Breach (2007) and Hollywoodland (2006)

Sarahmac and I may be the only people who watched these movies simply to get our Caroline Dhavernas fix**.  Even better, by the time they percolated up to the top of the queue, we had forgotten why they were in the queue, so "discovering" that she was in the movies made us all the happier.

Breach is actually a pretty good little film with a solid story and performances all around.  My only, fairly minor, complaint is that they seem to have overstated Hanssen's cunning for dramatic effect; reading his wikipedia entry gives the impression that upper management's lack of ability to follow up on reported suspicions had more to do with Hanssen's success at avoiding detection than his own brilliance.

Hollywoodland has good performances, but suffers from a lack of people we can root for (aside from Caroline, but her character leaves a scene, and the movie, about halfway through).  Initially we kinda like George Reeves and Toni Mannix, but he gets jaded and surly over his lack of "real" acting roles and she gets creepily possessive.  The story of Louis Simo's personal life never manages to mesh with the noir mystery.

Now we're waiting for netflix to pick up Mars et Avril (which doesn't look particularly promising, but better than Passchendaele)...



** Wonderfalls was our first, and probably greatest, experience with the netflix recommendation engine, early in 2006, and we recently went back to rewatch the series, and it was just as much fun six years later.  I've found that I really like these short-lived, completed series because there's much less time investment*** than waiting... and waiting... for the next season of Game of Thrones, or even getting on the Buffy train for seven seasons.

*** especially once the series goes south.  It seems rare for a series to maintain quality for more than 2-4 seasons

Ahead full impulse

Oh, yeah, we're looking forward to seeing this, too...

The reality is that the entire movie could be Benedict Cumberbatch running around in a trench coat and giving a voice over and I'd watch.  But it will be SO MUCH MORE.

A couple more thoughts:

• From the trailer, I assumed that Alice Eve is playing a young Carol Marcus, but Sarahmac took one look and declared her Elizabeth Dehner based on the haircut.  It's so eerily similar that I hope she's right.
  
• What's most fun about Khan (or, whoever the villain is in this movie, nudge, nudge, wink-wink) is that, when played and written properly, he's a smart villain.  We want the villain to have qualities we admire, we want him to have tricks up his sleeve, we want to have moments where we can't help but "accidentally" root for them.  What we want, over and over, is the original Die Hard experience of an action flick with a brain.  And, given that Cumberbatch does a good Alan Rickman, is that really too much to expect?