Very well-written.

I'd like to argue that America's seeming fascination with popular depictions of forensics--be they mostly serological and ballistic, like what you usually see on CSI, or linguistic, as in Zodiac--comes with a price.

This is not because such fascination by itself is hurtful; indeed, I think it's pretty cool. Instead, I believe that the danger comes from its basis in a fascination with death (and before someone fires off an angry letter saying that they watch CSI for the science, listen here: I believe you. But don't think that the show is a bastion of scientific accuracy). Of course, that's a very human impulse, to think about one's own death, but it really is possible to carry it too far, and assume that the technical details of the forensic investigation are the most important part of the movie.

When that excess spills over into art, the results are particularly unpleasant to watch--you (as the screenwriter/director/producer) pay loving detail paid to how brains splatter from a head wound, but characters and plot suffer just as much. You set up increasingly bizarre and improbable circumstances for your detectives to investigate, just so it stays interesting ("Ok, he was murdered at a party being held inside a hockey rink, and the killer destroyed the refrigeration controls, so we have to collect all the evidence before the ice melts!") At worst, you pick a technique like PCR or superglue fume fingerprinting and base your story around how to use it in the investigation. You get really nice icing, so to speak, but very little cake.

The worst of this whole genre is the serial killer film: directors try to play forensic psychiatrist and reinsert the same serial killer (who is, at heart, Hannibal Lecter) into increasingly unbelievable situations.

Don't get me wrong--I do like a well-crafted police/forensic procedural when it comes along, but I think that excesses of the genre are unmistakable.

We all know the outcome of the story: The Zodiac killer is never brought to justice.

I am not sure why I would pay to see such horrible murders without ever getting the satisfaction of seeing justice served. Seems like an exercise in poring over the carnage of innocent lives snuffed out by a psychotic.

David Fincher's film roundup:

-- Alien 3: looked great, but otherwise pretentious

-- Se7en: clever with scary details, but mean-spirited

-- The Game: i liked it better than most. Very "clever."

-- Fight Club: brilliant. ending is silly, but makes the movie worth watching twice.

-- Panic Room: terrific small-scale thriller. Jodie Foster rules.

I'd like to see "Zodiac" based on the strength of Fincher's previous work, but I am going to brace myself for a not-good feeling.

...would get called on trying to have their cake and eat it too. I've seen plenty of movies that ostensibly decry sex and violence that are full of titilating sex and violence themselves. Fight Club is a good example of this. I suppose the idea is supposed to be people repressed in their daily lives go to some crazy fucked up extremes - except the fighting is presented as macho and cool. Watching Fight Club doesn't make you think beating the shit out of each other is insane, quite the opposite it looks appealing!

Few movies get this right. American Psycho is a great example of a movie that does. Although it has sex scenes the sex is very clinical and unarousing, as it should be given the overall tone of the movie. (American Psycho was directed by a woman, so perhaps she didn't feel the need to make the women into sex objects)

Far too many movies with an anti-violence message have lots of cool violence in them, and lots of anti-sexual-violence movies have lots of titilating sexual violence in them.

Floridian Carolyn Krebbs drew inspiration from the Zodiac Killer for her groundbreaking short story, "'C' is for Cross-Stitch."

http://electricstorytime.blogspot.com/2007/01/c-is-for-cross-stitch.html

I wonder if anyone involved in this production cared that those who were murdered were real human beings with real families who still mourn their children; sister/brother; friend; lover; husband/wife; mother/father. This movie is sure to cause further pain to the friends and families of those who were murdered. And for what? So that some folks can pay money to see a graphic representation of how their loved one was brutally murdered...because it's supposedly entertainment?

Maybe if the director had spent any time at the Parents of Murdered Children website, he could have rethought (at the very least) restaging the murders graphically. If this movie was mainly focused on trying to find the killer without taking some sort of prurient thrill in seeing how other humans were murdered, I think that would be different. But focusing on the victims actual demise is sick. It's as if the whole point of these movies is not in using the evidence and smarts to find someone who has done evil, but to glorify and wallow in the evil itself.

All of this armchair psychoanalysis is interesting, but beside the point. I'd like to think that we can analyze films on their own merit, not on what they say or don't say about their directors.

I'm not going to claim that an author/director lets nothing leak of themselves leak into their art, but it seems an easy habit in negative reviews to want to lash out at the creators somehow--look at all the accusations of pedophelia leveled at Nabokov when Lolita was written. A book made readers uncomfortable, he MUST be a sick man to have written it.

I don't care if Fincher has an outsized ego--what directors, even the best ones, can survive to become auteurs without an outsized vision of themselves and their capabilites? And we can debate about whether he's failed artistically or not, but to simply claim that he's a some kind of autistic obsessive, and a not much a people person to boot, and it's just SICK SICK SICK to portray violence in stories (this is more directed at the shrinking violets on this comment thread than at the review itself) is far too easy and lazy.