Hollywoodland

Imdb synopsis: A detective examines the mysterious death of George Reeves, TV's Superman.

Adrian Brody is a fantastic actor, too often given interesting roles in uninteresting movies. As my dad says, he's like lightning. But they sure do erect a bunch of lightning rods around him.

Sort of a hum-drum movie that follows the death of TV's original Superman, Hollywoodland tries to shed light on another one of those corrupt Hollywood scandals (Black Dahlia, Argo, etc). Mr. E didn't realize til halfway through the movie you were actually following two story lines: Simo (Brody) and Reeve (Affleck) and they both have their own character arcs.

I really think the only reason I kept watching this was because of Brody. I loved his gritty attitude, the way he played the game. I enjoyed watching his troubled relationship with his ex-wife and son, the way he fought to make his job mean something. Ben Affleck was a bit boring- I think in this case because of his character, but I haven't been super impressed with him until Argo. Granted, the story was set before my time so I think those who knew the drama surrounding George Reeve and the Superman show may have connected with it more, I just don't think it was a movie to stand the test of time.

Plus, I think some of the movie-making was sloppy. It was very difficult to tell what time-period was being portrayed if you didn't see the actors right away. And time within each arc was loose- I never knew how far we had come from the last scene, thus everything seemed sort of rushed or un-motivated. This movie definitely could have been clearer, but I think other murder-mystery movies have done it better.