Remember Me (2010)

2/5

Remember Me is a gutsy movie that doesn't quite work for me. The impact and meaning is based on a surprise at the end that has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie, and therefore is a complete crap shoot as to whether or not you will like it. In fact, the entire movie trudges along because it knows what happens at the end, but you will find it slow and overbearing because you don't. The movie follows Emilie de Raven after a brutal scene in the beginning where she watches her mother get shot in a mugging. It also follows Robert Pattinson as a pale, emo non-vampire who gets into fights with random strangers and cops. The whole thing is very bizarre. They begin a relationship on fairly shaky ground and we watch it progress alongside their relationships with their families, with no sense of where anything is going until it eventually gets there at the end.

The technical aspects are surprisingly competent (I found them surprising anyway). There are some great shots in this movie and some provocative editing. However, that's where the competence ends and the incompetence begins. The script is excruciatingly emo, or maybe it's just the acting that makes me want to tear my eyeballs out and use them to plug my ears. The directing includes unnecessarily violent scenes, presumably intended to shock us with matter-of-fact style. Unfortunately it just comes off as gratuitous exploitation (as does the ending). There is no redeeming factor that would allow me to recommend this movie.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1403981/

Hollywoodland (2006)

3/5

I saw this with my mom and brother tonight. Let me just say that this is not a film noir (or neo-noir), which is what I was expecting going in. Don't get me wrong; it tries to be with its hard-boiled style and sometimes clever dialogue, but the images are too perky, Adrien Brody is immensely unconvincing as the tough-as-nails detective, and the plot is just too simple. What this movie is, is a murder mystery set in the 50's. It reminded me of Michael Crichton's book Airframe because the main character just goes back and forth between theories of what "actually happened," except in this movie the murder is never solved. The method of flashback used is so conventional that it became jarring because it took me away from the 50's setting of film noirs. The movie can't really decide whose story it wants to tell: the detective who loses sight of morals and family or George Reeves and the mystery surrounding his death. So it tries to tell both but fails to quench your thirst for either. The recurring side characters were worthless. Utterly. The feeble attempts at giving the characters backstories by referencing one unique feature felt like something learned as a requirement in a scriptwriting class.

Even so, this movie is mesmerizing, which I think it takes partly from the true mystery surrounding Reeves' death. Despite what I said about leaving the theater knowing as much as when you went in, I like the fact that the director doesn't impose his own point of view on you. Despite the flashbacks, I found the directing to be surprisingly competent. He really respects the audience's intelligence and maturity levels. There were some really nice transitions and artistic flourishes that elevated this into a film instead of just a script. I can't really say I recommend it to either the film noir crowd, the cinema as art crowd, or the murder mystery crowd as it doesn't particularly excel in any of those facets. But it's a worthy attempt.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0427969/