Zodiac (2007)

Great movie.

Storytelling at its best. Fincher does a wonderful job with this story, and I also loved the extras including documentaries, as well as David Fincher's commentary. August 17, 2008

Great story line, First Class acting by Gyllenhaal, Ruffalo and Downey Jr.

Unlike other reviews that felt the movie was a bit too long, I felt that the pacing fit perfectly with all the principals investigative skills and the fantastic and engrossing acting abilities of Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr. and Elias Koteas. You feel the tension, pain, confusion and frustration these [investigators], both police and journalist experienced through their investigation(s) of this infamous murder suspect. Brian Cox played a short but admirable part as Attorney Melvin Belli; who's office I once had the pleasure of "visiting", picking up legal documents as a process server in the City of San Francisco. What a character he was. And what a great group of good-looking "female legal assistants" he had in that office.

The more I watch such top-notch acting jobs performed by these stars, the more I appreciate how much work and effort they put into their jobs that sometimes make you feel like they're the real characters and not acting. Superb Directing by David Fincher.

What a great movie. I live right next to San Francisco (Daly City) and was in high school when these killings started. They were the talk of the town. One of the best murder-suspense movies ever made. August 15, 2008

Utterly Absorbing

"Zodiac" is fascinating. It pulls you into a labyrinth of detail and doesn't let you go for two and a half hours, as a host of interesting characters try to unravel a mystery that remains officially raveled to this day. A great cast (including Phillip Baker Hall, who was also in the not quite as good version of the story "The Zodiac"), tight scenes, an effective sense of time and place, and an excellent script all combine in a story that will almost certainly give you the creeps, but in a way that engages your mind and not just your fear factor. It's almost as if "All the President's Men" were about a serial killer; it has that kind of feel. Definitely worth renting, and you'll probably wanna buy it, because it has more detail than can be absorbed in one sitting. Deserved to do better at the American box office. August 10, 2008

Was I the Zodiac?

The SF Chronicle reported that DNA from saliva under a postage stamp has cleared Arthur Leigh Allen, the favorite suspect in San Francisco's most celebrated serial murder mystery. Artie Allen may or may not be gratified - he died, after all, twelve years ago - but I find the news disquieting. Though there's no reason for the cops to have my DNA on file, I've long been expecting suspicion to shine my way. The profile fits. I moved to the Bay Area in 1968, in time for the first killing at the pumping station in Vallejo. I'm intimate with the other slaughter scenes as well: Lovers' Point on Lake Berryessa, Cherry Street on Pacific Heights, the Yosemite Cut-off near Modesto. I weigh the requisite 210 lbs, I stand the proper 5' 11", I sometimes wear those boxy glasses shown in the police artist's sketch, and my gloves, like OJ's, are XXL. I can make my penmanship look any age, gender, or educational level, a knack I learned from faking sick-out excuses in junior high. Most incriminating, I have the habit of putting too much postage on letters, especially submissions to magazines.
On the other hand, I've never owned an Impala or worn a pair of Wing Walkers, certainly not size 10½. I don't smoke, and I'd have to stretch to spell like the guy who wrote The boy was origionaly sitting in the frunt seat when I began fireing or What I did was tape a smal pencel flash light to the barel of my gun. Admittedly, misspellings might be subterfuge or typos from writing in cipher, but it would take a post-modernist genius to counterfeit a line like the Idiout who phraises with inthusiastic tone of centuries bout this and every country but his own.

The weak link in the chain of circumstances binding me to the Zodiac is that I don't recall stabbing or shooting anyone. Nor do I recollect mailing a single cryptogram. Of course, you have only my word for my unmemories, but asking if I remember something is like asking a Cretan if he's a liar. Since all Cretans are postulated liars, any answer is tautological. What I do recall is the sensation of wondering, each time the Zodiac hit front page, whether I might not be the killer, shrouding my guilt from myself in schizophrenic amnesia. As Nero's favorite playwright said, humani nil a me alienum. Nothing human is foreign to me.

This memory of doubting my own memory haunts me. There are gaps in my memoirs--weeks, months--easily wide enough to accommodate a few random killings. I first realized I'd forgotten large parts of my life when I applied for a job, right out of college, requiring security clearance. Who bought the marijuana, the squinty G-man asked, which you and Rick Fields smoked together in his dorm room on the night of May 3rd, 1964? Smelling entrapment, I gruffly objected to the absurdity of expecting anyone to remember such trivia, but I didn't get the job. What's worse, I can't recall now if I ever really smoked dope in college, let alone inhaled.

I suppose I could scrape my tongue and send it to the lab - anonymously, you understand, since it's self-awareness I seek, not closure. Admittedly, the burden of proof in America rests on the prosecution, but we've often been too quick, we Yanks, to exonerate ourselves. Right now I have to wonder why none of the corpses I buried under the artichokes behind my cottage have been exhumed. It's an awkward feeling, being evicted from a house where you've buried bodies. The new people are bound to dig the veggies up to plant dahlias, or to repaper the bedroom and find the walled-up crypt.

Are there biochemical tracers for dreams? Do the neurons worry about sources, or do they blindly update bits and bytes of memory seriatim, in which case what I call my life is no more than a bundle of algorithms, a cryptogram waiting vainly to be defragmented? I've already downloaded portions of the 1507 websites meticulously devoted to what was, after all, a minor murder spree. The BTK in Wichita, for instance, strangled nine, wrote twice as many taunting letters as the Zodiac (with better spelling) and spattered prodigious volumes of semen all over his crime scenes. The Green River Killer dumped so many corpses in the environs of Seattle - forty-two and still counting - that Boy Scouts started getting merit badges in forensics. In Ciudad Juarez, dusty gullies routinely cough up young women - mauled, dismembered, minced - the slaughter count now over 340, the leading suspects all local policemen. Browsing the Web, I feel like Dante creeping into Hell: io non averei creduto che morte tanta n'avesse disfatta. I had not thought that death had undone so many.

In these and other spectacular acts of mayhem, bogus letters claiming guilt outnumber the real thing, and experts say serial killers tend to inject themselves into investigations, often posing as cops. Now there's a stunt I can imagine myself pulling. Whenever I shattered one of Mother's kitschy knick-knacks, I earnestly volunteered to help track down the intruder. Likewise my first wife (or is it my third?) testifies that whenever I groped one of her girlfriends, I gave myself away by making disparaging cracks about the victim. It's a short step from disparagement to murder, I confess, though too short to win me an election in California. On the other hand, Detective Dave Toschi may have forged the Zodiac's final 1978 letter, evincing a rare flair for literary imposture - unless, as his fans argue, he was the actual killer himself. He hardly fit the profile, however, having neither large hands nor small feet.

By the way, an almost universal trait in psychological profiles of serial killers, according to FBI sources, is an "obsessive reading of stories and essays about unsolved crimes." If that extends, as I fear it must, to the writing thereof, once this is published it's only a matter of time until I find myself arraigned on somebody's web page. Well then, come and get me, all of you! I've lived with my secrets long enough!

[And by the way, the film would have made a better book.]
July 10, 2008

Good, but a little long

Zodiac is long. Maybe it just felt longer because I happened to be tired when I saw it. I am not going to sit through it again just to find out. Luckily it also happens to be very good with an excellent cast. There are no crazy car chases, shootouts, or fancy explosions and you don't even get the satisfaction of the capture of the Zodiac, yet it is still a solid film. What you get is a story that follows the methodical progress of police work and the investigation of a cartoonist turned journalist.

July 7, 2008

More reviews at Amazon.com ...