Category: Film Review

“I hate to admit this but I don’t understand this situation at all.” An appreciation of David Lynch’s impenetrable entertainment, Twin Peaks and all- by Josh Hains 

by Josh Hains, posted in Film Review

These days, when I watch anything David Lynch has filmed, be it Blue Velvet, Wild At Heart, Inland Empire, or even his flawed yet hypnotic and deliciously crazy adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, I check my brain in at the door. I let my mind become invaded by the alluring sights and sounds that populate his stunning body of work, letting them burn themselves into the deepest parts of my soul. I don’t over think what I’m watching, and I don’t allow myself to obsess over such cerebral, intentionally puzzling works. Above all else, the images tend to stay with me like dirt under my fingernails, or a ghost lurking in an old house.

The point of Lynch’s life’s work is breaking convention, trying truly new things with the form, narratively or visually, that most people in the movie or television businesses will never think of in their lifetime. Ever. Taking cinematic standards we’ve become comfortable with and breaking them like a sledgehammer against concrete, dismantling what’s considered safe, easy, and profitable, his works always risky, provocative, difficult, and confounding. I find just about everything he’s made confounding to varying degrees, and just like any great puzzle, the necessary pieces to solving any given mystery in any of his works are always right there in plain sight, staring me right in the face, taunting me. I’m reminded of a quote from Christopher Nolan’s brilliant puzzler The Prestige: “Now you’re looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled.” Except that I don’t want to be fooled, at least not entirely.

I have a tendency to want to know what pieces go where and watch them all slowly fit together, though an equal part of me doesn’t want to completely kill the mystery, doesn’t mind the ambiguity and relishes in being challenged on such deeply psychological levels. The first time I saw his Mulholland Drive, I disliked it because I couldn’t make heads or tails of what I’d just witnessed. Nothing I’d seen made any amount of sense, or could easily be summed up in a quick sentence. It was impenetrable, and I hated it. A couple years ago I learned that the impenetrable, confusing, ambiguous nature of everything that is Lynch, is the point. Whether or not I can solve the puzzle of Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway, or Twin Peaks, isn’t the point of those and most of David Lynch’s filmography. That’s never been the point. You’ll only drive yourself mad trying to solve something you aren’t meant to solve, or find yourself underwhelmed and ungrateful if you do somehow manage to decipher the code that solves the mystery and don’t like the results. The point is the journey, and just like any grand adventure, everything he’s made has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It’s not the destination that matters, but how we get there, and though the journeys Lynch takes us on between those points on the map is different from what we’re used to, in the end it’s actually a really good thing.

All great art should be more than just disturbing to the comfortable and comfortable to the disturbed. It should be challenging. It should make us think deeper than we’ve ever thought before and inite us to continue to think deeper. It should make us look at the art and ask why, make us take a deeper look inside ourselves and ponder why we didn’t think if it ourselves, and what we can do to be more creative and open minded. It should open a wide assortment of doors to all kinds of endless creative potentials and ideas, and challenge us to tackle subjects we’ve been too afraid and comfortable to explore. Twin Peaks: The Return, is this year’s prime example of taking the standards we’ve become so accustomed to, and breaking them for 18 episodes straight. 

I haven’t been able to wrap my mind around most of what happened this season on Twin Peaks, and though repeated viewings of Twin Peaks when the Blu-Ray arrives some months from now will surely unlock a few secrets and tie up some loose ends I didn’t immediately comprehend, I doubt I will ever be able to fully understand everything that happened over the course of The Return. I also don’t fully understand what the hell happens in Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway, or Inland Empire, but that’s quite alright with me. I’m not supposed to understand the plots, I’m supposed to be swept up in everything else that’s going on. The acting, the symbolism, the trippy nightmarish images, the sudden graphic violence, the sensuous love stories, thunderous pulsating scores, the sublime aura of it all. Like I said before, it’s not the destintion that matters, but how you got there, and how I got there was a magnificent achievement. 

My biggest takeaways from Twin Peaks: The Return, as of right now because I’m still processing what I watched, are that David Lynch is perhaps the foremost essential artist of our times, and a truly brilliant one at that, willing to break rules and conventions for the sake of experimentation and trying to provide more sophisticated entertainment to us all. My other takeaway is that though the battle between good and evil in fiction or our reality never truly ends, as long as the world is occupied by Dale Cooper’s, the light stands a chance of winning.

Atomic Blonde 

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review


Atomic Blonde is the annual adrenaline shot the action genre gets every year, if we’re lucky. Amidst carbon copy superhero extravaganzas, increasingly ridiculous Fast/Furious hemorrhages and head scratching animation ventures, the multiplex is a frustrating realm these days, but sometimes we are blessed with a good old fashioned hard-R action blitzkrieg that turns out to be a pure banger, lighting up the summer movie roster like neon fireworks. Blonde rides the wake that John Wick left behind, a refreshing, stylistic, no-holds-barred form of action storytelling that cheerfully pisses in the face of all things glossy and PG-13. Set in a frenzied Berlin days before the wall comes down and the Cold War freezes over, Charlize Theron is a breathtakingly sexy super spy with a very particular set of skills and a borderline nihilistic approach to espionage, as well as a massive bone to pick with certain factions of the enemy, who stay fairly hidden until the wicked chess game of a plot rounds it’s final curves. Tasked by a sneaky British intelligence honcho (Toby Jones) and a mysterious CIA Agent (John Goodman, excellent as always) she’s caught between all kinds of warring assets including the KGB, roaming German euro trash punks and a British rogue agent (James Macavoy) playing all sides at once. The plot serves action, to be sure, but it still takes itself seriously amidst all the punches, flying kicks, icepicks to the jugular and careening vehicular destruction. Theron is a primal piston of wanton violence and slinky sexual virility, throwing herself headlong into every action sequence with the kind of reckless abandon that makes you believe those bruises for real (apparently she busted a few ribs for real filming this, the absolute champ). The highlight is a bone shattering one take wonder of a staircase fight, a hapless Eddie Marsan bandaging a bullet wound with swaths of duck tape while Theron furiously dispatches several enemies using any means within arms reach, a spectacle that leads to glorious cringes once the hits get hard and critical and sharp objects start getting close to eyeballs and major organs. The soundtrack must be noted too, the filmmakers employing nostalgic melodies straight out of the 80’s to evoke time and place nicely, with everything from Nina’s 99 Luftballoons to The Clash’s London Calling and Queen’s Under Pressure coming into play. There’s also pretty much the hottest movie sex scene I’ve seen in years, as Theron and a bombshell of a French agent (Sofia Boutella) get slippery under the sheets in a neon soaked Berlin hotel room. This is an action film made by folks who are head over heels in love with the genre, and the passion shows. We never feel cheated, chaperoned or short changed, every ounce of this piece charged up to please the crowd and keep pulses thundering. 

-Nate Hill

TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN

by Frank Mengarelli, posted in Film Review

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Let’s discuss Showtime’s finest “original” programming and David Lynch and Mark Frost’s cataclysmic finale of the TWIN PEAKS saga. First things first, will we get another season or a standalone film that is akin to FIRE WALK WITH ME? Probably not, no. Sure, stranger things have happened, but it’s more than likely we will not get another visual TWIN PEAKS story, and may not even get another film from Lynch himself. This very well could be it for both Peaks and Lynch.

What does the final season mean? What does it answer in the twenty-five-year absence? What happened to Cooper at the end? Honestly, none of that really matters, does it? The more diehard fans of both Lynch and his seminal series with Mark Frost, are not looking for answers, one could say that they are just seeking more unfulfilled questions that will keep them returning to the Peaks canon over a series of years, if not decades.

One thing is apparently clear from THE RETURN. Lynch’s obsession with dreams and a parallel reality which is all rolled into lifelong inspiration, THE WIZARD OF OZ. OZ deals very much in dreams, a parallel reality, and one’s journey back home or at the very least the center of their own reality. There are a plethora of motifs and nods to the film within the series.

THE RETURN isn’t very much like the original series, aside from a string of arcs from beloved characters. What truly perpetuates the main narrative is FIRE WALK WITH ME, which is even more of an important component of the mythology of TWIN PEAKS than ever.

David Bowie’s brief cameo as time traveling Blue Rose Task Force Special Agent Phillip Jeffries became the great and powerful Oz of THE RETURN. He spoke in a method of half riddles, through puffs of steam coming from a percolator.  Sadly, David Bowie was not able to start and complete his scheduled scenes, so instead actor Nathan Frizzell was cast as the voice of Jeffries, and even overdubbed Jeffries’ dialogue from FIRE WALK WITH ME and THE MISSING PIECES. Regardless of the lack of David Bowie, Lynch was able to bring him back into the spotlight, not only in the foreground of the new series but also as the pop culture icon that he had always been.

 

Without diving into the Lynchian mathematics that is near impossible to solve within THE RETURN, the series ends itself exactly where it began. Cooper is in the Lodge, speaking with Mike and with Laura Palmer whispering in his ear. What does that all mean? It means that Cooper is looped inside of his own dream, within the Black Lodge, and with this reveal, it certainly calls the entire run of this season into question, and makes us ask ourselves what is the reality of the show? Is the reality we saw outside the Black Lodge a tangible reality, a parallel reality, or is it fictitious and all conjured up within Dale Cooper’s head as his sits in the Black Lodge?

David Lynch and Mark Frost brought the season back to where it began and left the audience with a bigger question than what was originally asked. They not only created the finest television event of the year but possibly ever. They have crafted an alluring, taut, and downright haunting story that has no end.

 

NICK’S NOTES: WARGAMES

by nlclement, posted in Film Review

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I used to watch WarGames all the time as a kid. It aired constantly on HBO, my dad was a big fan, and it was edgy in just the right spots but never overly offensive as to be objectionably in my mother’s movie-watching eyes. Released in 1983 and directed by John Badham (who had replaced Martin Brest), this cold-war era piece of vintage entertainment centers on a young computer hacker (Matthew Broderick) who accidentally infiltrates a top-secret government computer program, resulting in a series of escalting “war games” being conduced by a super-computer between the U.S. and Russia. You gotta love this idea! Co-written by Walter Parkes and Lawrence Lasker, the film sports some gorgeous cinematography by William A. Fraker, and is very well-paced by editor Tom Rolf. Shot for $12 million and grossing $80 million, the film was a big hit and was well-received by critics, and has become one of those staple catalog titles that people still adore to this day. Extra-cute Ally Sheedy POWER and big-time Dabney Coleman POWER like a cherry on top.2

Force Friday Podcast: THE EWOK ADVENTURES

by Frank Mengarelli, posted in Film Review, Podcast, Star Wars

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Join Frank and filmmaker Derek Wayne Johnson as they discuss BOTH of the Ewok films that are seminal films from their childhood. Don’t forget to purchase Derek’s film, JOHN G. AVILDSEN KING OF THE UNDERDOGS from retailers everywhere!

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RON HOWARD’S GUNG HO — A REVIEW BY FILMMAKER & GUEST CRITIC DAMIAN K. LAHEY

by nlclement, posted in Film Review

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‘Gung Ho’ (1986) dir. Ron Howard

“The truth? You don’t want the truth. You want to hear that Americans are better than anybody else. But they’re kicking our butts. That ain’t luck. There’s your truth. Sure, the great old American do-or-die spirit. Yeah, it’s alive. But THEY’VE got it.”

In ‘Gung Ho’. a U.S. automotive plant has been bought out by a Japanese company and the workers must adapt to the Japanese way of doing business. This is an unintentionally prophetic film about the complacency of the American working class and the tensions that arise in a rapidly evolving multi cultural and global economy. A comedy packed with some earnest socio-political insight, this remarkable film is headlined by an effortless and confident Michael Keaton who fits this movie like a glove.

Watching this film years after I last saw it, some of the culture clash gags did make me wince but overall it holds up. In less capable hands individual sequences could have dissolved into SNL skits. Howard does a commendable job of sidestepping obvious set ups (for the most part) and focusing more on the world these characters inhabit without becoming patronizing. I think this is one of his best films. The script by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel from a story by Mandel, Ganz and Edwin Blum is clever and quick with a clear understanding of these characters. The film feels very ‘lived in’ and Production designer James L. Schoppe and costume designer Betsy Cox deserve serious kudos for their work on this. Cinematographer Donald Peterman captures the proceedings in an unassuming way, really letting the material breathe.

I really love all the supporting players in this, too. Gedde Watanabe, George Wendt, Mimi Rogers, John Turturro and infamous acid tripping professional baseball player Dock Ellis all do a wonderful job.

Adding to this film’s relevancy is the fact that ‘Gung Ho’ sheds a light on something that has now had a very negative impact on the United States Of America – the delusional entitlement of the working class or more specifically, the white working class that turned out in droves for Donald Trump. Brain dead from propaganda telling them they’re the greatest thing since sliced cheese and that they deserve pay checks just for getting up in the morning, they have supplanted a racist nationalist ideology for a reliable work ethic. They want to be treated and compensated like the hard working Paul Bunyons of American mythology without actually doing any of the work. They believe they’ve been abandoned and in some ways this is true. But they’re abandonment of a reliable work ethic has let them down far more than any foreigner or liberal policy they would like to blame.

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BILL WATTERSON’S DAVE MADE A MAZE — A REVIEW BY NICK CLEMENT

by nlclement, posted in Film Review
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The charming, off-beat indie Dave Made a Maze is one of those efforts that truly feels hand-made and the product of a filmmaker who had a very specific vision and a very specific way of realizing that vision. Directed by Bill Watterson from a script he co-wrote with Steven Sears, this quirky and unconventional piece of psychological distortion is a startling and extra-cool debut for the helmer, while the film has a genuine novelty as a hook (30,000 square-feet of cardboard were used to create the titular maze) and there’s an exciting sense of originality at work all throughout the lean running time, which results in a movie where genre conventions are explored and upended, statements are made about viewer expectations and the decisions that the various characters face, with the overall surreal nature of the entire piece becoming a constant source of joy to discover. You legitimately don’t know what will happen next, which is one of the best compliments anyone could ever pay any particular film. Jon Boal’s inventive cinematography is a major plus for the entire production.
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The art direction by Jeff White and production design by Trisha Gum and John Sumner is pause-button worthy, as the film takes on a humorous yet dark done that extends from everything to the performances to the aesthetic. The various actors, especially lead Nick Thune, are never arch with their line delivery or reason for being within the story, and you get the sense that Watterson and his collaborators were having serious fun with the shifting fantasy world that is on display. The narrative centers on an artist suffering from a serious case of creative block, and the complex maze which he creates in his living room as a way of escaping his frustration. But when the maze seemingly takes on its own life with surprising and dangerous ramifications, all bets are off, as the weird and wild story straddles multiple lines while dishing out something happy-creepy and new. After premiering at the Slamdance Film Festival and winning the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature, Dave Made a Maze received a limited theatrical run this summer, and is available as a streaming option via various providers. This is a cool, funky-fresh little item that defies description and feels destined to pick up a sizable cult following.
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Xavier Gen’s Hitman 

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review


How to put this: if none of the classic video games featuring Agent 47 were ever made, and Xavier Gen’s Hitman was a standalone film, it wouldn’t be a half bad little B-movie type actioner, with a few gnarly set pieces and a level of acceptable energy kept up throughout. As a film version of these beloved games, however, it just just crashes and burns. Here’s why: the games were very specific, stealthy and designed to be atmospheric, slow burning tactical missions carefully built upon each other like a precarious house of cards, each mission more complex, difficult and risky than the last. The film? A standard Hollywood-ized action narrative that blatantly ignores every structural piece and character quality of the games. When will they learn? What’s more is, the film would have been unique, something memorable, had they followed the blueprint which the games pioneered, but they always just insist on cheapening the formula with boring old movie tropes instead of revering an already charted course which made the source material popular enough to get a film version green-lit in the first place. Ironic. Anywho, this ones your standard globetrotting cheeseball outing, with a bald Timothy Olyphant doing his best yet coming nowhere close to being a solid 47, stuck in a mucky plot involving corrupt Eastern Europeans, double crossing fellow agents and pursued by a hyped up Dougray Scott as some Interpol bigwig and Robert Knepper as a shady Russian (dat accent tho) secret police dude. 47 is betrayed by his own organization and tossed to the dogs, forced to go rogue and, in the film’s most grave plotting misstep, saddled with babysitting duty to a Slavic damsel in distress (Olga Kurylenko). They seriously just gotta hurl a Bond babe into every flick that remotely resembles a 007 venture, don’t they, which is a major offence when you look at what a ruthlessly mythic, near inhuman creature 47 is in the games, and what a manipulatable chump he becomes when pinned under the yoke of this painfully silly script. The 46 I know would just as soon as bury a bullet in this chick’s head as let her tag along and become a liability, let alone start to develop (cringe) human emotions. Such are the dollar signs in the eyes of studio execs though, and any hope of a faithful adaptation suffers as a result. The few sequences that work, including a hotel escape and a subway car Mano á mano between 47 and his genetically altered fellow killers, just don’t feel remotely inspired by, or in the spirit of the video games. The film has a few muted notes of originality, but any action piece that feels the need to pilfer John Powell’s Bourne Identity score instead of hiring a composer to whip up something fresh just can’t be taken seriously. Big ol’ meh from me, think I’ll rent out a PS2 from the pawn shop and settle in with Hitman: Blood Money again, because this shit doesn’t cut it. 

-Nate Hill

Taylor Sheridan’s Wind River

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review


“I knew this girl, and she was a fighter. However far you think she ran, I can promise you she ran farther…”
I couldn’t find an exact verbatim quote, but that’s the kind of affecting, succinctly written dialogue to be found in Taylor Sheridan’s Wind River, a deeply moving knockout of a film. The third in a so far brilliant stateside saga dubbed the ‘frontier trilogy’ (following Sicario and Hell Or Highwater), River is the beast of the bunch, a surprisingly emotional, fully engaging murder mystery set in yet another harsh, weather beaten vista where life struggles to survive, namely a desolate Indian reservation in the heart of Wyoming. We open with life in jeopardy right out of the gate: as Nick Cave’s haunting original score howls across the snowy plain, a terrified young girl flees through the landscape, alone and injured. She doesn’t make it through the night. This sparks an investigation from the scant law enforcement the area has to offer (Graham Greene is wonderfully world weary as the tribal Sheriff), a rookie FBI Agent (Elizabeth Olsen) and a veteran game tracker (Jeremy Renner in hands down the best work he’s ever done) who’s rocked by his own personal tragedy. Their task is anything but easy, stalled on all sides by criminal activity, uncooperative suspects and that ever present, ruthless winter climate. The mystery, although not quite as elaborate as one might imagine going in, is an unfortunate and infuriating situation that fires up the blood, as well as Renner’s dogged hunting instinct and need for retribution, an act he solemnly promises to the girl’s broken father, played by Gil Birmingham in the kind of show stopping, heartbreaking performance that pretty much demands a best supporting nod. Renner is just… so good, and it’s jarring to see him out of that glossy Hawkeye getup and in a role with some real heft, but he carries himself with grave charisma, especially in a monologue that will have eyes, ears and hearts rooted to the screen. This is Sheridan’s first time in the director’s chair and the guy proves he’s just as uncannily gifted as he is with writing, especially when it comes to action, his rendition of the classic Mexican standoff/shootout is queasily suspenseful and the best sequence of it’s kind that I’ve seen in years. He’s also got a knack for finding just the right musical talent for his pictures as well. Sicario saw Jóhann Jóhannsson whip up an audible nightmare of a score, and Hell Or Highwater also had the benefit of Cave and Warren Ellis, whose compositions here echo out through the desolation like laments for those lost, dead and buried under the snow. Tightly paced, emotionally rich, suffocating in it’s scenes of tension, cathartically invigorating when it needs to be, all of the best things a story should be are on display here. If Sheridan’s output continues to ascend the way we’ve seen so far, he’ll singlehandedly save ol’ Hollywood. 

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory- Mirror Wars: Reflection One 

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review


Mirror Wars: Reflection One is a miserably bad, slipshod Russian produced Top Gun/Bourne Identity clone that seems to exist only so three genre heavyweights can collect a nice little paycheque. The fellows in question are Malcom McDowell, Armand Assante and Rutger Hauer, and the trio grimace their way through grade school dialogue plus a nonexistent, comatose plot line, surrounded by Russian no name ‘actors’ who do anything but perform decently. Everyone here is some sort of clandestine spy or cloak n’ dagger federal heavy, all out to get a cutting edge self flying aviation AI program implemented in fighter jets, or at least that’s what I got out of it. McDowell is a sinister nutjob who plans to steal it or something, with surprising stunt agility for a dude his age. Assante is some bumbling, overzealous law enforcement pazzi who traipses all over Eastern Europe doing not much of anything, while Hauer is a mystery man literally credited as ‘Mysterious Man’, some all powerful spook who pulls the strings on everyone. The main flub here is dubbing, as in whoever they brought in to lay English voices over those of the Russian actors, because they sound like deaf people with mouths full of maple syrup, and that’s no exaggeration. At least hire a few competent VO artists to lay in some English bars so the pitiful few people who actually give this thing the time of day (myself included, sadly) can understand the badly written dialogue. But no. Aside from the three legged table of wasted talent that Hauer, Assante and an especially gamy McDowell provide, this ones for the dogs.