Director: Andrew Jarecki
Year: 2010
Stars: Ryan Gosling, Kirsten Dunst, Frank Langella, Lily Rabe, Philip Baker Hall
Well, this was odd - and perhaps not exactly what I was expecting. I still don't know how much I enjoyed it. I hadn't really heard of the movie before, but it sounded interesting when I saw it was on TV, so decided to give it a try. It turns out that the reason I hadn't heard of the movie was because, even though it has some big names in it, it was never really promoted upon its release, and got a very narrow arts-house release.
Upon watching it, it's not hard to see the reasons for the lack of promotion. It's a tough movie to market. It tells the story of David Marks (Gosling), and his relationship with his father (Langella) and his wife (Dunst). It's apparently 'the most notorious unresolved murder cases in New York history' (according to the movie blurb; I had never heard of it so who knows whether or not this is true) - but this is the part of the problem. The murder case is unresolved, meaning there's no closure in the movie. Now, it's clear that the movie thinks it knows what happened, but it leaves a lot of questions in its wake. Not least of which is 'is this what really happened? How much has this movie made up?!'
Overall, the individual performances aren't bad. Individual elements of the script aren't bad. I even spent chunks of the film being quite intrigued and wondering what would happen next. But somehow All Good Things isn't quite the sum of its parts. I can't really recommend it - it's mostly likely to leave you feeling frustrated and confused - not to mention wanting answers you won't get.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
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