I watched Hollywoodland last week. It begs comparison to the other recent, true-but-unsolved-crime period piece, The Black Dahlia . It's a favorable comparison for the former film. Black Dahlia stars Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart (two actors I've never really cared for) as L.A. cops and Scarlett Johannson as the third point of their love triangle. Ostensibly, it's a move about the murder of the lady posthumously referred to as "The Black Dahlia," one Elizabeth Short; Short was killed i...

I should first point out that I had a certain bias against this movie long before I saw it. Why? Daniel Craig strikes me as a poor choice of physical type to play the character of James Bond. It was the production company's decision to terminate Pierce Brosnan's tenure in the role, and frankly, I don't see why. Brosnan, who had been considered for the role many years earlier, finally was available after Timothy Dalton's run, and he was easily as good as any of the previous actors. The Brosna...

I just returned the Hellboy: Sword of Storms DVD to Netflix. In many ways, I found the movie to be superior to the live-action version. The characters felt very similar, thanks to the fact that the filmmakers hired most of the same actors for the animated movie. The story seemed to flow much more naturally than in the live-action film, probably because this story was written specifically for this medium and this movie. I have commented previously in this space about how I felt the live-ac...