I am not Paul Avery

The Movie: Zodiac, directed by David Fincher
Recommendation: Dee and The Boy
Reason: From Dee: "The book was really, really good." From The Boy: "The editing and the lighting was really well done."

People, I beg of you, stop bringing your small children to the theater. Please. Not because movies like Zodiac will warp them for life (for a movie that's being hyped as being about a serial killer, it's not very gory), but because they will get bored, and every time the screen goes black, they will yell "MOMMY THE MOVIE'S OVER!" Get a sitter. Please. The moviegoing public will appreciate it. Small children shouldn't be put through the excruciating boredom of sitting in a dark theater watching a story they don't care about, without anything that would interest them happening on the screen at all. It annoys adults who are really enjoying the film.

Anyway. My mother once told me that when she was a teenager, she was afraid of David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam. She didn't live in New York at the time, had never been there to my knowledge, but she somewhat fit his profile. She recalled that when the Son of Sam was prowling the streets of Queens, a lot of young women started cutting their hair short, whether they were near New York or not. Serial killers like Zodiac and the Son of Sam do some strange things to people. They're the supervillains of our age, and the police who try to outmatch them are our heroes, to put a four-color spin on it. I was therefore quite impressed by the thought put into this film. From a story perspective, Zodiac is not fast moving. It stops and starts. It jumps. In a way, I imagine it's what real casework would be like. From the early stages, when leads were hot and the killer seemed just inches away, the film flows fast and clean, the rough patches in the story palpably frustrating. In the later stages it seems halting, difficult to watch, much as an investigation must become when reality sets in and the 'outwitting' takes longer than expected. The pace, I think, stuck with the story Graysmith wanted to tell. He did more than make a case for one suspect or another-his book and this film discuss the impact of the case on the investigators and those around them.

Theories and accusations aside, I liked the story the film told. Zodiac is a strange figure, morphing according to eyewitness accounts (and played by different actors, who matched the descriptions the victims and witnesses provided at the time). Graysmith is a weedy little nerd, Avery's a wannabe gonzo journalist, Toschi's eternally frustrated, and as they each take their own shot at IDing the knife-hand who's been tormenting their careers, a little more of the whys and the hows of the case's handling are brought to light. It's difficult to watch the interactions between the agencies that handled the case-so many things were dropped or missed. Jake Gyllenhaal struck a perfect chord of desperation and logic. Toschi's frustration was greatly played by Mark Ruffalo. This movie isn't for the easily distracted, weighing in at around two and a half hours, but it's worthwhile if you're interested in the case and the way the book came to be.

-74/365 down, 291/365 to go