Wednesday, December 15, 2010

All Good Things - B-

In theaters (and OnDemand). Rated R, 101 minutes. Trailer.

Like The Social Network, All Good Things tells a slightly fictionalized account of the life of an extraordinary person. Unlike The Social Network, All Good Things is an uneven film that never quite figures out what its trying to do. Directed by Andrew Jarecki, a veteran documenatarian (Capturing the Friedmans), the film tells the creepy story of Robert Durst, the scion of a powerful New York family with deep mental disturbances related to his witnessing of his mother's suicide at the age of 7. Click below for more on AGT:

Durst is depicted ably by Ryan Gosling, who captures the undercurrent of psychosis very well. Kirsten Dunst plays his middle-class wife and Frank Langella is the overbearing father. The film doesn't really try to be meaningful, but it isn't that entertaining either, so you are kind of left out in the cold. Jarecki would've been much better served telling this story as a documentary. If you are going to watch it, don't read up on Durst to at least preserve some of the suspense. If you aren't, you should read up on him - cross dressing, murder, sawing up bodies, novelists, Galveston....its a crazy tale.

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