Review of Mulholland Falls (1996) by Lewis C — 02 Dec 2009

This movie needed more Jennifer Connelly, and it needed to be in black and white. I'm sorry, but noir never really works for me unless it's steeped in shadows and a colorless world. That's just what I've been conditioned to expect from a good noir movie. If Mulholland Falls would have been set in the modern day, I think that the color wouldn't have bothered me as much, but the combination of the time period and the style makes the colorization just to much for me to tolerate.

As for Jennifer, she's the crux of the film, but we don't get to spend very much time at all with her. We don't get a sense of who she is and why she did the things that she did, and that greatly lessens the impact of her death. If you don't care about the core of the story, then it's difficult to have any real investment in the rest of the movie.

In all honesty, even if the movie was in black and white and Jennifer Connelly had two times more scenes, this movie would probably still be boring. I just never cared or was interested in what was going on. Michael Madsen was wasted, there wasn't nearly enough of John Malkovich, and Nick Nolte was just smacking people and looking grim. Mulholland Falls gets two stars for Jennifer Connelly's magnificence, but even her wonders barely made it worth watching.