I recommend Hollywoodland, a neat little noir that is no big shakes but is well-handled and intriguing enough. I expect that it will serve nicely as the first part of a double bill with The Black Dahlia, another story of dashed hopes in hollywood. and speaking of the black dahlia, please read the book by John Gilmore (which I’ve recommended elsewhere) called Severed–you can practically feel the seediness of 1940s LA and the desperation of midwestern starlets who find themselves in quasi-prostitution rather than working with Warner Brothers. In Hollywoodland, the nicest bits are Bob Hoskins as a feral studio exec whose wife overtly cheats on him with George Reeves, the man who played superman in the TV series. Ben Affleck, never known for his acting chops, is very fine as Reeves, getting his manner and vocal inflections down without being overbearing. the heart of the film is probably diane lane as the studio exec’s wife, carrying on with Reeves–she projects an interesting mix of sexiness with a tinge of desperation at getting old and at letting her life go to waste in pointless indulgence. Adrian Brody as the detective/plot exposition device who investigates the whole sordid affair (was Superman’s death a suicide or a murder?) is also good. The movie is competently directed by Allen Coulter, a regular director for The Sopranos. one wishes that Coulter had let go a bit in the manner of, say, Jack Nicholson in The Two Jakes (an unjustly overlooked masterpiece–I don’t care what fans of Chinatown say) or David Lynch in Mulholland Drive, but as a sucker for the fatalistic noir genre, I was happy for two hours. I, too, am afraid of being typecast as the invulnerable he-man type.
The Illusionist–certainly well-crafted but rather slow on its feet. Ed Norton plays a famous illusionist in Vienna whose remarkable act begins to have political implications that annoy the Crown Prince, jockeying for an eventual takeover of power from his father (I don’t know if this has basis in fact–what do I know from European late 19th century politics?)–Norton, too, re-discovers his lost love (Jessica Biel, looking rather overpoweringly Nordic…I prefer her in her Blade 3 incarnation. please kick my ass, Jessica) who just happens to be betrothed to the volatile and vaguely slimy Crown Prince. well, complications ensue…and I won’t say more, but you will have to let me know how savvy a moviegoer you are. The movie is rather slow but the illusionist bits are good and Norton is good and Jessica has large…..talent, that remains as of yet untapped. But really, just because something is set in turn of the century Vienna doesn’t mean it must have the air of a stuffed doll or that it must overuse the iris technique one associates with silent film. as with Hollywoodland, some juice is needed here. Again, it’s diverting but it seems as if it sets out to be one of those little “sleeper” hits that do not wish to offend.
I’ve already mentioned the egregious Edison Force–star-packed but predictable as Arnab making a scatalogical joke. John Heard, Dylan McDermott, Cary Elwes, Justin Timberlake, Kevin Spacey and Morgan Freeman all fall in the face of this policier about corrupt cops out of control, something the director, in the extras, describes as an “important” statement about authority and corruption. It must be “important” in the same sense that my Special K this morning was an important statement about grain-based cereals. The director also has that long-haired middle-aged look favored by the mid-tier in Hollywood, something affected by Walter Hill (who does have talent, spottily demonstrated) and meant to indicate that rebelliousness coexists in suspended tension with being a good hired gun. Jack Valenti has it, too–he would do better with one of Phyllis Diller’s wigs, which make no claim to believability or a counter-culture sensibility. Please avoid this film–you would only be encouraging Justin Timberlake’s acting career and paving the way for Clay Aiken as a fresh-faced recruit, right out of the Police Academy, who must bring down the secret drug ring of the Police Chief (Treat Williams) and avoid the murderous attempts of the rogue cop (Billy Zane) and his decent-but-conflicted partner (Malcolm Jamal-Warner). Listen, kid, maybe you don’t have the stomach for this sort of thing. Isn’t there a Christmas stage show somewhere?
intriguing, michael. i saw a clip of hollywoodland on the daily show and it looked dire. granted it was only 30 seconds or so but it looked like affleck doing a lot of ACTING.
We re-watched Mulholland Drive last night (rather than go out to see Black Dahlia or Hollywoodland.)
Frankly, I’d like to see Black Dahlia minus any scenes with Josh Hartnett. And I’d like to see the parts of Hollywoodland that just focus on Affleck and Diane Lane, cutting out all parts of Adrien Brody.
Hmm… When those come out on DVD, I think I may have an editing project on my hands.
Yes, Ben does more ACTING probably than he’s used to…but I didn’t find it to obtrusive. why would anyone cast a Black Dahlia movie with Josh Hartnett? it’s the same thing that makes me wonder why Scorsese casts Leonardo in rather heavy roles for which he seems too wispy. I am biding my time looking forward to The Departed, where I expect a great deal of moody double-crossing and a scenery chewing turn by Nicholson. It appears to be more cops-on-the-edge stuff, but Scorsese will probably give it a greater depth–and besides his movies are usually a pleasure just to look at.
isn’t the departed the remake of infernal affairs? i quite liked the original, but i’m sure the scorsese read will be far heavier. the new stars certainly don’t have that quality that both andy lau and tony leung have of suggesting that there’s always something else they’re thinking about while doing and saying whatever it is they’re doing and saying, which worked so well in the original.
I kinda liked Hollywoodland. I agree with everything you say Michael but the Rashomon-esque script was unsatisfying (how do you tell the story of a “true–yet unsolved–crime” without some kind of closure). Ellroy and De Palma offer up a lurid, laughable conclusion to the Dahlia case (it was so silly and Fiona Shaw seemed to the only one in on the joke), but the narrative conceit in Hollywoodland where Adrian Brody quietly sneaks onto Reeves’ lawn to “imagine” three possible death scenarios was also disappointing. Still, as you mention, Diane Lane is excellent (actually she’s tremendous) and I hope she’s remembered by those paid to remember at year’s end. And while I wish Affleck had not chosen to chase the big paychecks to work in shlock like Paycheck, I still think he’s capable of creating memorable characters. I remember his fine work in Dazed and Confused, Chasing Amy, Good Will Hunting and even his playfully tounge-in-cheek turn in Shakespeare in Love. So it was good to see him stretch a bit here.
I don’t think The Queen deserves its own thread. It’s competent filmmaking for sure, well acted and shot; the kind of thing Granada Television offers the Brits on a weekly basis. Sure Helen Mirren is very good as the queen . . . she’s Helen Mirren (and she was far more enjoyable in Elizabeth I even if that film suffered from Masterpiece Theateritis). And I guess, on one level, I could argue the film to be smart about politics and culture, but after further thought, I’m not even sure about that. It’s the script that keep tripping me up. The screenwriter appears to fluctuate between liking and loathing his characters. Is the film generous to Charles or critical of him . . . well both really. Does the film condemn Elizabeth for living in the past or does it make one sympathetic to her plight . . . well both really. Is Tony Blair a blazing reformist/modernizer or a closet royalist? The film does seem to hate Prince Phillip and revere Cherie Blair, but the ambiguities of character mentioned above do not grow out of a specific point of view; these characters–however authentic in real life–feel arbitrarily constructed. My wife thinks it is downright subversive to make a film about a living monarch (and she believes the Monarchy to be an outdated institution at best) and well, it did make me wonder how the film would be/has been received at Buckingham Palace (just what Harry and Wills need). But I wonder only because it is obvious that the entire film is a fictional approximation as to what was going on at Balmoral while the world clung to their televisions (the camera appears to revere those 40,000 acres in a couple of sweeping shots). While watching The Queen I was most reminded of Shattered Glass, a small yet well-made film about journalistic ethics released in 2003. Both films deal with institutions that are seemingly unprepared to fight off the cult of celebrity and the desire for fame no matter what the costs. The Queen is mid-cult pablum for middle-aged audiences; yet it is also (according to Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes) the “best reviewed film” of 2006. Something is terribly wrong.
The Illusionist is a bad film. And although it’s not as bad as a lot of films I’ve seen this year, I think it should be judged a little more harshly than others. It tries to be one of those The Usual Suspects & Sixth Sense type of films, where you realize in the end that you have misrecognized and misinterpreted everything you have just seen. But The Illusionist fails badly.
Eisenheim, played by Ed Norton, is supposed to pull off the greatest illusion of his life. He does, of course, but there’s little or no effort on behalf of the filmmakers to make this at all intersesting for us.
I’m not going to type SPOILER here, since there’s nothing to spoil…D’oh! Okay, so Eisenheim fakes the death of the woman he loves, frames the cruel, but otherwise innocent Crown Prince (played by Rufus Sewell, the film’s only saving grace), fools the Chief Inspector at every turn, then runs off to the countryside to live happily ever after with said woman. I would say that if you didn’t see this coming, you were not paying attention–but you could be in the theater next door, watching an entirely different film, and know what’s coming in The Illusionist. Nuts to the fillmakers for throwing in four chinamen as decoys.
The second to last shot is of Chief Inspector Uhl who, after Eisenheim (in disguise, no less!) has eluded him one final time, stands on the railway platform, laughing at amazement as he pieces it all together. We are given a series of flashbacks, little bits of information that we didn’t need anyway. “Oh, she drugged the Crown Prince? I get it now. Marvelous!” The only trick these filmmakers pulled off was getting me to see this thing.
I suppose it’s possible we are meant to figure out Eisenheim’s plot, so that we can watch in amazement as the Crown Prince blows his own brains out. But I doubt it.
Oh, and it will be a long time before this filmgoer will forgive Ed Norton for this line: “The only mystery I never solved was why my heart never let go of you.”
michael says this film is well-crafted. But remember, nothing is what it seems.
Poof!
I use “well-crafted” as an insult. The film should also be docked a few notches for trying so hard on its ersatz 19th century appeal, borrowing the obsessed prosecutor from Dostoevsky, etc.
This is the only movie that made me sympathetic to a Crown Prince.
as for Ed Norton. I much prefer when he says things like “Hey Ralphie boy. Sheesh, what a grouch!” Ed Norton is now in that Somerset Maugham adaptation. What is he trying to do to himself, become the poster boy for the mid-cult literary adaptation?
as alex woolcott and i finished watching the illusionist last night, i tipped my martini glass to him and quipped brightly: there’s less in this than meets the eye. oh, how we laughed.
john, i think the movie might actually have been trying to be more complex than your read of it. i think it is meant to be unclear whether the stuff in harvey pekar’s flashback/reconstruction actually happened or whether it is his rationalist insistence to explain it all. but frankly, my dear, as i once quipped to vivian leigh, i didn’t give a damn.
We watched The Illusionist this evening. I’d comment on its plot and craft and merits, but I have a headache, and worried through the whole thing that I had glaucoma.