Reaction Shots

I've spent the better part of the hour watching Lynch's short works, some I've seen, some not; but one of them is " Scissors " and I've got to single it out because it's one of those pieces of his that hits some emotional place of anguish and beauty (in me, anyway) that some of the more intense points in his feature work do. I have in mind the fever points in Blue Velvet when Jeffrey and Sandy start to unravel before the enormity of Frank Booth's crimes. Both of them just kind of go to pieces - I'd say out of nowhere, but there was a constellation of evil that brought them to this moment. It is utter trauma, but MacLachlan and Dern sell it so intensely, it's more rattling than anything Dennis Hopper does in the movie. He does this again in "Mulholland Drive" during the "La Llorana" scene. After everything Watts has been through, again there's this fever pitch of something like abject terror and a peculiar grace. Th...

This post was originally written back in 2016. As with other such posts, I'm not re-editing or updating them...unless something substantial in my point of view has changed. It would be churlish to dismiss “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark” as a mere trifle. It’s way fun, for sure, but it’s so much more. Of course, it’s Lucas and Spielberg’s love letter to the serials of the 30s and 40s, but if it were only that, it wouldn’t have the staying power it has. That staying power doesn’t come just from the enthusiasm of two nostalgic men-children; it comes from a constellation of immense talent and I don’t think it’s too much to say, genius. The introduction of Indy isn’t melodramatic; it’s straight up iconic. Has any other modern film star been repeatedly “iconic” as Harrison Ford? Not just Indiana Jones and Han Solo, but the way he’s carried himself through his career; even later Ford seems so much better than the roles he’s been in (even, that word again, in “Indiana Jon...

During the recent past, I’ve watched for the first time and even re-watched some romcoms that I hadn’t thought much of before or had remembered fondly but couldn’t recall why or in one instance, freaking loved (“Trainwreck”).  But what comes back to me over and again is that in terms of genres, the romantic comedy is the one that lends itself to the greatest possibility of subversion and yet, is most often the most cringe-inducing within the framework of the genre (the majority of works in the field tend to be formulaic and hacky to the point of amnesia, hence, why I vaguely remember most of them.) Exceptions abound, of course, and the definition of what precisely a romantic comedy is can be fairly broad. For my purposes, a rom-com is set piece with two main protagonists who come together as a result of hopefully funny set-ups, break apart owing to miscommunication/differences in values or one farts in bed and the other doesn’t, but come back together – most of the time – owing to ...

I’m not a fan-boy. That said, I like the Star Wars mythos as I understand it from the films (and the visual world-building is remarkable), but had to double-check to make sure that Mos Eisley is a place, not a person (I got confused with a character’s name in the current episode.) I really don’t like the prequels, don’t particularly care for “The Jedi Strike Back” and view the last three tales of the saga with a mix of sentiment, curiosity, and indifference. I’m not inured to cultural cachet of the series and yes, I teared up whenever Carrie Fisher was on-screen and yes, I found certain parts of this last chapter moving, despite the staple gun patchwork of the script. That latter part feeds the indifference. The curiosity, of course, is how these new films were going to address this massive franchise. Turns out, the new films aren’t bad, but that is most decidedly damning with faint praise. “The Force Awakens” is a beat for beat remake of “The Last Hope” and I actuall...

After Ed Wood, it’s unlikely I’d find a more extreme polar opposite. Guy Ritchie is possessed of one of the most frenetic, technique-laden approaches to visual story-telling of any director around. Additionally, he commands casts that can breathe life into dialog that may be among some of the most florid in contemporary cinema. That said, Wood and Ritchie do have a couple of things in common. Hear me out! Please, before you look into having me committed, consider the following. Just because a camera is kinetic (or hyper-so), doesn’t mean that there is a compelling story being told. Just because the scripted language is colourful doesn’t mean that what’s being said is cogent or not nonsensical. And just because a film is shot in the twenty-first century, doesn’t mean that said film is free of casual racism or a tortured, convoluted plot. That said, I enjoyed “The Gentlemen”; the performances carry this debacle through relatively briskly. The “relatively” comes from the...

"They" have nothing to do with it! It's the goddamn gun, Donny! ‘k. I love – unabashedly and unrepentantly – “Plan Nine from Outer Space” and “Glen or Glenda”. I have not seen Ed Wood's later, more tawdry films, though my morbid curiosity leads me to believe I should check them out. “Jail Bait” has lingered in my mind as the middle of the three films, rounding out a pretty craptastic trilogy and I have to admit, it shows a surprising amount of competence while still remaining fairly nuts. I don’t think I completely avoided the film until now; I just never carved out time for it. I’m glad I did. Really. In all, it’s a stretched out “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” episode minus good writing. However, that might even be a little unfair; the dialog isn’t nearly as idiotic as much of what comprised the screenplays of the other two movies mentioned here. It helps that there are real actors mouthing the words and there’s an almost Lynchian quality to some of t...