🍾 Happy Friday!
Today is the last day of our week dedicated to movies starring Jake Gyllenhaal — you can see all my other recommendations here — and I saved the best for last. And since it’s Friday, I’m telling you about some of the best movies I watched this week.
Fun (and relevant to this movie) fact about myself: I’m a Leo/Cancer cusp with a Virgo rising — not that I care about this stuff. Okay, here’s day 5️⃣.
Today’s movie: Zodiac
STREAMING ON PRIME VIDEO
What it’s about: Zodiac tells the very true and very terrifying story of the infamous “Zodiac Killer,” who terrorized the San Francisco bay area in the late 1960s and early 70s. The movie follows three men obsessed with figuring out who the killer is: political cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), journalist Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.), and detective Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo).
Why it’s great: I often cite Zodiac as my favorite David Fincher movie — although if you ask me any other day that might change. It’s a dark and menacing crime thriller on its surface like Se7en, mixed in with an investigative drama. But Fincher is doing a lot more when you dig deeper. It’s a disorienting story. He plays with time and place to confuse you and put you in the headspace of the characters. Those characters are complex and motivated to a fault — Gyllenhaal’s Graysmith is borderline obsessive. You realize then that this isn’t a police procedural. You’re not watching to solve the mystery — you’re watching to solve the characters.
The key players:
🎬 David Fincher
🖋 James Vanderbilt
🎭 Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Chloë Sevigny, Anthony Edwards, Brian Cox, John Carroll Lynch, Dermot Mulroney
The details: ⏳ 162 minutes // 🗓 2007 // 📺 Trailer // 📝 My review
Fun fact: After reading the screenplay for the first time, the real Robert Graysmith said, "God, now I see why my wife divorced me."
Don’t have Prime Video? Zodiac is available to buy or rent on Prime Video, iTunes, and YouTube.
What I watched this week
It’s Friday, so I’m going to tell you about some of the movies I watched this week. I’m fortunate to be covering the New York Film Festival right now, so I’m starting with one of the best movies I’ve seen there, so far.
Bacurau 🌵
The second movie I watched at NYFF was the Brazilian weird western dark comedy Bacurau. It tells the story of a remote, tight-knit community that is at the center of a sinister act of class warfare. From my review:
The tone of the movie is so unexpected but delightful. It’s like the weird western that Quentin Tarantino never made... There are so many small quips and observations from characters that make you want to hang out with them more. Unfortunately, we have to see them go through some pretty… ahem, difficult things.
Brittany Runs a Marathon 🏃🏼♀️
Off a recommendation from my friend Tolu (@lu2moons), I watched the movie Brittany Runs a Marathon — playing in theaters now. The movie — just like the title — follows a down-and-out New Yorker who decides to start bettering her life by training for a marathon. From my review:
When Brittany Runs a Marathon sticks to Brittany… well, running a marathon, it moves with plenty of laughs and relatable commentary. I mean, you can never go wrong with a movie with the line, “it’s New York City, of course I’ve slept on a rat.”
And that’s it for our week dedicated to Jake Gyllenhaal movies. If you have suggestions for other actors you’d like me to cover, let me know by replying to this email! Thanks for being here 😀.
Have a fun and safe weekend,
Karl (@karl_delo)