O.K., enough already. First of all, I'm sick of hearing it everywhere - onstage last night, while listening to music; on the phone; in the subway; standing on line at the supermarket.
THE BLACK DAHLIA is an awful movie (enter primordial scream of countless accusations - bad script, bad acting, bad, bad, bad! BAD!)
And so it goes. I'm sure everyone has heard this litany of criticism echoing on down the line. People, I ask, what do ya like?! What have you been brainwashed into accepting as 'good film-making'? Sentimental Indy garbage with an earnest story and actors trying desperately hard. Hey look at me act. Hollywoodland is an example of earnest talent at work. Look at them act, look at them make a movie, look at them try and fashion a meaningful story from a film noir script. Look at them try and copy CHINATOWN and fail.
DePalma is fearless, and always has been - that's why any of his films will kick most film's ass any day of the week. Then bust it's head open and splatter its brains on the sidewalk, while following its double as it walks away in a crane shot that swoops up and locates us in the vast wasteland of the Angelika Film Center.
His pretty pop candy, drenched in brainsplattered pools of fake blood and outrageous performances is so damn dead-on American we can't bare to watch it. The same way some of us can't stand the work of Andy Warhol. We don't want to admit that we are what we are, a population whose surface shines with all that is meant to be inside. We live to be looked at, more now than ever before. And DePalma's films begged to be looked at. They shimmer with visual beauty and stunning cinematography.
The title link will take you to an A.O. Scott primer on this DePalma split we've got going on around here. I can't say anything better than it's said here (though I'm sure you'll notice he never references his own opinion, which I gather is the opposite). Read it and weep.
