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The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

This film is almost 10 years old now. I watched it a second time and I appreciated it much, much more the second time.I think it helped that I knew it's a tragedy, not a thriller. This is not action-filled, guns blazing. It's a rather sad story of a man who becomes trapped.I also like that it was not structured like a typical Hollywood film. It has a dual story line featuring Adrian Brody in one, with Ben Affleck and Diane Lane in the other. Yet it is also broken up into sequences - and during different sequences you're convinced a different suspect committed the murder.I think if you set your expectations to see a good character study, with sadness and triumph, you will enjoy this film. Also, there is a lot of subtlety to the film, little hints and clues that are not hammered at the viewer. The actors play it very soft, especially Diane Lane. She does a great job. There is a lot going on with her, a woman who is married to a wealthy man. But she would like something more. She's trapped also. All the characters are trapped in some way.

slightly overlong but compelling drama based upon a true story.the obvious "companion" would be Stone's JFK > about an earnest, honest public servant who "knows" the facts and has developed a very credible explanation of a murder..but who cannot get his explanation beyond a headline or two. powers that be will let the scenario ride..unless it gets...too "close".the story really is more about a private detective who gets obsessed with getting to the truth of the George reeves reported suicide. he goes full throttle at the case, leaving behind another client and his family.beautiful, tasteful period cinematography, meticulously detailed attire, vehicles, music of 1959.we get a real drama here plus a credible summation of an event which has pervaded our consciousness for decades.minor demerits for length of movie and for the character of the investigator's girlfriend. her acting is fine but the character seems placed in the storyline to lend sympathy to the victimized wife. as if to say, he's wildly "rogue"...ultimately irresponsible.see this movie!

On the plus side, it's about time someone made a movie about George Reeves, and HOLLYWOODLAND delivers a lavish production that's really a performance piece. Affleck proves a terrific choice for Reeves. He brings his affable charm to the role and ably conveys Reeves' self- loathing at not being able to make it as a serious actor. The film's examination of his time as Superman is certainly its greatest aspect. And Diane Lane, gorgeous as always, does some of her best work here. Amazing stuff.The problem is that the movie actually tries to shed light on what happened on that fateful night in June, 1959. Did George actually kill himself or was there a gunman/woman in the room with him? It's through Adrien Brody's PI character that the movie posits a couple of explanations, but a movie like this has no answers to offer. It was a controversial death and investigation and it hasn't been conclusively solved since. And what was really disappointing about the movie is that it spent so much time with the Brody character, and dragged things off on a tangent with his chaotic personal life. I didn't care about any of that, and just wanted to get back to Reeves. HOLLYWOODLAND is worth seeing, just don't expect any answers. Still, it does a nice job creating the '50s Hollywood atmosphere, there's the always incredible Bob Hoskins, and it's got plenty of mood. It's just exasperating. Also, a really bad title for this movie.5/10

For all Dark Knight fans furious over the casting of Ben Affleck in the upcoming BATMAN VS SUPERMAN, he did convincingly play a superhero, or rather, an actor playing a superhero, with style and finesse…So put your DAREDEVIL phobia aside and check out HOLLYWOODLAND, a biopic combined with Film Noir about actor George Reeves, star of the original SUPERMAN television show and who may nor may not have committed suicide, giving Affleck the chance of, at that time, returning to indie form after bombing as a big box office superstar…At one point, before his directorial/starring successes with THE TOWN and the Oscar winning ARGO, Affleck was no longer allowed to play in the A-list reindeer games...Enter the struggling, melancholy Reeves, a square-jawed character actor whose most prominent role was a brief scene in GONE WITH THE WIND. Like anyone in the biz, he desperately yearned for a game-changing cinematic opportunity, and finally landed a part he didn't want – as Clark Kent, the mild-mannered newspaper reporter who is really, beneath a stiff suit and horn-rimmed glasses, the "greatest" superhero of them all.The best scenes have Reeves conflicted with the show's success, having to appease unpredictable women while keeping a good image for the children who worship him. But since the story goes back and forth in time, much of the film centers on rogue private eye/gumshoe Louis Simo...A sleek, manipulative Adrian Brody... who's told the world doesn't need any more Ralph Meeker types right off the bat... is a pretty good snoop, but his character is much too convinced – way early on – that Reeves was murdered by his fiancé rather than a self- inflicting gun shot, making him more of a conspiracy theory mouthpiece than an ambiguous pawn gathering clues.Particular scenes involving Simo shrugging from one location to the next, in the usual Noir fashion, tend to drag in this entertaining but overlong project. Making the sporadic backstory about George Reeves and his fledgling career, even when he was on top of the world, that much better.