Zodiac (2007)

 "I think he's watching us."

"Well, we're very good looking."

This is an interesting film, to say the least. I suppose I was expecting something more sensational, more focused on the gory details, but instead far more of the run time is dedicated to the puzzle of who the Zodiac was, with all the many little clues, details and complicating factors, not least of which is which crimes, other than the main ones, were genuinely committed by the Zodiac himself.

The whole thing looks beautiful and the directorial style from David Fincher is exquisite. The California of the late '60s up to the early '80s is recreated in convincing and fascinating detail. Indeed, the actual social mores of this time- in which hippes and the like did not loom anything like as large as popular culture may make us imagine- are as fascinating as anything else, not least the detail that Arthur Leigh Allen seems to be let off appallingly lightly for his disgusting child molestation. And the cast is pretty much perfect, although Robert Downey Jr and Mark Ruffalo stand out in particular.

I'm not convinced that Allen was the Zodiac- indeed, I'm not sure any of the usually touted suspects were. But I don't think we can say, despite appearances, that the film does either. It leans into the ambiguity at times, especially with the extraordinary tense scenes where Robert begins to suspect that Bob Vaughn may be the Zodiac, and the two of them are alone in Vaughn's basement.

But the film, I think, is not about solving the mystery: it's about the dangers of obsession with endless if fascinatingrabbit holes such as this, which ruins Robert Graysmith's marriage, Paul Avery's health and career and David Toschi's reputation. Mysteries are fascinating, but they are not more important than our relationships, our children, our lives. And that's a very compelling point from a seriously impressive film.

Seven (1995)

 "This guy's methodical, exacting and, worst of all, patient."

I'm not going to call it Se7en. That would be silly.

Anyway, wow. David Fincher has given us a deep, profound and truly great film that isn't widely appreciated enough because of the style, the (mainly conceptual rather than visual) gore, and the industrial aesthetic bookended by opening titles from the great Trent Reznor and closing titles from the even greater David Bowie, in his sublime '90s industrial phase which you probably haven't listened to but must do so, now, immediately. The style may be out of sync with the mainstream, but it's superb.

Furthermore, the performances are exquisite. Morgan Freeman is sublime as William Somerset, a Philip Marlowe figure- a grizzled and cynical cop who has seen it all, yet a man of culture, decency and humanity, a nuanced, real and decent man. He oozes charisma. Brad Pitt plays a character less obviously deep and interesting on the surface, being an unintellectual and naively impetuous everyman, yet his performance is no less sublime. And Kevin Spacey, whatever his deep moral failings in real life, is the perfect villain here.

This is overtly the gory tale of a killer who commits highly sadistic murders in the theme of the seven sins, as investigated with much cleverness by two contrasting detectives. Yet it's about much more than that. It's about the extreme danger of inflexibly religious "morality" and the obscenity of puritan obsession over the whole concept of "sin" to the point of blaming the housebound victims of extreme obesity or women made obsessed by society with body image for their nature while ignoring the fact that something- misogyny, abuse, whatever- made them what they are. Justice cannot exist withoiut sympathy and understanding. This is what Somerset has, for all his cynicism. Mills and John Doe do not.

This is sublime, and a defining film of the decade.

As an aside, it's very xennial of me to note that I saw this, at the pictures, in 1995, when I was eighteen and therefore an adult. Yet this is a world where police detectives have typewriters at their desks instead of PC's and research means libraries rather than Google. I am, nevertheless, young. Yes.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

“I just don't like getting old!

This is an odd film, only loosely based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story on which it's based, which takes its central conceit- a man who is born old and lives life backwards- almost as an incidental detail at times and feels just as much, if not more so, a chronicle of the short twentieth century from 1918 to 2004.

The non-linear narrative is clever, as a dying Daisy has her daughter read Benjamin's diary to her as Hurricane Katrina approaches. Thus we have two perhaps unreliable narrators, gaps, different pints of view, a narrative which is never coded as neutral or omniscient. The fairytale quality is constant, from the haunting tale of the blind clockmaker who makes a clock to bring back his dead son to the reading aloud in the present day. Brad Pitt is an ok star, f an inevitable one for a David Fincher film, with Cate Blanchett outshining him a little.

Inevitably there's a picaresque quality, and the sense that the framing of the film, as a tragic love story between Benjamin and Daisy, is just one complex way of looking at that big, complex thing that is life. There's a rather interesting sequence in which Ben, narrating, details a huge number of ordinary human actions from various different Parisians that cause Daisy to be hit by a car and her ballet career to end. And yet, later, it turns out that Caroline was never aware of her mother's illustrious career. We lead multiple lives, all of us.

A thoughtful and philosophical film, then, if an odd one. But one that has, I think, a lot to say beneath its surface.

Alien³ (1992)

“You’re gonna die too…”

Well, I suppose they can’t all be good. The first two films in this franchise are both superb, but this one… isn’t. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. For one thing, the other two films were both shot by A-list directors, but I’d never heard of David Fincher until I Googled him just now. I certainly should have done, I grant you, but he's no Ridley Scott or James Cameron.

Having said that, though, the film is serviceable. It isn’t awful. It’s just that it’s totally lacking in suspense and moments which make you jump, and has absolutely no sense of the unity of style and content which made the first two films so slickly gorgeous in their very different ways.

There isn’t the same sense of threat, either. After a film with hordes of the buggers we’re now back to just one Alien, which just doesn’t seem as nasty as the one in the first film. Without the constant emphasis on its toughness and its acid blood it’s suddenly a lot closer to being just another monster, albeit a rather cool looking one. And killing Newt and Hicks before the start of the film, while showing us how nasty the alien is, gives us a rather alienating sense of discontinuity. And why do we have to be told that it’s “Ellen” Ripley? First names have no place in this franchise! It might be nitpicky, but I don’t like the fact that Bishop is referred to as a “droid”, either.

It’s a bit jolting, and inconsistent with what’s gone before, that such a large proportion of the supporting cast should be British (complete with phrases like “rubbish tip” and even the pronunciation of “lieutenant”, which really surprised me!). It’s always a joy to see the great Brian Glover, possibly the world’s greatest Yorkshireman, but even Charles Dance can’t hide the fact that Clemens is such a deeply dull character who really drags the film down by taking up so much screen time. Even the revelation of his supposedly great secret is such a massive anti-climax that you’re quite relieved to see him being immediately impaled and killed by the alien.

Charles S. Dutton is magnificent, mind- such charisma. It’s just that he looks out-of-place among such a bunch of wide boys. And the whole concept- a bunch of scum-of-the-Earth criminals who have found fundamentalist religion- is a bit random, to say the least. Nothing much is done with this concept, so why have it at all?

Even the foreshadowing of Ripley’s death is not handled well. There’s a certain neatness in Bishop asking to be killed early on, just as Ripley will later, and the scene of the Alien next to Ripley is nicely iconic. But the inevitability of Ripley’s dying soon, one way or another, actually takes away tension rather than adding to it, and there’s precious little of it to start with.

Lack of tension aside, the general look of the film is certainly competent. But there’s no flair or sense of ownership of the film’s aesthetic. Everything just looks like generic, contemporary science fiction. The aesthetics of the first two films were so much more than that.

Just one Alien film to go, then. I hope it’s better than this one.