Thursday, May 17, 2007

Zodiac Smodiac

Unless my current life take a surprising twist I am unlikely to do any of the following things:

  • Become a cartoonist
  • Marry Chloe Sevigny
  • Become obsessed with a serial killer and risk losing my family and my life as a result.

Lucky me I don’t have to because last night I nabbed a free ticket to Zodiac and now I feel I have lived through a lifetime of all of these things.

My love for Jake Gyllenhaal (give me a break - I’m not checking the spelling) and Mark Ruffalo is outweighed only by my love of Robert Downey Junior. Seriously, I love, love the RDJ. And the fact that all three of them were in the movie was a huge drawcard.

Sadly, as Paula pointed out, it was not unlike sitting through three hours of Law and Order: The Less Exciting Years.

Oh sure people died and it was alternately funny and creepy in places and all three actors did a bang up job but, jesus, it was long. Not just long but long. And it felt it. I don’t have ADHD and I do have a pretty good attention span, particularly when RDJ is onscreen and wearing a cravat but for most of the movie, including the many, many years it spans Nothing. Happens.

Maybe the number of red herrings, blind alleys and unsatisfactory results are what real policing is all about and maybe, in that way, it’s slightly truer to life than the average thriller. But just because my life as a journo consists mostly of long phone conversations and council meetings I don’t see anyone trying to remake All The Presidents Men with this kind of realism.

Though I would totally be up for it.

8 comments:

shiny said...

that's disappointing - i saw a short for it last night and thought it looked good. :(

my name is kate said...

It wasn’t actually bad. I rather enjoyed it because it was free and the acting was good. I just thought it wasn’t as good as it could have been and I think there must have been a way to speed up parts of it.

Dave said...

i love robert downey junior - even in all his coke snorting glory...

my name is kate said...

Yeah you might not leave him in charge of, say, your young kids or operating thrashing machinery, but he’d be awesome fun to hang out with.

shiny said...

Agree on RDJ. It's amazing how often those charactaristics combine in people.

my name is kate said...

Well according to the reviews I've been reading my impatience is not shared so go forth and put your faith in Margaret and David's judgement. Just do not drink a Retro Betty's chocolate milkshake moments before entering the cinema. Seriously.

Dave said...

Retro Betty's rocks too.

my name is kate said...

That is true. But not so much when your bladder is as taught as a helium balloon and you still have 40 minutes of movie to go...