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(Side note re: Nicholson and playing outside the audience-friendly persona of "Jack" that has cropped up in the last two decades. Consider the fact that between 1997 and 2002, he starred in exactly three films - As Good As It Gets, The Pledge, and About Schmidt - and was nominated for Oscars for all but the one that he should most have been recognized for. I'll leave you to do the legwork on that one)

The best moments of The Two Jakes are when the past rears its ugly head - when Jake first hears the name of Katherine Mulwray uttered on a recording and it jolts him out of a fitful sleep or he encounters other figures he once thought lost to time. The casting of several actors from Chinatown to reprise their roles helps with this atmosphere. Notable among the new cast are Harvey Keitel as Jake Berman, a businessman and cuckold who hires Gittes, and Madeline Stowe as a widow who suspects a conspiracy. They imbue their respective parts with low-key menace and knowing sultriness and bring a heat to the story that helps things percolate but never really delivers a satisfying boil.

The "surprise" at the crux of the story is that Kitty Berman, the other Jake's wife, is really Katherine Mulwray. This becomes obvious early on to the audience but not until much later to Gittes and this proves to be the film's Achilles heel. Much is made of Jake not wanting to face his past dead on, but it seems improbable that it takes him so long to acknowledge that Katherine is a dead ringer for her dead mother. The film concludes on a number of conversations between the pair (as well as that old standby, a courtroom scene) that add up to much less than the sum of their parts. Perhaps it is fitting that a film about uneasily reconciling with the past doesn't end on any false dramatic moments or beats. It is a shame that this also dooms it, like a fleeting nostalgic moment that trips across our thoughts, to fade from our memories the longer we consider it.

Next time: I take a cue from the world of comic books and movie franchises and deliver my origin story. It involves a religious rock opera, one of the most loathed sequels of all time, Paris Hilton's aunt and Lucinda Dickey (again?!)

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