspect he wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole, even if he was aware of it)

The movie itself, taken alone, might indeed be a fine piece of work, but at this point, I'm rather skeptical that's it very truthful to the actual events, despite the pre-release PR claims to the contrary.

Skeptical, but totally open-minded and intent on seeing it for yourself before condemning it, because, given your interest in the case and the public perception of it, anything else would be unthinkable, right? ;)

Any Zodiac project that has Graysmith involvement is going to set off immediate alarm bells, as far as factual accuracy goes. BIG ones.

I'm even OK with the movie appearing to focus on Allen, since he was indeed the leading police suspect at the time.

Considering Graysmith seems to change details about his personal involvement, and what he knew when, in each subsequent book, I may require a vomit bag if there's a lot of those scenes, though :ph43r:

I just came back from seeing it and it's really a superb film all around.

I don't know if these count as spoilers, but just to be safe:

SPOILERS



The movie certainly does not end up saying "Allen is Zodiac". In fact, the ambiguity and uncertainty about "who is Zodiac" is really the theme of the movie, I think: it's about what it means to "know" something, and how one can live with the loose threads that life constantly leaves.

This is the anti-police procedural. Leads sputter out, forensic data is inconclusive or confusing or contradictory, witnesses disappear, jurisdictional questions are just as important as leads, nobody ever really confesses to anything, nobody's around to helpfully explain why the bad guy does what he does, and even when you think you "know" something you can't prove it. Outside of a certain interest in notoriety we're never clear what motivates Zodiac: hell, we're not even sure we're seeing the same guy during all his killings, or that all of the killings are by "him".

Nor is the movie adulatory of Graysmith, who I think comes across as rather a fool, throwing away a marriage and family for not much of anything, in the end. The movie is very clever in a lot of ways: we come in and we see the poster that says (paraphrasing) "There's more than one way to lose your life to a serial killer", so we know from the start that's something's up. But we still get sucked into the quest to find out "who is Zodiac", forgetting that the people in the movie doing the same thing are ruining their lives -- losing their jobs, their families, their reputations, etc. The movie seems to suggest there's a distasteful kind of "using" here of the crime: the only people who seem engaged with the reality of the situation are the two survivors, both obviously wounded and broken men.

The thing looks fantastic, like it stepped right out of 1970. The editing and structure is also great -- at first glance you'd think this would be an almost unfilmable story, but Fincher bridges the gaps in all sorts of interesting ways. And mostly very well acted, although I don't like Jake Gyllenhal generally and think he's very flat here. (It's not that I didn't buy him as a boyscout getting creepily obsessive; I just didn't care. No emotional heft at all, which I think you need to feel for Graysmith here. This strikes me as a Matt Damon role.)

Definitely check it out, it's really great.

doug

Good a time as any to mention that the consensus is with Doug on this one (there are exceptions, mostly by those who couldn't get into it at all and were bored by it, and a small few who don't like Fincher or what they feel he's up to here).

77% on MetaCritic, who poll all the major print critics and the more established of the web contingent.

86% on Rotten Tomatoes, noticeably higher, as they are more inclusive, but also less discerning in their polling.

Either way, this is by and large an extremely well-regarded film. And I don't get to see it til Monday night, you ever-luvin' bastards. ;)

I went to see it on Friday and it was 'good'. I can't say 'great' as it really didn't have a huge impact on me, but I can't really say anything negative about it either. I think Fincher handled the material quite well, there are a few very good suspenseful moments interspersed throughout all the procedural stuff, the acting was top-notch across the board (especially Downey), the 70's look was captured really well, and even at its extended length, I was never bored.

I guess it really comes down to how much interest you may have in the case, or how big a fan you are of police procedurals as to how much you will really like/love the film. ZODIAC focuses on more than just the day-to-day of detectives trying to find a killer, and it's admirably cut together to handle all the various characters and developments, but at the end of the day, it really is just a police/reporter procedural, although easily a better-than-average one. Did someone here compare it to ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN? I read that somewhere and I kind of agree.

In the end, I personally don't know how true Graysmith's books are to the case, or how accurate the film is to all of that. But I also don't know if this story was really all that necessary to tell in such an epic way - as it isn't the most compelling dramatically, especially after the killer stops his spree of violence. There's nothing wrong showing us the despair and fall of these characters on their years-long hunt for this killer and to see how it all really unfolded, but sometimes truth isn't as interesting as fiction. Maybe I yearned for some of that fictional writing that made SE7EN so interesting and thrilling, even though I know that was not what this film was about. Just saying the simple sentence "The Zodiac was a killer in the 70's who was never caught" sounds so much more mysterious and intriguing than what apparently actually transpired with the detectives and the reporters, at least based on the film.

Still, I have to say its definitely worth seeing. And if you are into the case or really like this genre, there will be a lot more to admire.

Here's a line from the trailer and the movie that just doesn't sit right:

NARLOW: What are you, a Boy Scout?

GRAYSMITH: Yes, Eagle, First Class.

Anybody who has been in the scouts knows that First Class is one of the ranks that precede Eagle. Claiming to be an "Eagle, First Class" is rather like introducing oneself as a "General Colonel, U.S. Army."

Now what does this error tell us? That those who oversaw the screenplay didn't do any fact-checking? That Graysmith could spend years in the Boy Scouts and not remember the proper description of the high rank he obtained? That Graysmith was a consummate liar?

Knowing nothing about anything, I'd say probably the former. The latter is a helluva conclusion to jump to, based simply on a dialogue exchange from a trailer.

Or, is it possible that it's a slyly subversive line meant to suggest the latter? And is an example of a supremely fact-checked screenplay?

Boycott!!! ;)

I usually avoid serial killer movies (at least the ones based on true stories) like the plague, but I wound up seeing this the other night. I wasn't looking forward to sitting in a movie theatre until 2:00 am, which is WAY passed my bedtime, but it was my horror-movie-buddy's turn to pick the film, so I went along with it.

It's a surprisingly good film. Totally captivating. It's actually like an anti-serial-killer film, in that it takes a very realistic approach to the investigative process. As I was watching it, I wondered if the Zodiac case was really worth it and wondered what was so captivating about it. The film actually addresses these things, even if it doesn't completely give satisfactory answers. I didn't leave the theatre feeling like I had seen a great film, but in the two days since, the film has really haunted me.

I knew literally nothing about the true story before viewing the film, but did a few websearches afterwards. While that doesn't really qualify as "research," I did note that a lot of people dispute Graysmith's assertion as to the killer's identity and that the suspected was cleared years ago.

So I have a bit of an ethical problem with the film. The film clearly points the finger more firmly at one suspect than any others, and uses the suspect's real name. This person - now deceased - has never been put on trial, yet he will now be forever identified, in most people's minds, as the Zodiac killer. And yes, I know Graysmith named him in his books, but this is a major Hollywood release that will play all over the world. Should we be worried about the ethics of this?

D.

It looks as though he was conclusively cleared through DNA evidence in 2002.

So who is the Zodiac?

Allen was cleared IF you are certain that the DNA from the envelope belongs to the Zodiac, which some people doubt. I don't know enough about the case to have a valid opinion but all of this leads back to the movie with its focus on the Zodiac case as a seemingly endless maze without an answer.

I was hooked from the opening shot, and the movie is still rattling around inside my head. Definitely one of the best movies I've seen in a long while.

Who else could it belong to?

Well, there are those who would say that Allen (who is reported on zodiackiller.com to have had an aversion to licking stamps and envelopes -- the taste of the glue "made him sick" so he allegedly had a habit of getting others to stamp and seal his envelopes) had someone else stamp and seal the letters. I'm not saying that these people are right, and that this is not a HUGE stretch (especially given that DNA testing leading authorities to Allen would have not been an issue at the time, so it certainly wouldn't have been a case of him trying to cover his tracks), but it's a theory that's out there.

The DNA results still have some questions about them; more damning to Allen's "candidacy" as the Zodiac is the palmprint on the 'Exorcist' letter.

The palmprint belongs to the writer of the letter (official analysis of the print's location indicated it was in the writing position, as opposed to a random palmprint put on afterwards), and the print didn't match Allen's.

Now, you can argue that Allen didn't write the letters, but then you no longer have a one lone nut situation. That means you've got multiple people involved in carrying the whole thing out, and amongst other problems that creates is the simple fact that two people are far less likely to both keep their mouths shut all these years than a single individual would be.

Yeah, that's a huge stretch. Not only would he have no reason to "hide" his saliva at that time (unless the cops could determine blood type from it, but still...that wouldn't narrow the field down a lot), but Allen could simply have used a wet rag or sponge to wet the stamps.

SPOILERS


Well, "more firmly" I guess, although in the context of the movie that's not much: we're told that the case is completely circumstantial, that nothing can be proven, that the forensics rule Allen out, and that even eyewitness testimony is shaky -- the terrific final scene of the movie has the lone eyewitness brought back to try and ID Allen, and even he, the Holy Grail, can only give the cop an 8 out of 10 surety level. And at the end we're told a DNA test ruled Allen out, although it was immediately challenged.

Allen is pointed at not because he's Zodiac, but because he's the embodiment of the idea of Zodiac to Graysmith.

But to make a more general, basic point, people draw their ethical lines where they will, and if people want to draw a line at "implicating somebody who's now dead and can't defend themselves", there's nothing wrong with that. It's not a line I care about drawing -- the dead don't care, and the historical record has always been in play in the present, whatever that is. I wasn't bothered by Stone's JFK, which is a great movie although it's final assertions struck me then and strike me now as pretty over the top; I'm not bothered by RICHARD III, although there's always been a school of thought that the actual historical figure is quite misunderstood; Kenneth Roberts wrote a couple of massive bestsellers in the Forties and Fifties (Rabble in Arms and Arundel) suggesting that Benedict Arnold was actually quite a patriotic guy, etc. The examples are legion.

I guess it's worth pointing out, and if it bothers people, I respect that. But it doesn't bother me.

doug

I'm assuming the movie portrays Mageau's early-1990s ID of Allen?

(Hartnell is still very much alive and the kids who saw Zodiac at the Stine shooting presumably are, but we'll call that dramatic license)

It does portray Mageau's ID of Allen. Hartnell wouldn't be a very good judge for a lineup considering he only saw a large man with a hood covering his face. The kids who saw Zodiac at the Stine shooting were looking out a second story window at a man they saw get out of the passenger side and only come around to the driver's side (which was the side facing their house) to wipe down quickly before disappearing into the night.

Mike Mageau is indeed the only witness that got a true unobscured look at the Zodiac's face that is still alive.

But as he himself said, he was only certain enough to grade his identification an 8 out of 10, and over 20 years after the fact.