WEIRDLAND: Two "Zodiac" reviews

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Two "Zodiac" reviews


"What David Fincher has accomplished is to remind the audience why serial-killers scare us so deeply – it's that they can exist in the real world, that they creep among us and could strike at any moment. [...] The acting across the board is terrific – faithful to the period without sinking into kitsch, restrained without being intentionally dull or "lifelike," and in the case of Jake Gyllenhaal, a real show of range that may even outdo his "Brokeback Mountain" performance.

Gwyneth Paltrow in New Line Cinema's Seven - 1995

I never liked "Seven" because I thought Fincher spent too much time glorifying the sleazy world he'd conjured up, but this movie feels like a rethinking of an earlier film as dramatic as the later violence-is-bad Eastwood movies. (Tellingly, there are very few showy shots in the entire film.) I can always do without scenes of a beleaguered wife whining to her hard-working husband, but there's no question the movie agrees with her. Fincher is as obsessed as his characters are about the crime –the laying-out of the case is fascinatingly detailed but still riveting – but he's smart enough not to fall apart with them. This is a 159-minute treatise on the futility of obsession that never takes it easy on its characters – even when Gyllenhaal’s Robert Graysmith finally gets his wish to “uncover” the truth about the killer at the end of the film, he realizes how empty a dream it really was. It's absolutely tragic and utterly brilliant. I can't think of a crime drama I've loved so completely." Source: www.Thesimon.com

"Zodiac is a meta-thriller: it comments on itself and other serial killer movies, and in a broader sense, on our obsession with real life and fictional serial killers -" -by Randall A Byrn.

Read the full review Source: http://Blogcritics.org

2 comments :

Anonymous said...

I keep being amazed to read that some critics consider Jake's acting in Zodiac to be outstanding while there are some who seem to think that, to borrow an American expression, 'it totally sucks'..!

Anonymous said...

I agree Penny Lane.I don't get why the critics are so divided on Jake's performance.
Although the vast majority have commented well while the few that don't like his acting in the film seem to dislike him as an actor in general or even they way he looks