(Movie Review)This film original hit theaters in September of 2006. I was back in the USA during that time, so I remember reading a couple reviews of it in the paper.
The reviews said something about being based on a real life unsolved crime (interesting, I thought) that had to do with a big sex scandal in 1940s Hollywood (hmm, even more interesting).
But, the reviews cautioned, the story was pretty hard to understand.
Perhaps I wasn't reading these reviews as carefully as I should have, but I interpreted this as meaning the film had a pretty complicated plot, and you had to pay careful attention to figure out everything that was going on. One of those films that made you think, in other words. A big juicy mental puzzle to sink your brain into on those nights when you're into a "thinking man's film". And after having just finished "Lethal Weapon 3" (see previous post) I was ready for something like this.
Unfortunately however, when the reviewers said this film was hard to understand, they meant it in a negative way. They meant "hard to understand" as in "the screenwriters didn't do their job", because there is a lot of exposition just plain missing from this film.
It also looks like someone did a really botched job editing this, because there seem to be all sorts of key plot points missing from the final product.
The film has some good points (and I'll get to those in a minute) but the bad points are enough to sink it. If the film makers didn't care enough about this film to give it a coherent story line, I wouldn't recommend you feel the need to waste your time on it. Who cares how stylistic it is?
All that being said, the style of the film is pretty cool. The film does a nice job of re-creating the 1940s film noir style. There's plenty of scenes with chain smoking men in fedoras where you can really feel the atmosphere.
Link of the Day
NOAM CHOMSKY ON THE CURRENT ECONOMIC DOWNTURN
The Black Dahlia: Movie Review (Scripted)
Unrelated to the post, but still: a link you might enjoy.
ReplyDeleteyeah, you're right, that was right up my alley.
ReplyDeleteInteresting argument. I remember all those episodes from my childhood, but I don't think they made me an atheist (or agnostic in my case). Although I guess it might have lodged it somewhere in my subconscious.
Probably the concept of a human struggling against some sort of divine being is a lot more widespread than just Star Trek. Greek mythology, for example, has stories of humans occasionally struggling against the gods and sometimes winning. Depending on your interpretation of the Bible, maybe you could even expand this genre to include Jacob wrestling with God.
Still, it's always nice to see one's guilty pleasures being intellectually validated.