Twin Perfect, the YouTube channel behind the popular four-and-a-half-hour “Twin Peaks ACTUALLY EXPLAINED” video, has just released another David Lynch analysis, this time focusing on the director’s surrealist 2001 masterpiece Mulholland Drive.
Entitled “The Terrible Secret of Mulholland Drive”, it’s a little over an hour long and adopts a very interesting angle in understanding the film’s confusing plot, one that I hadn’t previously considered. As with his Twin Peaks video, he advocates for a marriage of subtext and the text itself, folding the movie’s deconstruction of Hollywood into his explanation of the story. I highly recommend the video, which you can see below:
David Lynch is pretty much my favourite director currently, ever since I watched his masterful TV magnum opus Twin Peaks. I’ve still got some of his movies left to watch (most notably Blue Velvet), mainly because I’m trying to savour his filmography for as long as possible. I’m going to try to watch Inland Empire this Halloween season. I’m both excited and apprehensive, given the movie’s reputation of either being the Lynchiest masterpiece of all Lynch’s masterpiece or an impenetrable self-indulgence. Let’s be honest, I’m such a Lynch shill at this point that I’ll probably give it five stars (I thought The Elephant Man was just alright but still gave it four stars, just by virtue of it being directed by Dave).
I like to watch a lot of horror movies around Halloween, even though the ‘holiday’ is not as big a thing in Australia as it is in America. We’re only really in it because of the commercial appeal of selling decorations and confectionary, with none of the spiritual aspect that permeates the origins of the American and European Halloween. I got the ball rolling (who says you can’t start watching scary movies in September?) with a rewatch of Ridley Scott’s eminently suspenseful Alien on Friday night, and continued with a viewing (my first) of Wes Craven’s slasher sequel Scream 2.
I watched the original 1996 Scream a couple of months ago and loved it. It’s hilarious but it’s not a spoof, and it doesn’t skimp on the scares. It delivers a thrilling and effective slasher film while also commenting on and subverting the tropes of the subgenre, resulting in a truly unique (at least, until everybody started ripping it off) postmodern horror film. Not to mention that it includes one of the best ever horror protagonists in the form of Sidney Prescott, played by Neve Campbell, who serves to reinvigorate the final girl trope with a distinctly feminist bent. It’s an awesome movie.
I was a little apprehensive going into its 1997 (now that’s a quick turnaround) sequel. Despite the inclusion of the original director, screenwriter and cast (all of which tends to be a good omen), horror sequels are never as good as the original, as Scream 2‘s characters point out multiple times. And while it does have its flaws (the primary one being that the original’s subtextual meditations on the effect of movie violence become the text in the sequel, to lesser effect) the film does a great job at living up to the high standard that the original set. I could tell that Scream 2 was a worthy successor almost immediately, as it has an excellent opening scene.
The original Scream has an iconic opening sequence, perhaps the most iconic of any horror film. It’s been parodied and imitated but never bettered. Thus, the sequel is faced with an immediate hurdle, because it has to construct an opening that could somehow live up to the first film’s. And, somehow, it did. The opening scene of Scream 2 is not better than the original’s, but it is pretty damn excellent in its own right. It stars Jada Pinkett Smith and Omar Epps, playing a couple who attend an advance screening of the film-within-a-film Stab. Their chemistry with each other instantly endears them to the audience, and the crowded location that they’re situated in gives us a false sense of security in assuming that they might live past the opening scene. The audience relaxes even more as the opening scene directly and comedically references the opening scene of the previous film, as Stab features a crappy, Hollywoodised version of the Drew Barrymore phone conversation. It was a bold choice to directly reference the big shoes that the film has to fill, but I’m glad they went for it. The comedy continues as Epps’ character goes to the bathroom to encounter two guys cosplaying as Ghostface at the urinal — until the calm is shattered when Epps is stabbed in the side of the head through a cubicle wall! It’s a shocking and unceremonious end to the character, and the murder’s gory nature instantly ups the ante of violence from the original. The tension continues to ramp up as the killer, now dressed in Epps’ clothing and still wearing his Ghostface mask, returns to the screening and sits next to Plinkett Smith. She mistakes him for her boyfriend until she notices that his hands are drenched in the real Epps’ blood. On the screen, a bastardised version of Barrymore’s death from the original plays out as Plinkett Smith attempts to escape but is stabbed multiple times by the killer, which goes unnoticed by the cheering, costumed crowd. The killer disappears as Plinkett Smith climbs up in front of the screen, dying as only a couple of the viewers realise that something’s wrong.
It’s a lengthy, frenzied and effective scene that quickly establishes the film’s thesis and makes it clear that the sequel will be every bit as clever and subversive as the original (at least until the climax, where things become a bit predictable). I’m surprised people don’t talk about this opening that often. It’s truly amazing.
I meant to post this yesterday but I… forgot, so you’re getting my thoughts on the Dune trailer a day late!
My first impression of Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Duneis a mix between Lord of the Rings and Blade Runner. The scale and cast size of the former, the tone and introspective character work of the latter. This, in my book, is a good thing.
The cinematography by Greig Fraser is quite beautiful, particularly in wide shots. Would Villeneuve regular Roger Deakins have utilised a more varied and dynamic colour palate as opposed to Fraser’s muted ones? Possibly, but the look seems to suit the tone the movie is going for.
Which I guess leads me to a bit of a concern with the movie, not so much with the quality itself but with its value on the box office. As soon as Timothee Chalamet stuck his hand inside that box and started screaming, a thought struck me: this film doesn’t seem very mainstream. I don’t say that in a disparaging or pretentious way, but in that this is a $200+ million movie that’s been put in a big tentpole position in December, and it’s… not a Marvel movie, basically. It seems dark and introspective, with very little humour. I just don’t see it being very marketable to the general audience, especially in the current COVID-ravaged climate. It’s kind of like a Tenet situation, except that had the ‘director of The Dark Knight and Inception’ energy going into its marketing. What casual moviegoer is seeing Dune because it’s directed by the guy who did Enemy? To be clear: I’m happy that Warner Bros. puts so much money behind directors’ visions, I’m just talking from an objective viewpoint. Plus, it does have a very stacked cast behind it, so that’s something.
The real attraction is clearly the giant space worm, though.
Before you get enraged and unleash a plethora of tweets on the Academy’s new diversity rules upon the world, here’s an idea – actually read the criteria first.
The new rules are a low bar to clear. I’ve made four short films with tiny, mostly male crews and every single one of them would qualify for Best Picture if they were feature-length under these new rules. This is not the Academy forcing movies with white male casts out of the Oscars. This is not the Academy going ‘woke’ or ‘SJW’ or whatever stupid anti-diversity buzz word you want to use.
Potentially, the only diversity you’d need to qualify for Best Picture is a female VFX supervisor and a few Asian interns at your production company. It’s that easy. Like I said, the new rules are an incredibly low bar to clear. Let me put this in perspective for you: Green Book (of all things) would easily qualify under these new rules.
Even if these rules were stricter, who cares? We’ve had over ninety years of very non-diverse Best Picture winners. These winners not being diverse doesn’t make them bad (many of them are masterpieces), but it’s resulted in a lack of nominations for more different and unique films from different places, different perspectives. If the Academy voters need to be forced to watch diverse movies, then that’s what it takes. But, as I’ve said, that isn’t the case here. My prediction that the Oscars will be pretty much business as usual, especially since these rules don’t kick in until 2024. In conclusion, calm the hell down.
I had the pleasure of seeing Tenet last night, and it was glorious to be back in the cinema after all this time. They were even serving popcorn, which I was doubtful about given how they were encouraging us to wear masks (the maskwearing actually added an extra layer to the film, given that oxygen masks play an important role in the film’s latter half). More importantly, the film was also really good, as I wrote on Letterboxd two days ago:
I’m a bit stuck between four and four-and-a-half stars for this film’s rating, because I don’t think it really suits either. In my head, it’s a 4.25 star film, so I decided to mark it up. This is undoubtedly Nolan’s best movie since Inception – an exciting, technically masterful, brilliantly scored throwback to ’60s Bond movies (particularly Thunderball) with some classic Nolan complicated sci-fi rubbed in for good measure. This is the sort of movie that demands a second and even third viewing – if Inception was confusing on first watch, Tenet is damn near incomprehensible, but I say that in the best way possible. It is challenging in a way that no $200 million blockbuster has ever been before; if you switch off for one second you’ll be lost for the next five or ten minutes. The expository scenes fill in the basics but then it’s up to the audience to fill in the finer details as Nolan bounces from one exquisitely crafted action setpiece to the next. I’m making it sound a bit pretentious, but it’s also supremely exhilarating. There’s the aforementioned action scenes, which are all superbly shot and mostly achieved practically, which is awesome. The special effects are flawless and Ludwig Goransson’s pulsating, unforgettable score (if he doesn’t win another Oscar for this I’ll lose all hope in humanity). The film’s been criticised a bit for its supposedly cold characters but I didn’t really have that problem. Once you accept that they’re fulfilling various Bondian archetypes, they provide a compelling anchor in this complex story. I cannot stress this enough: John David Washington is so good in this film. He’s funny, suave, plays the emotional scenes well… if he wasn’t American, he’d be my top pick for the next James Bond. That man is a star, mark my words, and it has nothing to do with nepotism. The rest of the cast are all good: Robert Pattinson is fun, Elizabeth Debicki is compelling, Kenneth Branagh gives a very broad performance (which I didn’t mind) and Michael Caine was in it for about three minutes and still got his name featured on the poster. The reason I haven’t rated the film higher is because at certain points the complex rules of the Tenetuniverse felt like they were keeping me at arm’s length a little; I was occasionally spending too much time trying to figure out what the hell was going on when I should have been invested in the drama of the scenes. This problem was most evident to me near the beginning of the climax, when things get really complicated and confused the hell outta me. Luckily, I was able to overcome my stupidity so as to enjoy the third act, which is emotional, cathartic and boasts some immense creativity. Overall, Tenet is a great film and I couldn’t have asked for a better one to welcome myself back to cinemas with.
I’m serious about the Thunderball comparison. The similarities are indisputable: one-liner dropping emotionally distant hero, fun Felix Leiter-esque sidekick, troubled main female character who is at the mercy of a broadly-played foreign villain… When you factor in the fact that it has several scenes set on boats, Tenet is kind of a time-travel remake of Thunderball. I’d have thought this was just a coincidence but this is the man who appropriated a lot of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service imagery for the climax to Inception, so who knows? He’s definitely been vocal about how this film is his most direct homage to the Bond franchise.
As if getting a new Christopher Nolan movie wasn’t good enough, we also get a new Charlie Kaufman in the form of I’m Thinking of Ending Things in three days (I also plan to read his film-focused debut novel Antkind soon, and I might write about it for the blog, schedule permitting) and then the intriguing The Devil All the Time on the sixteenth. Oh, and The New Mutants is also out but I’m struggling to build up the motivation to go to a cinema for… that. After a long dry period, it feels like movies are well and truly back.
Beyond the Popcorn 