The Majestic (2001)

Screenwriter Peter Appleton (Jim Carrey) is a up-and-coming Hollywood screenwriter in 1951. His first film is in cinemas and his second is on the cusp of going into production. When he is named in an anti-communist Congressional investigation, he is immediately disgraced and blacklisted. Drunkenly driving into a storm on night he crashes his car and wakes up on a beach with near-total amnesia. In the small town of Lawson he is immediately adopted by cinema owner Harry Trimble (Martin Landau) - who mistakenly believes Peter to be his son Luke, last seen missing in action during World War II.

The Majestic is director Frank Darabont's heartfelt ode to old-time Hollywood cinema. Channeling his best Frank Capra, he presents an uplifting and deliberately sentimental slice of Americana: the patriotism of World War II, the paranoia of the Red Scares, and the unifying, healing power of Hollywood movies to cure all ills and bring all people together. I suspect how one responds to the film depends on their threshold for that sentimentality. If you like to wallow in these kinds of cloyingly sweet romantic and family-based dramas, then The Majestic is a pretty entertaining movie. If the merest hint of sweetness turns your nose up, then this movie is going to stink like a garbage heap. As for me, I think my feelings are somewhere in the middle: The Majestic has a lot of good material in it, but it's a hell of a mess.