2009 TIFF Bytes #2.5: Vincere

September 21, 2009Posted in2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Drama, Film Festivals, Italy, TIFF
originally published September 21, 2009Too long for Twitter, too brief for the capsule page, some quick takes on films screened at this year's TIFF: Vincere (Win) (d. Marco Bellocchio)Structurally and even editorially, the oddly-titled Vincere (Win) is kind of a mess, but the badass opening scene hooked me. Therein, a slender, dark-eyed journalist with a good head of hair--you guessed it: Benito Mussolini--sets a pocket watch and gives God five minutes to strike him down; if he's still alive when time runs out, Mussolini (Filippo Timi) tells the pious crowd gathered before him, it means there is no God. I really wanted…

Valkyrie (2008) – DVD

July 27, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Thriller, Tom Cruise, UK, War

***/**** Image N/A Sound B Extras A
starring Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Terence Stamp
screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie & Nathan Alexander
directed by Bryan Singer

by Walter Chaw Tight as a drum, deadly serious, and a mild corrective to not the enduring misconception that there were no men of conscience in Hitler's Germany, but rather to sickly, condescending awards-season bullshit like Defiance, The Reader, and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Bryan Singer's Valkyrie swoops down like its titular winged avatar to deliver the Holocaust melodrama to a minor kind of Valhalla. It's sober-minded and fact-based, with another handsome-destroying performance by Tom Cruise (though he only loses one eye here after losing both in Minority Report) that places him in uneasy orbit alongside Warren Beatty as another pretty boy aspiring for seriousness through mutilation of the self. It's a sober thriller, and because the outcome is never in doubt in a historically-based plot to assassinate Hitler, it lives and dies by its ability to sound smart and cast well.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) [2-Disc DVD Collector’s Set – Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

June 18, 2009Posted in1960s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blu-ray Disc, Clint Eastwood, DVD, Italy, Spain, West Germany, Western

Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (Extended English-language Version)
***/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A- Extras A
BD – Image B+ Sound A Extras A
starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach, Aldo Giuffrè
screenplay by Age & Scarpelli & Luciano Vincenzoni & Sergio Leone
directed by Sergio Leone

Goodthebadandtheuglycapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Perhaps it had been too long between screenings, or perhaps my mind had been playing tricks on me, but my most recent viewing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly wasn't as good as the others. There was still much to admire: the wild structure, which doesn't properly introduce its MacGuffin until about half an hour in; the hilariously cavalier attitude towards human decency; the raw-meat attitude towards bodies and faces; and, of course, the idea of Eli Wallach playing a Mexican, which is always appealing. But all of this seems somehow only fitfully successful now, the film's conceptual high points surrounded by the same arid desert that nearly finishes off two out of three of the protagonists. Perhaps I should chalk it up to the distance of memory–even downgraded, the experience has something bizarre for just about everybody, whether their memories will be kind to it or not.

Angels & Demons (2009)

May 14, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Ian Pugh, Italy, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller

*½/****
starring Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, Armin Mueller-Stahl
screenplay by David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman, based on the novel by Dan Brown
directed by Ron Howard

Angelsdemonsby Ian Pugh The preferiti are the cardinals most likely to be elected Pope following the death of the previous one. So I learned from Ron Howard's Angels & Demons–twice. It's a point that is adequately explained in a news report serving as the film's prologue, then superfluously explained in one of hero-cum-tour guide Robert Langdon's information-dense lines of dialogue. From there, it appears as if Angels & Demons will take a willing leap off the same cliff The Da Vinci Code did, annotating each excruciating historical detail for no other reason than to play WIKIPEDIA while spelling everything out in the most condescending way possible. Yet a strange thing happens around the movie's halfway mark: everyone stops defining and redefining the arcana–indeed, exposition practically ceases altogether as the characters are dragged between libraries and churches, spirited from one set-piece to the next, arriving just in the nick of time to face off against the killers or help save some poor bastard from getting burned alive. The shift in tone is sudden and dramatic–you could probably draw a fat line through the middle of Angels & Demons to delineate where the hand-holding lectures end and the linear procession of action sequences begins. How did that happen? As Opie will always be his unsubtle middlebrow self and co-screenwriter Akiva Goldsman will always be the guy who wrote Batman & Robin, I have no choice but to assume that the responsibility for this schism lies with the man whose name appears for the first time on this franchise: David Koepp.

Gomorrah (2008) + Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

February 20, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Crime, Drama, Germany, Italy, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

Gomorra
***½/****
starring Salvatore Abruzzese, Simone Sacchettino, Salvatore Ruocco, Vincenzo Fabricino
screenplay by Maurizio Braucci & Ugo Chiti & Gianni Di Gregorio & Matteo Garrone & Massimo Gaudioso & Roberto Saviano, based on the book by Saviano
directed by Matteo Garrone

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
*/****
starring Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Madhur Mittal, Anil Kapoor
screenplay by Simon Beaufoy, based on the novel Q & A by Vikas Swarup
directed by Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan

by Walter Chaw Dropping us in the middle of Italian slum Scampia, itself smack dab in the middle of nothing, Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah (Gomorra) is the Hud of gangster flicks, all deglamourized, harsh, expressionist stripping-away of illusions and idealism to reveal the gasping, grasping emptiness underneath. Like Hud, the source of that idealism is years of cinema supporting a romanticized iconography: the American western in Martin Ritt's film, the collected works of Francis Coppola and Martin Scorsese in Garrone's peek inside the ways of this thing of ours. Unlike Hud, there's no intimation of a "happy" ending for the sociopaths of Gomorrah–no feeling that for whatever the cost to a normalized (idealized?) existence, the outcasts and opportunists living their lives in imitation of Tony Montana are doomed to their tough-guy surfaces and the anonymous deaths predicted for them during a brutal prologue. Non-narrative and populated by a non-professional cast of locals and unusual suspects, the picture, however steeped in naturalism, is finally a formalist piece about as free of structure as Sartre–and every bit as meticulous. This "No Exit" (and the French title of Sartre's play fascinatingly translates, when applied to a discussion of a film, as "In Camera") and its unlocked oubliette is Scampia: The players in organized crime are imprisoned there by choice, trapped by the validation they desire from one another.

Miracle at St. Anna (2008) – DVD

January 20, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Ian Pugh, Directors: Spike Lee, Drama, DVD, Italy, War

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonzo, Omar Benson Miller
screenplay by James McBride, based on his novel
directed by Spike Lee

by Ian Pugh Beginning with a moment of vocalized contempt for the John Wayne-ification of World War II in popular culture, Miracle at St. Anna thoroughly establishes its primary aim to give credit where credit is due to the unsung black heroes of the era. Director Spike Lee brings a broader sense of humanism to the table as well, though, orchestrating innumerable moments of fear and sympathy across several languages to impress upon viewers that there were, indeed, honest-to-gosh people on each side of a conflict not typically remembered for its moral ambiguity. If it's been done before, considering that Valkyrie subtly co-opted righteous, intelligent rebellion as an exclusively Anglo-American invention just a few short months after St. Anna's release, it's something of a necessary evil. Yet the picture is finally done a near-fatal disservice by Lee's often-painful (and, some might say, trademark) didacticism, with plenty of telegraphed prophecies on hand to reiterate that faith is more important than religion and that the common link of humanity overrides any national divisions. Messages well worth repeating, no doubt, but the film feels the need to drive them home with talking heads spouting heavy-handed philosophical ruminations that subtly give the mind license to wander. Sure, whether or not God exists, we should all act like He does–what else ya got?

The Stendhal Syndrome (1996) [2-Disc Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

November 24, 2008Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Directors: Dario Argento, DVD, Horror, Italy, Mystery, Thriller

La sindrome di Stendhal
**½/****
DVD – Image B Sound C+ Extras B
BD – Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
starring Asia Argento, Thomas Kretschmann, Marco Leonardi
written and directed by Dario Argento

Stendhalsyndromecap

by Walter Chaw It's hard for me to reconcile the Dario Argento of the Seventies through to 1982's Tenebre with the Dario Argento ever after (at least until what I've heard is a remarkable comeback, the upcoming completion of his Three Mothers trilogy). The inventor almost by himself of two distinct genres of film in Italy (and just the concept of the arthouse slasher in the world), a co-writer of Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, and a revolutionizer of horror-movie music became this guy who stopped aping Hitchcock and started aping…Jeunet? Himself? Even with Max Von Sydow in the fold (Non ho sonno), the pictures post-Tenebre are cheap auto-knockoffs devoid of innovation and lacking the amazingly imaginative gore that marked Argento's early gialli, the archetypal resonance of his supernaturals, or the transcendent, sometimes sublime lawlessness of his hybrids (like Suspiria, for instance, still a towering achievement). They're almost to a one these gaudy, derivative, exhausted pieces of shit.

La Femme Nikita (1990) + Killing Zoe (1994) – DVDs|La Femme Nikita – Blu-ray Disc

November 17, 2008Posted in1990s, 2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, DVD, France, Italy, Thriller

Nikita
***/****
BD – Image A- Sound B+
DVD – Image B Sound A- (English)/B (French)
starring Anne Parillaud, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Tcheky Karyo, Jeanne Moreau
written and directed by Luc Besson

KILLING ZOE
***/**** Image A Sound B
starring Eric Stoltz, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Julie Delpy, Gary Kemp
written and directed by Roger Avary

by Bill Chambers When DVD screeners of La Femme Nikita and Killing Zoe arrived concurrently in my mailbox, I thought I had an angle for a piece: actor Jean-Hugues Anglade, a co-star in both films. I began taking notes, asking myself how they fit into his oeuvre and whether, viewed in tandem, these actioners represent career progression. That’s when I realized: What I know about the work of Jean-Hugues Anglade you could fit on the head of a pin; I’ve only seen him in one other performance, as Zorg in Betty Blue (a.k.a. 37°2 le matin), a movie with obvious but ultimately superficial parallels to La Femme Nikita. So howzabout this for a thematic compromise? Nikita (its native title) and Killing Zoe each take place in France–that’s as good a link between them as Anglade.

TIFF ’08: Lorna’s Silence

September 3, 2008Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Belgium, Directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Drama, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Italy, TIFF
Le silence de Lorna***½/****starring Arta Dobroshi, Jérémie Renier, Fabrizio Rongione, Alban Ukajwritten and directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne by Bill Chambers That figures: I'm finally ready to get on board the Dardenne Brothers bandwagon and everyone's bailing. What I like--maybe love--about their latest, Lorna's Silence (Le Silence de Lorna), is that it zigs when you expect it to zag, which may peg me as superficial (some reviews of the film have admonished it for having a plot) but which nevertheless strikes me as a refreshing change of pace from the neorealist wallowing of their earlier work. (To my…

Youth Without Youth (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

June 9, 2008Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Francis Ford Coppola, Drama, Esoterica, France, Germany, Italy, Mystery, Romance, Romania, Sci-Fi

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A
starring Tim Roth, Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz, André M. Hennicke
screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the novella by Mircea Eliade
directed by Francis Ford Coppola

by Walter Chaw Set in just-antebellum Europe, Francis Ford Coppola’s Golden Age superhero fantasy Youth Without Youth finds mild-mannered ancients professor Dominic (Tim Roth) transmogrified by a bolt of lightning into a being who appears to not only have regained his youthful appearance, but also developed the ability to alter physical objects with his mind. Dominic is in 1938 Romania when 1.21 gigawatts of electricity send him back to the future, able to absorb entire volumes with a single touch, learn dead languages in his sleep, and have contentious conversations with himself reflected in mirrors literal and figurative. It’s a superhero movie in the same sense as Kasi Lemmons’s sorely underestimated The Caveman’s Valentine: based on a literary source, it’s itself intensely literate, sprinkling Mandarin and Sanskrit in with, late in the game, a language of our hero’s own devising to which he devotes reels of obsessive notes. All that’s missing is a purpose for our hero–something remedied as the picture moves forward past WWII and Dominic encounters Veronica (Alexandra Maria Lara) en route to her own collision with cosmic destiny.

Sundance ’08: Good Morning Heartache

January 29, 2008Posted in2000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Film Festivals, Italy, Sundance
Riprendimi**/****starring Alba Rohrwacher, Marco Foschi, Valentina Lodovini, Stefano Fresiscreenplay by Anna Negri and Giovanna Moridirected by Anna Negri by Alex Jackson Broadly speaking, bad movies come in two distinct flavours: boring and obnoxious. I'm always conflicted as to which is worse, but as of this moment, I feel like it would be faint praise to say that Riprendimi (the preferred English title is Good Morning Heartache) is just plain boring. Small-time actor Giovanni (Marco Foschi) and television editor Lucia (Alba Caterina Rohrwacher) are a young Roman couple who have agreed to appear in a documentary about temp workers. The thesis…

Private Fears in Public Places (2006) – DVD

September 25, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, France, Italy

Couers
***/**** Image A Sound A
starring Sabine Azéma, Isabelle Carré, Laura Morante, Claude Rich
screenplay by Jean-Michel Ribes, based on the play by Alan Ayckbourn
directed by Alain Resnais

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Some time ago, there was a contretemps in the pages of another writing venue of mine, REVERSE SHOT. The estimable Nick Pinkerton had written a rather tepid assessment of Alain Resnais’s Private Fears in Public Places (Coeurs): he claimed that its inclusion in the New York Film Festival was an “obligatory slot-filling by one of the ‘Old Masters of the Sixties’ art-house.” NYFF programmer Kent Jones shot back with a dryly-hilarious note confirming such selection criteria, which enthused that the film “had exactly the lack of urgency, the unexceptionable hominess, and the scanty charm we were looking for.” The whole thing was pretty funny, but it illustrated the pitfalls of playing certain critical lines. While Pinkerton is mostly correct that Private Fears in Public Places is a disappointingly inconsequential film by someone who had previously defined styles and moved mountains, this is punishing Resnais unduly: just because you’re not making a masterpiece doesn’t mean you lack any point at all.

TIFF ’07: Mother of Tears: The Third Mother

September 9, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: Dario Argento, Film Festivals, Horror, Italy, TIFF

Fest2007tearsLa terza madre
***/****
directed by Dario Argento

by Bill Chambers Sanity and fatigue are ineluctable corrupting influences on an aging filmmaker, but it brings me great pleasure and no small relief to be able to report that while Mother of Tears: The Third Mother–Dario Argento’s long-gestating conclusion to his “Three Sisters” trilogy–is neither as artful as Suspiria nor as dreamlike as Inferno, it nevertheless surpasses expectations fostered by Argento’s recent work to emerge as his best movie in decades. Fitting that Argento should choose to tell the Rome-set story of Mater Lacrimarum last, marking this as a homecoming in more ways than one.

The Bridesmaid (2004) – DVD

May 22, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, France, Germany, Italy, Romance, Thriller

La Demoiselle d'honneur
***/**** Image C+ Sound B- Extras A-
starring Benoît Magimel, Laura Smet, Aurore Clément, Bernard Le Coq
screenplay by Pierre Leccia and Claude Chabrol, based on the novel by Ruth Rendell
directed by Claude Chabrol

Bridesmaidcapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Comparisons of The Bridesmaid (La Demoiselle d'honneur) to Hitchcock are almost inevitable, not only because such assessments are the lazy default position of critics when referencing suspense yarns, but also because The Bridesmaid's director, Claude Chabrol, has carved out a career as the French heir apparent to the master's title. That said, the distinctions between the two filmmakers are probably more interesting than the similarities: Chabrol's overall style is considerably more relaxed than Hitchcock's, and his approach to character is finally less judgmental. Here, for instance, in lieu of assigning blame to the damaged femme fatale of the title, he notes the thrilling nature of her transgression and the unappetizing prospect of returning to normalcy after succumbing to her lethal charms. Chabrol has always put women in the driver's seat of perversity and sexual wilfulness–something Hitch never quite had either the guts or the sympathy to pull off.

Muriel (1963) – DVD

April 16, 2007Posted in1960s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, France, Italy

Muriel, or the Time of Return
Muriel ou le temps d'un retour
***½/**** Image B Sound B Extras A
starring Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Pierre Kérien, Nita Klein, Jean-Baptiste Thierrée
screenplay by Jean Cayrol
directed by Alain Resnais

Murielcapby Travis Mackenzie Hoover Alain Resnais films are more interesting to me for their differences than for their similarities. Though you can find an oft-cited obsession with memory running through his oeuvre, the high-profile literary screenwriters with whom he chooses to collaborate tend to impose their own sensibilities. Thus Hiroshima, mon amour features Marguerite Duras' passive-aggressive desperation and Last Year at Marienbad is marked by Alain Robbe-Grillet's mathematical abstractions. Neither of those two canonical works–which are at least united by a conceptual monumentalism–looks very much like Muriel, or The Time of Return (Muriel ou le temps d'un retour) (hereafter Muriel, also its promotional title), which enlists Jean Cayrol to sketch a story of domestic dishonesty and historical trauma that's at once spatially smaller and more emotionally expansive. Here, if one isn't confronted with the ostentatious "artistry" of Resnais' more famous work (not that great artistry isn't evident), one is aware of a tangle of guilt and regret behind the brave faces. And whoever can be said to be in the driver's seat, it's an amazing film.

Philadelphia Film Festival ’07: The Boss of It All

April 10, 2007Posted in2000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Denmark, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Sweden
Direktøren for det hele***/****starring Jens Albinus, Peter Gantzler, Iben Hjejle, Fridrik Thor Fridriksonwritten and directed by Lars von Trier by Ian Pugh Presenting himself to us as an image reflected in a window, Lars von Trier literally begins The Boss of It All with an assurance that the following hundred minutes will be nothing more than a light comedy not worth "a moment's reflection." He then introduces us to pretentious, untalented actor Kristoffer (Jens Albinus), who has been hired by office worker Ravn (Peter Gantzler) to pose as the company's absentee president in delicate negotiations to merge with an Icelandic…

Ginger & Fred (1986) – DVD

February 12, 2007Posted in1980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD, France, Italy, West Germany

Ginger and Fred
Ginger e Fred
***/**** Image A Sound A
starring Marcello Mastroianni, Giulietta Masina, Franco Fabrizi, Friedrich von Ledebur
screenplay by Federico Fellini, Tonino Guerra and Tullio Pinelli
directed by Federico Fellini

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The idea of Fellini criticizing television for its vulgarity–as he does in Ginger and Fred–is indeed a bit rich: Federico Fellini complaining of vulgarity is rather like Roberto Rossellini complaining of neo-realism. But beneath the surface of this admittedly shallow lament lies the movie's real theme, which is the displacement of artists once their chosen form is rendered obsolete. It's not too hard to see Fellini himself, high-modernist art director that he was, in his music-hall dancer protagonists, who by 1985 have been completely snowed under by seismic shifts in technology and, by extension, entertainment. Slight as the film may be, you can't help feeling a twinge of regret for not only its leads, but also the increasingly-forgotten filmmaker who pulls their strings.

1900 (1976) [Two-Disc Collector’s Edition] + La Commune (Paris, 1871) (2000) – DVDs

December 18, 2006Posted in****/****, 1970s, 2000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, France, Italy, Pseudo-Documentary, Robert De Niro, War, West Germany

1900
**½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Robert De Niro, Gerard Depardieu, Dominique Sanda, Francesca Bertini
screenplay by Franco Arcalli, Giuseppe Bertolucci, Bernardo Bertolucci
directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

LA COMMUNE (PARIS, 1871)
****/**** Image B- Sound C+ Extras C+
directed by Peter Watkins

1900capby Travis Mackenzie Hoover In this corner, Bernardo Bertolucci, weighing in with a massive budget courtesy of Alberto Grimaldi and a cast that includes De Niro, Depardieu, Sutherland, Lancaster, Hayden, and Sanda. Over here we have Peter Watkins, working for peanuts on a single soundstage with a cast of nobodies recruited from Paris and its environs. The fight, as it turns out, is more than one over who can make the longest movie (5hrs15mins for Bertolucci, 5hrs45mins for Watkins) or grab the most attention. The issue is: what are the conditions necessary for a revolutionary epic–moreover, what conditions get in the way? This is the real purpose of comparing 1900 and La Commune (Paris, 1871) (hereafter La Commune), for each film throws down for the Communist cause but only one is conscious of the nuances. Where Watkins and his troupe constantly reframe the idea of what it means to foment revolution, Bertolucci thinks he's got the idea–and proves, through mindless repetition, that he really doesn't.

The Science of Sleep (2006) + Jet Li’s Fearless (2006)

September 27, 2006Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, China, Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Martial Arts, Romance, Theatrical

THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP
*½/****
starring Gael García Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alain Chabat, Miou-Miou
written and directed by Michel Gondry

Fearless
**/****
starring Jet Li, Nakamura Shidou, Sun Li, Dong Yong
screenplay by Chris Chow, Christine To
directed by Ronny Yu

by Walter Chaw A cacophony of cascading whimsy, Michel Gondry's exercise in Freudian bric-a-brac The Science of Sleep plays like a movie based on a thrift store specializing in Harlequin novels–French Harlequin novels. It adheres to the music-video director's maxim of maximum images per second, and it casts Gael García Bernal as Stéphane, a useless lug endlessly working on a calendar of calamitous events and pining after his across-hall neighbour Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), with whom he is too smitten to confess that his mother is her landlord. His dreams take the form of a one-man variety show, while Gondry revels in scenes where he inflates his hero's hands and has him ride an animated patchwork horse. But The Science of Sleep is more exhausting than illuminating–more a loud masturbation than any kind of intercourse with the audience. The difference between the Gondry of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the Gondry of The Science of Sleep, it seems obvious to say, is the difference between a film scripted by Charlie Kaufman and one not, though it's more complicated than that in that the Kaufman of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is an artist who finally struck a balance between affectation and a much finer connective tissue. Gondry is still just engaged in the twist.

Hollywoodland (2006); The Black Dahlia (2006); Factotum (2006)

September 15, 2006Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Brian De Palma, Drama, France, Germany, Italy, Mystery, Norway, Romance, Scarlett Johansson, Theatrical, Thriller

HOLLYWOODLAND
*/****
starring Adrien Brody, Diane Lane, Ben Affleck, Bob Hoskins
screenplay by Paul Bernbaum
directed by Allen Coulter

THE BLACK DAHLIA
**½/****
starring Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank
screenplay by Josh Friedman, based on the novel by James Ellroy
directed by Brian De Palma

FACTOTUM
**½/****
starring Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor, Marisa Tomei, Didier Flamand
screenplay by Bent Hamer and Jim Stark, based on the novel by Charles Bukowski
directed by Bent Hamer

Hollywooddahliafactby Walter Chaw Deadening, dull, sepia-drenched faux-noir period hokum of a suddenly popular stripe, Allen Coulter's Hollywoodland casts lantern-jawed, wooden-countenanced Ben Affleck as his way-back literal and metaphorical doppelgänger George Reeves. An apparent suicide that has fostered a small measure of conspiracy theories, Reeves, television's original Superman, is shot in the head, naked in bed, on a summer night in 1959, briefly throwing a generation of kids into minor existential turmoil. But casting Reeves's death into suspicion is a far stickier wicket: Even with the introduction of a woefully-underwritten fictional gumshoe (Adrien Brody) with his own crew-cut, wayward boy, and ice queen ex (Molly Parker) to match, the suggestion that someone in the portly statue's coterie (including his wife-of-a-studio-bigwig-mistress, played by the ageless Diane Lane) might have had a motive for slaying him is given a quick spin and then stabled without a whimper. What's left is the typical and unsurprising Hollywood fable of the high price of fame and the dreadful cost of its pursuit. The central irony that drives Hollywoodland is that, in its desperate attempt to make a mystery of Reeves's death, the only thing it succeeds in doing is cataloguing the myriad reasons Reeves had to justifiably cap himself.