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2006: V For Vendetta

For most audiences, it was just one fleeting, if monumental, moment in film history. The footprint left by the Wachowski Brothers is enormous, even if they've only made one truly successful film, 1999's The Matrix. In 2006, though, they helped bring another Alan Moore graphic novel to life, V For Vendetta. Though it was directed by James McTeigue, a Wachowski collaborator, the film was written and co-produced by the Wachowskis. Moreover, with Hugo Weaving as the film's title character, it's hard not to see the Matrix connection. Set in a dystopian future, V For Vendetta is about V, a masked freedom fighter trying to bring down the totalitarian government that dominates Great Britain and most of the world, symbolized by a heavily neo-Nazi leader (John Hurt) and a loud cable-TV host. V is somewhat inadvertently aided in his suicidal raids by Evey, a young woman who comes into contact with the mysterious masked man.

Evey was played by Natalie Portman and, perhaps no thanks to her popularity in the world, the film became known as "The Movie Where Natalie Portman Gets Her Head Shaved". Yes, this happens in the movie, and yes, it probably doesn't have to happen, but it got a lot of unwanted attention. There are certainly flaws in this movie, but it was slickly made, well-acted (Weaving does a great job, especially considering the fact that all he's got in his repertoire is his voice), and surprisingly moving in sections. One scene, just after Evey's head-shaving, dramatizes a lone journal entry the young woman stumbles upon while in a lonely prison. Suffice to say, the scene is a bit of a diversion, but a well-developed and tearful one at that. The Wachowskis went on to direct the huge flop known as Speed Racer, and are laying low. McTeigue just helmed Ninja Assassin, but V For Vendetta is still the high point of the decade for all three men.

2007: Zodiac

Who can say what would have been? And yet, wondering is so much fun. What if Zodiac, arguably David Fincher's best film (sorry, Tyler Durden), had been released at the end of 2006? Would it have been nominated for a slew of Oscars? What if Zodiac had been released at the end of 2007? It may not have been able to dethrone No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood, but Zodiac would have made the Oscar race a lot more complicated. This based-on-a-true-story crime drama, about the famed Zodiac killer who terrorized California during a stretch of time during the 1960s and 1970s, featured three phenomenal lead performances from Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., and Mark Ruffalo. More than that, Zodiac was the least flashy film that Fincher's ever made, including his follow-up, the Forrest Gump lookalike The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Yes, there's plenty of CGI (as in various shots that are completely computer-generated), but none of it seems particularly noticeable and is blended in so smoothly.

What makes Zodiac stand out so much is the screenplay by James Vanderbilt, which so accurately defines what obsession is. The Zodiac murderer was never caught, even though the film makes it clear who the madman really was. That didn't stop the three lead characters - Gyllenhaal as a fresh-faced crossword-puzzle creator, Downey as a rumpled reporter, and Ruffalo as a famed cop - from spending most of their adult lives trying to figure out who he is. Though they only ever come into contact with the presumed killer once, in a chilling interrogation set in a break room, these men never gave up, even if it meant that they would ruin their personal lives. Some things go beyond being married, having a job, or wanting to feel remotely human. We are, all of us, obsessed about something. Most of us, sure, aren't obsessed with finding murderers, but for these men, it's all they can think about. Fincher, a notoriously nitpicky director, is the perfect person to have made Zodiac, easily the most underrated film of its year.

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