Results tagged “James Ellroy”

Rather than merely join the chorus of those who dismissed Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia, and rather than cast a dissent from the general critical favor accorded The Illusionist, I’ll respond to critics I enjoy and respect whose perspectives on these movies differ significantly from mine.

This is, to some degree, an act of self-doubt. I disliked both films and have no difficulty enumerating their faults. But part of me fears I didn’t open myself adequately to the movies, or watch them closely enough.

Most importantly, though, these essays from other critics do a better job articulating and developing the movies’ themes than the filmmakers do. These writers see great things in The Black Dahlia and The Illusionist. I see them, too, although I think they’re in raw form in both movies.

Today marks the release of Brian De Palma’s adaptation of The Black Dahlia, and I’m torn.

• I love the work of James Ellroy — the crime writer on whose novel the movie is based.
• De Palma does virtually nothing for me.
• Ellroy has gotten more stylized, more sophisticated, and better over time, and 1987’s The Black Dahlia — the first book of his “L.A. Quartet” that closed with the fantastic L.A. Confidential and White Jazz — began a period of rapid growth. That’s a nice way of saying that the book is lesser Ellroy.
• Yet Matt Zoller Seitz is persuasive about the movie’s charms.
• And then Dana Stevens guts it.