“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”
–Dr. Samuel Johnson

Though only marginally filmed here, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining has always stood out as a defining moment in Colorado’s cultural history. Well, for me anyway. I was only 6-years old when The Shining was released, and there was no way in hell my parents would take me to see the thing, but my unhealthy fascination with the TV trailer’s wintry menace and the horror-struck, elfin face on the film’s poster stuck deep in my gut for the 8 or so years until I was deemed old enough to watch it on cable.

Mostly, the ambiguous nature of what was supposed to be so damned scary troubled me. I was well acquainted with monster movies, but what kind of monster was in The Shining? Was it the trees? The elfin thing? The snow itself? I asked my parents what “the monster” was, but they could only shrug at me.

I remember blizzard-like conditions on the night they left me with a babysitter to go to the theater (although verifiable facts now tell me the release was in late May, but this is Colorado and I suppose there could have been a blizzard), and my Dad, an avid reader of Stephen King novels, was well aware of my fixation and teased me gently about the film’s Colorado roots, much to my mother’s displeasure. It probably helps that this scene was dressed in the tensions of my parent’s own unraveling marriage, but that was the moment that The Shining became my film; it was about a little boy in Colorado surrounded by indefinable horror, and therefore it was the first adult movie that I could relate to, years before I was old enough to actually watch it.

Once finally allowed entry to the film, it was all that I’d built it up to be: horrifying and bloody, riddled with skeletons and ghouls, but above all else, it still felt personal. To this day, what I want in a film is to feel entirely lost, to have no sense of where the film is going, and though a first viewing of The Shining certainly provides that, it stays nestled so deep in its own overbearing style that the entirety of the thing feels familiar, and the rare flashes of actual Colorado (an establishing shot of Boulder’s Flatirons, the nebulous connection to Estes Park that elevated its Stanley Hotel to near mythic levels) raise the film to another level of significance. Surely, this is not a key element of Kubrick’s design, but it hints at how other locales might grow connected to films set in their worlds. New York, London and LA have several billion films about them, but what does it say about Colorado that we seem to have this one, and well… there’s Red Dawn and the South Park movie, Aliens vs. Predator 2, and that Day of the Dead remake, but these contradictory facts really only strengthen my argument.

And now, as an adult, I can see a little further past the grand guignol spook show of bloody torrents and stacked corpses and can begin to understand how Kubrick aimed the deeper horrors of his film toward the father (Jack Nicholson); here is a failure of a man, down to his absolute last chance to provide for his family, who is haunted by memories of his own very real drunken brutality, whose son understands the horrific truths of him on a primal level, and yet he is primarily cursed by an inability to communicate and explain himself, and this is doubly horrific for a man who defines himself, as Jack Torrance does, as a writer.

A common complaint against the film is the casting of Nicholson as a sane man who breaks down and that his familiar screen persona is easily more the feral beast of the film’s second half than the straight-laced father of the first, but it’s clear to me that this is by design: what we see in The Shining is not so much the transformation of a character but the collapse of a social role. In the key scene where Wendy (the astonishingly 70’s looking Shelly Duvall) discovers Jack’s “manuscript,” and its seemingly endless pages of well formatted, but essentially juvenile, complaint (“all work and no play… “), we see that the true monster here isn’t The Overlook Hotel’s myriad demons and that they aren’t somehow possessing or transforming her husband, but that they’re giving voice to the vulgar thug that he truly is, like a sort of preternatural Iron John movement.

The pacing in The Shining is so masterful, and the pressure cooker levels of tension so severe, that Jack’s descent into either madness or base, brutal truth seems so smoothly inevitable that while I can understand the complaint against Nicholson, of how a man getting in touch with his inner-monster could be viewed as less horrific than the transmogrification that audiences expect, I can’t help but feel that Nicholson’s portrayal, and Kubrick’s decision to cast him, is more honest. Consider how a father, in more normal circumstances, would view a son’s ability to seamlessly communicate with a more protecting father figure, or a wife’s desire to take that child away, as a threat. The realities of divorce, separation and remarriage have broken better men than Jack Torrance.

After having lived my own fair share of personal failures, there’s something far more fundamental in the film to relate to than just the presence of Denver’s long-time anchorwoman Bertha Lynn, there’s the savage satisfaction in the film’s climax, as Jack goes berserk and hunts down his family with an axe, where he hatefully yells through the battered down door of the family home in a perfect parody of polite communication: “Wendy, I’m home…”

“Let your hate flow through you.”
–The Emperor

I saw a made-for-TV trailer for CLOVERFIELD last night which ended with the whispery voiced movie trailer guy whispering “directed by Matt Reeves,” and I thought to myself, “Self, who the hell is Matt Reeves?” As my Self had no answer to my question, I searched him out on the interweb.

Matt Reeves wrote UNDER SIEGE 2, some episodes of Felicity and the excellent James Gray film THE YARDS. He also directed the underrated THE PALLBEARER which stared TV’s Ross as Ross. And that’s all fine and dandy, and I’m sure he’s a very nice fellow, but I mention all of this because it sort of strikes at the heart of the whole CLOVERFIELD marketing bonanza, which is essentially that it’s a part of the whole J.J. Abrams marketing bonanza.

While J.J. Abrams does not have a body of work that I care about, my TV keeps insisting that I do. “Produced by J.J. Abrams,” it purrs. “From the creator of Lost,” it moans. There is this entirely fictional love for J.J. Abrams that some corporation somewhere keeps insisting exists between us that’s not at all dissimilar to the mentally handicapped girl who lived in my neighborhood when I was twelve and how she would speed down the street on her bicycle screaming “YOU’RE MY BOYFRIEND!” While I do appreciate that J.J. Abrams is indeed a nerd, and that he produces work seemingly solely for the vast nerd demographic, I also think it’s a bit crass the way this demographic has been pandered to after the LORD OF THE RINGS extravaganza unearthed them.

And this is very much what CLOVERFIELD is: it’s a gimmick supported by hype and underneath all the gimmick and hype there is mediocrity. The gimmick and hype work really hard to convince you that you’re having fun and are witnessing some sort of cinematic event but you, of course, really aren’t. You’re just watching Godzilla via the Blair Witch. Some people seem to really love this film, and God bless ‘em for having a good time at the movies, but the marketing and the gimmick backfired on me. I saw the first trailer and my take was, “oh, cool, it’s Godzilla via the Blair Witch,” but the marketing bonanza just scoffed at me.

“You can’t know what this is,” it hissed. “It’s bigger than that.”

But it isn’t. It is what I say it is and it would have been better off as just a thing instead of a thing wrapped inside a CINEMATIC EVENT. Which leaves me in the unenviable position of being a curmudgeonly jerk because I am standing outside of a “CINEMATIC EVENT” and a cinematic event written by Drew Goddard who was a staff writer on Buffy and, therefore, a genius.

And, maybe I am a curmudgeonly jerk because I just do not want to spend an hour and a half with this guy:

His character’s name is Hud, which may be some sort of geek reference to ‘heads-up-display’, and he’s our narrator, camera-man and ultimately our chronicler of the destruction of Manhattan. He also seems like he would be more welcome in Mike Judge’s superior film IDIOCRACY. If Hud is supposed to represent you, the viewer, then somebody thinks you’re an idiot. I spent almost the entirety of this film wanting to grab the camera out of this mouth-breather’s fumbling hands and shoving it deep into his his gaping pie hole (aka the hole in his face that he puts pie into). Hud spends the entire film either creepily filming his crush, Marlena (the charming Lizzy Caplan), incessantly and psychotically repeating the name “Rob” (his best friend and the infuriating, stalwart hero of the film, Michael Stahl-David) or suffering from violent epileptic seizures. That his best friends and cohorts don’t seem to care about his constant and violent fits doesn’t help me relate to or find sympathy for them as they’re each slowly (and deliciously) devoured, crushed and exploded over the film’s 86-minute run time. But, I was bound to root for the monster anyway (and the monster is fantastic). It’s just my nature.

At times the Hud-o-Vision camera is pretty effective and at it’s best it downright artfully paints a world that’s dissolving into chaos but sadly these times are far too rare, and for the the majority of the film, the effect is equal parts frustrating and nauseating. The upcoming George Romero film, DIARY OF THE DEAD, uses this same gimmick to capture an apocalypse (naturally a zombie apocalypse) but Romero wisely places his cameras in the trained hands of a fictional group of film students (update from the future: it didn’t work). Again, this seems like such a curmudgeonly thing to complain about. This trapping should and could be a tremendously effective method of involving your audience with your characters, but I’m of the opinion that if you’re going to inflict this upon your audience then you’re just going to have to put more thought into each shot and find a way to fit your conceit (which you borrowed) into my tolerance for it.

“But,” retort the film’s defenders, “if you were filming the assault of a giant fish monster on your city then you wouldn’t be the world’s best camera operator either. So there!”

I’ll concede this point, but if that were to happen to me then I would not call it entertainment and would not charge people their monies to watch it.

Which brings up my final grouse on this clearly very important film. I am not a “God-Bless-Rudy-Giulliani” style American but I do believe the September 11 attacks are events that should be treated with respect and CLOVERFIELD’s not-too-subtle references just seems to ooze itself across the borders of bad taste.

How’s that for a catchy title?

Want an alternate title? How about “2007 – The Year Where My Standards Declined”. If I stopped writing reviews in the past few weeks then it’s because I think something in my brain has snapped and I somehow stopped being in anyway critical of the entertainment that’s put in front of my face. I noticed this around the time that I found myself happily renting DUNE or when I found myself really enjoying PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 3. I think this is somehow related to my fear of ever being a “mean” critic. The first draft of my review for the Harry Potter movie was not the happy, I-love-puppies version that you’ll currently find on this website, in fact, it was actually downright vicious and far more vicious than the film deserved. Like Homer Simpson says, criticizing other people’s work is not just easy, it’s “fun too.” If anyone feels my review of that particular film is too kind then it’s possible I may have over-corrected slightly.

And so, because a. despite what the talking rat movie says, I feel negative criticism has a positive effect on our culture and b. because I have to stop liking movies with monkey pirates, I’m going to sit down in my chair and channel my inner-bastard.

To kick off my year in review. Here are the lower points of the films I sat through in 2007 (not including HALLOWEEN because that should go without saying).

SPIDER-MAN 3:

Too long. Too self-important. The second film covered Peter Parker’s angst pretty thoroughly, in fact, entirely too thoroughly. So why the hell do we have to go back down that road in another god damn movie? Admittedly, being too self-important and humorless is pretty much the standard for comic books but that is one of many reasons why I no longer read comic books. This film should have just let Spidey, and we the peoples, have some much deserved fun. Swing on some ropes, punch some dudes. I dunno. Do super shit. Stop talking about Mary Jane’s career, god damn you.

I agree that films should have human interaction and motivations. Absolutely. Yes to that. However, there is a difference between that and people just acting like assholes to each other. Long-winded, overly-complicated set piece finales are usually so tiresome, the solution to this problem is not bringing all your main characters together to hold hands and have a big cry. Aside from being joyless, it’s also poorly conceived, written, paced and acted. Why is Spider-Man constantly taking off his mask? What is up with the jazz dance sequence? Just what in the seriously hell?

Finally, and least importantly, Kirsten Dunst is a beautiful woman and she was absolutely stunning in MARIE ANTOINETTE but Sam Raimi just has this gift for making her head look like a potato. It’s a weird and powerful gift.

TRANSFORMERS:

I am capable of suspending my belief. In fact, I lie to myself on a shockingly regular basis. This is not the issue.

In my opinion, the most ludicrous aspect of TRANSFORMERS is that this woman:

ends up making out with this guy:

and we’re just supposed to buy it. Everything else in the film is entirely plausible.

The best thing about TRANSFORMERS is Roger Ebert’s glowing review for it.

DISTURBIA:

Hey look, it’s Shia the Beouf again. My least favorite new movie star. And once again, he’s making out with a woman who is ten-times better looking than him. Like self-delusion, I also harbor unrealistic male fantasies. Yes, Scarlett Johansson totally digs on me and as soon as she gets over her whole movie star nonsense she’s going to come to my apartment and lick my face. I know that this is a fact of our universe but that doesn’t make it any less nauseating to anyone who is not me.

More importantly, I was tricked into watching this dog by the fact that people I knew told me to, by it’s solid reviews and surprising success at the box office. I’ll be polite here and call the plot a strange homage to REAR WINDOW, which is one of my favorite films. I saw REAR WINDOW when I was a kid and that’s when I found out that I love film. However, neighborhood husband who murders his wife is horrific and real, a charming new neighbor who is actually a serial killer(oh noes!) is the very definition of lame.

What’s worse than a finale with two dudes wrestling for a gun? Absolutely nothing. Maybe testicular cancer. You know the set up. One of the dudes almost has the gun, his fingers are just brushing the barrel… but… other dude does some thing or another and the wrestling continues for another five minutes. Maybe the building is on fire or there are cops on the way but certainly there is a very stupid woman standing nearby who could possibly just pick up the gun and shoot either dude but we all know that women are mostly just good for making babies and dinner. Shooting people is men’s work. This phenomenon happens in good movies too but I’m pretty god damn sick of it.

My second least favorite film cliche is the notion that the world is jam-packed with serial killers. People who are evil just because they are. How uninteresting is this? As uninteresting as the face of Shia the Beouf.

We’re going to play a little game now. Here’s a brief recap of a key scene in DISTURBIA that I lifted from Wikipedia. Count the cliches in this sequence and e-mail that number to me.

Turner knocks out Kale’s mother and seems to kill Ronnie by hitting him on the head with an aluminum baseball bat. He then reveals his plan to frame Kale for the murder of his mother, supposedly due to grief over his father and Ronnie, before supposedly killing himself. Turner reveals that he had wanted privacy, and it was Kale’s persistence that forced him to kill once more. As Turner has Kale writing a suicide letter to Ashley, she enters his bedroom, surprising the killer. Kale knocks Turner down, allowing him and Ashley a chance to escape.

The winner gets an autographed dvd copy of DISTURBIA. And by autographed, I mean that I will first pee on it.

BLADE RUNNER (THE FINAL CUT):

OK, I love BLADE RUNNER too. It’s a great but deeply flawed movie. Yes, it’s so much better without the ham-fisted narration, however, I do not understand why we need yet another release of BLADE RUNNER. I’ve seen this film several thousand times and while I do love it, it is not CITIZEN KANE. There is nothing special enough about it for them to have re-released it in theaters for a third time. Yes, Joanna Cassidy no longer turns into a drag queen as she’s falling through plate glass windows. Whatever. Ridley Scott and George Lucas are gonna have to live with the fact that the movie making process was not perfect in the late-70′s/early-80′s. The both of them have had far more glaring lapses of judgment than allowing any one imperfect shot into the movie theaters of over twenty years ago. HANNIBAL, anyone? ATTACK OF THE CLONES, people? CITIZEN KANE is considered one of the greatest American films of the twentieth-century, and yet, it had flubs. Oh well. Life goes on. Why can’t you two do like Orson Welles did and drink yourselves into a paupers grave like a real artist?

Also, if you think the greatest flaw in BLADE RUNNER was that the voice sync was off when Harrison Ford was manhandling the snake dealer then you are full-on deluding yourself. Go back and add some sensible motivation for your characters. Go back and make it surprising that Sean Young is a robot. Go back and re-shoot Rutger Hauer’s laughable dialogue in the final cat-and-mouse sequence. Or, even better, leave it the hell alone and make better movies than GLADIATOR. As for the added “unicorn sequence”… You take any movie that exists where a person is just staring off into the distance and interpose shots of a unicorn running through the forest, however, this will not result in a better movie and it will not deserve nine more of my dollars any more than it deserves two more hours of my precious attention.

Let’s just hope the next few decades don’t bring about a self-indulgent re-release of G.I. JANE.

300:

SPARTANS! TONIGHT WE DINE IN TINY LITTLE PANTS!

Tune in next week for mediocrity week! Yay, mediocrity!

Update!- I’m abandoning this project as everyone already knows NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN was the best film of 2007 and you probably don’t need to hear this here. God bless, America.

“I’m a bloodsucking fiend. Look at my outfit!”
–Willow from the Buffy show

Oh, vampires… How you must hate the metaphors. Over the centuries you’ve moved from unspeakable bloodsucking horror to a parable for Brad Pitt’s latent homosexuality. So, thank god for a movie that allows the vampires to just be vampires again. 30 DAYS OF NIGHT sets the vampires loose on a small arctic village for a month-long orgy of ghastly, pale-faced, vaguely-Eurotrash, trench-coated, blood spattering villainy and as someone who’s gotten a chill from the vampire legend since I was a kid, it’s as liberating for me as it must be for the vampires. Vampires are undead, soulless ghouls that float through the night and then rip out some throats with their teeth to drink human blood. Why is it so hard to make that scary? That 30 DAYS simply chooses to do that is enough to earn five stars on the Smog-O-Meter.

Beyond the fine decision to let the scary monsters simply be scary monsters, the movie built around that conceit is decent enough; it’s well-paced, nice-looking, and almost entirely satisfying. The city of Barrow, Alaska is nicely rendered and believable and if it weren’t infested with vampires, it’s arctic charm would seem pretty inviting. I especially enjoyed how efficiently the film sets the vampire “rules” and allows the characters the realization that what they’re dealing with is indeed vampires, thus fulfilling the best parts of the vampire genre, but the problems arrive when the film turns it’s attentions back to it’s human characters. This is something that I just don’t get: much like in the TRANSFORMERS movie, a film can be entirely believable when presenting giant, ass-stomping robots or supernatural beasties chasing down speeding trucks, so why is a film, presumably written by humans, so awkward and false when it comes to presenting the human aspects of it’s story? One character choses to deal with the horror by brutally murdering his family, thus disproving the otherwise sensible notion that it is impossible to over-react to a vampire holocaust.

The highlight of the source comic is the wonderfully evocative, Ralph Steadman-like illustrations of Ben Templesmith and unfortunately, beyond the blood spatters in the snow, there isn’t much a film can do to capture his ink-blot style and much like watching a grown man dress up in a bat costume to fight crime, there are just certain things that make more sense when left in their comic book venue. While I enjoy both the concept of the comic and, as I’ve said, the vampires it presents, the story inside the concepts just works better when left to broader strokes.

When tightened into a film what we’re left with is the worst of the horror film conventions, which is the characters being just stupid enough to advance the plot but mystically lucky enough to evade their supposedly inescapable tormentors. I’ll admit that if I were in a situation, heaven forbid, where Eurotrash vampires ate my city then it’s entirely possible that I wouldn’t be at my peak of decision making abilities but I am almost entirely certain that I would make better decisions than the people in this vampire movie. There are just way too many “WHY ARE YOU STILL STANDING THERE” moments to not be distracting and the film ultimately suffers for them. It seems to me that there has to be a better motivation for Josh Hartnett to go to the next building other than “he’s blisteringly stupid” and I’ve never made a film, so it’s easy for me to say but couldn’t some of these plotting problems be solved over a cup of coffee?

But, it isn’t the stupidity that bothers me so much as the poor etiquette. I don’t wanna get all Miss Manners on anyone, but, if a loved one ever sacrifices their self to a vampire mob so you can escape safely then I consider it the height of bad manners to just stand around and watch the grisly carnage. People, if we can’t maintain our etiquette then the vampires have already won.

Ultimately, the most distracting element of the film is Josh Hartnett’s inability to grow facial hair. Special effects can make you believe that a jet fighter can turn into a robot who then pounds hell of asses in an urban city place, but apparently the limit of both technology and credulity is pretending that Josh Hartnett is masculine. I don’t dislike the fella and like all of the actors in 30 DAYS he gives a better performance than most horror films would care to do, so if I mock him I’m probably just venting a bit at how jaw-droppingly stupid his character is.

Australians are barbecuing whole lambs over the fossilised bones of a fifteen-hundred pound paleolithic ant. The keg? An ice silo of lager.
–Raymond Smuckles

It’s difficult to distinguish between a dystopian Australian outback and just the regular Australian outback, and as both are presumably just as stuffed with funnel spiders and great white sharks, and as I am a giant coward, I’ll almost certainly never see either version. But, according to director George Miller’s MAD MAX, the major difference is that the dystopian version of the outback is ruled by gangs of psychotic new wave bikers, which is actually how I pictured the regular Australian outback, but I’m just kind of a romantic that way.

Set in the not-too-distant-future of the late-1970′s, we find a society on the brink of a collapse for no discernible reason beyond that it is the late-1970′s. It is presumed there is some larger troubles somewhere out in this world, and it’s a rare bit of restraint and artistry that keeps Miller from this tantalizing chance for world building through any of the standard, hackneyed apocalyptic cliches.

When we meet our first villainous thug, The Night Rider, he’s engaged in a fun and well-paced car chase with the local interceptor squad (dystopian highway patrol). “I am the Night Rider! I’m a fuel injected suicide machine! I am a rocker, I am a roller, I am the out-of-controller,” he belts into the CB radio with all the PCP-fueled coherence of a 1980′s era James Brown interview. But, and naturally, none of the interceptors are man enough to corral the wild essence of pure 1970′s-style punk-thug-rockery. None, that is, until “Mad” Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson… duh) slides down his aviator sunglasses.

It only takes the gentlest nudge of Max’s fender to reduce the “fuel injected suicide machine” to a big blubbery baby. Does the Night Rider know who Max is? Does Max have some legendary reputation? Or, is Max just so insanely masculine that any man who dares cross him merely collapses due to their comparatively minuscule genitals? The world may never know, as the grease smear that was the Night Rider is in no condition to explain.

Despite the fiery bluster of the ad campaign, MAD MAX is more a movie about characters than cars. The stunt scenes are great and in a low-budget film like this one seem insanely dangerous (during one glorious wipe-out, a stunt man takes a speeding motorcycle to the head), but there are far fewer of them than you would probably like or expect if, like the rest of the world, you saw the sequel, THE ROAD WARRIOR, first.

So, while it’s sad that there isn’t more carnage, we do get a more thoughtful film than you’d expect, and happily this allows Miller to avoid one of the more tiring aspects of the 70′s and 80′s revenge movies: the fascist, right-wing finger wagging at those pussy-assed liberals who are more concerned with a thug‘s civil rights than giving our heroes the bloody vengeance they clearly deserve. But, being the man who wrote and directed both BABE and BABE 2, there is no way that George Miller is a fascist. Max stops his cohort, Goose (Steve Bisley), from brutalizing a gang rapist because it’s more than civilization that Max defends: it’s the human part of himself that he’s defending from the baser, more violent instincts that seem to be destroying his world. As Goose’s pursuit of vengeance leads to his eventual destruction and dehumanization, a horrified Max quits the interceptor squad before following the same path and instead chooses to live in the more human world of his wife and child.

In films like this, you don’t expect much of a character from the loved ones, but Jessie Rockatansky (Joanne Samuel) is actually allowed some screen time and is equally as charismatic as Max. The time the film allows them to spend together is far less tedious than you would imagine; in fact, it’s downright enjoyable to watch this young family trekking around the outback, eating ice cream and visiting relatives. But, of course, as the revenge genre goes, such a thing cannot last and the good things in life turn very, very bad. As viscerally satisfying as it may be once Max goes on his kill-crazy rampage, that he turns into the promised feral highway psychopath is part of Max’s tragedy. After his wife’s attack, Max doesn’t head straight for the gun closet to ammo up Charles Bronson style; instead, we see him sitting at his home gripping a monster mask and wrestling with what he wants to do and what that will mean. Also, there may have been some spoilers in that last sentence, but in my defense this film is almost thirty years old.

And Gibson is really good in this, whether he’s the steely-eyed interceptor, the good natured friend/father/husband, or the tortured man wrestling with his conscience, it’s good fun to remember the non-psychotic Gibson of previous years and that once upon a time the man had some of that charisma.

Young Chas Tenenbaum: Well, did you at least think the characters were well developed?
Royal Tenenbaum: What characters? There’s a bunch of little kids dressed up in animal costumes.

I was a bit nervous about returning to Wes Anderson’s world and watching more wonderfully dressed yet emotionally retarded characters trek out across the globe in an equally funky and dilapidated conveyance to learn something about themselves and to look fabulous doing it. As much as I enjoyed THE LIFE AQUATIC and disagree with the criticisms that it was too precious and empty, I do think it was a bit sloppy and self-congratulatory and is a soft spot in Anderson’s otherwise excellent body of work. I was worried that I’d find one of my favorite film-makers slipping further into lazy self-worship but, happily, THE DARJEELING LIMITED is not only far better crafted than AQUATIC it thankfully sidesteps all of my concerns about laziness with ease.

Boldly, DARJEELING is an obvious but well mixed interfusion of THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS and THE LIFE AQUATIC. While Anderson gets to keep and expand upon his deeply quirky aesthetics, we get a return to the darkly humorous explorations of the angst of maturity and family. There’s also a nice reference to BOTTLE ROCKET via Francis’s (Owen Wilson) over-planning and fanatical exuberance, though here it’s a tiresome character flaw, which feels more accurate but, like in RUSHMORE, all character flaws are eventually put in their perspective where the attached character finds some redemption as the film advances.

Perhaps because of the complaints against AQUATIC’s slightness, it’s pretty much impossible to miss the metaphors here, as Anderson douses them with spotlights. It doesn’t take a dang ol’ grad student to decipher the three brothers dragging their designer baggage (with their father’s initials on them) all over the world. But, I’m no elitist. Metaphors don’t necessarily need to be complicated to be enjoyable. Like Francis ludicrously beaming over his personal assistant’s explanation “We haven’t found us yet,” when translating for the train navigator, there is some intentional humor and insight in the obvious, easy metaphors.

And it would be monstrously stupid to suspect that someone as literate as Anderson is guilty of the same faults he’s so clearly lampooning. That Francis suggests that the mere fact that they’re in India would be enough to illicit some sort of spiritual awakening even if they smoke while meditating or spend the majority of their “spiritual journey” in their pajamas is deeply funny. Unless you actually believe that one can have a spiritual quest by hiding out in a train compartment drinking cough syrup, then it’s probably safe to assume that Anderson is poking some subtle fun at his characters and the same clueless, rich American overseas presence they so clearly represent. And it would be absolutely inane to suggest that Jack (Jason Schwartzman) so fervently pursues Rita (Amara Karan) because she represents Eastern wisdom, but instead, he pursues her the way any adolescent imagines that the love of another will complete them, in the same seemingly arbitrary way that anyone decides what will or will not add much needed meaning to their lives.

Like the film’s themes (death, mourning, men’s fashion accessories and the brothers who steal them) the subtext is there to delve into if the viewer chooses to, and hopefully will, but the whole presentation is so rich and sumptuously presented that one’s attention can wander off and into the gorgeously textured scenery and it’s a comforting sensation. The film is like Anderson digging through an enormous box of toys and his job as a director is to focus your attention on one item at a time and it’s a pretty goddamn cool toy box. You’ll take a moment to appreciate the loneliness of one of the characters, laugh at Peter’s (Adrian Brody) impassive, hangdog face, move on to another great Stones song, to a passionate yet humorously misguided monologue, to dreamily gazing at dreamy train hostess Rita, etc…

In general, I’m less than interested in the daddy issues of angsty hipsters, but I certainly enjoy Anderson’s take on family. As a brother, I appreciate how Anderson presents “the brothers” as a single entity and how each brother is like a different aspect of the same twisted personality.”I wonder if the three of us would’ve been friends in real life,” wonders Jack. “Not as brothers, but as people.” A great line that encompasses not only the subtle humor of the film but the sense of unreality and non-specific nostalgia that one finds both in family reunions and in an Anderson film.

In a key scene toward the end of the second act, the brothers are trudging along, struggling with their baggage, when they encounter a group of Indian boys crossing a river. Their initial reaction is more funny, ironic detachment but the scene immediately shifts into an urgency that not only pulls them out of their pampered comfort and into action, but forces them to fulfill their lame, half-hearted oath to “say yes to everything.” Beyond that, the scene is a miniature of Anderson’s greatest quality as a director as he shifts the scene from humor to despair and handles both with the same delicate subtlety.

It’s very easy to look at the clothes, or obscure European pop music and dismiss Anderson as a shallow hipster but I’d say it’s inaccurate. Not that he isn’t hip, which he clearly is, but it’s the shallow dismissal that I have a problem with. True, no one likes the evil hipsters but I’d say Anderson is arguing that these people’s carefully constructed worlds, their controlling tendencies, and their desire to define themselves through their possessions (their father’s glasses for example) are extensions of their root problem, the brothers’ deeply misguided concepts of themselves and the world around them. One of Anderson’s talents is to sympathize with and to find the humor in such existential idiocy. Added bonus? Fun to look at.

“You don’t have to do nothing,” Nelson said to me. “You just sit there and drink your drink and listen to the music. Good music.”
–Raymond Carver, Vitamins

Every short story that I wrote in college was exactly two things: first, a story about a man and a woman in a room who have a complicated relationship, and second, a total rip-off of Raymond Carver. Which gets as tiring to write as it does to read. So, for awhile the things I wrote started to get goddamn weird. Buddhist monks, re-incarnation, alternate universes, etc… But I’m still nostalgic for that first taste I had of real literature, Raymond Carver and Ernest Hemingway, who both predominantly wrote stories of men and women with complicated relationships who inhabit rooms together.

And now, free on iTunes comes the latest little piece of work by director Wes Anderson. It’s a sort of short film prequel to his upcoming THE DARJEELING LIMITED (which has the TSMFR all a-buzz) but mostly it’s about a man in a room and then a woman comes in that he’s having a complicated relationship with. The man is Jason Schwartzman and the woman is Natalie Portman. The exact nature of their relationship is uncertain but clearly troubled. They’re not in a good place right now but still quite affectionate, both emotionally and physically. He’s been hiding in an expensive hotel room in Paris while she’s out doing questionable things and is covered with strange bruises.

Anderson’s little film is basically what my college self thought art was about and life should be like. Which means it’s pretty much perfect.

Short film. Short review.

So who’s to take the blame for the stormy weather?
You’re never gonna stop all the teenage leather and booze.
—Sonic Youth, Teenage Riot

If you’re looking for an upside to the last few years of endless war and terror in the world then how about this: at least it forced novelist J.K. Rowling into a thankfully serious turn in her otherwise whimsical novels of teen-aged wizards. Written during the unsettling time following the 9-11 attacks, the novel and now the film do an excellent job of capturing that uneasy quiet before the storm of full-on war, when the promise of Bad Things loom around every corner. I don’t care at all for Fantasy as a genre but the addition of modern angst and sensibilities helped to turn what could have otherwise been one of countless wizard stories into something that feels far more worthwhile.

Rising well above being merely the inverted novelization style of cash-in that began the Potter film franchise, the latest entry is brisk and attractive but still pretty emotionally satisfying. If you’ve seen either of the previous two Potter films, you’ll be happy to see that it continues the practice of being beautiful looking, exceptionally well-acted and written. It’s also impressively paced considering the size of the source material (why couldn’t the LORD OF THE RINGS films have felt this smooth?) and while the film series still seems to just miss Rowling’s infectious charm this is a good step forward for the stewards of the film wing of the Potter juggernaut in their search to find their own feet. While we do lose some of the texture and character of the Potter world, ORDER OF THE PHOENIX director David Yeats gives us hope that it’s solid craftsmanship that will fit the square Potter-peg into the circular cinema-hole.

As Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and friends return, it’s time for them to reach the angsty, snogging, and rebellious section of their story. Their newest antagonist is Hogwart’s latest dark arts teacher, the unfortunately named, pink-sweater wearing, Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton). Priggish, and slavishly devoted to those in power, Umbridge’s concern is not only maintaining the status quo but moving the social clock back a click or two. While the wizard world refuses to admit their old enemy has returned, you can’t help but see the modern parallels as Umbridge, who personifies the essence of 1950′s style Conservatism, returns to the seat of unquestioned power usurping the more broad-minded and modern Headmaster, the wizard Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon). And no, I do not believe that George Bush is Lord Voldemort but he certainly helps me understand Potter’s sense of dread and his uncertainty of how effective his attempts to organize and in any way rebel against the dark clouds gathering around his way of life will ultimately be. So if Bush is good for anything, he’s helped me to enjoy the new Harry Potter film. Bravo, sir.

The final Dumbledore v. Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) showdown is absolutely gorgeous, and easily fulfills the promise of the grown-up Big Magic that we’ve been teased with throughout the previous films. Here, you can see how easy it would be for the film makers to just go soft and rely on their special effects budgets and like a lazy contestant on Top Chef whose imagination has failed them, they could just stuff their dish with as much truffle oil and foie gras as their budget will allow. They’ve got their hands on the greatest actors of a generation and the rights to the biggest cash cow in modern literature, so it would be very easy for the producers to keep calling in the low-grade Spielberg disciples and just coast into their new, ruby-encrusted palaces, but you can see that they’re actually trying here and that in itself is enough to earn my respect. The bright lights and pretty colors of the film’s final sequence are mesmerizing but unlike the summer blockbusters that we’re used to, the finale isn’t just there to distract you from the short-comings of the film-makers imagination, it’s what the preceding events have led up to, and that they still bring it all back to Harry’s emotional/moral journey and keep the whole thing relevant and meaningful is no small accomplishment.

That said, and you’ll have to forgive me for a quick geek out… man, you have Helena Bonham Carter standing there and perfectly cast to boot, so why does she only have four lines of dialogue? There’s been no greater step by the film-makers at carving out their own identity than their history of creative casting. It fills my black heart with delight to watch Alan Rickman’s Snape commit random acts of violence on school children and luckily he’s in PHOENIX at least twice as much as he was in GOBLET, which sadly means he’s only on-screen for about five minutes. As the film’s pacing is so lean I feel we could maybe sacrifice a moment or to two to let the film breathe and let him smack Ron Weasely (Rupert Grint) around a little bit more. Or maybe just one or two more scenes of Maggie Smith looking at someone disapprovingly. Meanwhile, watching the lead actors Radcliffe, Grint and Emma Watson, grow into adulthood has been one of the more charming aspects of the series and through some stupendous luck they’ve all turned out to be talented and attractive. What are the odds that three cute little child actors would grow up to be sane, talented and attractive young adults? It may be that my take on this is distinctly American but with their enormous cast of child actors they’ve gotten tremendously lucky. Also, it should be mentioned that the newest addition of Luna Lovegood (Evanna Lynch) is very charming but through no fault of this young actor I still prefer the Luna I imagined from the novels. Her character is just one of the aspects of this world best left in the ether of one’s imagination.

Admittedly, and obviously you can’t and shouldn’t fit all of a 900-page novel into a two/three-hour film. I don’t need to see a re-enactment of that one time when Neville gave Harry the spouting box of lying ginger-fruit or whatever, but at times I have to wonder whether or not I would be able to understand or even care about any of this had I not followed along in the books. I know it’s a film about the lives and loves of magical teenagers but even in a world of Deluminators and Occulemency can there still be such a thing as plausibility? The art department does a fantastic job of creating truly frightening villains, but it does just seem odd that they keep losing out to a squad of 15-year-olds and even more so once these scenes are pulled from the vagueness of one’s imagination. The book is pretty overwrought when it comes to the sorrow and the teenage angst, which is appropriate for a sad tale of angsty teenagers, and the film does a fine job of honing that angst into an understandable if slightly less fulfilling experience.

“If that’s your best, your best won’t do…” –Twisted Sister

Starting this venture into film criticism, it’s probably time I set my baseline for what I consider a bad movie. I didn’t want to pick some lame, inconsequential Uwe Boll film that no one ever cared about, as that’s both obvious and dull, and so I’ve been hoping for something earnestly made and honestly dreadful to tee off on.

Thankfully, Rob Zombie has just made another movie.

I should probably admit that with the exception of the original, excellent TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, I can’t think of a single slasher film I would recommend without serious reservations and that includes John Carpenter‘s original HALLOWEEN. I have no patience for brutality and, moreover, slasher films are formulaic bores. Place pretty, talentless actress and friends in non-standard setting. Add sneaky, preternatural killer and watch everyone die horribly. Repeat ad nauseum for thirty god damn years.

I don’t want to sit here and condemn a film for emulating a genre that I dislike, and luckily I don’t have to; HALLOWEEN is so awful that anyone can hate it. I certainly understand and respect another person’s love for film and the desire to make them but this man just doesn’t have the chops. Being a rock star entitles you to trash hotel rooms and snort high-grade cocaine off the lady parts of your choosing. End of list. It does not entitle you to ignore the fact that you could painlessly edit out the first 45 minutes of your film.

I’m not a horror film purist, and so I don’t particularly care if Zombie reinvents Michael Myers’s background and transforms him into the sad product of a dysfunctional, redneck household, but I don’t understand why he would. If HALLOWEEN is a love letter to the original film, then shouldn’t at least Zombie care that he’s completely demystifying Carpenter’s invention? Originally billed as The Shape, Myers was the bogeyman, even his doctor called him “it” as opposed to “him.” But according to Zombie, Michael Myers murders people because his step-father was a drunken hillbilly and his mother was a stripper. As if this is in any way a sensible explanation for why Myers shreds high school girls like a puppy shreds a box of Kleenex. According to my research, as the original HALLOWEEN franchise progressed/degraded there were half-hearted explanations for Myers’s evil involving druids and secret government laboratories, but that’s still less ridiculous than Zombie’s “insights” into the human condition.

Aside from the fact that this back story is painfully cliched, it’s far more aggravating that it’s so incompetently told. Most noticeable is the leaden pacing and jaw-dropping dialogue. In the feels-longer-than-it-is opening scene, respected character actor William Forsythe taunts his wife (Sheri Moon Zombie) with the prospect that he’ll search out a particular waitress and maybe “choke my chicken and purge my snorkel all over them flappy-ass tits.” This is an actual line of dialogue in a film that exists in our universe and that’s far more mind blowing than anything I witnessed in INLAND EMPIRE. Yes, having that man as your father figure is probably not conducive to healthy self-esteem, but I think it’s far more likely to produce a very similar, boorish drunk than something as interesting as evil personified. However, I will admit this to Zombie, if this first scene had carried on any longer I probably would have killed somebody.

Essentially what Zombie has given us are two entirely different movies. The first is an unpleasant, poorly-conceived meditation on the making of a junior psychopath, and the second is a music-video-inspired, Reader’s Digest condensed version of John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN. These two unrelated films are clumsily welded together by a title frame which reads “15 years later.”

After roughly an hour we’re finally introduced to Laurie Strode, theoretically the film’s heroine. Played by Scout Taylor-Compton, Laurie looks more like a remnant of the SCREAM days of the self-referencing horror film that a genre purist like Zombie should be horrified by. She’s easily more Neve Campbell than Jamie Lee Curtis. Not that Taylor-Compton is especially bad, she isn’t. She definitely seems like she could be the next big moderately-talented, pretty young actress, but I don’t see any connection between her and the archetypal “scream queen.” In itself, it’s not a bad thing that Taylor-Compton doesn’t have the same vulnerability that Curtis had, that lost in the big world virginal glaze that set the standard for the legion of Carpenter wannabees, but it isn’t as if it’s been replaced by something more interesting. She’s just cute. That’s all.

When we’re introduced to Laurie at yet another painfully long breakfast, she taunts her mother by suggestively rubbing a finger through a bagel hole whilst breathlessly moaning that she’d been sexually molested by the local hardware store owner; that this delights her mother to no end is further proof that Rob Zombie is just not of this planet. Behavior this Zen-level weird doesn’t make me consider if this breakfast taunting is somehow connected to the snorkel-purging, chicken-choking breakfast taunting from the Myers home, it just makes me think that Zombie is a bit of a hack. If he is in fact contrasting this seemingly “nice” family to the one that spawned Myers in the first place then what exactly is the difference that he’s found? That in a healthier household, the taunted woman has a better sense of humor about crudeness?

I haven’t seen Malcolm McDowell in anything for a few years, so I’m not gonna fault an actor for picking up a paycheck, but it’s certainly hard not to pity the man when he arrives on scene with wild eyes and a stringy, Rob Zombie style hair-do to replace Donald Pleasance as the world’s most ineffective psychiatrist Samuel Loomis. And I have one particularly sniggly complaint to make, but if I’m going to take the film seriously enough to review then it’s worth wondering why it is that if Michael Myers is famous enough to elicit a media firestorm of controversy over his possible release from the mental institution then why does Dr. Loomis have to fight so hard to get anyone to care that Myers has escaped? Is it Thunderkissian commentary or just laziness that a released maniac is more interesting to the media than an escaped one?

As for the rest of the cast, does the acting even matter? How far can you take this dialogue? No one gives a “good” performance but generally everyone is better than the film deserves, or happily, than the genre demands. It’s always good to see Udo Kier, and he’s one of many cameos that won’t mean much to non-horror buffs, but the film is chock full of them. Sadly, they aren’t given much to do beyond lending Zombie some genre credibility or to bare their breasts long enough to get them spattered with blood.

While Zombie’s explanation of Myers’ fascination with the William Shatner Halloween mask is both poorly conceived and weirdly executed, it’s at least of some iconic relevance, but do we really have to investigate the origins of Michael Myers’ jumpsuit? In case you’ve been wondering, Myers murdered a jive-talking truck driver named Big Joe Grizzly (Ken Foree of DAWN OF THE DEAD fame) while he was on the toilet. Mystery solved.

With the exception of the classic HALLOWEEN theme music, which Zombie wisely relies on, the soundtrack is just awful. In a recent New York magazine interview, Zombie boasts that his slasher film isn’t built to sell a soundtrack, as was presumably the practice during the late 90’s slasher re-emergence, and I suppose this is a noble enough goal, but it doesn’t seem to be a terribly relevant one as I don’t remember anyone pushing a SAW soundtrack on me. So while it’s a non-accomplishment, there has to be a better way to achieve this than scoring your film with 80’s cheese-rock gods like Rush and (for the love of god) Nazareth. “Love Hurts”? Like the rest of the movie, the soundtrack is a creatively empty experience you’ll probably only enjoy if you yourself are Rob Zombie.

And probably the most damning thing I can say about this film is that it just isn’t scary. It may be a bit naive of me, but I still presume that frightening your audience is still somewhat the point of a horror film. Zombie seems to feel that he can trade the preternatural Myers for a far more brutal one and that it’s somehow an acceptable balance, but it simply doesn’t play out that way. Watching Myers march over and manhandle naked young girls isn’t as frightening as having him leap out of the shadows. It may seem unfair to continually reference the original, as I know Zombie has set out to create his own film, but he relies too heavily on our understanding of the source material to make his film work, and so he’s failed in that regard. To make it a Rob Zombie film he’s simply added rednecks. I would like to see this treatment for other genre classics. Here’s hoping for Rob Zombie’s THE GODFATHER starring the WWF’s Mankind as Michael Corleone and The Rock as Sonny. Sid Haig will make an excellent Luca Brasi. I will be in the front row.

Despite what Zombie may say in interviews about exploring the creation of evil in human beings, all we need to see is the ludicrous preponderance of rock star hair to understand that Zombie actually has no interest in pursuing any sort of truth about human existence and that all we really have here is sad, fan-boy, masturbation. For someone with so much love for this genre, Zombie doesn’t seem to have put any thought into elevating or even understanding this seminal slasher. Again, I have no love for the original, but to slap on such a lousy ending that fails to even attempt to strike the same mysterious final chord of the original is in itself mystifying. While doing nothing to raise my interest in the source of Michael Myers psychosis, this film certainly makes me wonder about Rob Zombie.

If this review wasn’t dismissive enough for you then send me an e-mail and I’ll see what else I can come up with.

“I must say that the people who get the movie, in general, have been wise and intelligent; the people who don’t get it are ignorant scum.” –Steve Martin on the poor reception of Pennies from Heaven

The day after I first watched David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE, I mentioned to an acquaintance that while I quite liked the film, it was an experience that he would almost certainly not enjoy and should probably be wary of stumbling into. Naturally, as sometimes happens to me after I say words to other people, he seemed a bit insulted.

In my head, I was being merciful and was trying to save this man from accidentally entering what could be one of the most boring, aggravating cinematic experiences of his life. Not that his plebeian mind couldn’t possibly appreciate a fine work of art in the way that I could. Not that his taste in films was less than discerning and not that he was, in any way, less than… but the man has BABY GENIUSES on his TiVo.

It may have been an insensitive declaration, but honestly, wouldn’t it be far, far worse to have someone all up in your face with a three-hour-long experimental film that you just HAVE to watch, “in fact, I have a copy right here. Have a seat!”

“Why?” he sputtered defiantly. “Why wouldn’t I enjoy it?” Well, let’s run through some of the basic facts, and you can decide for yourself whether or not you would be offended by my waving you off from David Lynch’s latest.

The facts of INLAND EMPIRE:

- Sometimes it’s a movie that is in Poland, other times, less so.

- Sometimes Laura Dern is one person and sometimes she is another, and sometimes she is possibly a third person and throughout all of this, there is the possibility that all of her characters are merely imagined by an entirely different character who is not Laura Dern.

- Julia Ormond is here as a spooky, potentially hypnotized, white trash psychopath and possibly a manifestation of Laura Dern’s fragile psyche. To sum up, she’s a kooky scamp who may or may not exist who sometimes uses a screw driver to stab people in their vagina.

- Laura Elena Herring appears very briefly as her shockingly attractive self and dreamily flirts with everyone around her. However, most of the time she appears as an ominous, ghostly, rabbit-headed demon.

- There are monkeys and anecdotes concerning monkeys, there are one legged women, and lumberjacks and Baltic circus performers eating hot dogs.

- There are also interrogators, murders, whores, a character known only as “the Phantom” who is either a pimp, a scorned husband or the devil; there are rumors of a gypsy curse–and most importantly–there is a “lost girl” who is trapped in a hotel room, doomed to watch a sitcom about the aforementioned rabbit-headed demons for all of eternity. Possibly this is because she had sex in this hotel room with a man who either made her feel like a whore or literally paid her money for sex; it’s not clear.

So, while it’s probably short-sighted to point someone away from such a wild film experience, that, hypothetically, could blow this square’s mind into some cosmic understanding and foster a new taste for such wicked inventions and possibly completely shatter their preconceived notions of identity and sexual politics, it’s entirely more likely that they would fall asleep within half an hour and in the future add a few more grains of salt to my film recommendations.

While many of Lynch’s favorite elements return-the logs, the lumberjacks, the angry static, the beckoning red curtains-the demons in EMPIRE don’t chase you down as aggressively as those of the TWIN PEAKS universe, they just tend to haunt the same rooms that you do. For the most part, INLAND EMPIRE is relatively slow, ponderous and as decidedly un-sexy a film as Lynch has made since THE ELEPHANT MAN. Sure, there are celebrity cameos, but I don’t think Mary Steenburgen or William H. Macy get the heart rates up the way they used to. Old men speak in Polish. People wander on icy, grainy Polish sidewalks. Laura Dern cooks scrambled eggs, stares through a hole in a silk blouse, is suddenly at a barbeque in rural California (maybe?) where her husband (maybe?) smears ketchup onto his chest as Dern looks on, horrified.

In general, my biggest complaints against INLAND EMPIRE can be summed up by a scene that takes place within the first five minutes of the film. A long time Lynch regular, the great Grace Zabriskie (the mother of Laura Palmer and almost mother-in-law of George Costanza), shows up to deliver an ominous warning about the new film that Dern’s actress character (and we the peoples) has just signed on to. Zabriskie cartoonishly spins threats of unpaid bills, brutal “fucking” murders, parables about the birth of evil and the tenuous nature of time, all while dueling extreme close ups with a very confused-looking Laura Dern (at least 70% of INLAND EMPIRE consists of Dern looking either baffled or horrified at strange people who are performing either baffling or horrifying acts), but the scene plays more as self-parody and alternates between being downright silly, pretentious and amateurish.

This is a film that Lynch shot in his free-time over the course of two years and sometimes it certainly feels that way. Being shot entirely on digital video adds certain elements to Lynch’s style- I actually quite enjoy the look of it-but it also strips him of some of the lovely cinematography he’s been able to pacify audiences with in the past. As entirely as EMPIRE’S shortcomings are exposed, Lynch doesn’t seem all that concerned with correcting them as his attention throughout the film seems to be elsewhere. His enthusiasm for the freedoms allowed to him by the medium of digital video is infectious, and his experimentation with the format buy him some elbow room with some of us anyway, but in almost every aspect, this is Lynch at his sloppiest. He’s in Ed Wood mode here, “it’s not about the small details, it’s about the big picture/we’ll fix it in the editing room/etc…” Not to mention the worst dialogue he’s written and yes, I have seen LOST HIGHWAY, thank you. Luckily for Lynch, his big ideas are pretty damned seductive and the man does some amazing things in the editing room, but these are not small complaints.

Which all begs a pretty fair question–what exactly did I like so much about INLAND EMPIRE? Well, almost everything else. This is a film about BIG IDEAS and strange ideas that I think a more guarded brain is unlikely to tolerate. This is a film as bull headed as the staunchest of Lynch’s critics, but through all of its impenetrable arrogance, there is something incredibly human, affecting and redemptive here.

While Rammstein is woefully absent from the film’s soundtrack, it still manages to flare up with a few treats like the wonderfully creepy “Ghost of Love” which Lynch himself wrote and performed. There are a few other classy tunes, all of which are surprising and effective, but for the most part, the soundtrack is either more ERASERHEAD style industrial clanging, haunting train whistles, or industrial-based orchestral music that’s the sort of dull, throbbing pulses and random ambient swooshes that, if placed on vinyl by themselves, would send the average pitchforkmedia.com reviewer into those spasms of infectious delight that drive me to, again, swear off Pitchfork for good. But it works wonderfully here, and I’d almost go so far as to say it sounds like the echoing, empty, howl of an indifferent universe but that might seem a bit overstated. So I’ll just say it’s a very nice soundtrack, indeed.

Also, it would be a huge disservice to the film not to mention just how stunningly good Laura Dern is in this. I’m not sure how the actor/director relationships work on a Lynch film, if he wrestles or coaxes or just inspires these sometimes grotesque but completely fearless performances from his leads, but they’re unlike anything else that exists in film. Jeremy Irons gets to be all haunting and detached, which is generally the only way Jeremy Irons is in any way tolerable, but it’s Dern that has to screech and moan and crawl around on Hollywood Boulevard vomiting blood and, well, she’s damn good at it. Like Sheryl Lee’s performance in FIRE WALK WITH ME, which was so insanely over the top that it’s generally, and unfairly, considered to be just downright unhinged, Dern is at that level of THIS ACTRESS GOES TO 11, and that such extremes manage to be both this effective and terrifying is nothing short of miraculous. Alternately, like Naomi Watts in MULHOLLAND DRIVE, once Dern has fully unleashed her inner Kraken, you can see that the earlier scenes where she seemed to be stiff and just generally delivering a half-assed performance are damn near as brave as all the wailing and the screaming and the bleeding. It can’t be easy for a talented actor to allow themselves to be portrayed as so seemingly talentless, no matter what the director has in mind for the later chapters, because what if he forgets about you like he did with poor Patricia Arquette in LOST HIGHWAY?

Whether or not you’re inclined to suffer any of Lynch’s wayward instincts is basically a question of whether or not you think the man has any credibility as a serious artist, and Lynch’s stubborn refusal to explain his awful behavior has plagued his career with angry film critics fuming accusations of both sexism and the more universally damning “weird for weirdness’s sake.” Most famously, Roger Ebert has never been able to forgive Lynch for Blue Velvet, and I’ll certainly admit that watching Dennis Hopper rape and humiliate Isabella Rosellini was far from one of my favorite scenes in film history, but I really don’t think Lynch rubs your nose in the bizarre or in brutal sexual violence from a lack of better ideas, or, worse because he finds it pleasurable; I believe there are recurring themes to Lynch’s films and they’re themes I appreciate and believe in. I think the man’s a romantic who firmly believes in a sense and order to the universe. It might be one that we little brains aren’t capable of fully grasping, but it’s there and it is, as the Phantom’s one-legged-sister gasps, sweeeeeet.

So, perhaps by challenging my acquaintance with INLAND EMPIRE, promising that there is in fact something of great value beneath the seemingly impenetrable layer of hellish surrealism, he’ll begin to grow curious about the film and seek it out with the intention of proving me wrong and finding the value in this weird, dark gem, but it’s almost entirely more likely that he’ll get distracted, angry and then fall asleep hating the universe, but at least it won’t be my fault.

You have been warned.

You want to know my spoiler-filled take on “what exactly happened?” swipe away at the INVISO-TEXT!

I have no fucking idea what happened. For seriously reals.