Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 02, 2005 | | Summary | Well-acted...good DVD set, but hard to get involved | Content
 | Perhaps it's because the central mystery (what, if anything, did John Holmes have to do, DIRECTLY, with the Wonderland slayings?) is never solved, the movie has a natural hole in it. We'd like to know, because so much of the rest of the movie feels a bit pointless. It almost feels like it was made, or edited, by someone in a bit of a drug haze. I think that could be effective from time to time, but the movie is too unfocused from a narrative standpoint. We literally don't always know what's going on.
Frankly, the main reason to see this lurid movie is because we might be interested in finding out something about famed porn star John Holmes...NOT because of the murder-mystery itself. And we certainly get to see the dark side of Holmes...the drugs and the self-delusion. But there's no real sense of the man behind the drug-influenced behavior. And he had an interesting life, one would think. The world of porn, however distasteful, would hold a certain grim fascination. And his relationships with women "in the real world," only hinted at here, seemed to have been quite complicated and a bit sad.
I can understand a filmmaker wishing to compact the John Holmes story into this few days that brought him unwanted "attention" later in his life. But I really think the boat was missed here. BOOGIE NIGHTS has often been referred to as a sort of semi-biography of Holmes. I don't know how true that is...Dirk Digler (of BOOGIE NIGHTS) and Holmes each had legendary "tools" of their trade, but whereas Dirk comes back to his "family" in adult films...Holmes went in other directions, and eventually AIDS claimed his life. There's the film.
Val Kilmer, who isn't a favorite of mine, is actually very good in the film, but the script doesn't give him a lot meat. Lisa Kudrow and Kate Bosworth, along with a wonderfully cast-against-type Dylan McDermott are good too. But the whole film just doesn't add up to solid entertainment.
The DVD set is excellent, however. Disc 2 contains a full-length biography of Holmes. It's a bit amateurish, but after seeing WONDERLAND, it makes a FANTASTIC companion piece, and if delving into the world of porn is what you wanted, this will fit that bill. It's a very graphic documentary...but fascinating.
Other bonus materials are more about the murders themselves, and if those are of interest, you'll get plenty of "real-life" graphic stuff to sift through. THIS MOVIE AND ITS BONUS MATERIALS MUST BE KEPT OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN. It is not for the faint of heart or the impressionable.
I can't recommend it terribly highly, but if even after my revue you are still interested, you probably won't be horribly disappointed in the time you'll spend. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 24, 2005 | | Summary | Plays like a soap opera but I did enjoy watching this silly film | Content
| This 2003 film is also known as The Wonderland Murders, the title referring the name of the block where some real-life grizzly murders occurred in the 1980s. At that time, an adult entertainment star known as John Holmes, was somehow involved in these murders and actually was one of the people put on trial. Nobody was ever convicted though and the real story remains unknown. However, the producers of this film chose to bring the story to the screen in typical Hollywood fashion.
Val Kilmer is cast as John Holmes. When we meet him, his career is starting to fade and he is completely hooked on cocaine. He has a teenage girlfriend played by Kate Bosworth who adores him in spite of the fact that he often disappears, does drugs all the time, and his life is a mystery. But there is definitely chemistry between them and there are a few smoldering scenes to illustrate this.
John also has a wife, played by Lisa Kudrow, and when he is in trouble he goes running to her. The girlfriend is known to the wife and the two women have a good relationship. This is an interesting triangle, and because the acting is so good, this triangle really feels believable.
The rest of the plot spools out like a bunch of little boys in a childish gang war. All the guys are drug addicts and when one group robs the other, the first group goes for revenge. Many scenes seem like nothing but drug orgies. Other scenes seem like nothing but violent attacks and revenge. And, because the story is based on a real incident, the facts are purposely obscured and the conclusion is left open-ended and shaded with doubts about what really happened.
There's a feature of the DVD that includes the girlfriend, now grown up. And some details about the trial. John Holmes himself died a few years after the trials from AIDS. Somehow though even though this is the stuff that soap opera's are made of, I found myself interested and must admit that I did enjoy watching this rather silly film. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 23, 2005 | | Summary | Fun to watch but POINTLESS... | Content
| There are some excellent actors here, decent dialogue and good camera work. It's just that this film is nothing more than a stylish, drawn-out rehashing of some fairly trivial murders that would probably never have been rehashed had it not involved John Holmes, the porn legend with his legendary johnson. Unlike the far better "Boogie Nights" which detailed not only the porn industry but also had something of a subtext, this film is just your typical sensationalistic entertainment journalism.
Talk about bait-and-switch: this movie really doesn't tell us much about John Holmes at all, let alone the porn industry that created him.
Not a bad way to kill 2 hours, but it really leaves you wanting something more. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 05, 2005 | | Summary | Indispensable package for Wonderland aficionados | Content
| I felt that this movie was unfairly bashed by newspaper critics. I got the impression that none dared venture anything positive once a consensus had been established.
I was so curious about this affair after reading the Rolling Stone article years ago that I saw this movie when it was first released in theaters; I wanted to see if it corroborated the article. So did it? That's the movie: two different versions of the heist are presented --John Holmes' and David Lind's. It's one thing to hear a story, but something else to see it enacted. John Holmes' version was amusing to see enacted because it made his lies obvious; some things could not have happened as he told them (ridiculous) and the audience laughed on those. Toward the end is a chilling murder scene that I believe, all things considered, is as close to the truth as we will come. For example, I believe it was Deverell who answered the door, and I am convinced that Holmes was there and was probably coerced into participating (to implicate him and thus prevent him from turning against Eddie again by testifying).
This two-disc set also includes omitted scenes, a Crime TV segment, and telling interviews with Sharon Holmes, Dawn Schiller, and people who knew Holmes from "the industry." There are photos taken of the victims when they were alive which I found very interesting, just to see what they looked like. The LAPD crime scene video was not as hard to take as I had expected, mostly due to the then-poor quality of video tape (it has come a long way since 1981); three of the four just look like they're sleeping except that their hair is caked with blood. There are also interviews with some of the actors.
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| Rating | | | Date | June 15, 2005 | | Summary | Not a bad movie at all! | Content
| Even with Val Kilme being on the botttom of my list of favorite actors, I sincerely did not understand some of the bashing this movie received. It's a different (but no arrogant) movie: two versions of the Wonderland murders almost equally divided by half.
And that's exactly what happened in the real trials: the two versions were presented, Holmes was judged not guilty.
Since the beginning, the movie makes it clear that this is NOT about John Holme's career in the adult movie business. A honest decision by the producers. So, this is another "based in real facts" movies. Of course, there is the trouble of not a single real people presented in the movie be a likeable person at all (well, maybe Lisa Kudrow's charater... anyway, she maybe changed with time, but anyone who married a guy like Holmes must have been an airhead or a complete insane person...That's why not even the character of Ann is a likeable one.)
Abyway, the movie is not judgmental at all. It tries to give you a balanced portrait of what happened. A very good, intelligent movie.
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