So I had to watch a longer version of Zodiac at work the other night and it was like torture. Mind you I was being paid to watch this movie and every time I have to watch it it gets worse and worse. Zodiac is basically David Fincher's Sidney Lumet tribute, the only thing he gets right is the scratched up logos at the beginning of the film, but of course even those are fake and forced. Fincher has attempted to try to re-create the world of a 70s Lumet movie with the phones ringing and all the fast talk and action, but this movie only exists as a pathetic re-creation. On top of that this movie is like sitting silently watching a musician play a bad note, every note, one sad note at a time. Nearly every line in Zodiac rings flat, bad and wrong. Every single performance overwrought, over mannered and labored. This, of course comes from Fincher's pathetic 100 takes to every line approach, which essentially kills the vitality of nearly every moment of his movies. (the only exception being Fight Club, which only survived because he had four "go for broke" style actors holding it together (pitt, norton, leto and carter). Here he doesn't get so lucky. All of this being ridiculous, because he's making a tribute to a man whose movies relish on improvisation, energy, guts and real filmmaking. Sidney Lumet is committed to reality in his best movies, David Fincher probably doesn't even know what reality is. And before I forget, Mark Ruffalo's charater's love and constant requesting of "animal crackers" has to be the most forced, irritating "character quirk" in the history of movies. Every time he brings it up I feel like yelling at the screen and tearing my eyes out. It gets under my skin that much.

What's great is that Sidney Lumet, at 83 mind you, came out with a movie this year that wipes the floor clean with Fincher. I hope David Fincher watches Before the Devil Knows You're Dead and is humiliated. Before the Devil is raw, full of energy, performances and dialogue that are ALIVE. It is a thriller in the most masterful of ways. It is edited together like a snake that grips tighter and tighter and tighter. He has four gutsy actors in Hoffman, Hawke, Tomei and the legendary Albert Finney and not only does he let them go to the deepest edges, he allows the action in the scene go on longer, he lingers, he leave the performances, characters and in a way the actors themselves hung out to dry with no protection. This creates and edgy, painful environment around every scene. I've read Lumet's book Making Movies so I know his strategies, but here he does it with such gusto and perfection. The movie starts out in long shots and the dialogue is delivered slower and there is more space between lines. The photography is rich and colorful. But with nearly every scene the camera pushes in tighter on the characters, the image becomes more and more exposed (the actual processing of the film stock coinciding with what's happening in the movie!) so by the end of the movie everything is in close up, the pictures are burnt and overexposed and there is no lingering between lines in conversation, everything the characters do and say by the end is without thought or hesitation, for better or for worse. If you become wrapped up in this snake of a movie, by the end it has a vice grip on you.

As for Zodiac, there is no strategy, only a pathetic attempt at perfectionism in a movie realm that demands fringe and edge. Only Chloe Sevigny in her first scene at the restaurant and a few moments with Robert Downey Jr bring any energy to the screen. I could literally care less about any one who was murdered in Zodiac. The movie is that impersonal, distant and utterly disconnected. Pretty much the definition of what every movie produced by a major studio has become.

Zodiac is closest in style and subject matter to Spike Lee's Summer of Sam. These two movies should be shown back to back at film school to show how Spike Lee gets everything right and how David Fincher gets everything wrong.

Additionally, you must, must see Sidney Lumet's nearly lost masterpiece, Prince of the City. It just came out on DVD. It is an absolutely fantastic. It does everything style wise that Before the Devil does but in epic, sweeping proportions.

the beginning of this Prince of the City trailer just gave me the god damn chills