Reviews

Ever. There's no need for any other visual entertainment.

This really rubbed me up the wrong way, on a matter of principle, because it's just too close to its source material, while adding nothing. This is 'After Life' by Kore-eda, my favourite film, only this 'visionary director' inversed the premise. Which ultimately makes little difference, it's still an exploration of what constitutes a meaningful existence on this earth.

It's beyond homage. Masquerading and marketing such plagiarism as a breathtakingly unique, original indie film (and fooling the press) is so much more insidious to me than the inevitably over-schmaltzified remake once-proposed in the 00s.

'Nine Days' takes the setup, the tone, the limbo setting, the bureaucratic elements, the interviews, the metaphysical questions, the down-to-earth quality, even the analogue VHS tapes and lovingly-crafted staged sendoffs. Even the minor plot developments were tonally the same. Zazie Beets and Benedict Wong are great, but performances become overwrought towards the end. The cinematography is beautiful. Yet in every aspect of actually feeling something, this pales in comparison to After Life. Much like when a knockoff design company changes a couple of small things on the product it's copying to avoid a lawsuit, but the final product isn't nearly as good as the original, this film doesn't provide anything approaching the quiet emotional resonance After Life does, instead descending into overwritten quasi-philosophical discussions which left me cold.

I don't mean to take the experience away from those who found it meaningful but it angered me most because I love cinema, I love unique voices, and I can't stand lauded frauds. When this guy's taking the Marvel money in a couple of years' time, Kore-eda will still be evolving his genuinely-authentic craft.

Spike Lee only shot the performance, it's not directed or written by him. So that takes out half the low scores here, which don't even discuss the content.

Pass Over a powerful, funny tragedy, taking the basic setup and some of the absurdity of Waiting for Godot, and applying it to the eternal hellish limbo of two struggling young black man. Spending their lives on an anonymous Chicago block, they're unable to escape the nightly police violence and 'pass over' into the peaceful existence they dream of.

The cast is superb all-round, and even considering it is predominantly a document of the play, there are in fact some affecting and apt editing decisions made by Lee throughout.

Yes. It has gorgeous cinematography. Yes, there's an hour long single-take shot. Well done.

The Director mistakes aesthetics as the driving force behind his idols, who very much seem to be Tarkovsky, Tarr, Weeresethekul, Angelopolous, Wong Kar-Wai, Tsai Ming-Liang and David Lynch. That's fine, great influences, but what he doesn't understand is those Directors were motivated by much more than 'creating a hypnotic dream world'. Their themes, concerns and questions seep through their films in a tangible way, making us FEEL.

Go on, I dare you to find an interview or article surrounding this film goes beyond being wowed by the admitted technical prowess of the one-take shot, or some utterly vague discussion of memory and dream.

There's nothing of worth to feel or grasp here, the puzzles, recurring motifs and characters amount to nothing.

It's condescending to tell people they don't 'get it', and it's narrow-minded to claim anyone who loves it is pretentious. I adored this new Twin Peaks, and I understand why it's divisive.

In his old age, an artist had a chance to throw a kitchen sink's worth of ideas on screen, under the banner of his old show, with complete creative control. Good on him I say! That creative control means many of the aspects which came from others in the original show are missing.

I was compelled from start to finish. I appreciated its slow rhythms, found the pacing hypnotic. I'd understand why many fans would despise its new form. I wouldn't blame them for it.

If you're after a fully-resolved, tightly-plotted, didactic storytelling, you won't get it. You'll be frustrated by scenes which suggest the story is kicking into high gear in traditional Hollywood ways, only to then be presented with a five minute shot of a man cleaning a floor.

This jarring approach... loose ends, unresolved plots, ambiguity and odd pacing are understandably annoying for many. It does lack the melodrama of the earlier series, but there's still a warmth to many of the characters, you are just less guided by music and tight plotting. It's a feat to me that it is somehow utterly absurd yet simultaneously feels more grounded, but this show is not going to tell you a tight story with a guiding hand.

Personally, I haven't received this feeling from any US cinema in the past few decades, and I love it. Twin Peaks The Return gave me space to let my mind wander in the same way an Apichatpong Weeresthekul film might. That's a very personal thing, for me it's not boredom, it's a space to imagine and open my mind.

There's a lot of hyperbole surrounding David Lynch but his works are the summation of his very clear influences, like any other artist. You can see it all very clearly, and I happen to share many of his loves, so it's exciting for me. Here it's the usual Cocteau, Anger visuals, noir and 50s stylings, but there are clear nods to everything under the cinematic sun, from Jacques Tati to Tarantino and early silent cinema. I loved that, it feels like a celebration of cinema!

The tone jumps from humour to horror in a heartbeat, each episode is jarring in barely-cohesive ways but for me, somehow it coalesced. The show feels liberated, free of expectation and cliché. It put me under a spell, certainly not because I was instructed to by critics at large but because together, all these disparate elements felt refreshing.

I don't think it's a puzzle to be solved, I don't think there's a bullet-point explanation to the story sitting in a locked vault. I do believe the broad intention was to make you think, imagine and question what you're used to being fed by TV and films.

Would I watch it if it weren't called Twin Peaks and weren't by David Lynch? Yes. Should it have been called Twin Peaks, and is it kicking fans in the face by doing so? Very likely. I think that's what makes it so anarchic and brilliant. I also fully understand why many wouldn't want that from Twin Peaks.

Most rightly hold the 1986 adaptation close to their hearts, with good reason, but this has replaced it for me. It's much longer, and feels just as faithful, if not more. It's certainly closest to what I imagined reading the book, and interprets the many stories with a greater attention to detail.

This is a delightful WuKong! Charming and cheeky, despite wearing a restrictive latex mask it's an incredibly expressive performance, made through great physicality and great vocal ticks. Same goes for the rest of the cast. It's amazing how much personality Zhu Bajie squeezes from behind his static latex pig mask! Xuanzang is one-note throughout, I've seen adaptations where there's been more personality injected into him, but honestly this is how he reads in the book.

It's so good, you even forgive the FX. This was an epic-budget show, but the FX work veers between 'charmingly bad in a stylised way' to 'my first After Effects class'. It is comically ATROCIOUS. How they let it out looking like this I don't know. The color grading is bad too, it's all over the place even within the same sequence often. A shame since it's otherwise filmed nicely, with great in-camera vistas and diverse rural locations.

Yet, the show as a whole is so wonderful, you honestly forget the bad visuals and just get hooked on the wonderful odyssey. It's a shame that as a US viewer, there is no legal local way to see it with English subtitles, although you can order the SD DVD box from China but I'm honestly surprised it isn't on any streaming service.