Mulholland Falls
by Lee Tamahori
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DVD details
Actor: Chazz Palminteri, Jennifer Connelly, Melanie Griffith, Michael Madsen, Nick NolteDirector: Lee Tamahori
Brand: MGM
Cinematographer: Haskell Wexler
Editor: Sally Menke
Producer: Lili Fini Zanuck
Producer: Mario Iscovich
Producer: Richard D. Zanuck
Writer: Floyd Mutrux
Writer: Peter Dexter
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 107 minutes
Published: 2004-11-01
DVD Release Date: 2004-11-02
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Product features:
- Includes original theatrical trailer
- Widescreen and fullscreen options
- Run time approximately 1 hour 47 minutes
- Rated R
DVD Reviews of Mulholland Falls
DVD Review: Worth revisiting...
Summary: 4 Stars
They say timing is everything and this certainly applies to the release and reception of movies. Case in point: Mulholland Falls. Released a year before the very similar L.A. Confidential, Falls was also a retro-noir set in 1950s Los Angeles that featured a murder mystery leading to a vast conspiracy. However, Falls was promptly blasted by the critics and quickly disappeared from theatres while Confidential became the toast of critics and award shows all over the world. So, what went wrong? Falls featured a cast of solid character actors (it had more name actors than Confidential) and a critically acclaimed director with Once Were Warriors' Lee Tamahori as opposed to Confidential's Curtis Hanson who had only done adequate B-movies like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and The River Wild. Now that a few years have passed, Mulholland Falls has aged surprisingly well.
One of the first things that is so striking about this film is the gorgeous attention to detail with vintage cars, suits and music from the period. The casting of actresses Melanie Griffith and Jennifer Connelly is right on the money as they both have the voluptuous body type common to that era. Sadly, they aren't given too much screen time but this does give Connelly's character something of an ethereal, mysterious quality that is quite haunting and works well in the movie.
With his gravelly voice and weathered good looks, Nick Nolte is well cast as the conflicted tough guy, Max Hoover. If there is one significant problem with the film it is the lack of screen time given to the excellent actors in his crew. They are given little time to develop their characters with only Chazz Palminteri edging out the others. There is little chemistry between them and as a result it isn't believable that they are a tight-knit crew. That being said, the chemistry between Nolte and Palminteri begins to kick in towards the end of the movie but it is too little, too late.
There is somber tone that hangs over Mulholland Falls and the ending is refreshingly downbeat (unlike the very classic Hollywood ending of L.A. Confidential). Like any good noir protagonist, Max's shattered life stays shattered. The murder has been solved but at a terrible cost to his own life. While Falls is a flawed film and certainly not as strong as Confidential, it is not an awful film by any means and actually has a lot of merits. It is definitely worth another visit and this new DVD offers the perfect opportunity.
Description of Mulholland Falls
Too much surface. Director Lee ("The Edge") Tomahori's noir story serves as a McGuffin to its ripe style. Amid secret agendas and unspeakable acts onscreen you stare at the fall of light across old cops' desks. Musing on super-8 footage of naked Jennifer Connelly, your mind wanders. Ah, yes, an allusion to the opening shots of "Chinatown". Roman Polanski's grand reinvocation of the dark intuitions of 1940s noir is there, too, in the sumptuous look, the plump list of stars (Nick Nolte, Michael Madsen, Melanie Griffith, John Malkovich), and the swoony, bittersweet soundtrack. The zigzags of the story that bring together two cheating husbands, one pneumatic babe, and (somehow) homosexuality waywardly recall "The Big Sleep". The Atomic Energy Commission subplot feels like an homage to "Kiss Me Deadly". With so many other movies to please, by the middle of the film it's clear that the story isn't going to thicken, that for all the amperage in Nolte's performance, for all the male rage in Michael Madsen and Chazz Palminteri, the hints of sexual malfeasance aren't going much past Nolte's domestic guilt about his affair with Connelly. And yet there are rich things. Tracing a path from his girlfriend to the head of the Commission (Malkovich), Nolte listens, hat in hand, to a purring existential science lecture about the invisible world of atoms. "Yeah," Nolte growls, "well, I see too much." Would that the filmmakers had let "us" see more. "--Lyall Bush"Bestsellers in DVD
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