They're like twins. Totally twins.

The Movie: The Black Dahlia, directed by Brian De Palma
Recommendation: L.A. Confidential. I believe they know one another.
Reason: I love noir, I loved L.A. Confidential, I love Mia Kirshner, I liked Carrie and Mission: Impossible. C'mon, this was practically a sure thing!

I've got to find some way to turn today around. The Night Listener was lukewarm, The Wicker Man BLEW and now The Black Dahlia somehow turned out uninteresting and horribly convoluted. It started nicely, it looked so right, they...okay, so they had some casting problems going on. Like Josh Harnett, for starters. Scarlett Johannsen. Hilary Swank. The feel that L.A. Confidential pulled off with aplomb was caught in bits and snatches here and there, mostly when the visuals were telling the story.

Unfortunately, once the look of the movie is overtaken by the performances and the story, the goodness evaporates. Don't get too attached to the story of the Dahlia herself-her life and death seem like afterthoughts, overwhelmed by subplots and rambling offshoots. One of the more compelling unsolved Hollywood murders is shelved to showcase Josh Harnett's inability to command the screen and Hilary Swank and Scarlett Johannsen slinking around in vaguely appropriate costumes (and in the former's case, a godawful accent).

If you look for the good, though, you can find it. Aaron Eckhart finds some soul and neurosis in the case the movie's supposed to revolve around. He digs deep to play his part and he would have made a much better protagonist than Harnett's soulful gaze. Mia Kirshner plays well, perhaps overworking her moderate screentime. In comparison to the other women in the picture she's a shining star. Rose McGowan, clocking in at around five minutes of screentime as Sheryl Saddon, has more personality than Hilary Swank's Madeleine Linscott. Let's not even mention Fiona Shaw utterly dominating the climax of the film, pushing the madcap campiness much too far and simultaneously ripping any possibility of one of the leads outshining her from their limp grasp. I don't know that those performances and the look of the film are enough to recommend it to anyone, though.

-158/365 down, 207/365 to go