20070520

Hollywoodland
5/10

I like a lot of the 1950's noir-crime stories, but this one left a lot to be desired. I was waiting to see how they'd do it, seeing as the real-life story it was based on, the death of Superman actor George Reeves(Ben Affleck), was never solved. Alas, this movie doesn't really go anywhere either. It's the story of Louis Simo(Adrien Brody), a private detective hired by Reeves' mother to investigate the circumstances surrounding her son's death. The LAPD case had been closed suspiciously fast, and there were more details that had been apparently overlooked before the police ruled it as a suicide.

It's one of those movies where the detective, through investigating a case, learns a lot about his own life and the relationships he's messed, in this case those with his ex-wife and son. The mystery element is just ok. It's predictable that at some point guys are gonna come and beat him up and tell him to mind his own business. Of course, he doesn't.

Bob Hoskins is mis-cast as an asshole Hollywood exec, and Diane Lane as her husband, and love interest for Affleck, is made to look surprisingly unattractive throughout the movie, especially as it moves on through time. I was surprised to look her up and find out she's only 42. They manage to make her look like an older woman who's trying to look younger, if that makes any sense.

Anyway, it's kind of a big mess that goes nowhere, in that when the "Directed by..." title at the end, my dad and I looked at each other with the "did I miss something" look. Skip this one.


Feast
7/10

Not smart, by any definition of the word, but a pretty good gory time. A bunch of generic, cookie-cutter characters (The big-shot twenty-something, the cowboy bartender, the middle-aged biker chick, distraught mother, bimbo, etc.) get stuck in a bar somewhere in the south, and there's monsters outside. They have to survive the night. That's it. That's the whole story.

This was the end-product of season 3 of Project Greenlight, produced by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Wes Craven. It's basically a first-time director who's done minor work on a couple other movies, with a bunch of no-name actors, and then Jason Mewes as himself, and HENRY FUCKING ROLLINS and a shirt-and-tie motivational speaker. People die, people backstab each other to survive. There's blood, explosions, etc. Pretty much all you could expect or want from a simple horror movie like this. Nothing ingenious or new, no character development, in fact the characters didn't even have names, but were called things like Honey-Pie, Bozo, and Beer Man. But that's not why you watch movies like this to begin with. If you rent this expecting all that, all I can say is "dude, don't suck."

Best quote, after somehow trapping the monster's junk in-between a door and the doorframe and cutting it off, Henry Rollins:

Coach: Whoa. Monster cock.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home