The Black Dahlia (2006)

2/5

The Black Dahlia is a completely fictionalized detective story set in the 40's about the real-life murder and dismemberment of Elizabeth Short. Based on a novel by James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential) and directed by Brian De Palma, I was pretty excited when I first found out about it, and pretty disappointed to hear all the terrible reviews. But I gave it a chance anyway, which was unfortunate. This movie is not very good. The problem with this movie was not that it was too confusing, but that it just didn't make any sense. The characters' motivations and actions were out of the blue and absolutely ludicrous sometimes. Everything was so exaggerated. The plot of the first half feels random and unnecessary, only for the second half to reveal that all these coincidences and side stories were vitally important. Most important-looking characters ended up being superfluous and most forgettable ones turned up again at the end. It somewhat cheapens the whole thing. The dialogue tried too hard and fell flat. It was often hard to hear what people were saying, or divine the meaning behind their words. The characters were unconvincing and felt really out of place in the environment, although I did like the acting. I particularly hated the echoing voices of people remembering important things that others had said.

The cinematography, set design, and costumes worked really great. There was one really slick sequence where Johansson's character sees Hartnett's character with another woman that I thought was done exceptionally well. Some of the fighting was cool, although it was mostly in the beginning. The music really wasn't bad at all and the editing was at least undistracting and competent. At least most of the movie was pretty interesting, despite not really knowing what was going on. All in all, very highly unrecommended whether you're interested in it or not (although it wasn't as terrible as my extremely low expectations).

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0387877/

Lucky Number Slevin (2006)

3/5

Lucky Number Slevin is, all things considered, a pretty entertaining movie. It's very fun, clever, and exciting, with an incredibly well-thought out twist at the end to make you sit up and pay attention. Unfortunately, because it's set up that way, it probably doesn't have a very good replay value. The twists at the end got a bit too ludicrous to be believable, and certainly unnecessary. And in explaining every minutiae of plot twists, the pacing suffers. It is especially exasperating when you've already figured out half of it, but they spend five minutes explaining anyway. The action was almost nonexistent; where present, it was obscured by bad editing techniques and flashy special effects. The camerawork was absolutely atrocious, which probably was one reason the editing was so jarring and gimmicky. While the idea was good, the script itself was pretty terrible; other than a snicker here or there, it was entirely bland and self-indulgent. But all in all, the movie is supposed to be a gangster/con movie, and it pulls it off pretty well.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0425210/