Oh. Em. Gee.

[a_leprechaun]

'aight.

So any of you who may have read my movie reviews in the past know there's almost nothing I don't like. I can find something to appreciate in everything I see.

So when my roommate Jessie told me today that we had to see "The Black Dahlia" because of how terribly, horrifically bad it was, I thought, 'It can't be THAT bad.'But it IS. IT IS

Comments

note: didn't see this movie either

[adampb]

Hell, I think this movie justifies its own existence just BECAUSE it got you to say something bad about something. Bare your claws, dammit! There's no holding back any more!

Y'know, I really dug his "Mission: Impossible" movie for what it was. And I liked a good chunk of "Carrie"--wobbly, but I could dig it. And we'll even throw in cult points for "Phantom of the Paradise" and "Scarface", though I have not seen the whole of either.

But this was my reaction upon my first learning about "The Black Dahlia":
- Ooh, interesting topic!
- Hey, Scarlett J. and Hilary Swank. I'm game!
- Stylishly shot, certainly...
- "Directed by Brian de", awwwww, shee-it.

I haven't followed his career as closely as others in part because his interests and mine do not mesh, but a reputation for style over substance never works for me, even though I am a fan of quite a few directors with a noted style (Gilliam, Lucas, and in his own way Woody Allen).

But De Palma... in a way, it's sort of fitting that lazy, unoriginal college kids slap up the the "Scarface" poster on their dorm room walls (it's not QUITE as ubiquitous as Belushi and "COLLEGE", but it's close, right?). Hey, it looks slick 'n' stylish, it vaguely connotes badassery and a sense of genre, but it doesn't say all that much about the personality who put it up there. That's De Palma. (I suspect he'd also enjoy the overused monochrome lesbian-kiss poster. Heh.)

In response to your 'inside joke' comment, De Palma is, like most of his New Hollywood film-school-generation buddies (Spielberg, Lucas, Scorsese, Milius etc.), one of those guys who can't stop referencing other flicks while he works, always quoting shots and setups from the directors he loves (they're all great fans of "The Wizard of Oz" and "Citizen Kane", and by God you WILL know that!). As you may have gathered I have a soft spot for that behavior, masturbatory as it is, and so you'll excuse me if I tiptoe around that issue and whistle innocently. ;) Not that you can't make an overly cinematically literate film that's still enjoyable as a standalone experience... hell, you can enjoy "Star Wars" without having seen "The Hidden Fortress", right?

On the other hand, I am forever grateful to him for the quote, "The camera lies all the time, lies twenty-four times a second." And of course that darling Bruce Springsteen video where Courteney Cox gets to dance.

Re: note: didn't see this movie either

[a_leprechaun]

Hmm. I guess the inside-joke stuff is alright if the rest of the movie is good--or at least makes sense--on its own terms. But it really doesn't work here.

I actually haven't seen any of his other stuff that I know of, but I was surprised to read he'd directed "Scarface". Isn't that regarded as onna them Very Good Movies?

Re: note: didn't see this movie either

[adampb]

This response will be lazier than I would like, but RL beckons :( -- we're going to open with quotes from Roger Ebert's re-review of "Scarface" for his "great movies" series.

Brian De Palma's "Scarface" rises or falls with Al Pacino's performance, which is aggressive, over the top, teeth-gnashing, arm-waving, cocaine-snorting, scenery chewing -- and brilliant, some say, while others find it unforgivably flamboyant. What were Pacino's detractors hoping for? Something internal and realistic? Low key? ... "Scarface" is an example of Brian De Palma in overdrive mode. Like Tony Montana, he isn't interested in small gestures and subtle emotions. His best films are expansive, passionate, stylized and cheerfully excessive"

'Excessive' comes up a lot in de Palma reviews, as do synonyms. Now. Ebert loves the film and in his love he points out why others may not. Both de Palma's "Scarface" and Howard Hughes' original were controversial in their time, and even today de Palma's holds high rank in most uses of the F-word.

Now, this is America, dammit, and there is a place in our canon for crime movies with massive amounts of drugs, blood, revenge and pulp violence, often involving chainsaws and dismemberment, and I make no criticism of "Scarface" for it. But you can tell, I think, how a filmmaker whose pinnacle work is such a film might run out of gas if he can't keep it together. Critical reception of "Scarface", both in its time and ours, sort of points the way toward how a lot of the man's work is viewed -- in "Scarface"'s case (or his other famous pulp crime film "The Untouchables") his taste for wretched excess worked, but look up "The Bonfire of the Vanities" or "Snake Eyes" some time, and you'll see reactions that mirror yours to "The Black Dahlia", where he was not successful in directing a film with some similar tendencies (though these days he seems to be more into lesbianism than cocaine).

Ultimately it comes down to opinion, but I guess you could view de Palma's best and worst parts as inextricably linked... but then I think you could say that about a lot of directors. That's actually an interesting notion and I will have to think about it.