The Real Race to the Chase

Everyone here knows my affinity for movies and the movie making process. Well there is no better time of the year for the movie goer than the last 4 months of the year. This is when studios most typically release there Oscar hopeful pictures. Of the last 10 Best Picture winners only Gladiator and Crash were released before September. Mostly the days of releasing your best film in the summer are over. The summer is now reserved for your big budget money maker, not nescessarily your best movie. So now the studios are starting to release stuff worth going to see. Over the past week I have seen three of these long awaited films for me; Little Miss Sunshine, Hollywoodland, and The Black Dahlia. So this is the race for studios to get their bets films out.


The Black Dahlia- This is a movie I had long awaited, I was always intrigued by the real life story of the young drifter who went to Hollywood and got all messed up in the wrong crowds during Hollywood’s “Golden Age.” This era also had a seedy underbelly too it back in the days of illegal stag films and call girls. The Black Dahlia is the tale of one of those lonely girls who wound up grousumly murder in a residential LA neighborhood. The movie is a fictionalized account of two detectives who are put on the case to solve this murder. Director Brian De Palm’s (Scarface, Snake Eyes, Carlito’s Way) hands are all over this picture. It is shot and edited in his signature style of amazing camera angles, mood lighting, and creative editing. And as De Palma is known the action and drama are faced paced moved by a solid soundtrack. The story itself is a muddle and jumbled mess for most of the film. It starts off with these two detectives (Josh Hartnett & Aaorn Eckart) being paired together for another case, then they are reassigned to the Black Dahlia murder. After that happens the plot begins to go to shit, and them movie focus more on the back story of one of the detectives, his “girlfriend”(Scarlett Johansson) and their past together, involving a totally unrelated crime. Somehow, while that is going on they are still researching the facts of the Dahlia case which brings Hartnett across this eccentric millionaire family. The Daughter of the family is played by Hilary Swank and the patriarc by Jon Kavangh. This review is starting to make as little sense as the movie, it just gets lost and there are three or four plots going on at once. The ending tries to then all of sudden bring everything back together to make sense and it became even more confusing than the original plot. The acting in the movie is pretty good, except for the lead of Josh Hartnett. De Palama plays the movie in the film noir genre and Hartnett was the wrong actor to choose. His peformance is bland and stale. Aaoron Eckart, Scarlett Johansson, John Kavanagh, and Mia Kirshner as the Dahlia are all very good, but the movie is stolen away by Hilary Swank whenever she is in the scene. She is brilliant as the femme fatale of the movie Ms. Maedelaine Linscott. Overall the movie is so little about the actual case of the Black Dahlia than if that is what intrigues you about this movie stay away. Otherwise if you are a DePalma fan you will enjoy the thriller side of this film.
5 out of 10

Hollywoodland- This movie also tells the sorted tale of a famous Hollywood murder mystery. One June evening in 1959 up in the Hollywood Hills actor George Reeves (Ben Affleck), TV's Superman, shot and killed himself with a single bullet while some party guest were downstairs in his home. Most believe there was more to the case than just straight suicide, by the LAPD closed the case immediately. However, Reeves mother hired a prive investigator named Louis Simo (Adrien Brody) to findout the "truth." The movies exists on two different timelines. The first covers a span of about 7-10 days where Simo is investigating the case. The other is done through flashbacks and tells the story of Reeves rise to prominence and his untimely death, covering a span from the mid 40's until June 1959. Reeves life was extremely complicated because he was involved in a relationship with a married woman, Toni Mannix; not only was she married her husband happened to be the head of MGM Films Eddie Mannix. Though he never actually worked for MGM in his life it was known throughout Hollywood that the Mannix's helped Reeves achieve success in his career. Reeves was also a hard partier who had many other woman in his life, he was a classic Golden Age of Hollywood leading man, bousterious, handsome, larger than life. Simo tries to uncover all he can about the relationship between Reevs and Mannix focusing on that aspect, suspecting that something had went sour and that either Mannix or her husband may have had something to do with his death. The movie seemlessly exists in these two different time frames, easily transfering from one to another, never were you confused on where you were in the movie. Also, unlike the Black Dahlia the movie does not hack out some proposterious theory just to make the viewer feel happy. The movie is very dark and done very well by first time movie Director Allen Coulter (The Sopranos and Sex and the City). The film is also paced by storng acting performances throughout. Most people feel Diane Lane as Toni Mannix gives one of her strongest performances that may be Oscar worthy. The two leading me also are great, Adrien Brody as sort of this sleazy yet likeable PI and Ben Affleck as Geoge Reeves. There are some out there who don't like the choice of Affleck for Reeves but he does a very good job, he has many of the same physical qualities Reeves had though they do not look alike (which is why some people don't like Affleck playing this part). Brody is steady and solid and carries the movie through his timeline. The other performance that is noteworthy is that of Bob Hoskins (Who Framed Roger Rabbitt) as Eddie Mannix, he gives a strong supporting role which to me seems award worthy. Overall the movie is well done, the plot is good, the acting is strong and the movie exists in a parallel time frame that is hard to pull off, but in this case it works.
7 out of 10

Little Miss Sunshine- Call it what you will, I call it an super achievement in film in everyway. Brought to us by perhaps my favorite movie studio, Fox Searchlight Pictures (Garden State, Thank you for Smoking, The Full Monty, In America, The Millions, Boy's Don't Cry, Antwone Fisher) the independant arm of 20th Century Fox. Little Miss Sunshine follows a dysfunctional families two day journey to California to watch the youngest daughter compete in a regional beauty competition. The problems with this family are numerous and everyone of them has some awakening throughout the movie helping them confront their issues. The father (Greg Kinnear) is out of work and determined to sell his "9 steps to becoming a success" plan, the son (Paul Dano) has taken a vow of silence until he gets into the Air Force Academy, the Uncle (Steve Carell) is coming out of the hospital after a failed suicide attempt, the grandfather (Alan Arkin) was recently kicked out of his assited living home for snorting Heroine, and the mother (Toni Collette) is trying to hold all of this together. In reality it is the little girl, Olive, who truly cares about each person in her family in sucha special and poingant way. The only problem is everyone in the family sort of knows, although it is never said in the movie, that this little miss sunshine pageant may be somewhat of an embarrasment for Olive who is a little pudgy, sort of bucktoothed girl with glasses, but in her own way she is beautiful. She has dreamed her whole life of competing in this beauty pageant. The movie is so damned original it is scary, and the writer and director are making their first motion picture so you have nothing to say, well this is just like Movie A that they directed or wrote. But this movie is a character driven actors movie all the way. It is hard to say who gives the best performance here. Carell fans will like him, thought his part is small, the same can be said for Alan Arkin who is hilarious as the angry drug snorting grandfather. The parents Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette have a great chemistry about their somewhat strained marriage. But really this movie belongs to the two child stars, Paul Dano (The Girl Next Door) and Abigail Breslin (Signs). Dano barely speaks in the movie and yet he creates this complex young man, trapped in this dysfunctional family. Then there is Olive (Breslin) who thinks everyone in her family are the greatest people on earth and she is so focused on this beauty pageant because it has been her lifelong dream. She carries the movie throughout, when there was a lull or something that seemed to be going wrong in the movie Olive was always the hero. This movie is so amazingly brilliant, charming, heart warming, and at time laugh out loud funny. Really I recommend that everyone go out and see it, you won't be dissappointed.
9 out of 10