Zodiac

Last night I used some tickets I won to go see "Zodiac". A few thoughts on the experience:

Arndale cinemas are totally dead on a Monday night. In our particularly screening (admittedly at 6pm) there were three people - Murray, myself, and an elderly asian man.

A lot of cinemas these days don't bother to put someone on the door collecting tickets - presumably because they don't sell enough tickets to cover the salary of both the person who sells you the ticket and the person who collects them. Pretty soon we're just going to be on the honour system with ticketing, as well as a self serve philopsophy for the candy bar.

Jake Gyllenhaal is great. I haven't seen a bad movie with him in it yet, although admittedly I've never watched that "Day after Tomorrow" film or the gay cowboy one. I think I'd strongly consider seeing both though just to watch his performance. He joins Ed Norton and Robert DeNiro on that list for me.

Robert Downey Jr plays an alcholic, who also has a drug problem. I guess that's what you call method acting. Actually it was kind of weird watching him/his character snort coke on screen. Murray joked that it was real and was part of his deal for appearing in the movie.

The movie itself was pretty good, although because it's based on a true story, it didn't have the resolution I was hoping for. I'd be interested to read the book that it is based on.

The film has a seventies look which was really cool - the film stock was kind of faded so it looks like it was made thirty years ago. The movie was pretty long - at least two and a half hours. Not in the league of David Fincher's great movies - Se7en and Fight Club - but probably better than Panic Room. Or any Jodie Foster movie really.