De Palma comes up short with 'Black Dahlia'
From the voyeurism of ‘‘Body Double’’ to Tony Montana’s quirky reinterpretation of what it means to fight a ‘‘war on drugs’’ in ‘‘Scarface,’’ Brian De Palma knows how to communicate obsession. Somehow, though, with ‘‘The Black Dahlia’’ (2006), De Palma has wound up with a cast that makes him seem like he’s fallen out of practice, merely telling us characters are obsessed when he should be showing us.
Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart star in the film, adapted from James Ellroy’s speculative novel about the notorious unsolved murder of ’40s Hollywood wannabe (and Medford product) Elizabeth Short. Hartnett’s earnest but slow LAPD detective Bucky Bleichert gets dragged into the Dahlia investigation by his burly partner, Eckhart’s Lee Blanchard, who has issues with the grisly case that have nothing — and everything — to do with his personal life with girlfriend Kay (Scarlett Johansson). Yet the three never work themselves into enough of a lather to make something palpable of the toll that all of this supposedly takes.
The one legitimately mesmerizing portrait of character fixation comes from Mia Kirshner, whose lost, yearning Short is glimpsed in dubious screen tests and a squirmy stag film scrutinized by police. Hilary Swank, meanwhile, has fun with the style and diction of starlets of the day as a Dahlia look-alike whose family is even screwier than she is.
Extras: Production featurettes totaling 45 minutes include an Ellroy primer geared for the uninitiated. (Ellroy’s mother was murdered when he was a boy, leading to his dark fascination with the Dahlia case.) A segment spotlighting De Palma as a stylist holds interest for showing how the production re-created noirera Los Angeles in, of all places, Bulgaria. (Universal, $29.98)
"FACTOTUM" (2006)
Street poet Charles Bukowski's alter ego, Henry Chinaski , once again shuffles onto the screen, played here by Matt Dillon as a jackass-of-all-trades with a booze-dulled longing to become a professional writer. While first-run reviews groused that Dillon, in ruddy makeup, and Norwegian director Bent Hamer ("Kitchen Stories" ) merely serve up Bukowski Lite compared to a film like "Barfly," there's enough wryness and casual wallowing to get across the author's fundamental world view. In one scene, Henry wakes up from yet another binge, trudges to the bathroom, retches, and grabs a fresh beer -- then sits by as his girlfriend (Lili Taylor ) does pretty much the same. When Henry then announces he's leaving her, it's not because this is some revelatory point where he's hit bottom , and has finally had enough ; he just seems bored with what's clearly the usual routine. No big moments of truth here, just lots of scuzzy little truisms about people's incapacity to change.
Extras: A production featurette turns out to be a Norwegian-language profile of Hamer that's almost half about "Kitchen Stories." The closest we get to an explanation of the director's interest in "Factotum" is that he was intrigued by the idea of the character not so much as a stifled artist, but as a functioning alcoholic. (
"INVINCIBLE" (2006)
Mark Wahlberg is effectively cast as blue collar NFL underdog Vince Papale , who landed with the Philadelphia Eagles after a walk-on tryout for coach Dick Vermeil (Greg Kinnear ) at age 30. The movie has a distinctively shaggy, '70s rock atmosphere that didn't come across in trailers, but the producers do nothing to shake up the sports biopic game plan that they previously formulated for "The Rookie" and "Miracle."
Extras: Papale sits in on a filmmaker commentary that shows he's apparently just grown more earnestly positive with time. Toward the end of the track, he's asked whom he'd like to thank, and he touchingly says his wife, for helping him through a cancer scare. (At which point one of the filmmakers smoothly interrupts : Yeah, but what about the production team? Ah, Hollywood.) A featurette on Papale is included -- although it's slightly deflating to be told that, in much the same way "The Rookie" glossed over facts for dramatic effect, Papale did have prior pro experience, in an upstart league. (Disney, $29.99; available now)
