DVD : Hollywoodland

In association with Amazon.com

Rating:

- Was ok nothing grand
A movie about the possible murder of an actor who played superman in TV series. Incidentally he is also a Reeve (George Reeves) like the Chirstopher Reeve who was to take over a superman in the movie. Plays itself as a whodunnit but does not reach to any conclusion as it is based on a true story. The case was closed as a suicide but along the movie we find a low life private investigator played by Adrien Brodie try to understand and through his mind's eye we see three possible ways in which Reeves could have died including the official suicide scenario. It's a run of the mill movie which you know cannot provide you anything startling as it has to stay true to the fact. So you kind of know it's destined to an anti-climatic end but you stick around for the period sets and costumes and the acting. I felt the movie was ok nothing grand.

regards, Vikram

Rating:

- Fails to deliver.
Hollywoodland starring Ben Affleck is a boring biopic of Superman television star the late George Reeves. This film is slow and irritating to say the least. Diane Lane is good as always while Affleck is just ok as Reeves, he has never been given a role that does anything for him I think. The film shows both point of views, did George Reeves kill himself or was he brutually murdered? To this day, no one knows for sure and Hollywoodland does little to make a decisive point. Skip this one!

Rating:

- The Death of Superman
George Reeves played one of Scarlett O'Hara's suitors in the first scene of "Gone With the Wind." It was his first movie role and the beginning of what should have been a successful career. But Reeves' big break came twelve years later as a double-edged sword. In 1951, he was cast to play the title character in "The Adventures of Superman," a TV kids' show based on the comic book hero. Reeves finally achieved the fame he coveted, but at a cost. He was so closely identified with the Man of Steel that other acting work became elusive. In 1959, newspaper headlines reported that Reeves had committed suicide.
"Hollywoodland" combines the story of Reeves (Ben Affleck) with that of down-and-out L.A. private eye Louis Simo (Adrien Brody), who attempts to attract media attention to himself by suggesting that the actor's death was a result of murder. Simo is divorced and has a young son (Zach Mills) who is troubled by the death of his TV hero. Simo operates from a cheap motel room and hustling has become a way of life he's not very proud of.
Director Allen Coulter switches back and forth between the stories of Reeves and Simo, giving background on the private life of the actor, his affair with the wife (Diane Lane) of a powerful studio executive, his role as a kept boy toy, and his growing dissatisfaction with his career.
As Simo delves into the "suicide" of Reeves more carefully than the police, he makes odd discoveries that raise difficult questions. Why is Reeves' mother (Lois Smith) convinced that her son's death was not a suicide? If Reeves shot himself, why were three bullet holes found, one from the exit wound to his head and two in the floor? Why have the police been so quick to call Reeves' death a suicide when there are so many odd circumstances surrounding it?
Simo is a man possessed as he devotes most of his working day to chasing leads, dropping hints to reporters, corralling and questioning people who were at Reeves' house the night he died, and arrogantly insinuating himself into the investigation that results in the reopening of the case.
As the film progresses, we are shown three scenarios -- all imagined by Simo, armed with assorted information he has accumulated -- of what happened in Reeves' home the night he died. According to the facts of the case, the credibility (or lack of it) of participants, and the power that the film studios wielded in Los Angeles, each of the three scenarios is reasonable. Coulter never presumes to present one version as accurate. He lays out the possibilities and lets the viewer put the pieces in place.
"Hollywoodland" combines elements of film noir with a traditional murder mystery. It is made with great style and care. The cast is uniformly first-rate. Affleck, who has taken it on the chin from critics and moviegoers alike for such debacles as "Gigli" and "Surviving Christmas," is excellent as Reeves, particularly in the early scenes, which portray the actor as a charming, handsome playboy able to enchant a woman with a smile and a witty remark. Affleck conveys an easy self-assurance and suaveness that alter later as his character deteriorates. Reeves enjoys the material goods being a kept man provides but yearns to become a star in the league of Clark Cable, not a guy in tights bashing through papier mache walls on TV.
Eddie Mannix, a top M-G-M executive known for sweeping embarrassing facts under the carpet if they threaten to create bad publicity for the studio or its stars, is played by Bob Hoskins as a bulldog of a thug in a dinner jacket. His speech clearly suggests tough beginnings. He has had to look the role of studio executive while drawing on his questionable contacts and methods to hush up gossip before careers are destroyed. Hoskins has little to say, conveying a sort of silent menace. There's never any doubt that this is a man you don't want to cross.
Diane Lane's Toni Mannix is an older woman infatuated with Reeves. Since she and Eddie have an open marriage, there is no need to conduct her affair in the shadows. She buys Reeves a house and sees to it that he has whatever he wants. Everything, that is, except decent film roles.
Lane looks great, even though she's playing a woman concerned about her fading beauty. Completely hedonistic, her Toni regards Georgie as her personal amusement, not as an actor striving to move ahead. We can understand Reeves' attraction to a beautiful woman with powerful connections in Hollywood.
Rated R for language, violence, and some sexual content, "Hollywoodland" is excellent at weaving a riveting tapestry around a 1950's celebrity and the notoriety caused by his death. Director Coulter makes the film involving because he approaches it from two angles. It's not a straightforward biography of Reeves, nor is it a modern film noir. It contains elements of both, certainly, but has an integrity of its own. The fact that fine actors have been cast and all do a solid job gives the movie stature. Rather than solving a decades-old mystery, "Hollywoodland" lays out the "What if...?" possibilities while shedding some light on George Reeves when he wasn't in that famous costume.

Rating:

- Why wasn't this film better?
This so-called "fact-based" melodrama about the death of "Superman" actor George Reeves had all the potential in Hollywood to become a blockbuster of monumental proportion. It took an event based on reality from the golden age of Hollywood studios (the action took place during 1959), it added authentic Hollywood scenery and location shooting, and it had a cast of masterful and beautiful stars (Adrien Brody and Ben Affleck as the male leads, Diane Lane, Bob Hoskins and wonderfully sinful Robin Tunney in support) blended in a Tinseltown mystery that had all the potential to be the first "Chinatown" of the new millennium. Instead, this movie was a flop and a bore. Why is that?

First, a brief synopsis for those that haven't seen it. TV star George Reeves (Affleck) kills himself, the Los Angeles police declare it a suicide and close the case, Reeves' mother hires private investigator Brody to investigate the case, which she says is a murder, and his investigation leads to a story told in flashback and real time sequences. While at time atmospheric and involving, the storyline has bumps and cliches to overcome.

Brody, probably the most talented actor now in Hollywood, recieves poor direction as the whimsically understated investigator Louis Simo, who just happens to be a divorced father living on the fringe of the P.I. fraternity. His characterization in this film is more cliche than living, breathing three-dimensional person, although he has effective mind sequences late in the film when he concludes, first, the Reeves was inadvertently killed by his lover and, second, that he was murdered and, third, that he did himself in.

Of the remaining stars in the cast, only Hoskins has the potential to approach Brody as an actor. He has a one-dimensional role as a Hollywood big shot and cuckold husband to Lane, who plays Reeves lover and entree to the "Superman" role. Tunney, playing Reeves later lover and fiancee, was convincing in her bad girl role but also monochromatic, pointing out another shortcoming in this film -- unimaginative direction. These actors all did well with their parts as moveable cardboard cutouts while not one particularly distinguished themselves.

Furthermore, the script and pace of the film did little to involve viewers. Instead of building a slow web of deceipt and corruption a al "Chinatown", this script meandered all over the place with far too many side trips. First it was as a mystery; second it was a portrayal of the cliched life of Brody's character; third it was a peek behind the scenes at the way things are done by Hollywood studios; fourth it was a murder msytery involving too many characters and too many subplots that took the viewer away from the main storyline. In one of Simo's subplots, illustrating a failure among many failures in his life, one of his other clients kills his wife, who he'd hired Simo to follow. This side trip -- which took up three scenes in the movie -- added nothing to this film and betrayed its raison d'etre.

I don't know how long it's been since I saw a film that less met my lowered expectations than "Hollywoodland". I'd have to go all the way back to 1980 and "The Formula", where the worst editing in film history wasted the talents of George C. Scott, Marlon Brando and other great actors in another mystery about a timely issue of that day and ours -- the machinations of increasing gasoline prices. So chalk up "Hollywoodland" to the junk heap of films that had classic potential and instead became mediocrities.

Rating:

- Hollywood Murder George Reeves SUPERMAN
This is simply a women scorned had him knocked off..If they unfold the facts he was almost knocked off earlier with car crash .Everybody connected with him wanted him dead..The truth will come out..The studio heads bought out his mother's investigation..Suicide no way,no powder burns on body..Gun wipped clean..
His mother made sure he died a hero...
He was known as honest George with integrity
What is the answer he was knocked off..
You be the judge and jury and clean the slate...

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