An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Dir: David Fincher.
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, Robert Downey Jr, Brian Cox
Description: In the sweltering summer of 1969, the Bay Area of San Francisco shuddered with fear at the mention of Zodiac, the nickname of the serial killer attacking its residents. Law enforcement agencies seemed powerless to stop the madman, who sent taunting letters to the media. Four men - detectives Dave Toschi and Bill Armstrong and journalists Paul Avery and Robert Graysmith - to bring Zodiac's reign of terror to an end.
Country: US. 2007. 157mins
Man on a mission: cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) spent more than 20 years on his obsessive quest
Anyone hoping for the tense, imaginative style of Se7en or Fight Club will be put out by David Fincher's long exposition of Robert Graysmith's book about the serial killer who terrified San Francisco in the Sixties and Seventies.
Deserting his usual pyrotechnical methods of heightening drama and creating tension, Fincher presents us with a careful, thorough investigation into the still unsolved case of the murderer who taunted the police with ciphers and letters for 20 years after the killings.
The results can be engrossing, but also more than a bit sluggish at times. It's almost as if Fincher wishes to prove he can tell a story dead straight. And straight it is, if never inept or badly made.
Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), a newspaper cartoonist and serial puzzle solver, obsessively hunts to uncover the Zodiac killer's identity, interviewing the few victims who somehow escaped his clutches, poring over old files, following abortive clues and annoying both his employers and the police by nudging them towards his own theories.
Then, around a third of the way through the film, the killings stop. While the murderer is active, we're in the realms of a tense, well-made thriller. After that, it's a bit of a trudge towards Graysmith's favoured conclusion: that Arthur Leigh Allen, who died of a heart attack before the police could gather enough evidence to charge him, was the guilty man. Since that evidence was circumstantial, the police might never have charged him anyway.
Whether all this is worth more than two and a half hours depends upon your view of thrillers in general and police procedurals in particular. But be assured that Fincher orchestrates the period well - which progresses from 1969 into the Nineties - and uses his good cast to his advantage.
Gyllenhaal is at his best when Graysmith's efforts to solve the crimes and write his book reach what looks like some sort of conclusion. Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Andrews are solid as the leading detectives who doubt him. Robert Downey Jr plays his friend, an eccentric and sozzled crime reporter, with his usual, slightly camp, veracity.
In all, I have to say I preferred Spike Lee's Summer of Sam, another long movie about a real-life serial killer. But if you have more patience than me, Zodiac (which is also competing for the Palme d'Or in Cannes over the next two weeks) will reward you with its meticulous version of the cloudy truth about America's Jack the Ripper.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Zodiac being listed as a thriller, I must say I was expecting something a bit more thrilling, as simple as that. It is a thoroughly good, captivating film on catching a serial killer, but the accent definitely is on the detail work done by a journalist obsessed with the case, not on the killer and its motives, because we never really find out who he was. And even if it is a true story from the 60s San Fransisco, it does make the film on the whole rather frustrating because at the end of 2 and a half hours or so, you are not much nearer to the truth than at the start so be warned that the pleasure is in the chase only not in the catch.
- Josephine Thalbach, London
Morning:
11°c
