Director: Anton Corbijn
Year Released: 2015
Rating: 1.5
Relatively young photographer Dennis Stock (Robert Pattinson), pitches a project to Life magazine involving a little-known actor named James Dean (Dane DeHaan), who just starred in a film of Steinbeck's East of Eden with director Elia Kazan. Relies heavily on the pre-established mythology surrounding Dean for effect: most scenes involve Stock trying to arrange to meet with Dean to take pics of him while Dean plays difficult and evasive. Deserves a shred of credit, however, for making both Stock and Dean a little unpleasant - Dean's self-absorbed and uncooperative, Stock is a negligent father - even though their characters feel one-dimensional and their 'friendship' a merely a product of the script. DeHaan is in a particularly tough spot with this one: 'his' Dean is a series of borrowed mannerisms and a mumbling voice and it's too 'actorly' to be fully convincing (DeHaan also doesn't look like his subject). Full-time performance artists/prankster James Franco, once again, pulled off the best portrayal of the late icon to date.
