Blue Velvet

Rating:
Summary: Blue Velvet is a mess! Surrealism at its worse!
Review: Before people start to disagree with me about my opinion, lets just say for the record that I love surrealism cinema. Luis Buñuel is one of my favorite filmmakers of all time, and I can go on and on about how I love Jean-Luc Godard's work (though never classified as a surrealist, with Pierrot le Fou and Weekend, its safe to say he was a surrealist).

But "Blue Velvet" (along with Wild at Heart) is a cinematic act of self-mutilation, a film that makes fun of itself...basically a satire. And for anyone to say that Lynch is the greatest surrealist since Luis Buñuel, then I suggest you check out Buñuel's movies, and you will see the big difference.

What's the difference? Here's a surrealist that's scared to declare the films darkest fantasies. Instead, he tries to cover them up with manipulative, sneaky satirical wit. Just think about this for a moment. What if Mr. Lynch did a remake of one of Buñuel's films like ... lets say Belle de Jour. Instead of celebrating the character being a masochist, who covers up this guilty pleasure with bourgeois impassivity, Lynch would instead work in a humor device so it could smooth over the rough edges, and make us forget about the much darker powerful scenes. See, Lynch may have learned how to weave in and out of dream sequences from Buñuel, but he missed the best thing about the Godfather of Surrealism: Buñuel saw that we were hypocrites, admitted to being one himself and believed we were probably made that way.

Buñuel's satirical wit (which dig in the ribs, sly and painful) comes from recognizing how "we all" are hipocrites. You may sit back and shake your head in dismay at the fantasies of Buñuel's characters, but you knew deep down inside, you have one that's just as repugnant.

So what does Lynch expects a moviegoer to do? After witnessing Isabella Rossellini getting slapped around, raped, etc., we suppose to forget about all of this and laugh out loud on the following scene? I'm sorry, but I must agree with Roger Ebert when he said, "I was absorbed and convinced by the relationship between Rossellini and MacLachlan, and annoyed because the director kept placing himself between me and the material. After five or 10 minutes in which the screen reality was overwhelming, I didn't need the director prancing on with a top hat and cane, whistling that it was all in fun."

But! Let me say for the record that he finally learned the power of Surrealism with Mulholland Drive. He didn't back out of delivering the goods in that movie. He ran right through that material without looking back to clean up the darker scenes with jock humor. But with Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, and Lost Highway, he was still searching for confidence to move forward.

Rating:
Summary: I Like Roger Ebert but I Disagree About This Film
Review: Roger Ebert is one of the greatest movie critics we have today (far superior to Leonard Maltin in every regard). Having said that I would like to disagree with his review of David Lynch's 'Blue Velvet'(a film which evokes some of Ebert's favorite film noirs as well as a sort of detatched German expressionest feel - familiar to those who have seen the films of film-makers like Herzog. One thing I really like is the deliberate symbolic nature of the movie (it almost is a parady of itself at times - the darkness underneath all things - the ants that are crawling beneath the soil. I also like Lynch's choice of actors the naive Laura Dern and Kyle Michlouglin and how they are drawn to the dark sides of things - which encompass both the likes of the Isabella Rosellini character (who also is kind of innocent in a twisted way) and Frank (Dennis Hopper) the very depiction of evil.
Though I can identify with Ebert just not liking the film (I detest everything Tarantino has done) - I personally find this film to be very meaningful - and in a way funny.
Lynch is possibly the only American film maker (right now) that I truly admire - he completely opens himself up in his films - truly uncompromising.

Rating:
Summary: A Candy Colored Clown They Call the Sandman
Review: The operative word on "Blue Velvet" is surreal. I'm not going to try to analyze it but I'm just going to say I like it. When this film was released in 1986 it came way out from leftfield. It was a totally unexpected surprise from the director of "Elephant Man" and the collossal bomb, "Dune"(maybe it shouldn't have been so unexpected for anybody who had seen the equally bizarre "Eraserhead"). David Lynch opens the film as some Norman Rockwell American world and slowly peels off the layers of this facade to reveal the dark underbelly of this idyll. The movie begins where fresh-faced Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) returns home from college following his father's heart attack. He discover's a dismembered ear in a field and turns it over to the police. Not contented with leaving the investigation to the police, Jeffrey goes on his own investigation to discover the mystery of the ear. What he encounters is a mysterious lounge singer, Dorothy Valens(Isabella Rossellini) and Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper)a bizarre fetishist who has Dorothy under his control. Hopper's rendering of Frank ranks as one of the great examples of screen villainy of all time. Hopper's performance is indelible and over-the-top. In a smaller role Dean Stockwell as Frank's sexually ambiguous friend, Ben, makes an impression with his lip-synced performance of Roy Orbison's song, "In Dreams". This film definitely falls under the category of love-it or hate-it. I fall under the former category because I admire Lynch for trying something so ambitious and being a singular voice in film-making.

Rating:
Summary: It's Daddy, you S**thead! Where's my bourbon??!!'
Review: I didn't read all the customer reviews, but I scanned about 50 of them and the featured review, and did not see one mention of the fact that Frank Booth is a very very funny character. Even Kyle MacLachlan, in an interview on the DVD version, said that he was supposed to be scared but found Dennis Hopper too funny to be afraid.

I sample:

Ben: 'Here's to your health.'
Frank: 'No. Let's toast to something else. Let's toast to f***ing...Say: here's to your f**k, Frank;'
Ben: 'Very well, then. Here's to your f**k, Frank...Cheers!'
Frank: 'God damn, you're one suave f**k.'

terrifying? oedipal? haunting? NO!!...Funny!!!

This movie would be terrible without Dennis Hopper as Frank Booth. Jeffrey is pretty cool, and Ben is awesome for a few moments, but, that's it. There's nothing else.

Best of all, Dennis Hopper spent years trying to distance himself from this role, giving all the credit to David Lynch, not wanting to be seen as such a depraved maniac by all the frat houses and elsewhere that love Frank Booth so much.

See this movie to see Dennis Hopper as Frank Booth. Skip the rest.