James Ellroy's Feast of Death

Think fast: who committed the gruesome "Black Dahlia" murder in Los Angeles in 1947? If you don't know, you're not alone. It's perhaps Hollywood's most celebrated unsolved homicide. Yet in this portrait of master crime author James Ellroy, we gain great insight -indeed, perhaps even the outright solution- to the puzzle of that crime, as well as insight into the murder of Ellroy's own mother, who was killed when Ellroy was only ten years old. Loosely framed around two long, sumptuous dinners at LA's Pacific Dining Car restaurant, at which Ellroy engages in candid conversation with his friends in the LAPD Homicide division, the film looks at the complex relationship between cops and murder victims and those who survive them. But the film is also a literal and figurative tour into the dark places of Ellroy's psyche, places illuminated here by the white-hot beam of a police cruiser's spotlight.

Biopic, Crime, Documentary