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