Venice. The Black Dahlia.

"There will be a few less than favorable comparisons to LA Confidential and Chinatown: it goes with the territory," predicted Anne Thompson, and sure enough, Variety's Todd McCarthy obliges. The first film is "significantly superior" and: "Chinatown it ain't, not in any department. On its own level, however, new pic generates a reasonable degree of intrigue." Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia is, for McCarthy, nevertheless a "lushly rendered noir."

"During the first hour, the hope that the director has tapped into something really great mounts with each passing minute," writes the Hollywood Reporter's Kirk Honeycutt. But "the second half feels heavy and unfulfilled, potential greatness reduced to a good movie plagued with problems."

Updated through 9/3.

Lee Marshall for Screen Daily: "De Palma has nailed the queasy, menacing atmosphere of post-war Los Angeles and its obsession with violent death. Some classic De Palma themes - voyeurism, lookalikes, sexual ambivalence, shifting perspectives on the truth - are paraded, ensuring that fans of the love-him-or-hate-him director will be kept busy with the rewind button when the film comes out on DVD."

James Ellroy's fine with it, reports Hugh Davies for the Telegraph: "Twice in my 27-year novel career I've been lucky with film adaptations. The first was LA Confidential, and now The Black Dahlia."

Update: James Israel writes... oh, sorry, where was I?

Updates, 9/1: "Typically these days, no studio would back a movie like Dahlia. After director David Fincher dropped out, De Palma patiently plugged away for three years at realizing Josh Friedman's adaptation of James Ellroy's Los Angeles novel," writes the Hollywood Reporter's Anne Thompson, who talks with the director.

Two via Cinema Strikes Back, Derek Malcolm in the Evening Standard: "This is De Palma back to something like his best." And an "A-" from Emanuel Levy.

Updates, 9/2: "De Palma stages some terrific set-pieces including a stunning crane shot over the roof of a house where a shootout is taking place, to a deserted field where Short's mangled body lies and the story really begins," writes the Telegraph's David Gritten.

David Jenkins, blogging for Time Out, compares the film with Genesis. The band. (Infamous, by the way, would be The Strokes; "well produced and with many wonderful moments, but ultimately too derivative for long-term admiration.") Anyway, Genesis/Dahlia: "lumbering, overcomplicated and unfashionable like you wouldn't believe. It's his first film since 2002's Femme Fatale, which didn't make it to these shores for reasons of quality control, and it's average in a way that only de Palma could get away with."

Ryan Wu points to Geoffrey Macnab's "Wagnerian" profile of Scarlett Johansson in the Independent. I'll let him explain what he means by that.

Update, 9/3: Another Scarlett Johansson profile, this one from Alice Fisher in the Observer.

Posted by dwhudson at August 31, 2006 1:43 AM