THE KILLER***** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 3

David Fincher returns to our screens with his mordantly funny, coolly stylish, impressively spare hitman procedural, THE KILLER.  The film is based on Alexis' Nolent's cult graphic novel, adapted for the screen by Andrew Kevin Walker who also penned SE7EN.  We spend the film inside the mind of a ruthlessly pragmatic hitman played by Michael Fassbender (SHAME).  We watch him narrate and then fuck up a hit on a French businessman, and then spend the rest of the film taking revenge on the people who tried to wipe out the chain of evidence leading to the fiasco. There isn't much on-screen dialogue, but flashes of deliciously dark humour and social satire from our deadpan narrator as he deftly takes down German tourists, New Orleans restaurants and Floridian ex-cons. As for Fincher, his social satire extends to self-absorbed beanie-wearing billionaire tech-bros, as superbly exemplified in Arliss Howard's cameo.

There is nothing not love about a film this well-made. It's just so stylish and handsome in its execution, so dark in its humour, so brilliantly scored by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, so pure in its focus....  All I want to know is whether Fincher is taking the piss out of Morrissey or legitimately using his songs in his score. Do please try to see this on a big screen and not at home on Netflix. This deserves a proper screen and audio setup.

THE KILLER is rated R and has a running time of 118 minutes. It played Venice and London 2023 and will be released on Netflix on November 10th.

MANK

When I first became serious about film, it was taken as given that CITIZEN KANE was the greatest film ever made and that Orson Welles was its single-handed auteur.  Great directors made great films. As I grew older and wiser, and thanks mostly to a second hand copy of Pauline Kael's Raising Kane, I realised that movies are the product of many diverse talents and that auteur theory is largely there to puff up the director's ego. In Kael's seminal essay, published orignally in the New Yorker in 1971 - link here - she explored the making of Kane and restored credit principally to its screenwriter, the legendary Herman Mankiewicz.  

Mank was one of the bright smart young jounros lured to Hollywood by the phat cash on offer. (Kael quotes the iconic telegram he was sent by the equally gifted screenwriter Ben Hecht.) Like Hecht, Mank held the industry that lauded him in no little contempt, always feeling novel writing or pure journalism were the higher forms of his craft. In particular, Mank was too smart not to see through the hypocrisy and cyncism of the studio system and hated himself for loving the luxury it brought him.  And this is why we find him, in 1933, in the first tiemline of this film, sitting in the palatial Xanadu of that nasty, jingoistic punblisher William Randolph Hearst, playing court jester. Mank knew full well what Hearst was, and how he and the studio system were undermining (yet another!) iconic writer - Upton Sinclair's - progressive bid for the California governorship. And he knew just what was going on between Hearst and his squeeze, actress Marion Davis.  And before long, his inability to keep on being court jester, to shut up and keep on cashing the cheques, got him into trouble. He became a nasty alcoholic, and sabotaged his career, coming up with the final act of revenge, a script for the thinly veiled attack on Hearst that was Kane. Hearst tried his best to keep it from being made, and went after Mank in the gossip columns. And that's how we find Mank in the second tieline of this film in 1940, drunk, cared for by a secretary, tussling with a credit-hogging Welles, being begged not to anger Hearst by his brother.

MANK is a cinematic tour de force and passion project for its director, David Fincher (FIGHT CLUB) based on the screenplay written by his sadly deceased father Jack.  Shot in sparkling, expressionistic Black and White by Erik Messerschmidt (TV's Fargo), Fincher gives us the movie version of Kael's essay, restoring Mank to co-credit for making Kane, but also as a hero to all of those on the progressive left who refuse to be bought. The film features another superb performance from Gary Oldman in the title role, a kind of grown-up self-righteous scabrous rogue halfway between Oldman's Sid Vicious and Churchill.  But there's a chillingly sinister cameo from Charles Dance, perfectly cast as Hearst and a wonderfully sympathetic performance from Amanda Seyfried as a remarkably self-aware Marion Davis to enjoy too. In smaller roles, I also liked Tuppence Middleton as Mank's wife Sara.  The result is a film that is in love with the golden era of Hollywood but has no illusions as to what it truly was - a film both cynical and nostalgic - dazzling and glamourous - but seedy and sinister. I found every frame ravishing and entertaining but worry it will not appeal beyond cineastes. Mank isn't the kind of activist hero we look for nowadays. He was too mean, too mired in the studio system, too ego-centric. But by god, what a man he was. 

MANK is rated R and has a running time 131 minutes. It was released on Netflix on December 4th.

HOUSE OF CARDS - Season Three - Chapter Twenty-Seven

COMMENTS -  By now, we're used to the patient long-arc storytelling of high quality Netflix's dramas, but even by their standards, the new season of its flagship political thriller is a slow-burn.  After a characteristically caustic and blatantly evil opening seen featuring the anti-hero President Francis Underwood, the focus shifts decidedly away to his sometime Director of Strategy Doug Stamper, recovering by his attack by Rachel Posner at the end of season two.  I love how dark this gets, and Michael Kelly should be praised for his superb acting which steals the show from Kevin Spacey. His final scene in the episode is truly twisted and I'm very much looking forward to seeing where his character will go in this series.

HOUSE OF CARDS - chapter five

Kate Mara as ambitious journalist Zoe Barnes.

Plot summary: While Frank (Kevin Spacey) appeases one of the teachers' unions, the other exacts revenge by picketing Claire's charity ball. The protesters are made to look callow in accepting food, but this may result in a nationwide strike.  Frank decides he will get the Philandering Philly elected as Governor.  Peter, abandoned by Christina, guiltridden over the shipyard job losses, gets wasted, leaving Frank to practice extreme tough love to get his head back in the game. Meanwhile, Claire (Robin Wright), frustrated at the loss of the Sancorp donation, booty calls Adam Galloway (Ben Daniels) to no effect. Zoe(Kate Mara) joins internet news portal Slugline, and goads Frank into taking blackmail photos of her as proof of trust. The Herald's editor, a stalwart defender of quality old media, is forced to resign by the proprietor. 

Comments:  I felt this episode was uneven and unfocussed, perhaps reflecting that the spotlight wasn't so much on Frank as on the two people feeling the consequences of the last episode's scheming: Claire and Congressman Russo.  I am full of admiration and wonder at Claire and Frank's marriage: open, honest and apparently anything goes so long as the other approves and can see the benefit to "us".  Imagine my relief when Frank dunks Zoe's iphone into a glass of water to erase the evidence of their meeting, and then my contempt for writer Beau Willamon when I realise all the evidence of their meetings is still hanging in the iCloud somewhere. Will this come back to haunt Frank at some point? 

As for Congressman Russo, I like Corey Stoll's depiction of his fragility, and wonder if maybe this is an Emmy-winning Supporting Actor role in the making.  This also raises the question of whether a series that airs on Netflix is even eligible. (The risible Lillyhammer meant we have yet to see a test case.)  Was Frank's tough love at the end of the episode plausible? I could see the sharks circling. I'm not quite sure the provision of the razor was impactful enough.  Overall, perhaps the weakest episode since the Peachoid.  Are we seeing the weaker quality of Joel Schumacher's direction? 

HOUSE OF CARDS - Chapter Four

Writer Beau Willamon; Robin Wright (Claire); Kate Mara (Zoe);
director David Fincher; Kevin Spacey (Frank)

Plot summary:  Democratic Whip Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) does his job, trying to gather the votes to get his Education Bill passed. He secures the support of previously intransigent Speaker Bob Birch by framing David Rasmussen, the House Majority leader, for trying to sage a coup.  Rasmussen is manipulated into resigning, clearing the way for the first African American Majority Leader, thus gaining his votes from the Black Caucus, Terry Womack.  Frank buys Womack by making Peter Russo close down the shipyard in his district, thus allowing the base in Womack's district to remain open. 

Meanwhile, at the Washington Herald, the proprietor, Margaret, over-rides the Editor, Tom, and orders him to promote, rather than to chastise Zoe (Kate Mara) for doing TV interviews.  However, Frank manipulates Zoe into turning down the promotion to Political Editor so that he can continue to use her, apparently sexually too.  She appears to tweet her Editor's inflammatory response, and is fired.

Finally, we learn that Claire (Robin Wright)  cut the jobs at her charity because she was unsure of a donation from her husband's campaign contributors, Sancorp. Lobbyist Remy Danton (Mahershala Ali) doubles the donation, but Claire is aware this obligates Frank, and turns it down. The people for whom she procured the Jefferson Ball tickets step in. She is willing to flirt with her former lover, photographer Adam Galloway (Ben Daniels), to get a donation. 

Comments: I very much liked this episode.  Screenwriter Beau Willamon deftly handles four related but essentially disparate fields of battle. This is the first time we see the President, and also the the first time we see Frank actually doing his job, which is to Whip Burch into line and get the Bill onto the floor without concessions. 

We also get more colour on Claire, which had previously been the most vague and thus uninteresting storyline. She had an affair with the photographer, but how far is she now flirting with him to use him, or because she is genuinely tempted by him. I also love the ambiguity about whether Frank and Claire know about how far the other will go to use sex to get what they want, and whether this is okay by both of them as they both understand what power entails. At this point, my impression is that they are truly in love, and with no illusions about each other.  My only reservation is whether Frank would be so stupid as to get involved with someone as nakedly ambitious and manipulative as Zoe? 

On a more minor note, I loved the chillingly pragmatic attitude of Pete Russo's children, taking it for granted that their father will have a mistress.  And I also rather like Franks' interest in gaming - first person shooters, no less!

HOUSE OF CARDS - Chapter Three

Plot summary: Democratic Chief Whip Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) simultaneously tries to negotiate with Teachers' Unions on the education bill while travelling to his home state of South Carolina to contain the Peachoid crisis: a teenager died in a car crash while texting about it, and now her parents are threatening to sue. Frank manipulates the deeply religious mourning parents into "letting me help you", neatly sidestepping the machinations of his fourth district opponent.  "I've been elected in this district eleven times, did you think that was all luck and a handshake?"  Meanwhile, Frank's wife Claire (Robin Wright) manipulates a Bleeding Heart into joining her charity, and rising star  journalist Zoe (Kate Mara) meets the owner of the Herald who, friends with Durant, puts Zoe's piece on the front page.

Comments:  For me, this episode severely lost pace and interest when it left Washington for South Carolina.  Still, as Armando Iannucci shows so well in The Thick Of It and IN THE LOOP, part of the   weirdness of high political power is that one still has to contend with petty constituency business. I'm also sure I wasn't the only one who googled The Peachoid to see if it really existed, and was delighted to see that it did.  A better hook upon which to hang a political satire was never invented. Other than that, it was nice to see some nods to the current debate over Charter Schools, but I missed the "real" politics. Meanwhile, I still don't see where the Claire story is going, and that's irksome, and the attempt to see her spooked on her run through the graveyard was just odd rather than effective. The other thing that irks me is how blatantly thinly veiled the references to the Washington Post are, complete with a Kitty Graham-like female proprietor. I was almost expecting to hear a comment to "titties caught in the ringer".  No matter how good a TV series shapes up to be, there's something rather arrogant and question-begging about referencing the icons of the genre. 

HOUSE OF CARDS - Chapter Two

Plot summary: Chief Whip Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) manipulates the author of the leaked education bill into standing aside, allowing Frank to introduce and take credit for a revised bill.  Frank uses journalist Zoe (Kate Mara) to get Daniel Kern to withdraw as candidate for Secretary of State, by scurrilously bringing to light an old Op-Ed from his college days.  Frank then uses the Philandering Philly Congressman (Corey Stoll) to persuade the real writer of the controversial editorial to claim that Kern wrote the piece, sealing his resignation. Frank's final play is to have Zoe start the buzz that Catherine Durant should be Secretary of State.  Meanwhile, Claire (Robin Wright) sacks 19 members of staff.

Comments:  This episode is all about seeing Frank manipulate people to get what he wants, manoeuvring himself onto the Education Bill, and Kern out of State, earning the thanks of Durant and Vasquez into the bargain. It's swift, neat and clever. That said, there's something about the concept of leaking via physical meetings and text message that worries me.  Why doesn't anyone try to discover where the leak comes from? I know that the author claims he got his staffers to shred it, but still.  Would Frank really meet Zoe directly in a world of a hundred camera phones waiting to catch any odd meeting (as used so powerfully in Chapter One?)  There's something about a story of political leaking that seemed far more plausible in the 1980s when electronic tracking was de minimus.  Why doesn't anyone wonder where Zoe is getting her information and question her meteoric rise? Wouldn't the Editor-In-Chief ask for, if not her source, then more context?   

Once again, the charity storyline seems dull and irrelevant, other than showing what we already know - Claire has balls of steel: it had better pay off. 

HOUSE OF CARDS - Chapter One

Plot summary:  Despite helping the President-Elect come to power, Chief Whip Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) is overlooked for Secretary of State.  He feigns loyalty, agreeing to usher an education bill through Congress within the President's first 100 days. Instead, he scuppers it by leaking a radical left first draft through the press via an ambitious young metro reporter, Zoe Barnes, who crudely attempts to capture his attention sexually (Kate Mara).  Meanwhile, we learn that Frank's wife Claire (Robin Wright) runs a charity and appears loyal to him.  And we see Frank exert his power over Congressman Peter Russo (Corey Stoll), a philanderer and casual drug user.  

Comments: As expected, the writing and production values are slick and smart. Fincher's palette is cool blues and browns, the production design classic luxe.  Nowhere is this more epitomised in Robin Wright's beautifully groomed wife.  Spacey's Frank exudes power, but in a less overtly Machiavellian manner than Ian Richardson, which is less entertaining but more realistic.  I liked the subtle humour - the education guru sitting next to his book titled "Learning about learning" - the inaugural address seemingly lifted from a Whitney Houston song, "I believe the children are our future..."  

Stylistic choices that irked me?  Somehow, the device of having Frank break the fourth wall and speak to camera seems cheap in the wake of Don Cheadle in House of Lies.  I found the score to be derivative of the Scandinavian version of The Killing.  The debate about old versus new media in the thinly veiled Washington Post is old hat, and quasi Newsroom, which is never good. The visual depiction of text messages seems derivative of Sherlock.  And casting an actress who is clearly Asian to play the Latina Presidential Chief of Staff.

Overall, a promising start.  Not sure why we're spending so much time with Claire's charity or Peter Russo, but clearly track is being laid and I'm interested to see where it leads.

HOUSE OF CARDS - Introduction

In the early days, this blog started as a water cooler for my friends around which we could discuss the latest films.  Given the rush of emails, tweets and general hoop-la, I thought I'd break convention and review Netflix' new long-awaited new series, House of Cards.

I come to it with some prejudice: the original British novel by Michael Dobbs and subsequent TV adaptation penned by Andrew Davies and starring Ian Richardson is seen by many as the high water mark in Thatcher era TV.  It was scabrous, radical, dark, dark, dark.  Richardson's Francis Urquhart seemed like an embodiment of all that we saw as sinister (yes, even us Thatcherites) in the ruthlessly ambitious, free-market Thatcherite years. And, of course, his catchphrase, "You might think that, but I couldn't possibly comment" became the "Tuckerism"" of it's day.  The original House of Cards was part of a long and beloved tradition of high quality political satire and drama that the UK seems to excel at - stretching from Yes, Minister to Thick of It.  Having seen the latter defanged as HBO's Veep, I was sceptical about yet another US remake.

That said, one couldn't argue with the quality of the cast and crew.  David Fincher, master of visual style and complex technical material (THE SOCIAL NETWORK) at the helm; Beau Willamon, political playwright, doing the screenplay; Kevin Spacey in the Urquhart role, starring as the scheming Democratic Whip; and Robin Wright as his perfect political wife Claire.

So, on with the show: let's see if Netflix really is the new HBO.....

Late review - THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (2011)

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO is a perfectly well made movie that has absolutely no reason to exist.  It adds nothing to the Swedish original, despite being directed by the spiky, visually astute director David Fincher (THE SOCIAL NETWORK).  It feels like just another faithful retelling of Stieg Larsson's best-selling thriller (whose plot I won't bother to recount), albeit with a bigger budget and better production values.  Fincher's fingerprints were too subtly felt.  Let's be honest, if all we'd been given were a music video for Karen O singing Trent Resznor and Atticus Ross' reworking of The Immigrant Song with the wicked cool opening credits, we'd have gone home as happy as if we'd sat through the entire three hour movie. 

If I wanted to get more granular I'd point out the following - two positives and two negative.  I prefer Rooney Mara's Lisbeth Salander to Noomi Rapace, not because there was anything wrong with Rapace's performance, but because Rapace feels more like a woman, and Mara really does look like a girl (although I concede that in the novel she's 23).  That makes her victimisation worse, her toughness more impressive, her being a ward of the state more credible.  Second, I really liked Jeff Cronenweth's digital lensing using the Red One.

The first negative is a bugbear I have with many English language movies set in a non-English speaking countries.  Simply put, I want the director to decide what he wants to do with the accent in the film and then stick to it consistently.  I don't care if the Yanks and Brits are speaking English with some undefined mittel-europische accent, or some approximation at it, but I don't want half doing straight English and half doing cod-Swedish.   There's nothing that draws me out of a scene more than seeing Daniel Craig speaking straight English to Rooney Mara trying to do a Swedish accent complete with "hey hey"s and whatnot.

My second bugbear is the perfunctory manner in which the relationship between Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist is handled in the remake. In the original movie, the genuine chemistry between Michael Nyqvist and Rapace really did centre the film and make us hungry for the next movie.  But in Fincher's take it's all too superficial, and betrays what's meant to be a deeply emotional moment at the end of the flick.  In fact, the movie has a wider problem, which is the very dull, slightly bizarre (plot points changed for no real reason) ending, that drags on for 30 minutes.

Overall, a pretty banal retelling once the opening credits are done. Looks like Fincher did it for the paycheck and directed with a very light hand.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO is on release in the UK, USA, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, Israel and Slovenia. It is released on January 6th in Hong Kong, Russia, Singapore, Bulgaria, Estonia, India and Australia. It is released on January 12th in Australia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Poland, Spain and Turkey. It is released on January 19th in Belgium, France, Hungary, the Netherlands and Portugal. It opens on January 27th in Brazil; on February 3rd in Italy and later in February in Japan.

Rooney Mara won Best Breakthrough Performer, tied with Felicity Jones for LIKE CRAZY, at the National Board of Review awards 2011.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK

Is Mark Zuckerberg a dick? And if so, is it still okay to use Facebook?

Ten years ago, Mark Zuckerberg was an IT student at Harvard. He was pissed off that his girlfriend had dumped him. He was pissed off that his friend Eduardo was getting into an elite club. He was pissed off that he was smarter than everyone but that nobody seemed to notice. So, in a fit of pique, he created a website called Facemash by stealing other students’ photos and uploading them to a photo-ranking site he created, in one evening, while drunk. The site got so many hits it crashed the Harvard network. You get the whole story right there in that scene: the motivations born of insecurity; the disregard for other people’s property; and the insanely brilliant ability.

Mark moves on to helping out elite rowers’, the Winkelvoss twins, with their social networking site, Harvard Connection. He looks around, keeps them hanging on the telephone, and meanwhile mashes the best of their idea (the Harvard exclusivity) with his own talent in creating cleanly designed, functional space. The result is Facebook. They, eventually, sue. (The delay due to being "Gentlemen of Harvard".) The next step is to take Facebook from being a Harvard phenomena to a profitable business. But where Eduardo, co-founder and financial backer, wants to go for advertising and a quick return, Mark is a purist – he wants the site to develop – he wants to know what they have. Of course, this doesn’t stop him being seduced by the charismatic Steve Parker – renegade founder of Napster and Plaxo – taking private equity dollars, and essentially pushing Eduardo out. And when Steve Parker lands himself in trouble with the law, Zuckerberg coolly moves to protect his company again.

When we leave him, Mark Zuckerberg is five years older, some billions richer, invisible no longer. But he's still bitter, insecure, and alone.

In David Fincher’s new film, featuring Jesse Eisenberg in the leading role, Zuckerberg is far more complex a character than I had expected. He’s not a quasi-autistic IT genius who is oblivious to the feelings of the people he screws over, and thus exempt from blame. Neither is he is a mono-dimensional, egomaniacal dickweed, hell-bent on pushing out anyone who dares interfere with his vision for “thefacebook”. Rather, he’s a complex mix of deep insecurity and complete self-confidence. And while he is undoubtedly equivocal with the truth when he needs to manipulate a situation, he’s also as liable to be manipulated by others, especially Justin Timberlake's Steve Parker. He IS an asshole, but a pitiable one at that, and not without redeeming features. He is smart, and creative, and he's usually right.

This is the kind of even-handed, nuanced reading that writer Aaron Sorkin (THE WEST WING) brings to the rather banal, thin source material provided by Ben Mazrich's book "The Accidental Billionaires". Everyone other than Parker gets a fair hearing. Sorkin does this by scrupulously avoiding championing one side or another. Rather every conversation, every action, is shown and then discussed by the people who disagree. We see everything as someone's opinion rather than objective fact - and most things from more than one point of view.  And David Fincher is just the director for this kind of slippery narrative - bringing the adrenaline and excitement of CGI heavy thrillers to what is essentially a movie made up of hacking and depositions. The result is a movie that is fast-paced, emotionally fascinating, and gives us a clear steer on where the film-makers stand:

Sorkin's Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook and no-one else in this movie had the talent to - but he was also willing to brush past obstacles without pity. Eduardo Saverin - the best friend with money - comes across as nice but naive - never assume the lawyers are your own - and truthfully out of his depth on how to take Facebook forward. The Winkelvoss twins are perfectly summed up by Zuckerberg in a throwaway line - they're pissed off and fighting because in their entitled lives this is the first time something hasn't gone their way. Still, as played by Armie Hammer, they have a kind of anachronistic nobility that's utterly charming. And as for Steve Parker, he's a little kid high on phat cash and hype. Yes he uses Zuckerberg, shamelessly, but you also get the feeling that he genuinely gets him too, and wants FB to succeed. Ultimately, I want a movie on Parker, with Timberlake playing him, all on its own.

I find it quite amazing that Sorkin/Fincher were able to deliver a movie about complicated legal wrangles, populated with complicated characters in a world far from the everyday and yet still make it comprehensible and exciting. I think it's because they tapped into the basic emotions: jealousy, greed, insecurity. They get that Zuckerberg just wanted to be noticed, and was protective of his creation. Which is why I'm really upset that they felt it necessary to introduce two rather cheap tricks to top and tail the narrative. First off, the inclusion of a pretty young lawyer (Rashida Jones) who reaches out to Zuckerberg, and is essentially there just to soften his edges and make us think he's less of a dick. Clumsy. And second, and more serious, the introduction of the fictional ex-girlfriend, Erica Albright as the neat motivating device behind the original facemash hack. I get that she's meant to serve as the amalgamation of all the social hurt he's ever felt, but it's just too pat, and why would she have ever dated him in the first place. It makes the movie stronger in a way - partly because of Rooney Mara's great performance - and because of the strength of the final scene - but it's also pretty weak and obvious for a film that, in general, is a lot more sophisticated.

So is Mark Zuckerberg a dick? Yes. Do I sympathise with him? Yes. Am I still going to use Facebook? Yes!

Additional tags: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, Jeff Cronenweth, Rooney Mara, Arnie Hammer, Max Minghella, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Aaron Sorkin,

THE SOCIAL NETWORK is on release in the US, Canada, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. It opens on October 15th in France, Switzerland, Denmark, Bulgaria, Estonia, Iceland, Spain and the UK. It opens on October 21st in Greece, Finland, Lithuania and Sweden. It opens on October 28th in Belgium, the Philippines, Australia, Croatia, the Netherlands, Singapore and Norway. It opens in November in the Czech Republic, Portugal, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Italy, Malaysia, South Korea, Russia and Colombia. It opens in December in Brazil, Argentina and India and on January 15th in Japan.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON - technically brilliant, emotionally sterile

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON is a very, very long, oppressive movie based on a very, very short, funny story about F Scott Fitzgerald. The only commonality is that both book and film are about a man called Benjamin who is born as an old man and ages backwards - through decrepitude, into middle-age, to the sexual immaturity, childhood to infancy and then death. His life experiences come in the right order, but his body rebels. As a newly born old man he has cataracts and arthritis. As a long-lived infant he suffers from dementia. In middle age, he has to grapple with how to live someone who is "going the other way".

The movie is broadly speaking, an elegy. An elegy for the young men who died needlessly in World War One and the old men slaughtered in front of Benjamin's eyes in World War Two. It's an elegy for lost opportunity and failed marriages. It's an elegy for those who we condemn to death before their time, shutting them away in nursing homes, fit only for ceremonial visits once a year. Finally, most clumsily, it's an elegy for the New Orleans that was destroyed in Katrina.

Insofar as the movie works at all, the first ninety minutes pass quickly. The viewer is mesmerized by the fairy-tale feel of the story - enlivened by the fabulist prologue concerning a blind watchmaker and tales of a man struck by lightening seven times. I could have used more of that charming whimsy. The movie simply looks fantastic, and as David Fincher and DP Claudio Miranda take us into steamy brothels, misty tug boats, and shabby Soviet hotels, the senses are overwhelmed. 

Where the movie falls down is when the traveling stops and Benjamin returns home after the war and we focus on his relationship with Daisy. She was fascinated by him as a child, throws herself at him as a twenty-something, rejects him at thirty and finally has a passionate affair with him in her forties. They "meet in the middle", but their tragedy is that they cannot grow old together. I think this part of the movie failed for me because I just didn't buy into why Daisy would find Benjamin so fascinating - a character who has become a passive observer of a world he is separated from by his freakish aging process. I find passive heroes very hard to get a hold of. I also just didn't buy into the motivation that underpins a major decision at the centre of the second half of the film. And if you don't buy into it - if you don't feel you are being swept up in an emotional tragedy - the second half of the movie is a pretty tedious affair.

All of which got me thinking what I really liked about the film. It certainly wasn't the passive performance from Brad Pitt as Benjamin or the rather typically good but not outstanding performance from Cate Blanchett as Daisy. Rather, I responded to the little vignettes, and the colourful characters that filled the margins of the story.  Taraji P Henson, Tilda Swinton and Jared Harris all give strong performances but the latter is particularly charismatic as the drunken Irish sailor who takes a semi-decrepit Benjamin from his "child-hood" home in New Orleans to Communist Russia and thence to World War Two. In addition, there's also something fascinating and funny about "fish out of water" stories. To that end, seeing an old-looking but pre-teen Benjamin visit a brothel or get drunk is wonderfully funny. But let's not get too pretentious. It's the same brand of entertainment as FREAKY FRIDAY.

So, in the final analysis, for me BENJAMIN BUTTON is a game of two halves - a beautifully made, elegaic fable enlivened by the odd flash of raucous humour, somehow hitched to a film that tries to be an epic love story but left me cold. 

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON opened in 2008 in the US and Australia. It opened earlier in 2009 in Turkey, the Philippines, Brazil, Sweden, Egypt, Greece, Portugal, Denmark, Poland, Argentina, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, Switzerland, Austria, Iceland and Venezuela. It opens this weekend in Belgium, France, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Estonia, Italy, Norway, the UK and Japan. It opens next weekend in South Korea and on February 20th in Finland.

ZODIAC - frustrating on purpose...?

In the late 1960s a serial killer shot and stabbed random people in the San Francisco area. He then sent letters and encripted messages to newspapers and police departments taunting them to catch him. The self-appointed Zodiac killer was a fan of publicity. He must have been pleased to see himself portrayed in DIRTY HARRY. He may well have appropriated murders that weren't his own to boost his twisted kudos. The police didn't solve the murders but a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle started an ad hoc investigation that resulted in a paperback book. He posits a theory as to the killer, but a quick google search will show you that there are still several theories as to who committed the crimes.

All of which brings us to the central problem: how can a director film gather together the fragments of a serial killer story with no resolution and fashion an engaging linear narrative? David Fincher addresses this problem byruthlessly organises his material into three acts, signposted clearly with timelines, and by throwing people who absolutely need to have closure a bone.

The first third of the movie is the most like a conventional serial killer flick. Victims are off'ed in tense tableaux; cryptic letters are sent into the newsroom; and the cops and reporters go through their procedures. In the second act, fatigue and frustration sets in. The only real suspect is cleared; the cops are moved onto other cases and the lead journo gets the sack. Even the Zodiac himself seems fatigued: the killing and the letters stop. It's a stand-off. At this point, even the viewer might feel frustrated and tired of the story - I gave Fincher the benefit of the doubt and decided that this was a deliberate attempt to have us empathise with the bewildering...slipperiness of the case. If this really is Fincher's aim, I think it's rather brave in facing the difficulty of filming the case head-on.

The final act puts us back into classic Fincher territory. The newspaper cartoonist picks up where the coppers left off and starts tracking down old witnesses and suspects. There is almost unbearably tense confrontation with a suspected murderer in a basement and a final confrontation with the suspect he chooses to believe is the Zodiac. The ending of the film is, however, slippery indeed. On one level, the viewers have been presented with a hypothesis as to the killer's identity and the text at the end of the film suggests that we should walk out of the theatre happy that the whodunnit has been solved. But there are too many important threads left hanging - and at least two very strong suspects still out there. So, the viewer can choose to leave the film unsatisfied and frustrated - having truly experienced the manifold evasions of the Zodiac. Clever stuff.

So right about now, you know that I found this movie to be frustrating but strangely gripping nonetheless. It's also worth pointing out that in terms of pure cinematic technique, this is a must-watch movie. The production design and visual style of the film is mesmerising. It's all warm claustrophobic browns and greens. Often-times, the camera seems to record an atomsphere - an oppression - rather than document movement. (Perhaps this is just me reading the lack of progress with the case onto the film.) ZODIAC is also pioneering in that it's the first feature film in which the entire shooting process took place without film OR video but completely digitally. In other words, the images were shot with digital cameras and the data was sent to directly through cables to the editorial suite. The images were backed up digitally and loaded into the Apple FinalCut Pro programme for editing. The hard drives were then reused. In other words, the only time the film was put on video or celluloid was for distribution to conventional theatres. Truly a feat.

Set against this, the casting is sometimes weak, othertimes under-used. Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards are serviceable as the two investigating cops, but their motivations are unclear. In particular, it is not clear why the latter should drop the case in favour of a normal life. It's also not clear why a hitherto down-to-earth honest cop could have become so mesmerised by fame as to have faked fan letters to Amistead Maupin, leaving him open to accusations of faking Zodiac letters. Elias Koteas and James Le Gros are just fine in cameo supporting roles as provincial cops but I couldn't help feeling that more could've been made of the Brian Cox role. Cox plays a famous pyschologist who is called by the Zodiac live on air. The film-makers start to investigate the corrosive relationship between fame and crime, but leave that strand hanging.

Robert Downey Junior chooses to play his role as a brilliant but strung out investigative reporter by swallowing half his words and becoming no more than a handful of physical ticks. I remain to be convinced that Jake Gyllenhaal can act as opposed to look put-upon. And that's a major problem because when Downey Junior's character fades into alcoholism and the cops get reassigned it's Jake's character who fills the screen. He plays the boy scout-cartoonist turned investigator who runs around the Bay area like one of the kids from Scooby Doo, reading old files, re-interviewing suspects and generally running great risks. Moreover, in a two and half hour film spanning twenty odd years Gyllenhaal neither alters his physical presence nor gives a satisfying account of why such a "boy scout" would become so obsessed with a serial killer.

Still, it's a testament to the fascination of the case and the virtuosity of the production that ZODIAC remains a gripping and memorable thriller.

ZODIAC was released in Canada and the US in March and played Cannes 2007. It is currently playing in France, Argentina, Australia, Denmark, Egypt, Israel, New Zealand, Serbia, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey and the UK. It opens in Slovenia and Finland on May 24th, in the Philippines, Germany, Singapore, Brazil and Estonia on the weekend of May 31st. It opens in Belgium on June 6th, in Hungary on June 7th, Latvia on Juune 8th, Japan on June 16th, Hong Kong on June 21st and Russia on August 2nd.