A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: Hollywoodland

Date Viewed: 9/24/06

Details:

Adrien Brody (Louis Simo)

Diane Lane (Toni Mannix)

Ben Affleck (George Reeves)

Bob Hoskins (Eddie Mannix)

Director: Allen Coulter

Score: 1/2

The Review: Fall 2006 was the season for roots-of-Hollywood mysteries, reflexive noir about the unsolved puzzles of yesteryear, back when the movie business was glamorous and the powers-that-were could get away with murder. Or so these films would have you believe. This was the first released of the two thematically similar films (Black Dahlia is the other).

Was Superman's death truly a suicide? Or, at least that of George Reeves, the actor who played Superman in the television series in the 1950's? Hollywoodland pits Adrien Brody (as PI Louis Simo) against the cops and the studios in an attempt to assemble the evidence into a compelling story, before he gets beaten to a bloody pulp.

But, as with many crime investigations, the evidence can be assembled into several different patterns, which in this case yields an intriguing film structure resulting in something akin to a quantum-choice parallel universe branching-tree. Three different alternatives are provided, and the audience is left to puzzle out which (if any) is closest to the truth. One prominent storyline involves an affair between Reeves (Affleck) and the wife (Lane) of one of the studio big-shots (Hoskins). And it's both surprising, and a bit of a let-down, that Reeves is portrayed as somewhat of a complaining jerk -- hunky, a little pudgy, but a jerk.

(1-Jan-07)

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