[Snowflake]

Tonight's fare was Hollywoodland. On a scale of 1 to 10 I'd give it a 5. Well cast, the film could have been tightened up by a good 30 minutes of trimming. The intrercutting between the flashbacks and the present were choppy and excessive and disturbed the flow when something was slowly building, and then nothing. Essentially, I felt the whole film was a slow build to nothing.

Affleck was handsome and charming enough, but I didn't really care for Reeves as a person or character in this film at all. I think the best scene was an early one in which he meets the Diane Lane character, Toni Mannix, those fairly crackle with possibility. Then we get to the skid row, second rate detective story. I love Adrien Brody, but this sub-plot of the divorcee detective and his angst ridden son and bitter ex-wife did not really move the plot along.

Bob Hoskins was short and sweet as Eddie Mannix. Not enough to do, but the denouement with Brody was excellent.

Diane Lane was a bit over the top, but in a good way. Got to give her props, she played and older woman, was made up that way and pulled it off. Loved her pink t-bird, that was the real Lana Turner moment, think The Bad & the Beautiful (now that is something they should show at the cemetary screenings).

Some of the movie seemed over crowded, cramped sets, claustrophobic. Cinematography was good, it had the lush, 1950s look to it. But the direction was plodding, imo. As I said, 30 minutes could have been trimmed easily.

In the end, the movie solved nothing, gives you three options and leaves it to the viewer to figure out what really killed old Superman. The sad thing, you get to the end of the movie and you don't really care about poor old George or anyone else for that matter.