Hollywoodland

Hollywoodland (2006)

Directed by: Allen Coulter
Written by: Paul Bernbaum
Starring: Adrien Brody, Ben Affleck, Diane Lane, Bob Hoskins, Robin Tunney, Larry Cedar, Caroline Dhavernas, Molly Parker, Zach Mills, I dunno... some other people...

I'm feeling remarkably apathetic at the moment. Um, this is about a private detective who is hired to solve the mystery of George Reeves' death. The police say that it is a suicide, but some people are convinced that he was murdered, and this guy is determined to find out the truth, whatever the cost.

He doesn't, of course, find out the truth. If anyone had discovered that George Reeves had, in fact, been murdered, surely we would have heard about it by now. Well, okay, there's a lot of discussion on the matter, but who fucking cares, really.

That's sort of the problem I was having with this movie. I don't care whether or not George Reeves killed himself. I guess the movie was also supposed to be about the corruption of Hollywood or something, but I don't really care about that either. It isn't exactly breaking news. It reminded me of The Black Dahlia, though it was marginally better. For one thing, I like Adrien Brody a hell of a lot better than that Josh Hartnett dipshit (I think Josh Hartnett was in that movie... I remember the other guy, Aaron Eckhart or whatever his name is, but not the leading dude).

I can't get enough of Adrien Brody - he made the movie kind of interesting. I mean, I didn't care about anything in it, but I wanted to see what happened to him. He's good. A lot of people make fun of his nose, but I don't find it all that distracting.

I don't really like Ben Affleck all that much, although he plays a crappy actor quite convincingly. Go figure...

Anyway, it feels a lot like an HBO special, not surprisingly seeing as Allen Coulter had directed episodes of Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, Rome, Sex and the City, among other things. It just had that tone, you know.

It actually looked quite good, it was well shot, the colours were appealing to me, but I just didn't really care about what was going on. I would have been much more interested in a story that didn't have to do with the film industry. I'm tired of movies about movies (movies like this about movies anyway - I could watch, say, Ed Wood again).

Yeah. And just to answer a question that has plagued me for so long, George Reeves and Christopher Reeves were not related. They just both played Superman, had the same last name and died in nasty ways. That's all. Coincidence? Maybe they should make a movie about that...

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