Dreamland

Mobsters and junkies and vampires, oh my. Just like the best jazz songs, Dreamland has to go off the rails a little before it finds the melody.

I think I will like anything Mchattie is in even if I have to deal with Juliette Lewis. I enjoyed Henry Rollins, he is always good at playing sleaze balls. this was a crazy weird movie. loved the visuals

SINGLE PEAK Venerable Canuck director Bruce McDonald returns to the big screen with a busy, all you can watch cinema buffet of cult-aspiring dishes. Maybe as a series of small, TV sized bites, this could work, but it becomes quite a taxing muddle in one sitting. The good: Stephen McHattie. His excellent turn helming McDonald's wonderfully crazed "Pontypool" is reason for high anticipation. Not surprisingly, McHattie shines in a dual role tour de force of endless, crackly Clint Eastwood close ups, and tough guy bad assery. The bad: A dual role is seldom a good idea. It is a disruptive smoke and mirrors trick, and proves too clever and distracting for it's own good. More bad: Juliette Lewis, who has the chops to be fabulously sensational, is fabulously awful, awkwardly embracing a despicable role in a volcanic spew of boorish overacting in an unsavoury role. There's more. The list is long. We have a child sex ring. We have Henry Rollins raging. We have a silly vampire. We have a wedding. We have kid gangsters. We have a mess. Brimming with taboo subjects, theatrical violence, absurd sequences, nightclub lighting, an endless stream of odd characters, "Dreamland" is a prickly stab at "Twin Peaks" cultdom. McHattie almost pulls it off, with a quirky performance for the ages that includes a bizarro Chet Baker impersonation. But it's not enough. Exactly what McDonald is trying to achieve here is anyone's guess. How about an insider's heroin trip? Let's go with that. - hipCRANK

Definitely not a “bad” movie per say . Also nothing new to the genre . A lifelong hit man has a change of heart when his ethical line is crossed 2.4