Zodiac (2007)

During the audio commentary of “Zodiac,” James Ellroy declares this stellar David Fincher film “one of the greatest American crime films ever made.” True. It’s also one of the best films about American journalism and obsession, he kind that cracks one’s life like broken crystal. During the 1970s in San Francisco, the self-named Zodiac killed at random, rambled in cryptic letters to the “Chronicle,” ruled radio and TV, disappeared for years. He owned the information, and therefore the city, and one shudders at what he could have done with the Internet. Among the lives he ruined: The detectives (Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards) and newspapermen (Robert Downey Jr. and Jake Gyllenhaal) who picked up the pieces and stored the evidence. Fincher and writer James Vanderbilt give us a suspect (John Carroll Lynch of “Fargo”) who presents a veiled sense of evil, but manages to stay outside the spotlight. “Zodiac” is wildly accurate, from the newsroom cigarette smoke to the endless interviews and dead-ends that keep detectives busy. Fincher’s masterpiece. A