The Singing Detective (2003)

When detective writer Robert Downey Jr. is hospitalized with a crippling skin disease, he hallucinates musical numbers performed by the people he encounters mixed into the world of his novel and memories of his childhood. I watched, and kept watching, this because of its cast which also includes Alfre Woodard, Katie Holmes, and an almost unrecognizable Mel Gibson. The grotesque makeup used for the writer’s lesions made it difficult. The plot is strange and often challenging to follow, but the psychological aspects as the film progressed kept me interested.