since many of you are probably planning on seeing it...
... i just wanted to give you a heads-up that "the black dahlia" sucks. big time. this movie is to "la confidential" was dan quayle was to jack kennedy. i don't know if that analogy makes sense ('88 VP debate?), but i'm sticking with it.
it's hard to say what made it suck, but suffice to say that the star-studded cast could do nothing to save it (not that any of them did much to try). one of the big problems is that at the end of the flick, when the the intermingled plot-lines are resolving, your reaction is not "oh, of course. i wish i was smart enough to have seen it coming", but rather "oh. i guess that's what happened." there really weren't any clues or suspense, they just explain it.
the ladyfriend made the most telling point about this movie as we exited: that if we had been watching at home, we probably would have turned it off. it was that bad. in fact, i would say it was the worst movie i've seen in the theatre in years.
it's hard to say what made it suck, but suffice to say that the star-studded cast could do nothing to save it (not that any of them did much to try). one of the big problems is that at the end of the flick, when the the intermingled plot-lines are resolving, your reaction is not "oh, of course. i wish i was smart enough to have seen it coming", but rather "oh. i guess that's what happened." there really weren't any clues or suspense, they just explain it.
the ladyfriend made the most telling point about this movie as we exited: that if we had been watching at home, we probably would have turned it off. it was that bad. in fact, i would say it was the worst movie i've seen in the theatre in years.
posted by Huevos McGringo at
9:32 AM
8 Comments:
That's kind of how the end of the Illusionist was. They just threw the ending there in the last 30 seconds and that was it. No clues in the movie building up to that solution.
Hell. I'm still going to see it, though.
I'm going to have to rebut here, McGringos. "Dahlia" was definitely flawed and saddled with a bad script and some bad performances (Eckhart = too hammy, Hartnett = too inexperienced, Johannson = too stiff and forced) which in a way stemmed from that bad script. But I think DePalma was trying to do something different from "L.A. Confidential" and would have been better off trying to jettison some of the typically labyrinthine, nigh-on-to-impenetrable Ellroy plot mechanics and create a film even more personal and perverse. As is, it's kind of a mishmash, but there are moments and sequences of typically amazing DePalma visual theatrics --- the scene where Elizabeth Short's body is discovered, the autopsy scene where the POV switches around, the high-camp dinner party sequence from Hartnett's POV, the insane slow-mo staircase murder sequence, and, most of all, the screen test sequences with Mia Kirshner doing an incredible job as Short and DePalma himself (at least his voice) as the offscreen producer/director. And what about the opening sequence, a one-take recreation of the 1947 Zoot Suit Riots? I thought Swank did a good job, too, and you really can't fault at all the film's set design, costumes, cinematography, noir evocation, etc. Anyway, DePalma films always work better if you view them at a kind of dream level --- some of his best and most notorious films ("Sisters," "Dressed to Kill," "Body Double") have plots that barely make a lick of sense. Neither did "Dahlia," but as a fever dream of the underbelly of the Hollywood dream factory and how it exploits people, file it right up there with "Mulholland Dr." and "Barton Fink" and the weird 1970s film of "The Day of the Locust." Like most DePalma films, it will look even better in ten years.
Sorry to go on like this, but I gots an opinion.
Jeff Fallis
mr. fallis-
i would not attempt a rebuttal as sophisticated as your own. but i would like to make a few comments:
first, while i agree that there were a number of memorable visuals (i recall all that you mention), i just didn't find any of them to be inspired or at all moving.
second, i'm somewhat surprised by your acting assessments. besides for hartnett (who i kinda like, but was really wooden here), i thought swank [surprisingly] turned in the worst performance of the lot.
as to viewing this movie "at a dream level", i just don't think it works. if you're going to go surreal, you need to really go for it. and you need vivid acting and visuals, something lynch films have in spades but that was totally lacking here.
i have respect, even reverence, for your knowledge of and passion for film. but i think here your cinephilia has gotten the best of you. this is no longer the director who brought us carrie and scarface. rather, this is the director who brought us snake eyes and mission to mars.
i was defintely thinking about seeing the black dahlia. thanks for the heads up. the story is really interesting, but that doesn't always guarantee a good movie.
see idlewild if you haven't already. that shit's got it all. music. sex. more sex. murder plot. etc.
"Mission to Mars" is criminally underrated. And I mean that. Weirdly, it's DePalma's most hopeful film. I'm just a big fan of his, and I disagree with a downward-trajectory view of his career. Have you seen "Femme Fatale"? Maybe his best film of all. Anyway, it's fun to argue... I stand by my defense of "Dahlia" as a flawed but worthwhile noir fever dream. Even a bad DePalma film is about forty times more interesting than most of the rest of the shit out there...
-JF
So, yeah. Those of us who liked Snake Eyes and Mission to Mars will like it? I'm with Fallis on the latter and with, I dunno, someone I'm sure on the former. I don't think either of them is perfect, but he's still doing really interesting things in both.
mission to mars was actually ok, i conceed. snake eyes was not.
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