The Crow: City of Angels (1996)

Sarah (the youth from the original film now grown, played by Mia Kirshner) inexplicably dreams of Ashe Corven (Vincent Perez), a victim of the city's nasty stock types, a man who seeks justice for himself and one other.
The Crow: CoA is a stupid movie with an ugly aesthetic. A pervasive yellow smog covers everything much of the time. Perhaps it was an attempt to give the city a miasmic, otherworldly feeling? I don't know, but it feels instead like there's a tank of cloudy piss situated between the viewer and their screen. It's dumb, but is perhaps the least of the movie's problems. Situations often make no sense and/or have little in common with the whole. The antagonists are woeful. The S+M people are ridiculous. And, for some reason, seeing the resurrected Ashe on a Ducati made me wholesale lose my shit.

1 exploding treetop out of 5

The Black Dahlia (2006)

Like The Untouchables (1987), Black Dahlia has a few exceptionally good scenes strategically placed within a historically interesting background that nevertheless feels overwhelmingly empty and lifeless.
Josh Hartnett is okay in the lead role, but a De Palma film needs a protagonist more than just 'okay' if he or she is to hold their own and not be swallowed up by the director's self-interests. The only two characters that manage to do just that are the murdered Dahlia (Mia Kirshner – amazing!) and the actual murderer (whom I can't praise directly because it would be spoiler).
It was reportedly three hours long cut down to a more palatable two, but while the pacing may have been improved if the additional footage was put back it's unlikely the overall feeling of boredom would've changed much.

2½ veneers out of 5