REVIEW: The Black Dahlia (2006)

The Black Dahlia is a 2006 historical mystery/thriller about the infamous Black Dahlia murder in the 40s. However, you’d be hard pressed to really find anything about the actual murder in this film, as this is a movie that seems more preoccupied with…oh, just about everything BUT the goddamn murder.

Director: Brian De Palma

Starring: Josh Hartnett, Aaron Eckhart, Scarlett Johansson, Hilary Swank

IMDb

I guess it’s based on a book from the 80s or something, and, hey, if done well, a story like this could be potentially good. A sort of brooding drama about the lives of two cops investigating the murder. Nothing wrong with that in principle…but the thing is, The Black Dahlia is a horrible movie. It’s been a while since a movie had me going ‘Just end! Just end already!’ after every scene in my head. It’s also been a while since a script made me want to strangle every single character in it and then light their bloated corpses on fire, but hey, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Let me take you readers on a journey now, through the pits of ineptitude capable by man…let me take you through the horrendous well of never-ending suck that is The Black Dahlia.

Sigh.

We start off in the 1940s! Isn’t that amazing? They never let you forget it; what with the constant sepia tone and the set pieces that come off more like a high school production of a Sherlock Holmes story than anything actually genuine. Every single set design, every character costume, every prop is just screaming out ‘look at me! Look at me! I’m from the ‘40s! Really!’ Like a little kid dressing up in a police officer costume on Halloween and then later begging his mom to take him to McDonalds. Eugh.

But enough of that – let’s get to the main attractions here: Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart, playing two cops who are so cool that they hang out chatting about boxing during riots and rebellions in the street. It’s a flashback from the present time when Hartnett is getting ready to fight Eckhart in the ring; sure. But seriously – we see all this cool stuff going on, all this action, and what is Hartnett narrating about over top? “I really thought it would be cool to have a boxing match with the guy from Suspect Zero.” That’s crap and you know it, movie!

What this movie wants us to believe: scenes like the one above, packed with action and social intrigue, are worth skipping over and barely mentioning at all as part of the story...

...while THIS SHIT is considered top-dollar stuff! The cream of the crop! Pfft, get over yourself movie.

And that’s another thing that’s really annoying in this movie…Hartnett’s butt-clenching awful narration, which is about as convincing as a twelve year old doing a Marlon Brando impersonation and editing it over the actual footage of The Godfather. It’s awful and contrived and I hate it – moving on, then.

Gee, I’ve spent so much time on this movie already and I haven’t even gotten to the main plot…well, what is the main plot? Well, Aaron Eckhart beats the crap out of Josh Hartnett and then invites him to hang out with him and his wife, because that makes a lot of sense, right? “Hey, I just knocked out several of your teeth. Want to come hang out with my wife Scarlett Johansson, so she can flirt with you while I’m not around? Yes? Awesome!”

Is that sepia tone getting irritating yet? Yes? Well, we're only 15 minutes into the goddamn movie. TRY SOME OTHER COLOR SCHEMES YOU HACKS.

Yeah, Scarlett Johansson plays Eckhart’s wife in this movie, and I think it’s actually a really impressive performance. Not because of her actual acting or anything; no – she’s about as convincing as a wooden plank would be. But because it’s so damn obvious that she didn’t care at all when doing this whole movie. She doesn’t even try to hide how much she doesn’t give a crap. You can practically see her waiting to get back to her trailer and smoke a joint after every scene she’s in.

It’s hilarious how Eckhart sees them dancing together at a party and gets that squinty jealous, suspicious look in his eyes – dude, YOU INVITED HIM TO YOUR HOUSE. How do you have any right to act jealous now?

"I get jealous even though I let my wife dance with random, attractive younger guys I physically bring home to her...I guess I'm kind of a dumbass."

I also love this one scene where Hartnett comes in and sees Johansson stripped down to her underwear just standing there washing her face in the sink. She turns around and sees Hartnett checking her out, and does nothing…uh, how about closing the door, you goddamn bimbo? I know you really want to bang Hartnett for no reason at all, but c’mon, be a little more subtle about it! Since we know so little about her relationship with Eckhart or even her as a stand-alone character, it’s hard to get invested in crap like this, makes little sense, and is mostly more humorous than dramatic or suggestive.

"Oh, closing the door is just so hard, especially when me and my husband made a new friend who apparently feels at home enough to just walk in at any time! But luckily I totally want his body for reasons only privy to hack screenwriters!"

Hartnett notices a big scar on her back that says ‘B.D.,’ which he uses his masterful detective skills to figure out means Bobby DeWitt, who was some pimp scumbag who she used to work for, who is currently in jail but getting out soon. Hartnett muses on how people hurt women all the time and…has anyone else noticed the big problem with this yet? They haven’t even talked about the Black Dahlia murder at all! We sure get a lot of nonsense about boxing, about the relationships between men at the police station and a lot of fluff about Hartnett hanging out with Eckhart and Johansson and going to the movies…but when your movie is called ‘The Black Dahlia,’ and you spend this much time on very poorly written drama and exposition, hell, you can see how I’d be disappointed! Just get to it already, you hacks! God, I’ve seen neighborhood watch meetings that are more exciting than this movie.

So we get some crap about some mob boss guy who they have to go arrest, and there’s some shootout. I guess there’s a minor subplot about the Black Dahlia murder, which finally occurs, but really, that’s just a minor side plot. Where’s the riveting talk about boxing? We also really need more scenes with Scarlett Johansson flirting with Hartnett behind her husband’s back. Who cares about the real, historical event that the title of this movie is based on? Deliver the good stuff, movie!

But, yeah, all jokes aside, the murder finally happens, so we get some scenes of Hartnett and Eckhart investigating stuff around town. They’re poorly done and cliché scenes, sure, but at least at over 30 minutes into the movie – yes, over 30 minutes in – we’re finally on the main plot. Baby steps, you know?

Scenes that have something to do with the Black Dahlia murder? Wow, I totally didn't expect that given the way this was going. It sure is an interesting sub plot, but when are we getting back to the main plot about romantic whining and cheating on husbands and boxing and stuff? This is pretty boring.

Hartnett, I guess, learns that there is some woman in Hollywood who looks identical to the murdered girl, so off he goes, ever the super detective. He meets up with the woman, who is played by Academy Award winning actress Hilary Swank…anyone expecting a good performance out of this great actress will be as disappointed as they were with the other big names in the film, as miraculously director Brian De Palma managed to take a bunch of these huge actors and get the worst performances possible out of each and every one of them. What a perfect load of asinine horseshit. Swank’s character is a cardboard cutout of a noir lady, only there to look hot in low-cut dresses and flirt with Hartnett in a silly accent…charming, if you’re 13.

"I won two Oscars, and now I'm in this movie acting like I'm strung out on meth and happy pills at the same time. Life sucks."

To get him to hide evidence and keep her name out of reports, she flirts with him and gets him to agree to come see her the next night, and he accepts because he is the greatest detective ever…all great detectives take bribes and are easily fooled by a pretty face! But while I was expecting a hot, steamy sex scene, we get this:

That’s right, she invites him in to meet her parents, and the first thing she shows him is a petrified dog. Apparently the dog was trained to fetch the paper, and on one particular day, Swank’s daddy learned that he got a big promotion, and so he shot the dog in place and left the newspaper in its mouth to remember the occasion forever. And nobody seems to consider this at all creepy, disturbing, morally wrong or an unholy abomination of nature! Anyone with good sense would just turn the movie off right now, after this plus all the other injustices to human decency this movie has, but not me. I hate this movie far too much to let my viewing up to now go to waste by not finishing. Let’s do this!

I love how Hartnett got suckered into an awkward date with her parents there and everything…that’s priceless, and because this movie caused me so much pain, seeing this gave me some vindictive catharsis. That pained look on his face like “I was thinking we’d be having sex by now, not listening to your lunatic father and horrible-acting mother” is just priceless. It’s not enough to make up for the rest of the god-awful cinematic train-wreck, but at least it’s something.

They do eventually have sex and everything, and it’s about what you’d expect – pretty much just a space-waster to put some smut up on the screen, and it doesn’t even last longer than half a minute or so. This movie is about as erotic as watching a porno with your grandparents.

Have you forgotten about the mutilated dead girl in this movie yet?

So really, there isn’t a whole lot to say about the middle of the movie because it’s just Hartnett and Eckhart going on a tour of the super obvious, gratuitous 1940s settings with scowls on their faces while Hartnett narrates overtop in his super-serious gritty detective voice – keep it up there, buddy, maybe someday you’ll really sound halfway convincing! The movie even just stops for a bit to show us how cool the 1940s were by showing us their comically over the top set pieces:

THIS IS THE 1940S! THIS IS THE 1940S! Did you get that yet?! Didja?!?

Did I mention the obnoxious repetitive saxophone notes played throughout, as if to accentuate every other 1940s stereotype this movie could pile on? No? Well...it's obnoxious.

So, you may be asking, what’s going on with Aaron Eckhart’s character? Yeah, I know you don’t give a shit about him in the least, but just pretend you do and go with it. Apparently overnight he became obsessed and insane over the Black Dahlia case and is now acting totally crazy all the time, shouting at his wife and causing scenes at work. I love how, when he causes a scene at work, Hartnett gets dragged in with him to get chewed out…seriously, why? It was obviously only Eckhart who made any trouble! Do they just think Hartnett looks cute or something?

And seriously – Eckhart being this crazy is not a good sign. Have you guys seen the last time he got like this?

Not a happy time.

But really, though; this whole plot thread about Eckhart going crazy is so poorly handled that I find it hard to believe that veteran Scarface director Brian De Palma actually orchestrated it. There’s no segueway! There’s no character development! He’s normal in one scene, then we cut away from him for 5 minutes, then the next time we see him, he’s raving mad. That’s beyond third-rate screenwriting; that’s like seventh-rate screenwriting! Somebody send this writer back to college and teach him how to write a proper goddamn story. Shit. What’s his name; Josh Friedman? And he hasn’t written anything else since this movie? Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me very much!

There’s one scene where his wife Scarlett Johansson explains that he’s so gung-ho because he lost his kid sister when he was younger, and so now any murdered girl reminds him of her. For one…that’s retarded. And two, really, a one-line explanation is a serviceable character development now? Go to hell, movie.

Anyway, apparently that DeWitt guy from earlier is being released now. Since The Black Dahlia is allergic to having scenes involving the actual Black Dahlia, we get a fight scene between him and Eckhart. There’s a struggle, and DeWitt ends up dead, but then a mysterious figure also slits Eckhart’s throat and kills him, too, throwing him over the balcony.

"I'm so glad I'm finally out of this movieeeeeeeeeeee!" *splat*

Johansson is so broken up about her husband’s death that she and Hartnett start making out almost immediately afterwards:

Look how sad they are! They're just broken up over Eckhart's death!

What a two-timing slut-whore. I guess dead husbands turn her on? This seriously pisses me off, and for that to happen when I’ve already had my brain melted by the rest of this movie’s mind-numbing insanity and stupidity is a pretty big feat. Bitch, your husband just died! I know nobody in this movie can show any kind of emotion beyond over-done melodramatic whining, but come on! How am I supposed to be invested in a character that just shrugs off the death of her husband like five minutes after it happens?

No, literally, it’s instantaneous. He gets killed, Hartnett looks sad, he goes over to her house and they talk about it for like a minute, and then they’re making out. It’s not even like grief sex, either; no; the next morning they’re snuggling and smiling and talking about what to make for breakfast. WHAT PLANET AM I ON? This is despicable and low even for this shitty ass movie! I hope Josh Friedman or the author of the book or whoever the hell authored this crap gets a rude awakening one day when they realize the ramifications of loss can’t be solved by shacking up with your buddy’s grieving spouse the very same day. Ugh.

Look at all that heavy grieving they're doing!

Okay, whatever, so it’s revealed that Johansson was keeping stolen money from this drug deal that Eckhart was helping to cover up, which is why he killed one of the guys in that shootout earlier. This plot thread is pointless and largely evokes a yawn from the audience, but it does get Hartnett back into the loving arms of Hilary Swank’s character! Because that’s really what I wanted to see! More running around to unlikable female characters for contrived, ridiculous melodrama! Why isn’t this god-forsaken movie over yet? It’s like torture! This should be used as a torture device on terrorists at Guantanamo! If you won’t close it down, Obama, at least make the best use of it possible!

So it’s then revealed that it may have been Hilary Swank’s character’s father who killed the Black Dahlia girl, because…he was in the house when she was making a pornographic lesbian film? I really don’t know, and I really don’t care. Two seconds later, we find out that this was all a red herring, and that the father didn’t do it, but the MOTHER did! Yeah, great suspense there, movie. That was, what, maybe a minute or two at most that we thought it was the father who committed the crime? Well, I was just on the edge of my seat, I say!

Whenever someone tries to tell you this is a good movie...just show them this face, and they'll shut up right away. And seriously, this lady's performance is just amazingly awful. If she didn't get awarded a Razzie for this I'll be very surprised.

But yes. This movie just solved the Black Dahlia murder. Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that just so smart and revolutionary? 60 years of policework couldn’t do it, but a hack screenwriter like Friedman and the doofus who wrote the book can! I am just so blown away by this amazing twist! So blown away that I want to know more! Tell me, movie, why did Hilary Swank’s mother kill the Black Dahlia?

Well, apparently it’s because the Black Dahlia looked like Hilary Swank’s character. That’s really all we get. That’s the big reveal – she killed the girl because the girl looked like her daughter. How did she even get away with doing it right there in the yard? I dunno! The movie didn’t plan that far ahead. Well, I extend my middle fingers as high as they will go straight in the direction of this festering disease of a movie, this horrible collection of clichés and overdone melodramatic tropes!

That’s The Black Dahlia, and it----

What? WHAT? WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT’S NOT OVER YET?! I still have more of this torture to sit through? Oh, God! Why? Why?!

So what, it’s revealed that Hilary Swank actually killed Eckhart earlier? Hartnett responds to this by shooting her and killing her right in her hotel room where they had sex earlier. He then goes back and gets together with Scarlett Johansson again and sees the Black Dahlia’s murdered, mutilated body lying on the ground in a vision, I guess symbolizing that he’s still thinking about the case. But like the movie as a whole, he just shrugs off the real, historical, UNSOLVED murder and goes inside to have more sex with Scarlett Johansson. Isn’t that just so perfect for this ass storm of a movie?

Hey, the sepia tone is gone! IT'S A MIRACLE!

"We can forget about this because it was never the main point of this movie and doesn't even deserve mentioning again. No, what's really important is that a man-slut cop gets together with a lying, horrible bitch who got over the death of her husband by having sex with his best friend five minutes after it happened. Truly she seems like the best person to be with!"

What they don’t show you is the police finding Swank’s dead body and throwing Hartnett in prison for murdering her. They don’t show you him getting ass-raped in prison for the rest of his life while Johansson’s character becomes a single mother and can’t give her unborn child a good life. They don’t show you those things, which would be a good thing in most movies. But I hated this movie so much, hated all of the characters, hated their reactions to every situation…I hated everything in this film so much that I WISHED we had seen that shit!

The Black Dahlia is just uuuuggggghhhhhhhh! I can’t even describe it in a proper English word, it’s so horrendous. Everything about this film is just painful, from the tacky sets and costumes to the convoluted plot and the horrible, unlikable characters. And it’s a shame, because some of these actors like Aaron Eckhart actually did try to make something good out of this, even in spite of the hack-work script, and even De Palma tries to conjure up some atmosphere with the admittedly decent camerawork. But nothing can salvage this botched up movie. The whole concept of introducing a romance subplot into a detective murder plot is iffy enough, but ending the movie on it is just creepy when you really think about it. It’s like, hey, here’s a story where a young girl got cut in half and mutilated beyond recognition…aren’t you glad it ended with a happy couple getting together? That just doesn’t work at all.

And the crowning jewel of awfulness has to be the fact that they solved the unsolved Black Dahlia murder, and not only that, but gave it such a weak and unimpressive story! All they could come up with was ‘she was killed because some mother thought she looked like her daughter’? Bullshit! That’s so anti-climactic it almost rewinds the entire movie back to the beginning. Which is a fate that nobody deserves. You really can’t just do that – resolve things that were actually unsolved in history. And if you do, you have to have godly writing skills to back it up and make it work for the story, make it plausible. So The Black Dahlia is a failure on pretty much every level, and I hate everything about it. I hope this movie burns in the lowest depths of cinematic hells imaginable!

The pictures in this review belong to their original owners. I do not own any of them.

REVIEW: Lord of Illusions (1995)

Am I dreaming? Is this movie part of some kind of freakish, nightmareish sub-reality in my mind brought on by some guy sticking his fingers in my head? Is Clive Barker stupid or actually so subtly gifted and talented that I can’t even perceive how great he truly is? Was the Kennedy assassination the work of a lone gunman, or was there something more at work? For the answers to all of these questions…don’t watch this movie, because it’ll just confuse the shit out of you and you’ll spend your time pondering the answers to those questions PLUS the myriad more brought on by the film’s insanity. Trust me. I know. I’m a survivor of Lord of Illusions.

Director: Clive Barker

Starring: Scott Bakula, Kevin J. O'Connor

IMDb

After watching this, you will be transformed! Transformed into someone who hates the art of cinema! Into someone who thinks the only way to make a good movie is lots of referential crap to dated stuff that nobody watches anymore, plus tons and tons of gore! Transformed into a mindless slave of the Clive Barker cult of nonsense!

The film begins with some people going in to stop this fat, balding guy who apparently has magical powers from using those powers to do something with a girl he kidnapped – it’s not entirely clear what his plan is. Except, of course, for being a fat, balding guy with no charisma, charm or acting skills…seriously, what is the draw to this guy? People are apparently worshiping him and lining up to join his magic cult thing, but this is the first really big hole. Who would follow this guy? He’s about as charming as a wooden fence post.

So yeah, I’m not kidding here, THIS is the leader of these mercenaries…rebels…whatever the hell they are:

What is that? The bastard child of Steve Buscemi and a weedwacker? Well, whatever, he goes in and tries to save the girl, telling her it will be OK but not actually saving her yet. Isn’t that the best kind of rescue? Also, why do they always gag people in movies where they can still talk? Doesn’t that go against the point of a gag?

She can clearly still talk through that, and as we'll see in a few scenes, she can still pick up and use a weapon even with her wrists tied like they are. So basically this is a failure of a hostage situation.

Then we see the best method of villainous plotting ever conceived – hanging out behind a rotating wall and then dramatically revealing yourself when you could have just stabbed your enemy from the start when he came into the room:

I guess the plot here is that this magician guy, Nix, is obsessed for some reason that is never fully made clear with that Steve Buscemi lookalike, whose name is Swann, and so he wants to “show him the truth of the flesh” or some inane bullshit; you know, the usual Clive Barker formula. Have a guy intone deeply and say cool sounding things that mean nothing, and then play some gory shots over it that also mean nothing. Maybe his philosophy is that two meaningless things, when put together, will create something of substance. But I think it’s fair to say it just annoys the living piss out of his audience and makes him look like a giant tool.

Then Nix gets shot in the back by the hostage girl he tied up. Gee. Maybe you shouldn’t have left her hands untied enough for her to use a gun. And maybe you shouldn’t have been so unobservant as to let her near that gun in the first place. You’re really not much in the brains department either, are you Nix? How the hell are people following this guy again?! They bury him underground and say he’ll never come back, but since the movie still has an hour and a half left, how much do you wanna bet he comes back?

They're putting down their bets right now...and hoping to win! The woman in the middle is putting all her rent money on the table even.

Oh, and this was all in less than the first ten minutes, by the way. Isn’t that a beauty? I’ve talked about so much already and the movie isn’t even close to starting its main plot yet. Ugh…

We then fast forward 13 years to New York City, where some private detective named Harry D’Amour gets a house call from his boss, generic frumpy white businessman. The conversation that follows is – I’m not gonna lie here – probably the most generic movie conversation ever made in the history of cinema. The guy in the suit says he has a job for D’Amour, who is skeptical about it while popping a bottle of beer. But we know he’s going to say yes and just go. Why wouldn’t he? When in the history of movies has the drunken, down-and-out detective ever said no to the One Final Job?

5 o'clock shadow? Rich 1%er boss with one last mission for him? Alcoholism problem? All checked off! You are officially the lead character in your very own terrible detective story...and seriously, how poorly acted is this character anyway? He blends into the background so much you almost forget he's even there most of this movie. I mean, he's only supposed to be our moral center of things. I guess that wasn't important.

So he ends up in Los Angeles chasing some guy who apparently is conning someone. He follows some guy to a fortune teller’s office where he finds a guy holding the fortune teller hostage, having already stabbed him several times in the chest. Then D’Amour is attacked by some bald bodyguard guy. How will D’Amour beat this guy? He slams the door in his face aaaaaaand that stops him cold!

Ugggghhhhhhh doors!!! I was trained for everything except fighting through them! Doors are my mortal enemies!

When the bodyguard FINALLY gets through the door several minutes later, D’Amour throws him out a window. Truly this guy was the best henchman ever. Then the other guy leaves as well, leaving D’Amour to tend to the wounded fortune teller, who dies. What are D’Amour’s chilling, poetic words to summarize witnessing such a painful death scene? None other than “Shit.” That’s all he says, and isn’t it just perfect? I think I’ve heard better eulogies from a five year old flushing her goldfish down the toilet.

So I guess the story behind this is that someone or something is killing off all the members of the squad who brought down that Nix character 13 years ago. Why did the killer take 13 years to get started with that brilliant plot? Because that fits the time this movie was released in the mid 90s. There literally is no other reason besides that. D’Amour gets hired by the wife of that Swann weirdo who is now a big time stage magician, who wants him to figure out what the hell is going on. Even though…he was already doing that anyway and didn’t need to be hired twice. Oh, wait! I know the reason!

"We have no reason to be attracted to one another besides the fact that I'm the main hero in a poorly written film noir detective story! Let's have sex!"

Literally without even saying anything, you know they’re going to have sex before the movie ends. It’s that friggin’ obvious. Why else even have this shit in the movie at all, if not for a cheap and poorly written romantic “plot”? This movie is as predictable as a weather forecast in the middle of a drought. I know it’s trying to be all homage-y to classic film noirs and detective stories, but god, would at least a little bit of energy and cleverness be too much to ask for?

Then D’Amour ends up going to one of Swann’s shows with the wife, whose name is Dorothea. The show is…well, it’s not really much of a magic show. It’s more like what would qualify at the video store as “special interest.”

Is that the Yogurt statue from Spaceballs?

Yeah, nice Power Rangers poses there you morons.

If you like seeing a bunch of mostly naked men wrapped up in metal wiring dancing around a statue of an ambiguously Indian-looking idol statue, well, then you would be in for a treat. I just imagine here all the people who brought their young children to see this, expecting a magic show. Wouldn’t this be just so strange to them?

Then Swann performs his ultimate trick – bloody, violent death!

Eh, I've seen better magic shows. 7/10.

And in the words of Harry D’Amour to describe the situation: “Shit.” That about sums it up.

Afterwards, D’Amour investigates some other magician guy and comes across the name Nix, which he figures is connected to the deaths of all these people, and when he asks Dorothea about it, she sends her butler to tell him to stop working and go home. So he finds out what she was looking for and she doesn’t like it? He DID HIS JOB, WHAT SHE ASKED HIM TO DO, and her response is telling him she doesn’t like it? What the hell? Is some kind of semblance of a logical sequence of events REALLY THAT HARD? Jesus Christ, Clive Barker! What’s wrong with you? Can’t you even just…try, for once, to write something that isn’t totally talentless hack work and just, maybe, I dunno, might be a crazy idea, TELL A REAL STORY? God!

So after that D’Amour ends up going over to Dorothea’s mansion where they have this conversation:

D’AMOUR: [Swann] thought Nix was coming back, didn’t he? Didn’t he?

[DOROTHEA slams her hands on the table and looks distressed.]

D’AMOUR: I can’t help you unless you talk to me.

DOROTHEA: Nobody can help me.

Normally dialogue like this wouldn’t be anything worth pointing out, except for what follows:

I mean really, REALLY?! "Oh, I just want to help you solve this crime" = making out with a stripper pole between your boobs? What universe is this?

Well, I called it, and it was totally predictable that they would end up having sex. But honestly, what the hell led to this? They were talking about the case and then, bam, they were making out, and one scene later they were in bed. Did Barker just miss a page of the script where they started flirting with one another? There was no build up to this at all! Usually there’s…something, at least, like a scene or two of them sort of being coy with one another, but here it’s literally just a totally unrelated conversation leading to them doing it! It’s like a parody of a film noir rather than a homage. But then again, expecting Clive Barker to start understanding anything about human interaction now would be an exercise in futility.

Then we see the worst special effects this side of Cube II: Hypercube as the ghost of Nix chases them around the palace and stuff:

If they were going for "childish red crayon scribble" then they got that one 100% correct!

After that, we find out that Swann is actually still alive, and faked his death so that the ghost of Nix would leave him and his loved ones alone. This is so stupid that even a dunce like D’Amour can point out the holes in it, like that Dorothea was the one who actually shot and killed Nix to begin with, so why wouldn’t he go after her anyway? It all just comes to point out how much of a goddamn pussy Swann is, and him being alive…really adds nothing to the rest of the movie, seeing as it’s almost over. So why add it? To pad out the running time, of course!

So apparently that one guy from earlier, who killed that fortune teller, is the main villain now as he kidnaps Dorothea and takes her to the site from the beginning of the movie, where they raise Nix from the grave as the incarnate of Frank from the first Hellraiser movie:

Can you tell this was made by the same guy yet? If the poorly written story and lack of serious atmosphere didn't give it away...

He almost kills Dorothea, but D’Amour saves her. Nix decides that he wants to explode Swann’s brain, so he does exactly that, rendering him a brainless vegetable. Then we see that he corrupts D’Amour by sticking his fingers in his head and making him see other people like this:

Well to be fair watching Clive Barker movies for too long makes me see people that way too.

…until Dorothea shoots Nix in the head and kills him!

Oh, did I say that kills him? I’m sorry. I meant he’s still alive after being shot! I always get those two confused…and seriously, can’t this shit JUST END ALREADY?! They push him down into a hole and kill him that way. What did we learn from this? That if you push people into holes and shoot them, they die? What the hell was the point of any of this garbage? I feel ill just thinking of the time wasted on this that I could have been using for something more productive, like watching paint dry, or reading my neighbors’ tax returns.

Lord of Illusions’ only real illusion is that it somehow got green lighted. You thought you were getting a good movie, movie studios? Well POOF! Bait and switch and you’re left with Lord of Illusions. God, what a mess. Did people ever really take this seriously? I mean Hellraiser is one thing; that at least had an iconic and memorable main villain. This? This has N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Sigh. It’s like Clive Barker has some kind of magical spell over his audiences blinding them to his talentlessness…some kind of strange pull over the minds of the weak…

…nah, people are just too easy to please and that’s all there is to it.

REVIEW: Identity (2003)

I’ve been debating recently as to whether the ending of a film can literally be so bad as to ruin the entire experience. If the rest of the film up until the third act has been a relatively pleasant and investing experience, can the ending really take it all away that fast? In Super, for example, it did kind of ruin the movie, as the ending undermined what the rest of the film was trying to do. In other movies, like today’s subject, however…it’s less complicated than that. In movies like Identity, the ending ruins the movie simply because it makes the whole thing completely suck while at the same time making you wish they hadn’t tried so damn hard to make something intellectual! Argh! But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s watch this stinker.

Director: James Mangold
Starring: John Cusack, Amanda Peet
Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0309698/

The movie begins with a bunch of cops preparing for a late night hearing the last night before a convicted murderer is about to get executed, and apparently the defense found some new evidence conveniently right before he was supposed to croak. What timely events!

Then we cut to a seedy looking motel where a family that looks like they should be in that god-awful Cape Fear remake is driving around. They run over a spiked heel in the middle of the road – weird, right? The movie thinks so, too, so it takes the time to flash back to a hooker played by Amanda Peet playing bondage birthday cake games with an old fat man, like something out of a horrible caption contest picture. Seriously, just look at this:

Anyway, she packs her stuff and then remembers she has to get something while driving later, so even though she’s all alone on a deserted road, she can’t just pull over and stop to look for it, no; she has to try and do it WHILE DRIVING. So she loses a bunch of stuff from her suitcase, including the shoe that the family ran over. Was this flashback…at all necessary to explain why a shoe was in the middle of the road? Actually yes, yes it was. I was actually hoping they would show MORE of that flashback, like why Amanda Peet became a hooker to begin with! Or what she ate for lunch the previous day. Or the first time she saw Two Girls One Cup.

Anyway, then the mother who was in the car gets hit by another car driven by everyone’s favorite limo driver, John Cusack, who was in 2012 several years later where he also played a limo driver. Amanda Peet was also in 2012. I SMELL CONSPIRACY! Anyway Cusack wants to go help the woman he just ran over, but the bitchy actress he’s driving around says no, because…well, there is no reason. She’s just a callous and horrible person.

Cusack, being a decent person, helps them anyway and they all go into a motel run by this guy, who was in Winter’s Bone and…yeah, he was certainly in that…anyway, in this movie he's just really prejudiced against Amanda Peet's hooker character. This unnecessary and senseless bias makes up the core of his character.

"I'm the highest class of cheap seedy motel owners!" Seriously you dumbass, don't prostitutes come in there all the time? Look at the place you run! Must be hard to get what very little business you get if you're selective about your customers!

And yeah, Amanda Peet is back. She drives back by the place where she lost her stuff – hours later? Really? What was she doing that whole time? Did she just reach her destination and then think, “gee, I really liked that one shoe I lost! Better go get it!”? That…just seems strange to me. Anyway, she gets stuck, too, and picked up by the Cusack. They find this other couple driving around, Lou and Gina, who don’t have a cell phone for them to use. What? Don’t have a cell phone? In this day and age? Pfft…it’s like this was made in 2003 or something…

Meanwhile, since this movie had too much dignity before, Ray Liotta shows up as a cop transporting a murderer to add his own input to the movie. He’s a short-tempered gun-crazy lunatic of a cop, but he’s still better than his character from Hannibal.

"Allow me to prevent you from ever finding me likable at all...mmmm...sleaze..."

His convict is played by Jake Busey from Starship Troopers, rounding out the cast of B-level actors you know you've seen in other movies, but can't remember exactly which ones. Joyous.

Then we see that Cusack apparently has the magical main character powers that every hero in these movies has as he manages to stitch up that George guy’s wife who he hit with the car earlier – oh, did you not even remember that with all the other nonsense going on in this movie? My bad. Allow me to never correct this convoluted insanity. But I digress – you know how in all of these poorly written films, the protagonist is a guy with a shit job who can somehow, almost magically, do unexpected things like fix wounds and take charge in tense situations? Cusack is like the poster child for that in this movie.

John Cusack is God! He can do ANYTHING!

Meanwhile in the courthouse, people shout because apparently that’s what this movie thinks is dramatic. Don’t have any actual depth? Try HAVING ALL YOUR CHARACTERS SHOUT ALL THE TIME AND LOOK SERIOUS. Screenwriting 101!

So before you start to think this whole thing is the set-up for a horrible Nancy Drew book, things get hairy as the actress Cusack was driving around is found murdered in the washing machine, because I guess she wasn’t clean enough! This of course sends everyone into a panic, especially when they find out that the convict Ray Liotta was transporting has escaped. This causes Lou and Gina to go have a sporadic fight for no apparent reason. Apparently, Gina lied about being pregnant to get Lou to marry her because her best friend told her that she saw him talking to some girl at a bar and…oh, do you care? Just put it on Jerry Springer. The whole thing ends with Lou gutted in the corner:

Well that's a LITTLE bloodier than most couple fights get...

Then they find out that Liotta's convict, who has been tied up to prevent him from doing anything crazy, has been murdered - SO WHO WAS THE KILLER? They get their answer when they find out that Larry has a dead body in his freezer. He tries to drive away but actually just hits and smashes George against a wall like a cartoon character turned to a pancake, killing him instantly. So they tie him up and he tells them the story of how he was broke and strapped for cash and came across the motel and found the owner dead, so he just started acting like he was the motel owner.

Then all the dead bodies start disappearing without a trace, like they were cleaned up by Samuel L. Jackson in Cleaner!

Except that was actually pretty good.

Then it's wacky fun escaping time as that Gina chick and the little kid, Timmy, try to drive away, but unfortunately the car has other plans for them, as it's tired of being in this movie and wants a quick out:

Then things get even WACKIER as everyone realizes they all have the same birthday and that their names are all named after states, like Ed Dakota, Larry Washington and so on, so forth. What relevance does this have to anything? Well, just wait a few minutes - you're about to be horribly disappointed.

And then time just unravels as John Cusack wakes up and gets told by Shakespearean actor Alfred Molina – yes, they got a guy who was in The Tempest to be in this garbage – that he (Cusack) is actually just one of this serial killer’s split personalities, of which there are 10 in total (i.e. all the main characters in the film), and one of them has been “killing” the other personalities inside his mind at the motel for the entire movie up until now.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet THE ONLY REAL CHARACTER IN THE MOVIE!

So yes. This movie just basically did a ‘none of it really happened’ trick on us. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I’m not even going to be able to review the rest of this in a linear fashion – it’s bullet point time!

+ First off, I must repeat – ARE YOU KIDDING ME? This is the worst ending twist I’ve maybe ever seen! How do you even DO something like this…you have a relatively good story going on and then you just completely BOTCH it with one of the outright stupidest ending twists ever! Couldn’t these idiots have just stuck to the motel story? That actually wasn’t bad! Sure, it was hammy, ridiculous and over the top, but it was at least an interesting story! The characters had some depth and they were getting kind of interesting. Why would I even WANT to watch a movie about some fat POS in a chair about to be electrocuted with multiple personalities? The movie has clearly picked the wrong plot to come out on the forefront.

+ So what, all of these characters are inside his mind, right? So Amanda Peet, John Cusack, Ray Liotta and that Winter’s Bone guy all live in the head of an overweight version of the Pillsbury Dough Boy? Somehow I don’t think that’s going to hold up. And since this guy was actually ‘acting out’ the whole movie in his head all along, just picture him doing that scene with the prostitute and the guy handcuffed to the bed with the birthday cake on his chest. Isn’t that a pretty picture?

Eugh.

+ Third, the premise behind this is that the multiple personalities this guy has are the characters we’ve been watching this whole time, and they are killing each other off in a mental “battle” for a dominant personality to emerge. This could possibly be interesting if it were handled in a better way (more on that in the next bullet point), like in some kind of really artsy film, but for what is supposed to be a grounded, semi-realistic psychological thriller? It’s beyond bad. The whole premise is that the defense lawyer for the guy is trying to get the court to overturn his execution by proving that the “killer” personality is gone. How are they supposed to prove that? Are they just going to point at him and say “Look, he’s cured now”?

There is NO WAY this would ever fly in any actual US courtroom. He would be sent to the killing chair the second that idiotic psychologist brought up the concept that his multiple personalities were literally killing each other off in his mind like a bad Friday the 13th sequel. I mean really, you might as well just use the South Park Imaginationland argument and argue that leprechauns are real even though they’re imaginary – in fact that argument was much better handled than the one THIS crockpot of a lawyer is suggesting!

+ And FOURTH and finally, this story is handled in a crapsack, hamfisted, clumsy-ass way! There’s no subtlety to this! Oh, it’s raining all the time because his mind is in chaos! Oh, the characters all have the same birthday because it’s really HIS birthday! SUCH SUBTLE CLUES! Why don’t you just slap a B-roll on the bottom of the screen explaining how we’re supposed to be SO AMAZED at this movie’s intellect the entire runtime? You might as well.

To sum it up, this plot twist is total, complete and utter ass!

Phew. So let’s wrap it up – Liotta is revealed to be an escaped prisoner who just disguised himself as a cop. He kills off Larry and eventually shoots John Cusack, too, who is a saint for actually giving a crap about his performance in this thing – seriously, acting like he cared about any of this must have been an exercise in sheer mastery of will – and then Amanda Peet kills him, too, escaping to an orange grove in Florida, a plot point which was explained somewhere while you were marveling over how stupid the end plot twist was.

Then we flash back to the real world again where the courts, probably because they were just tired of being in this piece of shit movie, have decided that the killer’s execution will be stayed, since they apparently DID believe that Liotta was the “killer personality” and that now that the Ray Liotta portion of his brain has been removed, he is no longer a danger to anyone. But since Ray Liotta has no brain, what does this really mean? Is it a statement on how little our minds actually see that’s true? Or is it saying that you should have spent your money on a different movie? I’m going with the second one.

Really, the only thing that could possibly make this movie any worse is if the little kid, who disappeared earlier, turned out to be the killer all alo---

Don't f*ck with little kids!

AW, GODDAMN, YOU JUST HAD TO DO IT, DIDN’T YOU?! You morons! Were you just trying for the worst possible ass-fest of twists you could think of? The Sixth Sense and Signs were still pretty recent; were you just trying to outdo those for worst ending twists ever put on screen? It’s made more insulting when they actually put in horrible over the top flashbacks from the kid’s point of view that explain how he killed everyone, like we couldn’t “get” it otherwise. Ugh! I don’t even care. This review is over. I don’t even have to explain why this one sucks, do I? Just don’t watch it. You’ll have a better day.

Images copyright of their original owners.

REVIEW: Deadfall (1993)

You might notice I haven’t posted much lately on this blog. Well, that’s simply because the last movie I saw was so bad, so pointless, so horrendous in every way, that I could not sum up my feelings in any conceivably literate way until now. Yes, folks, this is Deadfall, the most half-assed and hackneyed concoction of soggy, tired film noir clichés ever conceived of before Black Dahlia came along about 13 years later and raped all of our minds. But at least this one has Nicolas Cage! Cage is really the only saving grace about this at all, as the rest of the movie is just pure garbage in every way. Introduction enough for you? I think so.

Director: Christopher Coppola

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Some Other Assholes

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106684/

The credits show us a few things – the director is Christopher Coppola, it’s starring Nicolas Cage and Talia Shire has a part in the movie as well. Is this just a Coppola family reunion? Well, after watching it, you’ll wish they had some of the other Coppolas helping out; you know, like Francis Ford or Sofia. Maybe they would have made this at least a little bit watchable. But let’s just get started with the actual movie before we’re here all day.

The film starts off with some idiots in suits who obviously were late to the bargain bin theater production of Grease driving around. Then we get an incredible change of pace when the same idiots in suits going into a warehouse and pretending to be hardcore gangsters making a sting operation. Yeah, because I’m sure this slop will make me forget Paul Newman and Robert Redford in The Sting, right? Christ. Two minutes in and already I’d rather be watching an M. Night Shyamalan picture. That’s a new goddamn record.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the narration, delivered in perhaps the most unfitting manner ever by the worst protagonist in cinema history, Michael Biehn, who plays our main character Joe. Seriously, this guy has all the charisma of your average coma patient. He’s about as interesting as a piece of wet toast stuck to a cat’s backside…wait, actually I think that would be far more interesting that Michael Biehn’s narration!

Then a shoot out starts when the bad guys figure out they’re being played. I love how these morons are just firing randomly into the dark; isn’t that always an indication of great gunmanship?

"If we keep shooting blindly at the dark, SURELY we'll get things done!"

So in an act of true mastery of the craft, Joe accidentally kills his business partner and father in a shoot-out. Yeah, better try actually learning how to aim next time, you twit. I seriously don’t know how they expect us to take this even remotely seriously. Oh boo hoo, you screwed up; deal with it you little pisshead.

And what’s this? A scene of him crying in his room leaning against the bed like a little pussy? Allow me to extend both my middle fingers in your direction, movie!

Seriously, I'm not trying to downplay a horrible tragedy or anything but this is just so poorly done, and the movie just throws it at us without trying at all to make us care what happened.

So then he finds out he has to go see his uncle Lou, who’s played by the same actor because they were too cheap to get anybody else, and blah, blah, blah, it’s all very boring and dated-90s-like. It’s mostly just incredibly silly and ridiculous. It’s the antithesis of anything resembling captivating film noir. I mean, it’s less gritty and realistic than a game of CLUE.

Then he meets Nic Cage, who has a name but that doesn’t matter anyway; you’ll just call him Nic Cage so who cares? He mumbles a lot, wears a stupid wig and mustache and seems to never take his sunglasses off…so yeah, almost the same character as in The Vampire’s Kiss. He even has a stupid accent again.

Nice porn star disguise Nic.

But to be fair, his character is at least doing something, which is more than can be said for anyone else in this horrendous nonsense. They go to some bar and do stupid stuff and somehow Cage has a really hot girlfriend…yeah, not buying it; sorry movie. No girl would ever date this guy. I’m half expecting throughout this whole thing to discover that Cage’s girlfriend is actually some kind of transvestite, or something. ANYTHING! ANYTHING TO MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!

Then there’s one scene where they swindle a bartender out of some money? Why? Do the bartenders of the world really have too much money to where you have to play Robin Hood and steal from them? Bravo, Cage, you’ve officially become a true anus of a human being.

So yeah then we see even more implausibility when Cage’s girlfriend starts inexplicably flirting with Joe! Why? Just to get the plot to move forward, because when you can’t think of any ideas in your measly head to vomit out, show some sex scenes:

How much money do you think they had to pay her to have sex with this guy? Doesn't really seem worth it to me.

Watching these two pieces of plastic try to have sex is almost as bad as watching them try to act. I can’t think of anything less arousing short of, well, watching Nicolas Cage and the girl do it. Eugh.

But Cage almost gets killed in a bar after doing some coke, comes home and almost kills her. These scenes are some of the most entertaining in the movie, which really just means they don’t make you want to gouge out your eyes watching them. But Cage is very entertaining, with a truly over the top and insane performance that you can tell he had fun with. I mean, the rest of the movie is so glaringly awful, he probably knew it, and just decided to throw care to the wind and give the most ridiculous performance he could muster. He just didn’t give a crap. At one point he’s literally just shouting gibberish; no actual words at all.

That's his 'I just ate a really sour lollypop' look.

"I will SWALLOW THE CAMERA WHOLE!"

She throws him out, so his next logical path is go to find his employer Uncle Lou, tie him up and threaten to kill him with boiling hot water. He almost does, but then Joe comes in and kills Cage by shoving his face into the boiling water instead. No. No, movie; you can’t do that. YOU CAN’T KILL OFF THE ONLY CHARACTER MAKING THIS MOVIE ENTERTAINING! My heart has been broken. We still have 40 minutes of this to sit through and now the only character making it easier is dead?! What kind of sick bastards created this?

Oh. Oh yeah…well, the only proper thing to do is stop the movie and hold a funeral for Nicolas Cage. Proceed:

OK, now that we’re done with that, let’s go to the bar for drinks.

Now we can…wait, what do you mean I have to finish the review? Haven’t I suffered enough already in the name of entertaining the masses today?!  Well damn. Guess I might as well; I mean what else am I going to do tonight? Go out and have a life?

The movie continues with some awful scenes that try to be deep and serious film noir but mostly just come off as a big fat joke, as Joe narrates some more in a tone of voice that would better fit a children’s elementary school book reading session. Truly this is what Robert DeNiro aspired to when he made Casino, right? This narration is about as credible as Roger Rabbit narrating over Dark City would be.

Joe goes to meet Charlie Sheen, another human sewer-slime who Christopher Coppola dredged up to be in this movie. Sheen mostly talks in a low, almost unintelligible monotone, and treats us to long, agonizing scenes of the two of them playing the world’s most boring game of billiards ever. We never see him in the movie again, and so I mostly just wonder WHAT THE HELL THE POINT WAS. GOD. THIS MOVIE IS LIKE SITTING THROUGH THE INSANE RAMBLINGS OF A BRAINDEAD MENTAL PATIENT WHO JUST WATCHED A MARATHON OF OLD CRIME MOVIES. It’s asinine!

Some more stuff happens, it’s revealed that Joe’s father never died and the whole thing was an incredibly contrived set-up that could have easily gone wrong at any time, and the whole thing ends on a whimper with more of that ear-raping narration. Oh what a treat. This movie is so bad that I can’t even accurately sum up how bad it is. No insults I could make up would really describe it. This is so terrible, so lacking in plot or any kind of good characters or atmosphere, and so wrongheaded that all I can do is just…sacrifice it to the God Nicolas Cage, who sits upon his throne still, laughing at all of us mere mortals. Let this crap burn forever in the fires of Cage’s wrath and greatness, and let it never again tarnish our Earthly plane!