A good old Lynching

Movie Review: Industrial Symphony 1: Dream of the Broken-Hearted (1990)
The Dream of the Broken Hearted
This was originally presented on-stage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City on November 10, 1989. The show was part of the opening reception for the school's annual New Wave Festival. Filmmaker David Lynch and composer Angelo Badalamenti created the live show based on the dreamy pop music of singer Julee Cruise. Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern (who were shooting Wild at Heart at the time) star as a couple in the midst of breaking up. The performance also stars Michael J. Anderson, who was the Little Man From Another Place on Twin Peaks.

Movie Review: Wild at Heart (1990)
Next to Dune, I think this is Lynch's weakest movie. Surprisingly, it won the Palm d'or at Cannes. This was probably due to Lynch's TV show Twin Peaks being so popular at the time though. Wild at Heart stars Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern as two lovers being pursued by a bizarre medley of killers. The cast and the acting are great. Willem Dafoe is especially good as Bobby Peru, the slimiest character ever to appear on film. He does have nice teeth though. What I didn't like in this movie were the number of totally strange and unneccessary scenes. While Crispin Glover is great in his scene as Dell, the psychotic, rubber glove fearing, cochroach 'loving' cousin, the scene was totally pointless. The pure style and beauty of all of the scenes, however, still make this movie much better than most Hollywood fare. 8/10

Strange Mix

Movie Review: Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
Hmmm, what to say about this movie. It fits into that horrific little niche of movies like Caligula, the Passion, and Schindler's List that are so realistic and scary that I only need to see them once. Salo is about 4 noblemen in Fascist Italy who decide to live out the Marquis De Sade's last book in a private villa before the Allies kill them. A group of young men and women are kidnapped and turned into slaves for their sickest desires. What follows are scenes of rape, torture, and degradement as I've never seen before. It was tough to watch but is certainly an important movie that shows how unbridled power leads to corruption. If you don't think you can handle people being forced to eat each other's excrement then this isn't the movie for you. I don't find it all that surprising that the film's director, Pier Paolo Pasolini, was murdered shortly after he completed the film. 8/10

Movie Review: Backdraft (1991)
I saw this years ago but recently re-watched it with a class at my school. This is Ron Howard's action piece about firefighters and the fires they fight. 2 brothers work in the same firefighting brigade in Chicago. The younger brother struggles to prove that he is as good as his fearless and heroic brother. A deadly arsonist is also on the loose. The story is pretty mediocre, as is the lead performance by William Baldwin. I'm certainly glad that he got his in the South Park movie. The other actors are very impressive though, Kurt Russell, Robert DeNiro and Donald Sutherland are especially good. The best character in the film, the one that really steals the show, is the fire itself. Perhaps this is why the Universal Studios Japan attraction based on the movie doesn't feature any human actors, just the fire itself. I thought the ending was also a lit rushed and weak. The movie was entitled 'Backdraft' because an arsonist is preparing elaborate traps, called backdrafts, to kill certain people. However, when the arsonist is first seen in the movie he has suddenly changed his M.O. This sudden and unexplained shift in tactics leads to the arsonist's identification. Within the logic of the story it didn't really make sense. 6/10

Movie Review: Good Bye Lenin! (2003)
It's 1989, and a devoted Socialist in East Berlin suffers a stroke and subsequent coma. When she awakens 10 months later her entire world has changed. The Berlin Wall is no more, the two Germanies are once again reunited. Fearing that any undue stress will cause another heart attack and kill her, her son attempts to manipulate people and events so that she never learns the truth. This is all the more difficult because the world around them is literally changing. Advertisements for Coca-Cola and McDonalds are popping up everywhere, her favourite communist brands of food are no longer available, and there is a sudden flood of immigrants. Somewhat like the movie 'Life is Beautiful', this a is a fun movie about deception in the name of love. 8/10

Book Review: Star Wars: Jedi Apprentice 3: The Hidden Past - Jude Watson
A rather forgettable tale of Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan as they battle oppression and punitive amnesia on an alien world.

Not Without My [Son or] Daughter

Movie Review: The Forgotten (2004)
This Julianne Moore starts off well enough, a mother struggles to deal with the fact that everyone around her seems to have forgotten about her son that died a few years earlier when the plane he was in disappeared. They haven't just forgotten about her son mind you, they say she never had a son. Perhaps it's all just in her head. But then another parent with a child in the missing plane also remembers that he had a daughter. It all gets very X-Files when the FBI throws itself into the mix. Unfortunately a weaker than weak ending leaves this movie with an incredibly sour taste at the end. ********SPOILER******** Aliens?! C'mon. 5/10

Movie Review: Flightplan (2005)
Along the same theme, Flightplan has Jodie Foster searching every nook & cranny in a spectacularily huge jumbo jet to find her missing daughter. No one else saw her daughter, the crew say she never checked in, and Foster is taking medication because her husband just died. Is she making it all up too? Sean Bean (Boromir for LOTR) continues to impress as the captain of the aircraft. This, very Hitchcockian, thriller is well conceived and the setting of the jumbo jet is great; it's big enough to hide things but small enough to be claustrophobic. However, the end of this movie also shows a breakdown in logic. Foster's actions at the end are totally reckless and seem more like a quick resolution to the plot than a well thought out plan. 7/10