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Zodiac

Director – David Fincher – 2007 – US – Cert. 15 – 158m

Two cops, a crime reporter and a geek working on the same paper attempt to solve the identity of San Francisco’s 1970s Zodiac Killer – engrossing crime thriller / character study is now out on 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray

Fincher’s feature filmography is a fascinating hit-and-miss affair, debuting with the middling Alien3 (1992) then covering gems Se7en (1995, make sure you see a silvered print), Fight Club (1999) and The Social Network (2010) plus lesser outings The Game (1997), Panic Room (2002) and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). Zodiac concerning a serial killer, you’d be forgiven for pigeonholing it as similar to Se7en – but in fact it’s something rather different. Se7en is a fictional thriller concerning cops hunting a serial murderer – or, you might argue, the murderer himself – whose killings are inspired by the Seven Deadly Sins and an exercise in avant-garde visual style.

Zodiac is based on the unsolved case of the real life Zodiac Killer who terrorised San Francisco in the seventies. It spans decades, focusing on the four men attempting to solve the case. Attempting to stay true to the facts, it avoids a wrapped up, neat ending, presenting instead the contradictory evidence and leaving you to draw your own conclusions – or make your own guess as to the killer’s identity.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Killers
Of The Flower Moon

Director – Martin Scorsese – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 206m

*****

A returning WW1 veteran marries into Oklahoma’s Osage Indian tribe at the time of the Osage Indian Murders – plays the 2023 London Film Festival which runs from Wednesday, October 4th until Sunday, October 15th, and will be out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 20th

At slightly over 80 years of age, Martin Scorsese has now been making movies for over 60 years. Like his last, fictional, narrative feature The Irishman (2019), this one is pushing three and a half hours. I always have issues with films that long: the vast majority are that way due to director’s ego and / or inability to tell a story concisely. Some of them might have been better suited to a TV mini-series ( a medium in which, incidentally, Scorsese also works). Yet if you try and imagine Killers Of The Flower Moon cut down in length, it’s difficult. Maybe you could take out the frame story – the performance of a crime drama on the radio on the subject of the Osage Indian Murders – but that sets the scene nicely at the start and takes you back out of the movie equally nicely at the end, so it would be a shame to do so.… Read the rest