The Black Dahlia (2006)

I’m really beginning to think that Brian De Palma may be one of the most overrated directors of all time.  I’m getting this impression from the films of his that I’ve seen, of course.  Scarface is an overrated average film, The Untouchables doesn’t age well, Blow Out was very good but not timeless, and Carrie was decent, but the man doesn’t deserve as much praise as has been heaped on him for decades.  Also, it has been years since I’ve seen Mission to Mars, Femme Fatale, Snakes Eyes or Mission: Impossible so it would be unfair of me to include them in this discussion.  One last note, the last time I saw Carlito’s Way, I thought it was truly great, so there ya go, I am decently well versed in De Palma’s most recent filmography.

Anyways, long story short, this movie is a meandering and boring beautiful mess.  It features many trademark De Palma camera moves, some of them completely inexplicable.  They literally jar you out of the movie, make you wonder aloud “Why would you do that?”  There are some great actors in this movie, but for the most part they’re just wasted or given complete misdirection.  Mia Kirshner and Rose McGowan might have been the best performances in the movie, and totaled up, they probably don’t amount to 15 minutes of screen time.

De Palma should have gone back and re-watched L.A. Confidential, or maybe even watch it for the first time, because that movie is excellent and would have been the perfect tone for this film.  Not the histrionics of Aaron Eckhart – whom I normally enjoy – or the cardboard cutout of Josh Hartnett, nor the deer in headlights stare of Scarlett Johansson.  Hell, “L.A. Noire” made this case more interesting than this movie.  Now I want to watch Zodiac again to see what David Fincher would have done with The Black Dahlia case.

1 / 5

Carrie (1976)

If anything, watching older Brian De Palma movies is giving me a new-found appreciation for Nancy Allen, so there’s that.  Since I watched Blow Out the other day, I’ve decided to revisit older De Palma movies that I had not seen and had reputations of being classics.  I’ll also be watching The Black Dahlia.  This is the original 1976 version of Carrie, not the 1999 sequel, nor the 2002 TV movie version that was designed to set up a TV series.

If I’m learning anything from watching older De Palma movies, it’s that he doesn’t have a gift for making movies timeless.  Yes, I can sit here and say that it’s a great movie, but a teenager nowadays, in 2011, is most likely going to find it laughable.  It’s not just technology and clothes, it’s atmosphere, it’s execution.  Perhaps if Bernard Herrmann hadn’t died before the film was completed, the score wouldn’t be so jarringly bad (in my opinion).  It’s the acting too, and this movie does have great acting – Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie were deservedly nominated for Oscars – but there’s also just jaw-droppingly bad acting throughout.  AND WHAT THE HELL WAS WITH THAT VOMIT-INDUCING PROM DANCE SPINNING SHIT.  Horrible!

It’s certainly a good movie, but there are a load of flaws throughout and SPOILER ALERT why was the killing of two of the biggest assholes in movie history, John Travolta and Nancy Allen’s characters, so goddamn anti-climatic and emotionless.  Carrie (Spacek) was fucking PISSED and all she did was spin their car out and turn it into a fireball.  I don’t even know if she knew who was in the car at the time.  I’m not sure if the ending to the movie has been highly praised or what, but De Palma knows shit about ending his movies in a satisfactory fashion.

3.5 / 5

Blow Out (1981)

When it comes to Brian De Palma movies and me, well they’re kind of hit and miss.  He’s made some excellent films, and he’s also shoveled some shit out.  And he’s made films that for one reason or another, don’t age very well.  Blow Out is a very good film, but it would not play for today’s audiences.  Come to think of it, it was a box office failure at the time of its release as well so I guess it just wasn’t meant to be accepted by a mainstream audience.

Blow Out is a movie very much made for and about its time period.  With the advancements in technology and filming techniques, pretty much everything displayed as part of Jack Terry’s (John Travolta) job is obsolete.  Hell, we can record and upload YouTube videos of your stupid friends doing stupid stunts in a fraction of the time it would take Jack to piece together his sound effects into the laughably shitty slasher film he’s working on at the start of the film.  That’s not to say that we should dismiss Blow Out entirely, because it is very much a very good movie, just short of greatness.

If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it.  It’s frequently listed as one of Quentin Tarantino’s favourite films, and whatever your opinions on QT, he generally has great taste in movies.  John Lithgow gives a chilling performance that I now see replicated in his “Dexter” Season 4 arc.  However, SPOILER ALERTISH I will warn you that the incredibly bleak ending is what turned the word of mouth about the film back in 1981 to poison.  And the horrible make-up effect on Nancy Allen is terrible, even for 1981’s standards.

4 / 5