Do you have a favourite movie? Or movies? If you’re reading an article about a film, I feel like it’s a safe assumption that you probably do. Maybe you even have a list of your favourites? I do. I’ve got a top five that sometimes fluctuates, except for the long-reigning film that always holds at the top spot, Apocalypse Now.
How does one determine their favourite films? Everybody who makes a list probably has their own criteria; I certainly only know mine, which comes down to the rewatchability factor. How often have I watched a particular film? Why do I keep coming back to? How long is there between viewings? Perhaps this is a nerdish way to approach movies, but hey, I don’t have favourite sports teams or athletes, so let me have this.
David Fincher’s 2007 film Zodiac has long been a favourite film, even since I saw it opening weekend. The true story of the Zodiac killer who terrorized San Francisco and its surrounding areas at the end of the 1960s and into the early ‘70s is one of the most masterful crime films of any era. Upon first seeing it, I was mesmerized by its acting, visuals, and how, mainly through its use of talk, director Fincher could keep tension running for its two and a half hour runtime.
Before they were science bros in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr were brilliant on screen together in Zodiac as Inspector Dave Toschi and reporter Paul Avery respectively, while Jake Gyllenhaal, then only in his mid-20s, was already on his way to being one of our greatest actors, giving cartoonist Robert Greysmith equal amounts of naïveté and obsession as he worked to discover the identity of the Zodiac. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Zodiac since its release, via Blu-ray, streaming, and on iTunes, but each and every time I find myself still captivated, and often noticing something I didn’t quite cotton to in a previous viewing.
I probably watch Zodiac once a year, and I know I did so roughly two or three months ago, via the HD copy I own on iTunes. That version, a Blu-ray equivalent or thereabouts, has always felt a little lacklustre to these eyes. It’s never popped off the screen the way I’ve always wanted it to. In many ways, that’s really a minor quibble. I’ve never not loved watching Zodiac, right? However, just last night, as I was scrolling through my iTunes library, I noticed that the film had silently been upgraded from HD quality to 4K. I paused upon this discovery, wondering if this was a mistake. Realizing that it wasn’t, that the film was ready to stream in the highest quality available, complete with Dolby Atmos sound quality, I dove right back in.
In digging around about the technical aspect of the film, The Digital Bits’ Bill Hunt explained that Zodiac has been upscaled from how it was originally filmed in “10-bit RAW in 1080p HD (4:4:4) using the Thomson Viper FilmStream camera, along with some footage in 35 mm photochemical film (Super 35 format).” While I’m no expert on the jargon, to my eyes, Zodiac 4K feels brighter and clean, and probably more engaging than it ever did on Blu-ray or streaming sites. The gorgeous cinematography finally gets its due.
While Zodiac in 4K doesn’t change the content or the quality of the film itself, it does make it the best its ever looked, at least since it first hit theatres some 17 years ago. And again, just a few months since I last watched it, I managed to see something I’d never noticed before. In this case, it’s a small and subtle moment, when Robert Greysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) enters a staff meeting at the San Francisco Chronicle, and he’s patted on the back by the paper’s coffee vendor, Shorty (James Carraway), who hadn’t previously shown any sort of affection towards Greysmith. It’s a split second, but it gives just a little more to the relationship between the two.
Perhaps that’s why Zodiac has made its way to the prime position of my second favourite movie of all time. It always shows me something new, and it always frustrates me that neither Toschi or Greysmith were ever really able to get their man. Zodiac stands up to multiple viewings, even more so now that it’s been given a 4K release digitally. If you’ve never seen it before, now’s the time.
