Keyhole
Director: Guy Maddin
Year Released: 2011
Rating: 2.0
Visually remarkable but fatally muddled crime noir by Maddin - the 'plot' involves gangster Ulysses (Jason Patric) wandering through his house and encountering oddballs and experiencing oddball moments, like Kevin McDonald mounting a maid, an erect penis jutting out of a wall, a teenage boy masturbating in a closet (Yahtzee!) and a naked old man chained to a bed by his daughter (Isabella Rossellini). Patric adds a bit of stability to this, but for the most part it's Maddin throwing in bits of weirdo ephemera that distract rather than enhance the storyline - more than once his tangents throw the picture off, and then it has to scramble to regain some kind of narrative momentum. Deconstructing a classic text (in this case, The Odyssey) is an interesting concept, but what's left of this are the distinctively outré moments and not so much a fully-formed movie.
