Older fans will appreciate this classic release

The Cat's Meow

Director: Peter Bogdanovich

Cast: Edward Herrmann, Kirsten Dunst, Cary Elwes, Eddie Izzard, Jennifer Tilly, Joanna Lumley

You would need to be a true movie history buff to know about the real-life characters in this excellent thriller (which arrives here some years after its Stateside release).

In l924, aboard the yacht of newspaper tycoon, William Randolph Hearst (inspiration for Orson Welles' classic Citizen Kane), a group of friends, all Hollywood A-Listers, meet; and by the end of the day one of them, producer Thomas Ince, was dead.

The friends included Hearst's (Herrmann) actress mistress Marion Davis (Dunst), Charlie Chaplin (Izzard), famed columnist Louella Parsons (Tilly). The film considers what might have actually happened that fateful day (it is a murder that has never been properly solved or explained) and it marks a fine return to the screen of Bogdanovich.

If the film has a fault it lies in its very historical content. Not too many of today's young audience, I suspect, would have a clue about this once notorious case and thus it fails to engage us.

We older fans will appreciate it a lot more.

Star Rating: 4/5