One of my all time favorites.

An action-packed slog

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

According to this movie, anyway. Imagine a remake of La Ronde set in Hollywood with contemporary characters, written and directed by Quinten Tarentino while he's having a bad day, and you have a pretty good idea of what this movie offers. It's a series of vignettes in which one character has sex with another, then the second has sex with a third, who has sex with a fourth, and so on until the last character has sex with the first character. In the process, the characters treat us to a lot of cheap sex, spew four-letter words constantly, and treat us and psychobabble & gibberish that's meant to pass as being philosophical observation. And we're supposed to say, "Wow, what an intelligent, edgy work of art!" NOT!!! The problem with the sex and nudity is not that it's there, or even that it's casual and recreational. It's just that all the sexual activity is angry and aggressive, as though it's a substitute for violence. And that some of it takes place in improbable places (in a car wash, in a restaurant toilet stall). All of the characters are completely unpleasant. While bad guys can be interesting, none of these people are. They're all just rude, crude, boorish users, and not even interesting ones.The only thing that saves this from the lowest possible rating is the cast, who tries to rise above the muck. Some succeed, some don't. Hilary Swank steals what little there is to steal, making the most of the scenes she's in. But doesn't have much screen time. Natasha Gregson Wagner is beautiful but doesn't have much to do. As a cheating Hollywood socialite in an open marriage, she's little more than set decoration. Stephen Mailer is funny as the heroin-addicted lover of a closeted gay actor, and he has the best line in the film (which can't be repeated here, but involves moth balls). But his character is such a bitter, self-pitying, self-destructive loser, you wish he'd go away. Chad Lowe gives one of his less worthy performances as a misogynist pig of a studio exec sleeping with his boss's wife. Bill Cusack makes little impression as Wagner's cheating phony of a husband, and Peter Dobson makes less of one Mailer's closeted A-List lover. And Meta Golding's role is particularly degrading. It's a hit or miss affair that usually misses.

Matt Adler fans might be interested in this one, though he only appears as a very minor supporting character for three or four minutes total. But what the heck? It's one of the last films he's actually appeared in (because he's doing mostly adr loop credits these days).In spite of that, however, this is one utterly dull movie. You have probably seen a zillion movies just like this one, a few separate stories which share interrelated characters (in one way or another). But, they're basically very short scenes of insignificant events between the characters (all connected through sex) in which they take the time to pontificate (both through action and dialog) to the point where your wondering if you're the only one who has no idea what they're saying or if you're the only one who doesn't care. While there were a few interesting things that occur in the movie (most all of them involving any of the scenes with Hillary Swanks character--since she was probably the most interesting, if not the most likable character in the whole mess), this is just about an hour and half of non-sequential nothing. It may work in some films (Tarrantino, borrowing from the anarchistic stylings of 70s french and Italian filmmakers was able to pull it off, among others), but this the way 'Quiet Days in Hollywood' worked out, it is one of the many that makes no sense, and rarely strives to do little more than waste time.

Lordy this movie is bad! I rented it because I'm up for anything set in L.A., but I gave up less than halfway through because it's all but unwatchable. The director is reasonably competent from a visual standpoint, but it doesn't matter. The characters lack any kind of charm, although Daryl Williams' natural charisma manages to occasionally overwhelm the idiocy of the writing. The voices of the characters are so angry and obscene it's revolting and the audience has no choice to reject them all, especially Chad Lowe's malicious suit. Natasha Gregson Wagner is lovely, but she, like all her fellow characters, talks too much and says nothing. This film is bereft of plot and fundamentally, criminally incompetent. Don't even think about renting it.

You can always count on some mercenary to take advantage of an actor's success by releasing one of his or her early roles in some worthless B movie. 'Quiet Days In Hollywood' is an abominable ensemble production produced in 1997 and never released in theaters in the United States (it saw a limited release in Germany). It was recently released to the video market with Hilary Swank as the marketing hook. Actually, despite the fact that her picture and name dominate the package, Swank has only two limited appearances in the film.The film is a series of chain linked sex vignettes. Each character has sex with another character and then the second character moves on to the next vignette and has sex with another who moves on to another etc., until finally, the circle is complete and the last character has sex with the first character. The story has all the substance of a porn movie, with banal, profanity-riddled dialogue serving to bridge the gap between sex scenes. Since the sex scenes were mostly implied, even the prurient aspect was limited.Hillary Swank plays a hooker on the streets of Hollywood. She is brash to the point of stupidity, taunting and insulting dangerous people as if she has some sort of death wish. Her performance here is very amateurish and unpolished. Natasha Gregson Wagner was the only other cast member worth mentioning. She gave a reasonably good performance as a woman in an open marriage having sex with one of her husband's employees (the husband knows).There is not really much more to say about this sham. I rated it a 2/10. Don't get duped into seeing it as I did just because Swank is on the cover.