Zodiac

First, a note: I will never promise anything on here ever again (like future drafts of the Decalogue). And, since I'm the only person who reads this, I will henceforth be far more honest with myself.

Zodiac. My God, what a movie. David Fincher is a master (like you didn't know that). From the opening frames, I was hooked. Two lovers sit in a T-Bird on lover's lane. She wants him. He wants to go party. Then a car drifts by, pausing behind them. He's freaked. She just wants to get some. He asks if it's her husband. Then the Mustang comes back. The driver gets out, the sounds of Three Dog Night swell, and he shoots the lovers.

How's that for an opening? From there we're introduced to the players: Robert Downey Jr. as Paul Avery, a drunk, pill-popping, sleaze-slinging reporter; Mark Ruffalo as the work-a-day detective; and Jake Gyllenhaal as the headliner, comic artist Robert Graysmith. These guys all turn in stellar work, as does the supporting cast including Bryan Cox and Anthony Anderson (two "o"s in Goose, boys).

Special credit here must also go to cinematographer Harris Savides and screenwriter James Vanderbilt. Savides' work is elegant, pushing the limits of digital photography and finally capturing that ghostly, barely-there nighttime feel Fincher has been after for so long. As for Vanderbilt, nothing in his resume suggests that he's capable of a work of this scope, yet here stands the result. I don't know how much of it had to do with Fincher, but the writer of Darkness Falls managed to turn out a script that yielded an exciting, suspenseful, and somehow complete film about the endless multi-decade search for an almost-forgotten killer.

Go see it. And dethrone that fucking Wild Hogs piece-of-shit from the top of the box office. Please.