Hollywoodland

Its not impossible to be a clever writer of films today. But it is hard if you want to play with the noir genre. I've seen two recently that know what they are doing: "Brick" and "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang." The notion of noir is so well developed now, it is hard to play with. There's a parallel in Jazz, I think, the other uniquely American invention in popular art. It seems innovation has stopped in Jazz — some say it is impossible — and matters of style now rule, together with degrees of deviation from the form.

This tries something different and fails tremendously. I would appreciate it if what they attempted were bold and engaging. But it isn't and the most I can say is that it is an uninteresting failure.

What's attempted here is a sort of layered noir. In genuine noir, you have two worlds, the world of the hapless folk we see and the world of fate that jerks them around. The viewers are assumed into that second world.

In this project, the two worlds are both put on screen. One world is the world of chumps, occupied by Reeve, and our mannered noir detective. He's strictly noir, with the required boozing, womanizing, injury-attracting, money chasing qualities.

The other world is the world of movies, their producers and watchers together. Its a vast conspiracy, protected by the police (and all of the government, presumably).

This isn't the same as Billy Wilder's "Sunset Blvd" which puts the world of movies in that first world, subject to the same capricious twists as the aging actress and her new monkey-boy.

No, this is different, but it isn't well worked out. Halfway through we realize that we should have "gotten it" by now, or at least been given a thread to follow to later loose. Instead, there isn't anything developed. Yes, we see a man get sad. Yes, we see a mystery, played Rashomon-like with multiple truths. Yess we see loyalties formed and broken, and a bunch of other narrative fragments thrown in.

But we get nothing we can follow. There are four or five ways to give us an unfollowable narrative that we can follow. Not here. This movie committed suicide before it came to us.

The only nice things I can say are that Diane Lane does her character well, but then she really does worry about looking pretty in Hollywoodland. And there is a nice visual touch in the Sacred Heart cards, that in real life were placed by Ms Mannix after the death.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

I recently was lucky enough to get to go to a screening of this film followed by a Q&A with director Allen Coulter, stars Diane Lane and Adrien Brody; each one of which did a fantastic job in their most recent performances. Coulter's first foray into film is a very successful one. His abilities with the camera from his experience like The Sopranos is clear throughout and is very strong from the opening shot of LA as it swoops into the house as police enter the crime scene that is George Reeves home. The cinematography by Jonathan Freeman ("Rescue Me", "Taken") is very strong with a great contrast in shadows and a subtle yet noticeable difference between the two times shown in the film. Coulter also uses music and sound differences to establish the Louis Simo (Adrien Brody) and George Reeves (Ben Affleck) time lines as separated. The acting is all around amazing, Affleck and Brody take their characters and live them, both amazing. Affleck has a few moments where the Reeves voice seems to lapse slightly but it's nearly unnoticeable. Both near perfect performances and as for the rest of the cast, there is not a poor performance to be found in this film. Expect a SAG ensemble nomination here. The overall style of the film is very interesting. Coulter describes the film as a "film noir in the daytime" and a "film about a modern man." The story is beautifully told with a nicely flowing back and forth between George Reeves life up until his death and 'independent investigator' Simo's search for the truth about that fateful night. Overall the film gets a 9/10 from me because it was simply nearly flawless, I left the theater very happy for having seen it because I'm willing to predict that this film will get some mentions come award time.

As someone who has spent a number of years preparing the definitive biography of actor George Reeves, I approached this film with great trepidation. I had previously turned down several offers for the film rights to my own book because I felt it unlikely that those projects would result in a film truthful to the essence of the man I had come to know so well. All I can say is that the makers of "Hollywoodland" came as close as is humanly possible in the real world of movie-making to achieving exactly what I would have hoped for -- an examination of George Reeves's life and death that is true to the times he lived in, true to the kind of man I found him to be, and as true as possible to the most likely scenarios that have been projected to explain his death. While this is not a biography nor a documentary, and while adhering to each and every fact of Reeves's life would have resulted in a film exactly as long as his life, the artists here have done a powerful and affecting job of telling Reeves's story, and have framed it in a fictional setting that illuminates rather than obscures the truth.

In any event, in any life, there is what happened and then there is the truth, and the two may not always equally serve our understanding of the event or life in question. It is true that "Hollywoodland" takes occasional liberties with specific facts, in no less way than Shakespeare took liberties with the real life facts of Hamlet or Julius Caesar. But as Alfred Hitchcock said, drama is life with the dull bits left out. What matters is not whether a costume is the right shade of blue or whether there's really a gas station at the intersection of Sunset and Benedict Canyon. What matters is whether the essence of a true story has been faithfully told. And "Hollywoodland" does a superb job of portraying that essence, who George Reeves was, what his world was like, and what impact he had on those who knew him and those who only knew of him. Allen Coulter, the director, has done a splendid job capturing the era and has paid enormous attention both to period detail and to the details of the lives of the real-life characters. Only Reeves's fans (and not even many of them) will notice the pinkie ring on Ben Affleck's finger or the widow's peak in his hairline or the exotic Alvis auto he owns, yet these are all completely authentic to the actual Reeves. More importantly, Coulter has done an exemplary job of making Reeves into a human being, one whose dreams we ache for almost as much as he does in the story.

Adrien Brody, as the fictional detective whose story provides the audience a window into Reeves's life, is solid and manages to bring a little charisma to the comparative low-life he plays. Diane Lane is superb as Reeves's lover, the sexually hungry but aging Toni Mannix. And Ben Affleck does certainly his best dramatic work ever as George Reeves. In makeup, and with his own matching cleft chin, Affleck sometimes looks astonishing like the real Reeves. But more importantly, he captures the haunted quality of the actor on a treadmill to oblivion, as well as the immense charm for which the real Reeves is widely remembered in Hollywood. Although the script does not give any of the actors the kind of deeply meaty scenes that win Oscars, some of the hardest work to do is for an actor to excel in scenes that don't require fireworks. Affleck in particular does so in this film, and I think it does him credit. He is reported to have researched the role intensely, and it shows. The performances of Larry Cedar, Bob Hoskins, and Lois Smith also stand out especially distinctively.

The cinematography is stunning, with the frequent flashbacks clearly distinguishable from the "present day" scenes without the distinction being glaring or even obvious. And the musical score is elegant and very evocative of the time.

It is perhaps inevitable that die-hard Superman fans, for whom George Reeves is not so much a human being as he is a sort of superhero himself, will find things to carp and cavil about in this film. As a researcher with over thirty years of in-depth study of Reeves's life, I can split hairs over details pretty easily myself. And I suspect, too, that some of the complaints will be about the depiction of things that are actually true, but which don't show Reeves in a worshipful light. All I can say is that I have spent my adult life studying, admiring, and trying to understand the man whose story this film tells, and I think George Reeves would be touched and proud of the care these filmmakers have taken. I highly recommend "Hollywoodland."

First things first, Ben Affleck is not only amazing as George Reeves but he's by far the best part of "Hollywoodland." Oozing a dark charisma as the doomed TV actor, Affleck creates a surprisingly compelling character. He even makes a convincing Superman, ironic given his casting as Batman in the DCEU.

But despite Affleck's stand-out performance the overall film is dragged down by otherwise shallow characters and a weak, unengaging story. The film tells the tale of a private detective (Adrien Brody) as he investigates the mysterious death of "Superman" star George Reeves. The film starts out strong with a promising premise, and by far the most interesting element of the plot involves the flashbacks to Reeves' rise as a TV star and his ultimate death by gunshot. But the majority of the plot, which focuses not on Reeves but on Brody's private detective, is too slow and lacks dramatic tension. Many if not most scenes involve overly long, bland conversations that don't do enough to further the plot. Reeves aside, the main characters are largely undeveloped and not interesting.

"Hollywoodland" could've been great had the producers decided to do one of two things: A) Cut out the investigation storyline set in the present day and focus the movie almost entirely on Reeves, or B) Make the movie a thriller like "Rashomon" or "JFK" that told alternative versions of Reeves' life and death from different points of view. But as is, in spite of Affleck's performance and a handful of good scenes "Hollywoodland" just doesn't work. 6/10.

When I first began hearing about this movie, the premise, as I understood it, was that George Reeves'apparent suicide was in fact a murder, heading into the movie with that in mind, I was a little surprised, although not terribly disappointed to find that this movie is less about a murder mystery and more about man trying to find his path to stardom. What makes this movie ultimately so frustrating is that it wastes time and energy trying to give you a parallel storyline with Adrien Brody, as the self-important amoral private eye, who is trying to fix his life, this was an unnecessary and at times tedious plot line and as good as Brody is the better storyline and performance belong to Affleck. With some better editing and a more focused view of what this story should be this would have been an outstanding movie. Ultimately it seems that rather than take a chance on the performances generating buzz, the producers decided to sell a mystery that never fully materialized, as opposed to a layered and interesting character piece about a man not many people knew about.