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By Cole Smithey
ZODIAC
Movie Trailer 
A sweeping scope of social convergence
is magnified to the tune of Three
Dog Night’s “Easy To Be Hard”
that plays moments before the
Zodiac killer’s July 4, 1969 attack
on a young couple in a lover’s
lane parking lot. The tragic event
sets into motion director David
Fincher’s methodical adaptation
of Robert Graysmith’s “first-person
diaries” about the search for
the notorious “Zodiac” serial
killer that terrorized the Bay
Area in the late ’60s and early
’70s. With Alan Pakula’s “All
the President’s Men” as his guiding
beacon of contagious obsession,
Fincher conducts the police procedural
with masterful economy that eloquently
accumulates facts gathered by
various police departments and
by two members of the San Francisco
Chronicle’s editorial staff. Towering
performances from Jake Gyllenhaal,
as staff newspaper political cartoonist
Robert Graysmith, and Mark Ruffalo
as famed homicide Inspector David
Toschi, carry the film’s precise
tension to its gratifying but
uncertain conclusion.
David Fincher has said that
with “Zodiac” he wanted “to make
the last serial killer movie.”
That lofty aspiration translates
into a strict avoidance of the
subject’s intrinsic potential
for exploitation by approaching
it as a newspaper story wrangled
over by preoccupied detectives
and journalists. Fincher meticulously
crafts the true-crime mystery
as a social phenomenon that touched
the lives of many and ruined the
lives of a few.
In the years since his last
films (“Fight Club” and “The Panic
Room”) Fincher seems to have abandoned
his cinema of cruelty in favor
of a more restrained goal. “Zodiac”
brings his distinctively meticulous
talent to the fore as he prompts
intellectual and emotional responses
from the audience without allowing
for a second of distraction. But
there is more. The level of performance
he obtains from his ensemble of
actors is otherworldly. Crucial
too is the aural landscape that
permutates the engrossing fact-finding
mission at hand. Composer Davie
Shire (“All the President’s Men”)
contributes invisibly with a masterful
score that displaces our central
nervous systems. There is an unobtrusive
perfectionism in Fincher’s telling
of a difficult story. He knows
where reality and cinema meet,
and when to push the boundaries
of each. CV
‘Black Snake Moan’
Movie Trailer
The title “Black Snake Moan”
comes from Texas bluesman Blind
Lemon Jefferson’s song about going
blind, and the swampy imagery
serves as a beacon of primal anguish
for writer/director Craig Brewer
(“Hustle & Flow”). On the
outskirts of Memphis, Rae (Christina
Ricci) suffers from an anxiety
disorder that causes desperate
fits of nymphomania that her boyfriend
Ronnie (Justin Timberlake) sates.
But as soon as Iraq-destined Ronnie
leaves for boot camp, Rae immediately
returns to seeking out promiscuous
sex with every guy in her path.
Her indiscretion leads to a brutal
beating that puts her left-for-dead
on a dirt road near the house
of Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson),
a former Blues singer turned farmer.
Lazarus’ chivalrous decision to
risk his own life to save Rae
leads him to chain her to his
farmhouse radiator for an unpredictable
sort of moral, mental and physical
salvation. Brewer’s hard-bitten
drama isn’t merely defiant; it
spits fire at America’s phony
media-fed version of itself. It
displays human struggle on an
intimate scale that prompts its
audience to reflect on their own
misconceptions.
Musical legend Son House sets
the film’s dramatic framework
from a black-and-white clip of
him describing how the tension
in the Blues “consists between
male and female.” The documentary
footage cuts to Rae and Ronnie
having passionate sex just moments
before he leaves for military
service. Like a spoiled pet, Rae
chases after her boyfriend as
he rides away in his best friend
Gill’s pickup truck. Her mood
soon switches from needy to naughty
when a giant tractor dwarfs her
tiny frame on a rural route that
she saunters down in revealing
cut-off jeans and midriff T-shirt.
The tractor driver honks incessantly
at Rae who flips him the bird
without looking back as she slowly
leads him.
Craig Brewer is an American
auteur in the Martin Scorsese
sense of the term. Like Scorsese’s
early films, Brewer draws on the
inner workings of a slice of American
experience that seems foreign.
Like De Niro’s Johnny Boy in “Mean
Streets,” Christina Ricci’s anti-heroine
is treated with a respect and
patience that only her creator
can preserve. But unlike Johnny
Boy, Rae has a chance. “Black
Snake Moan” is not the best film
that Craig Brewer will ever write
and direct, but it comes from
the most original and independent
filmmaker out there. CV
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