The Black Dahlia reviews

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Eric
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Post by Eric »

Depends on which critics you paid attention to. Glieberman gave it his dependable "F" rating, but (on the other end of the spectrum) the Village Voice critics' poll ranked it the nineteenth best film of the year.

By my standards, Femme Fatale was one of the big critical hits of the year. (Then again, so was About Schmidt.)
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Post by Okri »

Were the reviews for Femme Fatale all that bad? I my have been reading the wrong ones, but I thought it was actually well liked.
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Post by Eric »

Sonic Youth wrote:Before Eric collpases onto the floor and Pauline Kael rises from the dead to take a looksee, Hollywood Reporter and Screendaily respectfully disagree.

Disappointingly, the film edges dangerously into camp.
Count this as the only possible negative review blurb that actually increases my excitement for the film.
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Post by Mister Tee »

And Variety, a bit further down the scale.

Even with the qualifications, this seems to be getting better response than any dePalma since -- what? -- Carlito's Way?

By TODD MCCARTHY


A literally ripping good yarn is undercut by some lackluster performances and late-inning overripe melodrama in "The Black Dahlia." Based on James Ellroy's estimable fictional account of what was, for 47 years, Los Angeles' most notorious unsolved murder, this lushly rendered noir finds director Brian De Palma in fine visual fettle as he pulls off at least three characteristically eye-popping set pieces while trying, with mixed success, to keep some pretty cockeyed plotlines under control. Given the difficulty even the significantly superior Ellroy adaptation "L.A. Confidential" had in attracting a sizable audience, anything more than a moderate B.O. turnout looks doubtful.
Like the novel, script by Josh Friedman ("War of the Worlds") uses the horrific 1947 killing of 22-year-old would-be actress Elizabeth "Betty" Short as a way to delve into the specifically Southern California brand of crime, sleaze, corruption, hypocrisy, cover-up, disillusionment and dream-crushing that has been a staple of resonant pulp fiction for decades.

In this respect, "The Black Dahlia" covers familiar ground, both thematically and in its seductively tawdry atmosphere highlighted by the usual downtown-area locations, deco apartments, constant cigarette smoke, beautiful cars, men in natty suits and hats and women in gorgeous glamour gowns, with the gap between the rich and powerful and those they would keep down never far from the center of things. Add the evocatively bluesy-jazz score and you might almost hear yourself muttering, "Chinatown."

But "Chinatown" it ain't, not in any department. On its own level, however, new pic generates a reasonable degree of intrigue, initially in the ambiguous relationship among tough L.A. homicide detectives Leland "Lee" Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart), younger partner Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert (Josh Hartnett) -- former boxers nicknamed "Fire" and "Ice"-- and their voluptuous blond platonic ladyfriend Kay Lake (Scarlett Johansson). What gives with this threesome isn't revealed until later, but Eckhart in particular takes the opportunity of the opening half-hour set-up to carve a strong impression as a volatile, aggressive cop ready for just about anything on a police force that craves his kind of guy.

In the first big set piece, the camera arches high and low and around and about in covering Lee and Bucky's stakeout of and shootout with some lowlifes in a lousy neighborhood. As their real target slips away, the mutilated body of a young woman is discovered in a field across the street; she's been cut in half, disemboweled and drained of blood, her head bludgeoned and her mouth extended by three-inch cuts on each side into a sick grin, details the police are intent on withholding from the public.

Hotshots Fire and Ice take on the case, but their few interviews with those who knew Betty Short yield little other than her grandiose dreams of movie stardom and her good-times attitude toward men, especially those in uniform.

Bucky becomes fixated on a long screen test he discovers in which Betty (Mia Kirshner) was prodded and interrogated by a director (voiced by De Palma himself).

Strangely, the combination of Betty's killing and the imminent release of a criminal he long ago put away makes the more experienced Lee flip out; with this, the most watchable and compelling character in the picture thus far frequently disappears from view for murky reasons, forcing the lower-voltage Bucky and Kay to the fore.

This changes for the better when Bucky's investigation into a lesbian angle in Betty's life leads him to high-society dark lady Madeleine Linscott (Hilary Swank), who turns up during a wonderful for-gals-only supper club production number of "Love for Sale" crooned by none other than k.d. lang. The suggestive sparring between the working-class cop and the classy woman with a pronounced physical resemblance to the murder victim may not be of the highest order, but it's enough to get them where they need to go, between the sheets and into a hot romance involving untold layers of deception.

Madeleine proves the lowly Bucky's passport to the rarefied realm of the city's drippingly wealthy, starting with her family: There's naughty younger sister Martha (Rachel Miner), batty mother (Fiona Shaw) and strange Scottish father (John Kavanagh). A dinner scene with this quintet is so bizarre you can only laugh, with Shaw's perf so over the top, albeit intentionally, that it amounts to a curious spectacle unto itself.

The convergence in a marbled lobby with massive surrounding stairs of Bucky, the unhinged Lee and his now ex-con adversary provides the elements for De Palma's most virtuoso scene, one in which shocking and upsetting violence forever alters the trajectories of several lives and the picture.

Hereafter, revelations about who was up to what become essential, leading to a big and near-ludicrous explanatory scene in which far too much information needs to be swallowed in one gulp to be remotely digestible. Once the table has been cleared, it's hard to buy what's proposed here as a satisfactory resolution to an persistently baffling case.

Eckhart's very good and so is Swank as a temptress with many games to play. But Hartnett is too blank and expressionless to carry the picture; he narrates and is almost constantly on view, but offers little nuance or depth. His Bucky is the eternal hard-bitten cop who learns life's bitter lessons on the job. It's not the actor's fault that so many great macho stars have made their names playing such parts, but it's impossible to watch "The Black Dahlia" and not idly think of how indelibly Bogart, Mitchum, Sterling Hayden, Jack Nicholson, Russell Crowe and numerous others have handled such roles.

Although she looks properly in period, Johansson also is weak, evoking little of the requisite vulnerability in a damaged woman who keeps the reasons for her hurt, and her real emotional impulses, deeply submerged.

Seen mostly in the vintage black-and-white screen test and brief flashbacks, Kirshner nicely catches the unformed dreaminess of a young fabulist who became famous only in death, while supporting cast of lesser-known thesps playing cops and baddies registers well.

It's great to see cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond working at full command on a big picture again after several years on more marginal projects. His scope framing and constant camera moves possess a bracing confidence.

Much of the film was shot in Bulgaria, but you'd never know it, as Dante Ferretti's unerring production design and Jenny Beavan's costumes combine with sufficient Los Angeles exterior work to provide authentic atmosphere.

Mark Isham's moody, old-fashioned score is one of his best, pumping up the dread and suspense and often providing emotional substance where the actors can't manage it.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

rudeboy wrote:The evening, however, turned out to be the kind of triumph Cannes didn't get when it opened with the lumbering The Da Vinci Code. This is De Palma back to something like his best. It's a superbly shot and at times controversial thriller which may not quite measure up to the film of Ellroy's LA Confidential but is certainly in the same class.
Before Eric collpases onto the floor and Pauline Kael rises from the dead to take a looksee, Hollywood Reporter and Screendaily respectfully disagree.

Black Dahlia


By Kirk Honeycutt
Hollywood Reporter


"Black Dahlia" has the looks, smarts and attitude of a classic Brian De Palma/film noir thriller. During the first hour, the hope that the director has tapped into something really great mounts with each passing minute. Then, gradually, the feverish pulp imagination of James Ellroy, on whose novel Josh Friedman based his screenplay, feeds into De Palma's dark side. The violence grows absurd, emotions get overplayed, and the film revels once too often in its gleeful depiction of corrupt, decadent old Los Angeles. Disappointingly, the film edges dangerously into camp.

No, "Black Dahlia" never quite falls into that black hole. The actors in the major roles cling firmly, even lovingly, to their boisterous characters. The sordidness and madness never seem completely wrong given the rancid world the movie surveys. Nevertheless, the second half feels heavy and unfulfilled, potential greatness reduced to a good movie plagued with problems.

Because the want-to-see factor for this anticipated film is equal to your want-to-like desire, the film's domestic distributor, Universal, could enjoy potent boxoffice. But it might skewer older, to fans of De Palma and crime fiction as well as those who recall Los Angeles' most infamous murder....



Characters, subplots and twists come fast and thick -- albeit abridged from an even greater onslaught in the novel. It is with the introduction of the Linscott family, though, that the story develops a noticeable wobble. Predictably, the Linscotts' involvement with the Dahlia proves extensive. Yet it is really so far-fetched. The family is one of those fictional creations where dementia, delusion and depravity run silent and deep, only to erupt in grotesque outbursts that border on the comic.

And speaking of comic, you should see De Palma and production designer Dante Ferretti's idea of a Los Angeles lesbian bar circa 1947. Instead of an underground hideaway, the place is a veritable Follies Bergere with half-naked chorines writhing and smooching on a towering stairway to the strains of a big band belting out Cole Porter.

But the film does many things right. The rapid dialogue is sharp throughout, as it should be because much of it is lifted from Ellroy's novel. Hartnett delivers an intriguing mix of tenderness, self-righteousness and self-incrimination -- Ellroy cops are never clean. Eckhart plays scenes at full throttle yet never feels out of control. As the good vamp, Johansson uses an angelic pout and faux innocence to have her way with men. As the bad vamp, Swank goes for such unrestrained sexuality that she makes the actual Dahlia -- Mia Kirshner seen in screen tests and one rather tame stag film -- seem almost demur.

Then there are the De Palma touches that pull you out of the movie: the black bird swooping down symbolically on the Dahlia's corpse, an earthquake thrown in for no good reason, Fiona Shaw's over-the-top performance as Madeleine's drug-addled mom, the rush of revelations in the final reel that feels more like footnotes than climactic moments.

Mark Isham's music is lush whether in a romantic or an overheated mood. Vilmos Zsigmond's graceful camera is a tad self-conscious as are sets and costumes, all a little too eager to flout their period trappings.


---------------------------------


The Black Dahlia


Lee Marshall in Venice
Screen Daily

Dir: Brian De Palma. US. 2006. 121mins.


A stylish, steamy genre exercise with a solid cast and a cluttered storyline, The Black Dahlia matches director Brian De Palma with hard-boiled LA crime writer James Ellroy with entertaining, if not wholly satisfying, results.

Working closely with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, set designer Dante Ferretti and composer Mark Isham, De Palma has nailed the queasy, menacing atmosphere of post-war Los Angeles and its obsession with violent death. Some classic De Palma themes – voyeurism, lookalikes, sexual ambivalence, shifting perspectives on the truth – are paraded, ensuring that fans of the love-him-or- hate-him director will be kept busy with the rewind button when the film comes out on DVD.

But The Black Dahlia lacks the masterful mesh between look, sound, story and character of another 1940s-set Ellroy adaptation, Curtis Hanson’s LA Confidential. The smart, noir-literate general audience at which the feature will have to be pitched in order to recoup its $60m budget may well walk away with a sense of sadness at the opportunity missed, despite the solid star cast. Certainly it will have to work hard if it is to exceed the $126m worldwide gross of LA Confidential.

The Black Dahlia, which opens Venice, plays in the UK and US from Sept 15 (in North America it rolls out a week after the not dissimilar Hollywoodland), reaching most international territories during the autumn.

Based on the gruesome, unsolved 1947 murder of aspiring actress Betty Short – aka The Black Dahlia – De Palma’s noirish buddy thriller is set in a seething, unstable Los Angeles in which the stink of corruption rises up from the flophouses of the red-light district to lap around the mansions of the rich.

The film starts off in police buddy mode, filling in the back story of the partnership between muscular LA cops Lee Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart) and Dwight ‘Bucky’ Bleichert (Josh Hartnett), who first met in the boxing ring, where their nicknames were Mr Fire and Mr Ice.

Their friendship is sealed during a stylised streetfight between soldiers and sailors that comes on like Gene Kelly with ultraviolence. Later, it is put to the test when Blanchard introduces his new sidekick to his glamorous girlfriend, Kay Lake (Johansson), a smart cookie who is not above a little flirting with her man’s best buddy.

When the murder that would appear to be essential to the plot finally happens, it does so in the background – literally, at the edge of a long crane shot – while Blanchard and Bleichart are busy on another case.

During the ensuing investigation, Bleichert finds himself torn between his unconsumed attraction to Kay and his relationship with Madeleine Linscott (Swank), a rich- kid femme fatale and Dahlia lookalike who seems to know more about the murder than she is giving away.

The Black Dahlia enjoys an intelligently structured screenplay from Josh Friedman (War Of The Worlds), but it often feels like it is running on separate tracks to De Palma’s direction. Initially the disruption of the crime-investigation-resolution structure proves intriguing, but it then risks becoming wearisome, making an already difficult, switchback-laden plot even harder to follow.

Elements of noir and horror, steamy love triangle and grotesque black comedy co-exist all too uneasily. If anyone can pull off this kind of genre acrobatics then it’s De Palma – but by the end, The Black Dahlia may leave audiences slightly resenting his sleight of hand.

Of the players, Josh Hartnett delivers an authentic take on what could have been a cliched character, the tough-but-vulnerable cop with a conscience. Scarlett Johansson proves subdued but still magnetic; Hilary Swank almost plays against type with a performance and Hepburn-esque accent that manage to stay the right side of hammy parody.

Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond is an able interpreter of the director’s style quirks – like first-person camera angles and restless, swooping circular and vertical shots (though, as so often with De Palma, there are scenes that would have been just as effective if the camera had just kept still). Another De Palma trademark – voyeuristic fragments of film within the film – is neatly gauged, especially in the touchingly pathetic screen tests that give us our only glimpse of Betty Short (played affectingly by Mia Kirshner) in her pre-mutilation days (the voice of the cynical off-screen director is De Palma’s).

Ferretti and costume designer Jenny Beavan have a lot of fun with the style vocabulary of 1940s Americana, mixing the familiar (trilbies, leather braces, sepia-tinged police HQ scenes, beach cafes right out of an Edward Hopper painting) with less obvious icons of the times, like the linear, modernist suburban home where Lee and Kay shack up.

Mark Isham’s score segues from taut orchestral tension chords to jazzy, noirish trumpet and sax mood music as the case requires, and there’s an enjoyable musical interlude featuring chanteuse kd lang in a lesbian nightclub.
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Post by rudeboy »

By Derek Malcolm in today's Evening Standard.

Venice likes Brian De Palma. The Black Dahlia is his fifth premiere at the world's oldest, and some say grandest, film festival. But considering the veteran director's last movie, Femme Fatale, went straight to video in the UK, it was a bit of a risk opening the 63rd edition with this adaptation of James Ellroy's bestseller.

The evening, however, turned out to be the kind of triumph Cannes didn't get when it opened with the lumbering The Da Vinci Code. This is De Palma back to something like his best. It's a superbly shot and at times controversial thriller which may not quite measure up to the film of Ellroy's LA Confidential but is certainly in the same class.

The book and the film are based on the true story of the brutal murder of Elizabeth "Betty" Short, a 22-year-old aspiring actress from the East Coast who came to LA like so many other pretty girls to knock on Hollywood's door. On 15 January, 1947, she was discovered brutally murdered in a vacant lot near Leimert Park.

She was naked, cut in half at the waist and her mouth was slit from ear to ear in a clownish grin. Photographs taken at the time were kept from the public and, despite false accusations and spurious confessions, the killing remained one of the most famous unsolved homicides in the history of the City of Angels.

Betty, however, was no angel. She was a girl about town who was probably a prostitute on the side and acted in pornographic movies when other parts failed to materialise.

Ellroy hoped his book about her would exorcise his own demons. His mother was strangled in 1958. It's certainly fertile territory for De Palma who creates, mostly in Europe, a swirling picture of boomtown LA in which corrupt policemen, venal property developers, ambitious film producers and hopeful starlets mixed with the immigrants trying to earn an honest living.

As one of the most cynical as well as one of the best directors working in America today, De Palma casts as tough an eye as Ellroy did on the incipient greed and depravity of the time.

His chief characters are two young policemen, both ex-boxers, who are called to investigate the murder. They are played by Aaron Eckhart and Josh Hartnett.

While Eckhart's Blanchard is so obsessed with the case that his relationship with Scarlett Johansson's Kay is threatened, Hartnett's German-born Bleichert pursues an affair with Hilary Swank's enigmatic Madeleine, the rich daughter of one of the city's most prominent families.

Bleichert discovers a pornographic tape which proves that Madeleine and Betty (Mia Kirshner) were competing friends. The trap is thus sprung, and both fall into it.

Shot in style by Vilmos Zsigmond and designed by Dante Ferretti, the film has everything it takes to allow De Palma some of those virtuoso tricks that light up the screen in his best works and prove that he knows his movies backwards.

There are reminders of Hitchcock's Vertigo in one remarkable death scene as a half-strangled man falls to his end over high banisters.

But Josh Friedman's screenplay is notable too, so that the cast have every opportunity to spread their wings. Hartnett and Swank are particularly good. But it is De Palma's film. Perhaps the drama becomes melodrama at times. He never lets go of a weird moment. But, warts and all, this is the best American thriller for some time.
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