Net_Wrecker
Member
PART I (well, just Eraserhead at the bottom)
PART II
Blue Velvet (1986): Is there anyone on Earth with better delivery than Kyle MacLachlan when it comes to Lynch style dialogue? I swoon every time he speaks, it's crazy. Blue Velvet remains a strong statement in Lynch's filmography, partly because it's his most overt "NOPE, SOMETHING'S DEFINITELY WRONG UNDERNEATH ALL THIS AMERICANA" messages, and partly because Dennis Hopper's crass, loud, insane, and insanely quotable "Frank Booth" is a template for every loud scumbag to come, both in Lynch's work, and through inspiration in other movies. I think this is my most watched Lynch, and I still find myself invested in the mystery, tensing up and anticipating scenes as if it was the 1st viewing. This marks a turning point in Lynch's career after the monumental failure that was Dune, and the result is a hard left turn towards a mid budget erotic mystery/thriller housing wherein a lot of techniques and motifs are birthed to be iterated on again and again in the decades to follow. I wonder what would've happened had Dune been a success.
Wild at Heart (1990): This is a whole lot of energetic nonsense. Lynch at his most playful, accompanied by a classic Nicolas Cage performance which basically amounts to an unstable Elvis. Not to be outdone, Laura Dern provides as much fire to the movie as Cage bringing a bubbly, sex crazed, Marilyn Monroe energy to almost every scene she's in. This movie doesn't fit together as smoothly as some of the others, relying on kind of flimsy flashbacks periodically to fill in the gaps for basically every narrative revelation, but there are a bunch of excellent one-off scenes throughout that keep things moving, and keep the movie entertaining. Special shout out to Willem Dafoe for the extra sleazy character he brings to life here, who is in one of the more ridiculous slapstick scenes in anything Lynch has done, which says a lot. Bunch of fun Twin Peaks actor cameos as well, as this was filmed right after the pilot.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992): I feel like this has been talked about enough recently so I won't say too much. I tend to fall of the side of Fire Walk With Me being a collection of great scenes rather than a great standalone movie. It's always felt like part of something bigger IMO, more so in 2017 as Twin Peaks works its way through a 3rd season. Still though, it IS great. Sheryl Lee gives herself up completely to the material and delivers an incredibly overlooked broken, hysteric performance. It's crazy how this was ravaged on release. Talk about a much needed reassessment.
Lost Highway (1997): And again with the reassessments. I don't know if this has had as big a turnaround in consensus as Fire Walk With Me (not talked about nearly as much), but it should. I get the sense that people largely felt that this was an exercise in aimless titillation and obscure Lynchisms, but damn this is good stuff. Yeah sure, on one hand it's very mid-90s trashy erotic thriller, but on the other hand it's mid-90s trashy erotic thriller with a boatload of atmosphere (especially in the first act OMG), a fun central idea to unpack and theorize over, and some great Twin Peaks style breaks in reality (right on the cusp of Lynch's narrative grounding becoming intertwined with "The Dream State" to the point that it gets hard to distinguish one from the other). Can we talk about this ridiculous tailgating monologue? Or this wild Nine Inch Nails/Bowie/90s rock accented soundtrack? Or that amazing
at the party? Or those finals shots? Yeah, I like this one.
The Straight Story (1999): The Forgotten Gem. So I mentioned this yesterday because I hadn't seen it since like 2001/2002 (and I recall being bored with it), so I just had to say something. Yeah, this movie is top tier David Lynch. People seem to either forget it exists or rank it lower than it should because it's a VERY different kind of story than what we're used to getting from who, The Elephant Man notwithstanding, became known as a modern champion of free flowing, R-rated, surreal oddities, but The Straight Story stands strong against his best work. The plot is based on the real life trip by 73 year old Alvin Straight across 2 states in America's heartland on a riding lawn mower to see his brother. Pretty much one of the slowest road movies you'll ever see. But within that, it manages to pack in so much heart, so much regret, so much melancholic contemplation; you're almost shocked that Disney let this come out in the state it's in.
Yeah, that's right, DISNEY. This is a G rated family movie. The main reason it gets away with this without falling into outright depression is due to the sharp, beautiful writing that complements the weight of these characters with surgically precise characterization. With only a few lines you get a sense of the history of the characters, the bond they have with each other, and the values they hold dear. And the more they talk, the more you fall in love with them. Hell, sometimes it's not even about dialogue as the camera floats along giving you methodical looks at faces and landscapes that tell you everything you need to know. At least half of the movie is watching Richard Farnsworth, who was actually suffering through cancer and arthritis during filming, struggle to do things, and you understand through sheer physicality the importance of this journey to Alvin, and what the role meant to Farnsworth. Through all this, what is by far Lynch's most straightforward movie (PUN INTENDED, OBVI), you can still feel his hand with every odd aside in dialogue, with every uptick in intensity and subjectivity, with every chance encounter. Don't let the story fool you, David Lynch is still in there. To top it all off, the ending is pure perfection. Even the soundtrack is possibly Angelo Badalamenti's best work.
This is a profoundly human movie from one of the people you'd least expect to deliver it. If you call yourself a Lynch fan and haven't seen/been avoiding this, watch it. If you didn't think much of it in your younger years, rewatch it. If you just don't like it at all, learn to live with the fact that you're a terrible person.
Mulholland Drive (2001): Bruh, it's Mulholland Drive. Do I need to type anything about this movie? 10/10, top 5 of the millennium, creeping up my greatest of all time list, moody as hell, great soundtrack, funny, terrifying, hypnotic, beautiful, mystifying, layered, masterpiece.
Inland Empire (2006): I've seen this twice now, and even if I wanted to explain this movie, I couldn't. This is relatively tame for about an hour, then it careens off the deep end FOR 2 MORE HOURS. A purposely ugly, non-stop nightmare fever dream tumbling in every direction simultaneously. The infamous SD video aesthetic and uncomfortably tight camerawork (filled with an absurd number of push ins) serve to make this whole thing even weirder. I can't even track the forward momentum of this movie. It's a completely uninhibited David Lynch directing a completely insane Laura Dern. On top of all this it contains 3 of the most strangely grotesque Lynch images of his career, which is weird because 2 of em aren't even really that bad. What and how even is this movie? Like, I get it, but I don't get it. A mess you can't take your eyes off of. And those credits? Wat? You'd probably fail a drug test a week after surviving this movie.
How did Justin Theroux manage to get roped into this and Miami Vice in the same year? Oddly enough, they both have a controversial super digital and intimate handheld visual style (though MV looks a hell of a lot better than Inland Empire), and they both feature Nina Simone's Sinnerman on the soundtrack (remixed in MV). What was in the water in 05-06?
_________________________________
Anyway, Lynch feature rankings
1. Mulholland Drive
2. Blue Velvet
3. The Straight Story
4. The Elephant Man
5. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
6. Eraserhead
7. Lost Highway
8. Wild At Heart
9. Inland Empire
10. Dune
Twin Peaks is a separate thing. Too much material to rank it with his movies. The good parts of Twin Peaks are top tier though, and Lynch's episodes in seasons 1 + 2 are some of his best work. We'll see how Season 3 shapes up by the end, but the first four episodes are great and, thankfully, a step back from Inland Empire......... Whoo boy, Inland Empire. Never again.
PART II
Blue Velvet (1986): Is there anyone on Earth with better delivery than Kyle MacLachlan when it comes to Lynch style dialogue? I swoon every time he speaks, it's crazy. Blue Velvet remains a strong statement in Lynch's filmography, partly because it's his most overt "NOPE, SOMETHING'S DEFINITELY WRONG UNDERNEATH ALL THIS AMERICANA" messages, and partly because Dennis Hopper's crass, loud, insane, and insanely quotable "Frank Booth" is a template for every loud scumbag to come, both in Lynch's work, and through inspiration in other movies. I think this is my most watched Lynch, and I still find myself invested in the mystery, tensing up and anticipating scenes as if it was the 1st viewing. This marks a turning point in Lynch's career after the monumental failure that was Dune, and the result is a hard left turn towards a mid budget erotic mystery/thriller housing wherein a lot of techniques and motifs are birthed to be iterated on again and again in the decades to follow. I wonder what would've happened had Dune been a success.
Wild at Heart (1990): This is a whole lot of energetic nonsense. Lynch at his most playful, accompanied by a classic Nicolas Cage performance which basically amounts to an unstable Elvis. Not to be outdone, Laura Dern provides as much fire to the movie as Cage bringing a bubbly, sex crazed, Marilyn Monroe energy to almost every scene she's in. This movie doesn't fit together as smoothly as some of the others, relying on kind of flimsy flashbacks periodically to fill in the gaps for basically every narrative revelation, but there are a bunch of excellent one-off scenes throughout that keep things moving, and keep the movie entertaining. Special shout out to Willem Dafoe for the extra sleazy character he brings to life here, who is in one of the more ridiculous slapstick scenes in anything Lynch has done, which says a lot. Bunch of fun Twin Peaks actor cameos as well, as this was filmed right after the pilot.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992): I feel like this has been talked about enough recently so I won't say too much. I tend to fall of the side of Fire Walk With Me being a collection of great scenes rather than a great standalone movie. It's always felt like part of something bigger IMO, more so in 2017 as Twin Peaks works its way through a 3rd season. Still though, it IS great. Sheryl Lee gives herself up completely to the material and delivers an incredibly overlooked broken, hysteric performance. It's crazy how this was ravaged on release. Talk about a much needed reassessment.
Lost Highway (1997): And again with the reassessments. I don't know if this has had as big a turnaround in consensus as Fire Walk With Me (not talked about nearly as much), but it should. I get the sense that people largely felt that this was an exercise in aimless titillation and obscure Lynchisms, but damn this is good stuff. Yeah sure, on one hand it's very mid-90s trashy erotic thriller, but on the other hand it's mid-90s trashy erotic thriller with a boatload of atmosphere (especially in the first act OMG), a fun central idea to unpack and theorize over, and some great Twin Peaks style breaks in reality (right on the cusp of Lynch's narrative grounding becoming intertwined with "The Dream State" to the point that it gets hard to distinguish one from the other). Can we talk about this ridiculous tailgating monologue? Or this wild Nine Inch Nails/Bowie/90s rock accented soundtrack? Or that amazing
Mystery Man scene
The Straight Story (1999): The Forgotten Gem. So I mentioned this yesterday because I hadn't seen it since like 2001/2002 (and I recall being bored with it), so I just had to say something. Yeah, this movie is top tier David Lynch. People seem to either forget it exists or rank it lower than it should because it's a VERY different kind of story than what we're used to getting from who, The Elephant Man notwithstanding, became known as a modern champion of free flowing, R-rated, surreal oddities, but The Straight Story stands strong against his best work. The plot is based on the real life trip by 73 year old Alvin Straight across 2 states in America's heartland on a riding lawn mower to see his brother. Pretty much one of the slowest road movies you'll ever see. But within that, it manages to pack in so much heart, so much regret, so much melancholic contemplation; you're almost shocked that Disney let this come out in the state it's in.
Yeah, that's right, DISNEY. This is a G rated family movie. The main reason it gets away with this without falling into outright depression is due to the sharp, beautiful writing that complements the weight of these characters with surgically precise characterization. With only a few lines you get a sense of the history of the characters, the bond they have with each other, and the values they hold dear. And the more they talk, the more you fall in love with them. Hell, sometimes it's not even about dialogue as the camera floats along giving you methodical looks at faces and landscapes that tell you everything you need to know. At least half of the movie is watching Richard Farnsworth, who was actually suffering through cancer and arthritis during filming, struggle to do things, and you understand through sheer physicality the importance of this journey to Alvin, and what the role meant to Farnsworth. Through all this, what is by far Lynch's most straightforward movie (PUN INTENDED, OBVI), you can still feel his hand with every odd aside in dialogue, with every uptick in intensity and subjectivity, with every chance encounter. Don't let the story fool you, David Lynch is still in there. To top it all off, the ending is pure perfection. Even the soundtrack is possibly Angelo Badalamenti's best work.
This is a profoundly human movie from one of the people you'd least expect to deliver it. If you call yourself a Lynch fan and haven't seen/been avoiding this, watch it. If you didn't think much of it in your younger years, rewatch it. If you just don't like it at all, learn to live with the fact that you're a terrible person.
Mulholland Drive (2001): Bruh, it's Mulholland Drive. Do I need to type anything about this movie? 10/10, top 5 of the millennium, creeping up my greatest of all time list, moody as hell, great soundtrack, funny, terrifying, hypnotic, beautiful, mystifying, layered, masterpiece.
Inland Empire (2006): I've seen this twice now, and even if I wanted to explain this movie, I couldn't. This is relatively tame for about an hour, then it careens off the deep end FOR 2 MORE HOURS. A purposely ugly, non-stop nightmare fever dream tumbling in every direction simultaneously. The infamous SD video aesthetic and uncomfortably tight camerawork (filled with an absurd number of push ins) serve to make this whole thing even weirder. I can't even track the forward momentum of this movie. It's a completely uninhibited David Lynch directing a completely insane Laura Dern. On top of all this it contains 3 of the most strangely grotesque Lynch images of his career, which is weird because 2 of em aren't even really that bad. What and how even is this movie? Like, I get it, but I don't get it. A mess you can't take your eyes off of. And those credits? Wat? You'd probably fail a drug test a week after surviving this movie.
How did Justin Theroux manage to get roped into this and Miami Vice in the same year? Oddly enough, they both have a controversial super digital and intimate handheld visual style (though MV looks a hell of a lot better than Inland Empire), and they both feature Nina Simone's Sinnerman on the soundtrack (remixed in MV). What was in the water in 05-06?
_________________________________
Anyway, Lynch feature rankings
1. Mulholland Drive
2. Blue Velvet
3. The Straight Story
4. The Elephant Man
5. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
6. Eraserhead
7. Lost Highway
8. Wild At Heart
9. Inland Empire
10. Dune
Twin Peaks is a separate thing. Too much material to rank it with his movies. The good parts of Twin Peaks are top tier though, and Lynch's episodes in seasons 1 + 2 are some of his best work. We'll see how Season 3 shapes up by the end, but the first four episodes are great and, thankfully, a step back from Inland Empire......... Whoo boy, Inland Empire. Never again.
