Zodiac (2007)

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Anthony Edwards

Have I Seen It Before: Maybe? Probably not.

Did I Like It: This might represent the last sustained moment of the movies before the Marvel universe took over everything. Downey in this film is practically vibrating in anticipation of leaping beyond his troubles (and more his years as an indie/and into full-moviestardom. There’s even a measure of what he brings to Tony Stark within his portrayal of newspaperman Paul Avery. Although that’s probably a very long way for me to say that there is a certain amount of sameness in the roles Downey has picked in the last twenty years, give or take a Nolan film*.

But, I can only guess that providing what many would call the last gasp of the mainstream prestige film** probably not what Fincher set out to do.

So many post-modern thrillers/horror films think they can reckon with the violence of their genre by either cynical detachment (Scream (1996) and its various sequels and imitators) or by doubling down on an unearned earnestness (David Gordon Green’s Halloween (2018)*** and its sequels), but Fincher is able to just confront the violence as it likely happened. Getting shot or stabbed is a very unpleasant fate, and I’m not entirely sure why it took until the mid-aughts to bring that element into a thriller. Even Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) tried to make it a little fun.

But what I really think about as I watch this film? They pretty much figured out that John Carroll Lynch did it, there’s a whole extra hour of stuff going on before it pretty much was clear that John Carrolll Lynch did it.

*I guess the ball’s in your court, Doomsday.

**Maybe an exaggeration, although one might have trouble figuring that out if they ever expose themselves to film discourse on the internet.

***Which I still like, and you can just deal with that. Thanks.

Top Gun (1986)

Director: Tony Scott

Cast: Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, Val Kilmer, Anthony Edwards

Have I Seen it Before: I’m sure I have. All of the “big” lines of the film hit something like a memory, but I can’t say I can point to a moment where I saw the whole film from beginning to end.

Did I Like It: And that’s maybe part of the problem. This is a movie of moments which don’t really hang together as a whole piece. That quality—a collection of pieces which don’t measure up to a complete whole—is endemic of a lot of 80s films. For instance, Rocky IV (1985) might qualify as a short if you take away all of the montage—although I haven’t seen the recent director’s cut.

One can almost feel Cruise aching to take more direct control over the films in which he appears, but for the mean time has to be content with being charming but restrained in films.

And there’s more than enough charm to go around. A Harold Faltermeyer score immediately launches any film into the territory of pure 80s confection, even those he scored outside the decade. The cast is never not charming, including not just supporting turns from Kilmer and Edwards, but also blink-and-you-miss-them performances from actors who would eventually go on to bigger things like Meg Ryan and Tim Robbins. Yes, Robbins hovers around the edges of the film, spending the run time as not much more than a glorified extra.

One wonders how somebody like Robbins drifted (and I assure you, he does drift) into a film with such jingoistic politics. A film treating the essentially inevitable outbreak of World War III as  the feel good turn for the third act would never be made out of the 1980s (at least, I don’t think it would, I’ll let you know when I finally get around to seeing Top Gun: Maverick (2022)) and probably shouldn’t be made by any reasonable person, ever. Maybe if it did try to weave together a more coherent, fuller package of a movie, it would be impossible to have any fun with it at all.