Wild at Heart

Rating:
Summary: david lynch can do no wrong!!!!
Review: David Lynch yet again proves that he is definately one of, (if not the) most talented artists working in the realm of film.
Jack Nances brief appearance, is alone worth owning this film.
and I cant say enough about Willem Defoe as "black angel bobby peru". if youre already a david lynch fan you will absolutely love this film...people not familiar with his work may find it a bit disturbing,i would reccomend that people not familiar with davids work..watch his films in chronological order and work up too "wild at heart"!!!

Rating:
Summary: I will eat the studio execs
Review: The studio execs who have failed to put this movie out on DVD have made it onto my "People To Eat" list. Now I just need to find out who they are. Or I could just eat everyone in the movie industry to be careful.

Rating:
Summary: "Wild at Heart" regales with the wildest love affair ever!
Review: "Wild at Heart" opened to fantastic reviews at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990, where it won the Golden Palm Award for Best Picture of the year. Written for the screen and directed by the master of quirk David Lynch, this film tells the wild adventures of a young convict (Cage) who breaks his parole to journey across America with his beautiful gal (Dern) to escape her evil mother (Ladd.) Whilst regaling us with tales of their recent serendipity, Lynch directs Ladd as she muddles in her morass of bad joss. Along the way, Cage and Dern cross paths with an assortment of classic Lynchian characters: strange but goofy and friendly at best; strange but evil and murderous at worst. Most of the heartless half-wits are sent by the evil mother (played insanely brilliant by Ladd) in an effort to sabotage the relationship between Cage and Dern. The chase across America is played wonderfully by Lynch, in an apparant homage to Homer's "The Odyssey." Cage, as a mondern day Odysseus, has just weathered years of rough adventure in jail and now must make his way to the 'promised land' in the hopes that Dern-his Penelope-will faithfully be there still at journey's end. There is even a one-eyed cyclops along the way, and a siren or two. Also, no road trip would be complete without quite a bit of "Wizard of Oz" imagery, of which there is plenty of, and quite obviously referred to therein. All in all, it has exciting action, steaming sex scenes between Cage and Dern (and even an erotic scene between Dern and DeFoe.) Moreover, the comic wit of the dialogue will have you rewinding the movie to hear your favorite classic lines again: "We're making this porno Texas-style!" I look forward to the day it will be released on DVD, as it did in fact win Best Picture in Cannes, Cage is an Academy Award winning actor himself, and DeFoe is a two-time Academy Award nominee! Buy this film, sit back, and prepare for a whacky adventure, terrifying in parts, strange in others, comical in all parts, but yet surrealy beautiful in still others. It is one of a kind moviemaking of which Lynch is the master. I guarantee you that you have seen nothing like it before. After finishing this film, be sure to rush out and get "Blue Velvet" and "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me." Great films. "When this kind of fire starts, it is very hard to put out. The tender boughs of innocense burn first, and the wind rises, and then all goodness is in jeopardy." from TP:Fire Walk With Me. Be sure to try your hand at spotting the various and sundry assortment of characters who drift into and out of each of Lynch's films. Enjoy. I recommend this film very highly. Anyone seen my snakeskin jacket?

Rating:
Summary: The ultimate WEIRD road movie.
Review: A viewer below suggests that "Anyone who gave Wild At Heart a bad review, but liked Dune should be ignored on general principles." Well, let me tell YOU something, pal: Not only is "Wild At Heart" some sort of a brilliant film, but I also think "Dune" is one of the most underrated films ever, and I think David Lynch is selling himself short to suggest otherwise. As a fan of Frank Herbert's sci-fi epic, I think Lynch did an admirable job of capturing Herbert's universe given a time frame of only 2 and ½ hours.

But enough about "Dune." I'm ecstatic that "Wild At Heart" is about to get its long-awaited DVD release, in part because the film in ANY format has been inexplicably long out of print, and in part because one scene in particular, which had to be "smoked over" to avoid the deadly NC-17, apparently has been cleaned up for this edition. When the film was first released in theaters, the climactic scene in which to top of a man's skull is blown off by a shotgun had to have some "smoke" added to obscure the graphic scene so that the film could get an R rating. However, anyone who caught the recent broadcast of "Wild At Heart" on the Independent Film Channel knows that the "smoke" has now been removed, and I assume the DVD release will reflect that.

"Wild At Heart" reputedly was David Lynch's first intentional foray into "humor," but that's not saying much here. There are some lines, visuals, and other assorted tableaux that are "funny" but only in the most absurd, Lynchian way. There are plenty of references to "The Wizard of Oz." There's some fabulous scene-chewing by Diane Ladd, plenty of gratuitous violence, and some great steamy sex scenes between Nicholas Cage and Laura Dern, all wrapped in a package surrealistic enough to satisfy any Lynch fan. This is the quitessential WEIRD road movie.

Rating:
Summary: Pure David Lynch.
Review: First let me get this off my chest. On other reviews for this movie, several people have listed Dune as a good David Lynch Movie.... David Lynch himself has implied that it was a mistake to make Dune at all. (The quote was actually: "I'd rather not talk about it" on the Actor's Studio.) Dune was a great book, Lynch is a great director, but the screenplay for Dune was an abject mess (The sets, costumes and casting were excellent though.) The point of all that is this: anyone who gave Wild At Heart a bad review, but liked Dune should be ignored on general principles... If you liked Lost Highway, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive or Eraserhead; you will most likely enjoy Wild At Heart. It's the closest to a comedy that he has made, although the blackest kind of comedy. Lynch's films are like abstract paintings, so if you like movies you actually have to decipher and think about for days afterwards, then this is for you. If you liked Dune, stick to Jerry Bruckheimer productions.

Rating:
Summary: A Rockin' Good Movie, Peanut !!!
Review: Wild At Heart was one of those 1980s unorthodox films that showcased bizarre characters and absurd situations; it was the sort of offbeat film that the late 1990s' American Beauty merely WANTED (pretended) to be. Every primary character in Wild At Heart completely steals a scene at some point along the way, imbuing the viewer with a marvelous mixture of hilarity, disgust and amazement.

From Laura Dern moaning, "Oh Sailor you make me hotter'n Georgia asphalt," to Nicholas Cage beating the brains out of a guy, to Willem Dafoe blowing his own brains out, this movie constantly takes you in grandly twisted directions.

It's a good thing I saw this on VHS, rather than in the theater. Following Crispin Glover's vignette as Jingle Dell -- he thought, among other things, that he was being pursued by aliens wearing black gloves -- I convulsed so hard with laughter that I missed the next five minutes of the story and had to rewind.

If you are a proud member of the Sick Sense of Humor Society, Wild At Heart is one of your keynote films. Enjoy !

Rating:
Summary: Not a great Lynch picture
Review: If you're looking for another Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, Elephant Man or Dune, this film is not for you.

I think this is a poor representation of Lynch's craft. I've always liked his penchant for the quirky and bizarre, particularly when interwoven with an intriguing plot (Blue Velvet). This movie, like the later episodes of Twin Peaks, is an exercise in weirdness just for weirdness sake.

While Nicholas Cage delivers a good performance, the film is otherwise vapid and rather tedious to endure (I had to keep taking breaks from the video). Laura Dern, while easy on the eyes, began to grate against my nerves as the movie wore on, particularly after the millionth time she screamed "SAILOR!!!" with that stupid Greek tragedy mask expression plastered on her face.

I was also disappointed to see Crispin Glover, always a favorite weirdo of mine, had a small part. Same with Sherilyn Fenn (always favorite eye candy).

I sought this out after it was OOP. While it didn't break the bank, I do not regard it as money well spent. Seek out other Lynch's for your video collection.

Rating:
Summary: WILD AT HEART
Review: This movie is wickedly beautiful and violently satiric, a pulp-fiction extravaganza of murder in 'B' movies. The film's junkyard-of-the-soul theme wraps like a chain around the sympathetic characters and stories. El Tuna, Texas indeed.

Rating:
Summary: For Lynchophiles Only!
Review: David Lynch is a talented man. He has a cult following. If you think David Lynch is the greatest thing since night baseball, read the other reviews, this flick is for you.

David Lynch first came to my attention with Elephant Man and I was impressed. I found Blue Velvet disturbing, but intriguing (with some serious flaws that become monumental in his later work). Twin Peaks was fascinating & funny for weeks before it became so obscure and self-referential that it ran out of steam and interest. I even liked lots of Dune. So, I anticipated Wild at Heart.

It began well enough, but then it just went off the page into excess. Half way through the picture I couldn't stand the vapid and inane couple played by Cage and Dern (two actors I admire greatly). Both of them went over-the-top, if such as thing is possible in a Lynch movie, and became boring and ridiculous. Since the entire rest of the film is peopled with nothing but depraved grotesques and caricatures, t!here isn't a human being anywhere in sight to give a tinker's damn about. So I very quickly didn't give a damn what happened to anyone in this garish nightmare.

I guess you could view this as a "comedy" of sorts. Artsy fartsy bad movies MUST be clever comedies, no? Well, it ain't very funny either. It is too pointless and idiotic to even qualify as "black comedy".

Lynch has a way with the camera and an image. He is a terrible writer, and he gets ludicrous performances from very good actors. I won't even go into the stupid Wizard of Oz references. His in-jokes and his vision is so introverted and personalized as to have little or no meaning or relevance to anyone else but himself. This kind of self-referencing, self-obsessed, mastubatory obscurity becomes indicipherable and tedious.

Some people find art in excrement. Knock yourselves out. I don't think putting arresting or disturbing visuals on screen is enough. Surrealism just to be surreal seems to me! an exercise in narcissism. It would have been nice to find something approximating human life somewhere in here, but I didn't find it in this nonsense. Nor any point other than bad acting and irrelevent images preserved forever on film.

Rating:
Summary: This movie affected me forever. Thrilling, soulful, cute.
Review: I only saw it once, in the theater and was a liberating, thrilling experience because of the emotion and depth of it's creator's mind came through so completely. This is art. If you are offended by it's treatment of women or racial distortions, you miss it's point entirely. Life is not fair. It's both sweet and primal, brutal and dazzaling, crude and enlightening, depending on the road you take, in various mixtures of each. Much like this film. I forever looked at the world differently; thru Lynch's eyes, a brief glimps of his soul and the metaphores his charactors represent. I could identify with each, and in some ways see myself in all of them... but if anything, I think it encouraged me to hang a little bit looser and attempt to enjoy more thouroghly because that's what life should be. If you haven't loved someone obsessively, you haven't really lived. If you haven't let loose and really partied, you missed something. If you've denied your dark shadow self your entire life, you don't really know who you are. I've been waiting years for this to come out on DVD and it looks like the wait will be over soon.