The Black Dahlia
It's really hard to understand why Brian De Palma would chose to adapt such an uncinematic screenplay. And sadly, as beautiful as Scarlett Johannsen is, she's no Faye Dunaway. Inevitably, you see her straining to 'act.' Yet despite the completely undramatic nature of the film, there is a hint of the vigor that energizes the book, an energy that suffuses Ellroy's best writing, of which Black Dahlia might be the first exemple. It's hard for the literary establishment, with its bent for 'fine' writing, to understand what is great about Ellroy, who is pulpy, repetitive, verbose. Yet there is a diabolical truth and energy to his major works, an accomplishment that I would place against any American prose writer of the last quarter century. In his stories of crime, lust, depravity, perversion, torture, and murder, he provides metaphors extreme enough to capture the chaos and amorality of capitalism, especially in its LA incarnations.