Okay, because the shoutbox is (rightfully) inadequate for such lengthy discussion, I'll continue it here...

You've repeated your initial response to it several times, yes, but you've not said anything new in response to the film since I've praised it.

This is what you wrote about Zodiac a while ago, and repeated just now in the Shout Box:

But you wrote that before I ever said any praise for the film; since then, that's all that you've responded with. You've not gone to any "yeah, but" counterpoint, you've just thrown the same thing back into my face. Repeating a point doesn't make it more valid, either.

What your saying is similar to me replying to that quote above with nothing but the words "MASTERPIECE! MASTERPIECE!"

Furhermore, on FCM you actually said to somebody "Please don't [see the film]". What's all that about?

But I don't want to sound like a bully, here. I can't stand it when people try to push other people's opinions into corners; I know you like watching films, and I'm trying (if you'll indulge me) to fetch out the best of you, to bring yourself, if you like, closer to knowing your own tastes, by means of seeing what works and what doesn't work, and why that is. Does that make me pretentious? Possibly, but take it as a compliment that I even care enough to post all of this.

Keep in mind that Zodiac is not only a serial killer film. It's a film about information, about technologies, about communication. A large portion of the film comprises the to-and-fro between the Zodiac and the newspaper to whom he's writing - and writing, initially, in code. The film is dialogue heavy, you're right, but it's in line with being visual-heavy, too - Fincher lays text over imagery and does all sorts of things with CGI to invoke an environment fuelled by the acquiring and publication of information. There's a scene in the film where two police departments in two different cities communicate via telephone, and one cop wants to fax another cop the code Zodiac has sent them, and guess what, the other cop says they don't have a fax machine yet. It's a film all to do with transitions in technology, I think, during the sixties and seventies, and how a society can live in fear because of a lack of technology - very self-reflexively, it's a film in turn made at a time, in real life, when we're obsessed with watching the news, acquiring information, keeping in touch with "reality". It's also based on a book by one of the characters in the film, and that book is published during the film (at one point he says, "I'm thinking of writing a book about all of this"), and the book's a bestseller in an airport, seen in an establishing shot where the protagonist is travelling across the country via plane - times change, there's no pussy-footing around on the phone anymore. It's very clever, I think; visually, it looks like a film shot in the seventies, only it's made with digital technology... because Cinema itself is a medium in transition right now, and the digitial capabilities are finally being explored further in recent years.

To be honest, the most important point I thought should be at least considered in your reply above, was this, what I wrote:



I realise you're prone to hyperbole, though: if you confessed to indifference due to subject matter, I could perhaps let you off.