Blue Velvet (1986)

Director: David Lynch

Pretty riveting, dark neo-noir type film which is the most accessible film I've seen from noted surrealist David Lynch.

I recall watching this one once before, about 20 years ago, though I had zero recollection of the second half of the movie. This means that I either fell asleep, or that I left the friend's house where we were watching it before it was over. Whatever the case, I'm happy that I finally went back to it.

The movie follows Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), a young man who returns to his cozy American town from college after his father is hospitalized after falling ill. While walking in a field near his neighborhood, Jeffrey makes the grisly discovery of a human ear lying on the ground. He takes the ear to the police, but can't seem to leave it at that. With the help of a police detective's daughter, Sandy (Laura Dern), he employs some amateur sleuthing techniques to dig deeper into the mystery. Before long, he is wrapped up with the sultry lounge singer Dorothy (Isabella Rosalini) and a maniac criminal, Frank (Dennis Hopper). Jeffrey is inexorably pulled into a dark, underground criminal world filled with drugs, violence, and depravity of a level that belies the otherwise peaceful-seeming town.

Blue Velvet is still pretty hypnotic, even after nearly 35 years, and certain elements almost seem like a practice run for some of what we would see in the original Twin Peaks  TV show 4 years later. The most obvious one is the notion of dark, twisted forces lurking beneath the tranquil, All-American, white picket fence veneer of the setting. You have the attractive young couple in Jeffrey and Sandy, who seem to be falling in love, and we see more than a few nods to the idealist view of relationship from American suburbia from the 1950s and early '60s. It doesn't take long, though, before things get weird. Like, really weird. No sooner does Jeffrey sneak into the lounge singer Dorothy's house for some intel on a possible murder than he finds himself in a closet, peeping on her undressing, then seeing her brutally victimized by the unhinged, sexually warped madman, Frank. This dizzying dichotomy of light and dark has long been a part of David Lynch's works, and Blue Velvet was his earliest and probably still his most accessible example of it.

Then there are the technical merits of Blue Velvet. The movie just looks so good. And I don't mean to say that it's easy or always pleasing to watch. It's not. There are just too many disturbing and violent behaviors going on to say that you "enjoy" watching it. Still, it doesn't take an expert to see that the costumes, lighting, sets, and cinematography are masterfully designed and executed. There's such a rawness to most of the scenes involving Frank that most films won't employ. When Frank is terrorizing then raping Dorothy, there are no edits or camera maneuvers to spare the viewers of just how horrific he is. Similarly, when Jeffrey is basically abducted to the apartment where Dorothy's child is being held captive, there is such a skeevy, dangerous vibe that one can't help but feel like Jeffrey has ended up in some deceptively drab-looking circle of Hell. An easily overlooked part of these disturbing sequences is the lack of music, creating a silence that intensifies the horror. On the flip side, there are other scenes and moments that are very lush and stylized, showing off Lynch's range of techniques.

Frank, menacing over a terrified Dorothy. Frank is one of
the most frighteningly raw psychotics you'll ever see in film.
And Lynch doesn't let you off the hook by stylizing him in
any way - he's just a mad dog nutbag, on unflinching display.

I always find it hard to explain my feelings on the acting in David Lynch's movies, since there's such a range. There's almost always some campiness to be found in his works, which inherently requires some overacting and scene-chewing from the actors. And sometimes camp filmmakers just put bad actors in their movies, either because they find the amateur acting funny or because they just like the way an actor looks on film, despite a lack of acting ability. I think David Lynch has always done all of these things, and Blue Velvet is no exception. All that said, the four main performers - all rock-solid professionals - are perfect. And there's also a great, smaller turn we get from Dean Stockwell, the bizarre, perverted "ringmaster" at the aforementioned apartment scene (I must admit that this character can accurately be branded as a classic example of homophobia).

Like every David Lynch movie I've seen, I can only recommend it to people who are ready for something that's more than a little odd, twisted, and challenging in some respects. While the over-arcing story follows your typical crime thriller, the telling is much grittier, bizarre, and in your face than more popular fare in the genre. The best starting place for those who haven't seen Lynch's work is the original Twin Peaks TV show. If the darker elements of that program don't freak you out, check out Blue Velvet. From there, Lynch's work mostly gets darker and more surreal, so it's a logical next step. 

New(ish) Releases from 2019: Booksmart and Parasite

Booksmart (2019)

Director: Olivia Wilde

A new teen comedy to add to the canon of 21st century-classics.

Booksmart follows in the spiritual footsteps of Superbad by following a crazy day in the life of a couple of close high school friends, Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein). Amy and Molly are overachievers who are primed for upper-echelon universities, and they are in their final week of classes before graduating. But once they realize that all of their peers, to whom they had felt academically superior, are also getting into top-notch schools on the strength of skills unknown to the prideful young ladies, massive regret sets in. Namely, that they had wasted some of their high school years studying rather than occasionally cutting lose and having fun with their classmates. In an attempt to remedy this, they decide to go all-out and attend a massive graduation party where they will have all of the fun that they skipped during their previous years of study. Of course, the line to the party quickly becomes anything but straight, and the girls are sent on a rather wild, epic evening of craziness.

While the overall premise and structure of Booksmart aren't particularly novel, it breaks a few barriers by focusing on young ladies who are incredibly smart, funny, and can be every bit as raunchy as their male counterparts. While my 44-year-old self was probably not quite as entertained as a younger person might be, I still found plenty to laugh at and appreciate. The Odyssey-like journey goes through various episodes, some funnier and more creative than others, which keep the pace moving along nicely.

The strength is in the performances of Dever and Feldstein, who are great in their turns as Amy and Molly. I can't imagine that it's easy to pull off uproarious comedy in the same film where two actors need to build some genuine sympathy and heart with the audience, yet these two young stars pull it off.

I don't know that I'll go out of my way to watch this one again, but I could very easily see myself surfing across it, stopping, and staying on for the rest of the ride. At least, at any point in the purely-comedic first two acts. Things get a bit more dramatic in the third (as you would hope for a buddy comedy that aspired to be a bit more than comedy), but it's an entertaining trip worth jumping into at nearly any point.

Parasite (2019)

Director: Boon Jong-Ho

Brilliantly crafted and executed social thriller/dark comedy by a modern Korean master who seems to just keep getting better and better.

Parasite follows young South Korean man Ki-woo and his family, the Kims. The Kims are quite poor, though they all seem to be rather intelligent, if sometimes morally dubious, survivors. Ki-woo takes an opportunity to fill in for a friend as an English tutor to the 15-year old daughter of a very wealthy couple, the Parks. Ki-woo gets the job by lying about his credentials and keeping up a good front to the rather gullible Mrs. Park. The money is so good that Ki-woo finagles jobs for his family members, as well. But once the Kims get deep into the Park's lives, things take a strange turn which jeopardizes the entire scam.

A simple, spoiler-free summary of the premise hardly does this movie justice. As with director Boon's 2013 sci-fi dystopian film Snowpiercer, Parasite has a strong theme revolving around socio-economic class. The interactions both within and between the Kim and Park families say a ton about the relationships between the upper- and middle/lower-tiers on the economic spectrum, not just in South Korea but in any society. This is what elevates the story far above a mere thriller.

And suspense-thriller is what you get on the movie's surface, which it does extremely well. While it takes a bit of time for the mystery and suspense elements to kick in, they hit hard when they do; I guarantee that, if you don't know anything about the movie, then you will never be able to see where some of the twists are taking you.

The Kims, trying to make ends meet by folding pizza boxes.
What might have been completely depressing in another
movie is, in Parasite, comical and revealing.

But, unlike say, an M. Night Shyamalan movie, Parasite goes well beyond its twists for its real impact. As already stated, the plot turns and rising tension serve to do more than simply build drama. They offer sly and sometimes brutal commentary on relations between people of very different means.

One might be tempted to think that Parasite is some horrific, dark tale that will leave one endlessly disturbed, but such is not really the case. Yes, there are dark elements to it, and even some horror elements. But there is also plenty of humor of various types, some dark but some very light. And this range of tones and gags is brought off splendidly by the flawless cast, most notably all four of the Parks - Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik), Ki-jung (Park So-dam), Chung-sook (Jang, Hye-jin), and Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho). The others are great, but these four charismatic hucksters really make you pull for them and really make you feel the pain when tragedy hits.

I expect Parasite to rake in more than a few major awards (I think it already has, at the time that I write this), as it really is an outstanding movie. If you haven't seen it, I can't recommend it enough. While there are elements that may seem strange to those more accustomed to traditional narratives, if you can go in with an open mind and try to read in between the lines a bit, you won't be disappointed. 

Retro Duo: Zodiac (2007); Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

Zodiac (2007)

Director: David Fincher

I actually saw this movie back in 2007 in the theaters and thought it was excellent. That was, however, the only time I had seen it until it popped up as streamable on Netflix about a month ago. After the mood struck me to fire it up, I was reminded of why I had such a high opinion of it a decade ago.

The movie tracks the investigation into the very real series of murders which took place in San Fransisco and other coastal California cities between the late 1960s and early 1970s. The killer infamously taunted the San Fransisco police department and media by sending letters to the major newspapers, daring them to try and discover his identity. Zodiac studies the years-long manhunt mostly through an unlikely vessel - San Fransisco Chronicle political cartoonist Robert Graysmith. As the Zodiac killer's letters arrive, Graysmith becomes more and more engaged in piecing the clues together to uncover his identity. Despite his many efforts, along with those of several dedicated and skilled police officers, the killer is never actually discovered or captured.

Zodiac is a highly unusual true crime movie, in that is offers none of the tidy satisfaction that many such movies serve up. Firstly, the murders are shown in a completely non-gratuitous way that truly chills one's bones. I greatly admire this approach, which prevents any sort of glamour from being placed on such vicious acts. Secondly, and perhaps most impressively, we do not get the satisfying, step-by-step detective tale that ends with the killer getting his just desserts. The road to identifying and arresting the man responsible is long, leads down many dead ends, and frustrates several good cops and earnest journalists into fits of near-insanity. By the middle of the movie, you can already feel these people's rage and feelings of impotence in the face of a murderer who not only brutally killed innocent people but also took pleasure out of taunting what he saw as the San Francisco establishment.

Telling such a tale in a way that is compelling cannot be an easy task, yet David Fincher pulled it off brilliantly. When I saw it in the theaters, I had a sense that the movie was overly long, though I did find it outstanding. During this second viewing, though, my sense of the movie being long-winded was completely gone. I could now see how each scene has its purpose and serves as its own small chapter in the greater tale. This is thanks to some strong writing and directing, as well as excellent performances all around by reliable actors like Jake Gyllenhall, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, and plenty of others. It should also come as no surprise that the cinematography and overall visuals are excellent - aspects of filming which Fincher never gives short shrift.

It's not a happy crime procedural in the vein of modern "Law and Order" shows, to be sure. But this is arguably one of the very best movies about a serial killer that has ever been made. If the topic itself is not too disturbing for you, I highly recommend setting aside the two-and-a-half hours to take this one in.

Cute little Caesar from the first movie
has learned a few hard lessons from life,
and he wears them in his gaze.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

Director: Matt Reeves

The second in the modern "Apes" trilogy, this was another surprisingly well-done follow-up to the equally solid Rise of the Planet of the Apes, released in 2011.

At the end of Rise, the exceptionally intelligent (thanks to genetic engineering) ape Caesar had led a large-scale escape of dozens of apes whom had been subjected to experiments and torture. Unbeknownst to Caesar, he and his brethren were also carrying a virus, known to humans as simian flu, which then began infecting the human population.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes picks up ten years after the end of Rise. Most of humanity has been killed by the simian virus. Caesar is the head of a large clan of apes living in an organically-constructed town in the forests outside of San Francisco. Still with him are several of the apes which he initially set free, before the outbreak of simian flu. Most notable are the massive and quiet orangutan Maurice and the still-bitter, tortured, and pugnacious Koba. The apes all live in relative peace, and they haven't even seen a human in two years. That is, until they come across a small group of them nosing around the apes' forests. One human gets spooked and accidentally shoots Caesar's son, Blue Eyes. This sets off a chain of events leading to a fight between an angry contingent of the apes and an enclave of human survivors who have been scraping out a meager existence in the husk of old San Francisco.

As silly as I found the original 1968 Planet of the Apes in many ways, it is extremely difficult to find much that is silly about Dawn. Yes, there are apes running around, riding horses and using guns. On the surface, it can seem completely ridiculous. But the themes of warfare, vengeance, xenophobia, and superiority are all thoroughly relevant, and they are handled with surprising skill here. Thanks in no small part to the stunning visual effects of Weta studios and some amazing motion-capture performances by Andy Serkis and others, even the apes evoke genuine feeling that is often missing from all-human cast, struggle-for-survival dramas. The apes like Caesar and Koba speak in short, simple sentences, but many of their words carry immense weight, given the context, and show thought and emotion with which we can empathize. And since the context is a more primitive world, with very little electricity or advanced technology, the prominence of questions about existence and survival feel completely natural. The resolution blends its action with its drama quite well, with the stakes feeling quite high on both a material and emotional level; this is impressive, given just how much of it involved computer-generated primates.

While I may not feel the need to rewatch Rise or Dawn of the Planet of the Apes again any time soon, I found them both pleasant surprises and very solid films, especially the latter. Perhaps the best praise I can offer is that, while I didn't bother to catch either of the first two in the theaters despite positive reviews, I plan to catch the final installment of the trilogy on the big screen. 

Before I Die #599: Manhunter (1986)

This is the 599th movie that I've now seen out of the 1,187 films on the "Before You Die" list that I'm working my way through.

Director: Michael Mann

A really interesting and compelling, if noticeably flawed, movie that was ahead of its time in several ways.

Nearly everyone over the age of 25, and an awful lot of people younger than that, are aware that Silence of the Lambs was the brilliant, ground-breaking psychological thriller film that brought the character Hannibal Lecter to a massively wide audience back in 1991. It also spawned a number of sequels, and even the modern, critically-acclaimed TV series Hannibal. Far less known is that Silence of the Lambs was not the first Hannibal Lecter film. Five years prior to Jonathon Demme's amazing take on Thomas Harris's novel, director Michael Mann headed up a film adaptation of the first "Lecter" novel, Red Dragon, but changed the name to Manhunter. This was all news to me until several years ago, when I was perusing movie lists. When I considered how wildly successful the Lecter character would become, and how skilled a director Michael Mann is, I wondered just how this movie isn't better known.

The movie is not dissimilar in general structure to Silence of the Lambs. F.B.I. investigator Will Graham (William Peterson) is called back from convalescence to help the Bureau track down a serial killer known as "The Tooth Fairy." Graham reluctantly accepts and begins the process of profiling the killer. Graham's method involves trying to think like the killers he tracks, which at times leaves him in disturbed mental states. While on the trail of the Tooth Fairy, he hits a roadblock and is forced to consult with the last serial killer whom he had captured, Doctor Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecktor (the spelling was changed for this movie), played by Bryan Cox. As Graham immerses himself deeper and deeper into the case, he grows more disturbed and erratic. As the clock ticks on the Tooth Fairy's next kill, Graham walks an ever-shakier tightrope of sanity.

In terms of its blend of ultra-dark subject matter with a sleek aesthetic, this movie was ahead of the curve. Sure, the twisted minds and worlds or serial killers and psychopaths had been done well a few times before, with movies like Blow Up, Taxi Driver, and even others like Peeping Tom or the seminal Psycho from all the way back in 1960. What Michael Mann did, though, was to apply his particular cinematic vision to such a tale - a look that he had introduced and honed on the hit TV show Miami Vice, which was at its absolute peak when Manhunter came out in 1986. To this day, many of the shots and sequences are stunning, even if there is a glossy, artificial appearance to more than a few of them. It was a combination of elements unlike anything else I can recall from the period.

One of the many stunning, carefully framed shots in the movie.
Such visual care shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with
Mann's other films like Heat or The Insider.

The visionary elements are quite clear in the movie, as are the flaws. There is the aforementioned artificiality to certain scenes. There are also more than a few slow-motion action sequences, a technique which I grew tired of long ago. The other awkward element is the the way that the Will Graham character "narrates" his projections into the mind of the Tooth Fairy. As much as I feel that voice-over narration is a cinematic crutch, it probably would have been less clumsy than what Mann decided to do, which seems overly stagey.

Manhunter is a great example of a greatly flawed but ultimately visionary film. It can still be appreciated for the bold subject matter and the psychological complexity of its main characters, to be sure. However, it's impossible to ignore how certain visual and narrative elements have aged very poorly. I am actually curious to now watch the more recent version of this story - the 2002 movie Red Dragon. I've never seen it, but it has a great cast and some solid reviews. I suspect that the face lift that the more recent creators gave the story could be of great benefit. I'm sure I'll have that review up before too long.

That's 599 movies down. Only 588 to go before I can die. 

Retro Trio: Sorcerer (1977); The World's End (2013); Ghost World (2001)

Sorcerer (1977)

Director: William Friedkin

An adequate but ultimately inferior and arguably unnecessary remake of a classic 1950s film.

Sorcerer is a spiritually faithful remake of the 1953 movie The Wages of Fear by Henri-Georges Clouzet. Though each film takes place roughly in the time that it was released, the 23-year difference between them matters little. The basic story follows a handful of shady drifters from different countries, all stuck in a small town in South America. All of them have long since run from something else, but all are desperate to finally return to their respective home countries. So desperate, in fact, that they agree to take an extremely high-risk, high-reward job in order to get the funds needed to leave. The job requires them to drive two trucks filled with highly volatile nitroglycerin across 200 miles of pock-marked dirt roads, so that the explosives can be used to collapse a runaway oil burn. These basics, along with the element of suspense which they set up, are the same in both movies.

Where Sorcerer differs from the original film is mostly in the time it spends on back story. Clouzet's film begins in the small village and spends the first 30-odd minutes there. Friedkin, however, opted to show how the four primary drivers ended up in their predicament. Perhaps unsurprisingly for the director of The Exorcist and The French Connection, the men's tales paint a grim picture. All four are varying degrees of despicable, with serious blood on their hands and misery in their wakes. While this does add a grimness to the movie that Clouzet's lacked, I actually found it a very effective device, as there is a fascination born of seeing if a quartet of vicious, haunted men can actually work together towards a common goal under deadly circumstances.

In nearly all other respects, though, I have to say that Clouzet's original is superior to Friedkin's. It's been about ten years since the one and only time that I saw The Wages of Fear, but I loved it and it always stuck with me.While it doesn't depict the drivers' nefarious backstories, it does strongly imply that these are desperate and somewhat unsavory men. Once they start to make the treacherous journey in their trucks, the movie is far better than Sorcerer. The tension and suspense is more consistently engaging. Whereas Sorcerer has several overly long scenes relying more on set pieces and drawn-out, repetitive action, The Wages of Fear sparks your engagement with one quietly deadly situation after another. Friedkin's movie does have some really good moments of suspense, but they don't stack up to the source material in either quantity or quality.

Sorcerer is a decent enough movie that suffers most from being a remake of an earlier masterpiece. Friedkin, as great a director as he was, probably should have left this one alone.

The World's End (2013)

Director: Edgar Wright

The second time I watched this one from start to finish, and it's even better than I had remembered. And what I remembered was a great movie.

Director Edgar Wright and writer/actor Simon Pegg wrote The World's End as the third and final installment of their "Cornetto Trilogy", a series of films connected mostly by their hilarious appropriation of well-known popular movie genres. This last film drew much of its inspiration from the science-fiction realm, most notably the classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Wright and Pegg had done this before, using George Romero's zombie flicks to inspire Shawn of the Dead and any number of Hollywood action cop movies to create Hot Fuzz. As great as those first two film are, The World's End outdoes them and showcases its writers' brilliance for creating entertaining, clever, and even thoughtful movies.

For the entire first act of the movie, a first-time viewer might wonder just where the science fiction is. The set up centers on Gary King (Simon Pegg), an alcoholic who peaked during his senior year of high school and, as he nears forty, decides to round up his old pals for a reunion pub crawl in their hometown. Once Gary convinces his reluctant former comrades to join (and enable) him and go back home, they soon find that their old pubs have all been homogenized by franchizing. This is the first glimpse of the sci-fi iceberg looming beneath the movie's first 30 minutes. As the fellows progress in their crawl, they discover that most of the town's denizens have been replaced by some sort of automated replicants, complete with their actual memories.

In the spirit of the classic movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The World's End uses its fantastic fictional elements to comment upon the homogenization of society. Whereas that earlier film was a thinly-veiled response to the utopian promises of communism, Wright and Pegg's film is a response to corporate sterilization of culture. There are several engaging exchanges that tap into deeper questions about individuality and youth-worship, among other rich topics. Carrying much of the load is a brilliant performance by Simon Pegg, who shows his surprising and impressive acting range in this movie. His Gary King character evokes several different emotions, and his arc is a surprisingly fascinating one.

I've become a real fan of Edgar Wright, and this movie is the one that solidified it for me.

Ghost World (2001)

Director: Terry Zwigoff

I hadn't seen this one since shortly after it was released 15 years ago. It still holds up very well as a funny, thoughtful drama about people who dwell outside of the mainstream. With hindsight, it is also clear that Ghost World was a rather early version of a style more widely popularized later in movies like Garden State and Juno. When compared to those more recent movies, I actually enjoy Ghost World a bit more.

Based on the graphic novel of the same name, the film focuses mostly on Enid (Thora Birch), a rather snarky, hip, 18-year old misfit who looks for inventive ways to stave off boredome during the summer following their senior year in high school. She and her equally-disaffected best friend Rebecca (Scarlett Johannson) tease and torment their friend Josh and hang around their more mainstream classmates just enough to mock and scoff at them. If this sounds a little jerky, it's because it is. Enid and Rebecca do make fun of some things which are worthy of mockery, but they're not exactly noble souls themselves.

Things are taken a little too far when, on a lark, Enid responds to a personal add and pretends to be a woman called for in the add. Enid and Rebecca stake out and watch as the man who placed the add (Steve Buscemi) arrives at the designated area to be unwittingly stood up. After watching the man wait hopefully and then leave dejected, Enid and Rebecca follow him to a garage sale. Enid buys an old record from the man, whose name is Seymour, and she makes a connection with him. Much of the rest of the story involves Enid trying to find a romantic interest for the introverted Seymour, deal with her changing relationship with the Rebecca, and pass a summer art class which she needs to officially receive her high school diploma. On the surface, it could be the plot to many coming-of-age films.

And yet, the novelty lies in the details. Typical of a Terry Zwigoff film, there is plenty of quirky and unexpected humor and drama. The characters are quite different from those in more popular teen movies. Enid, even more than Rebecca, typifies the condition that some young people experience when they have a far clearer idea of what they don't want than what they do. While this is familiar, neither Enid nor Rebecca are portrayed as loveable darlings whom the audience is clearly meant to support. They do selfish and even mean things, even if they aren't essentially mean people. This lends some drama to moments such as when Enid befriends Seymour, or when she breaks down as her friendship with Rebecca deteriorates. Thanks to the steady development of dimensions beyond our initial impressions of the characters, these moments have some heft.

Not every little joke hits, and not every action in the story feels totally organic. But there are enough laughs and enough authenticity to make for a good movie. I may not need to watch it again soon, if ever, but it's nice to see that a noted "cult" movie still holds up.