Reviews

Moody? yes. Slow? a little. Bow Wow? hardly. Fantastic cast! Who says you can't have a fun movie about a total idiot? Julius is the straight man to life's maddening trickster. Definitely worthwhile for fans of Jarmusch style movie making. Personally I loved it...anyone who's gone after something without knowing quite where will get this. Check out Cold Fever, a similar, but more grown up film about a Japanese tourist in Greenland.

A puzzle with no solution is no puzzle. That was my take on "Lost Highway." Yet with so many admirers of the great Lynch, I had to give "Mulhollad D" a shot. "Don't expect to understand it," I said to myself. "Let the right brain ride with the flow. After all, it's David Lynch." I guess that was the right way to watch it, because I got it on the first take, which I often don't with easier movies. Of course I didn't get it until almost the end. While my right brain was riding the waves, I guess my subconscious was busy examining the hull, so when the "Betty" nametag appeared, the Aha was confirmed. An explicit revelation of the plot is found in the IMDB review by idyllbay. My take is slightly different, but only slightly and does require invoking Eastern philosophies of death. (By the way, you don't have to understand this film to enjoy it, as most devoted Lynch fans will tell you.) I will only add that I have found few puzzle movies so sweetly satisfying since Vertigo. (Guess I have to re-see Lost Highway)

Another Sandy Dennis movie that ought to be on video. Love to see a revival of this one. Keir Dullea--2001 star--plays a very different cutting edge role! Captures the essence of Lawrence's take on men, women and nature.

E for effort. Four screens carrying four separate stories (or so it seems at first) were exhausting to watch (and hear, with all four stories talking at once). This was supposed to have been filmed in "real time," meaning,I gather, that the four stories were synchronously and continuously filmed. It was tempting to walk out in the middle in hopeless confusion. (Not for schizophrenics who don't want to be!) I stuck it out hoping it would all come together in the end which it does, but far from happily. It is an interesting approach to film but I hope I never have to sit through another one. I have no problem with unhappy endings, but the effect of the quartered screen and the four synchronous stories was to distract and distance me from all the characters. Well, maybe that was the intent. BTW, it features bisexuality, perfidy, and music that frequently doesn't synch with any of the stories.

Gorgeous people doing grisly things. Family values...IS he sleeping with his sister? Will he kill his girl friend? Remember when slips were risque? Savor the flavor of the fifties. Big flashy cars. Good girls going to Tijuana for bad reasons. Tough women who really need a man to protect them. Bring your nostalgia and your sense of humor. Let the spell begin.