Die Hard 2 (1990)

A plane full of people blowing up is awesome.  9/11 ruined Hollywood action films because everyone became "sensitive" about it, when in fact watching anything blow up in a film, whether it's a building or a plane or a truck, is fucking great.  I mean even for 1990, when action films were really, really great, like Total Recall, a plane full of people blowing up, over time on the screen as it smashed to the ground was actually pretty heavy stuff.  The first Die Hard had nothing so catastrophic.  The film ends happily with snow and a nice christmas song despite the mass murder, so it's all good.

Fun film, just as good as the first Die Hard.  The villain is not so memorable, but the guns shoot and the plane blows up and John McClane is right when the fat stupid cop says he's wrong and he kills the terrorists and shows them all and wins.  I also like planes and airports, so that just makes the film even cooler.

Ride The High Country (1962)

One of my favourite westerns.  Pine trees, mountains, Warren Oates, gun fights, great score, Joel McCrea, Randolph Scott, all mountains, raven, drink, gold mine, what a film, Heck Longtree don't stop at talkin.'

Mulholland Drive (2001) (spoilers)

Like Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive is a film about the creative process, although altogether different.  It's the best film I've ever seen along with Blue Velvet (tonally and stylistically quite different).  There's a lot to write about, but I'll try to be to the point.  Like Blue Velvet it's about the inner life of one being, Diane Selwyn, her waking life manifest in her subconscious and vice versa when she awakens (reawakens?).  I say that because I think the film implies that her "dream" (film really draws no line and there is none) is no less real and exists in eternity, despite being forgotten in her perceived waking state amid the destructive influence of the Hollywood film industry, which in her dreaming ideal really is a place of dreams in which her creativity and inquisitiveness flourishes against the odds, as opposed to the stifling, closed off den of prostitution we see once the key turns and she "awakens."  So if one were to put it in narrative order, Diane Selwyn went to Hollywood with dreams of becoming an actress, fell in love with and became obsessed with the ideal of the voluptuous, sultry film star Rita that she aspired to be and wished to possess (who she is also in a lesbian love affair with).  Diane hasn't much of an image, as she lacks charisma and is very confused and lost, but lives a rich inner life and has a great creative centre, which is the source of the great mystery dream that takes up most of the film, in which she is Betty, a bright, charismatic, confident newcomer, and Rita is an amnesiac who has been in a car accident who stumbles into Betty's new apartment.  The two form a bond and Betty tries to help her discover her identity.  In this state Rita as objectified in Diane's mind is totally at the suggestion and the mercy of Betty, Diane's sort of perfect inner-witch, who gradually moulds "Rita" into her own image.  This dream also follows the story of Adam Kesher, a hot shot young film director who is making some kind of weird 50s hot rod musical, but finds himself struggling not to sell out to the studio bosses under the influence of the mafia and their own falsely enthroned egos which are concealed without oxygen behind a glass case as a dwarf and a bodyguard.  It's the destructive process of Hollywood shown as a shadowy, secretive cabal of indecisive, crawling executives.

As Betty arrives in Hollywood with what I presume are her grandparents, leading her unwittingly to her doom, she is all confidence and smiles, completely hypnotised.  Unbeknown to her, she is being led on by the hidden hypnotist of her own psyche and her experience is her mind revealing itself to itself.  Things take a turn for the strange when she discovers amnesiac Rita in her apartment, who had just stumbled down from Mulholland Drive after a car accident in the night after stopping on the road.  A shell without an identity, Betty tries to discover one for her.  Rita is sort of like a sexualized imaginary friend to her, a real body but without an identity, leading Diane's psyche to become a sort of puzzle.  In one nightmare scene in the film, a man talks with his therapist in a diner about a dream he's had in which he finds a man in the back of the place who is causing all the fear he and his friend feel, and that everyone feels, a sort of malevolent force hidden and revealed without warning but ever present.  He goes out back to show his friend, who catches him as he falls from the fright of his encounter.  It's a sort of demonstration of the way fear reveals itself to us suddenly and without will, and how we are saved and returned.  He goes outside  Betty has to go to an audition for a second rate film produced by some guy named Wally.  The director is a half asleep hack who tells her and some old actor to "be with themselves, but not let it get real until it gets real."  This sounds like pretentious crap but has a ring of truth to it.  When she starts reading the lines, she automatically lets herself go and inhabits the role totally, in turn hypnotising the old Clint Eastwood looking guy, who himself turns in a natural, real performance.  I guess this goes to show that "acting" is just as real as anything else, a sort of mutual unconscious hypnosis that happens without resistance, hampered only by distraction and self-consciousness.  Having turned in the performance of her life she is quickly snatched by two "catty" casting people, who are quick to package the performance and make a "star" of it, by taking her to the studio where Adam Kesher is working on his...50s musical...thing auditions, where plastic looking girls and minstrels in frocks are singing 50s tunes.  Having arrived she immediately makes eye contact with Adam and the two connect as if by force, but Adam must sell out lest his life go to hell (a cowboy tells him he will have the "good things in life" if he casts a certain girl).  When he sees this girl audition, he reluctantly casts her in the part because he is forced to by the company boss and his shadowy conspirators.  Essentially he sells out and loses his best actress.  Betty and "Rita" continue to investigate her missing identity, going to the apartment of Diane Selwyn, a name they heard earlier, only to find her decomposing corpse lying on the bed.  This is Diane rotting away as she has this dream by what has happened to her in her "reality."  "Rita" runs out in shock and horror with her hands to her face, fading in and out of traces of herself while Betty reassures her.

Later that night, Betty alters "Rita'" and gives her a blonde wig and makes her look "different," but actually more like Betty.  She is moulding her in her own image.  They fall in love and end up making passionate lesbian sex together, but "Rita" senses something is not quite right, so she leads Diane in the middle of the night to some mystery club called "Silencio," which it turns out is a sort of stage demonstration of illusory power.  It is the innermost realm of the psyche that she can reach.  What is behind the curtains cannot be known.  There is some strange magician on the stage chanting "No Hai Banda" and making fire effects.  A trumpet player comes out and seemingly plays the trumpet, only to lift it away while the sound continues, the magician saying "it is all a recording."  Eventually a beautiful woman with orange and red eyeliner comes out and sings "Llorando," a beautiful song with moves the pair to tears, devastating them when she falls to the ground and the song continues.  The image is destroyed, the mask has fallen.  "Rita" finds herself alone in the apartment again with the mysterious blue box which was found earlier.  She puts her key in it, and the box falls to the floor from hands unknown and the dream is over.

Diane Selywn awakens to find herself in her apartment, only it is not the glamorous, luxurious Hollywood apartment of her dream, it is a dour mess of a place and the coffee is crap.  There is no longer some grand order of events like what was envisioned in the dream, she is now drifting in and out of different half remembered, bitter confrontations with her lover, who is "Rita," only not her, instead a dominant, powerful, manipulative woman who has the upper hand on Diane and hurts and humiliates her and makes her feel small every chance she gets.  Diane has lost something vital, but also discovered something divine.  She is a shell of her former self, a void in her heart from her inner revelation in Silencio.  The frozen death of her dream invades every aspect of her life, she is in a way "dead inside" and yet this black hole is really the source of all her creativity, which is at this point stifled by a Hollywood image factory that seems completely dead and worthless to her, a mere object that burns her whenever she touches it, and yet tragically she keeps pursuing it knowing full well that her creative paradise is within, despite its' dark secret.  Driven to despair by the scheming, crawling people she encounters she goes mad.  Adam Kesher is no longer a struggling director, but a hack sell out who got into the business through his actress mother and lives in a fancy house with Rita his hot wife who is banging everyone else on the side male or female and taunting Diane with it.  Diane has found herself in a hell where her doubtful, hesitant self image cannot compete with the confident models and pictures, and her creativity is locked away in a box and not even take into consideration.  Creative success cannot be had there and she is a starving artist, but instead of leaving or doing her own thing despite the great photocopier, she gives in and self destructs, a martyr.  The Hollywood ego is a photocopier of glossy images and this only degrades and kills true creativity.

There are many nuances to be found in the film, many details that make up the whole.  Really it's about identity and how identity is a prison, and yet only an illusion.  Below that, it's much softer and looser, and this is closer to the source of creativity, which is the source of everything, the blue lady and whatever lies behind the dark curtain.  Hollywood is an illusion, even films are a mere demonstration of this, like Mulholland Drive.  Egoic power is entirely illusory, and the real power lies below this in the waters of dream.  Diane Selwyn becomes a hapless prisoner of her egoic power and her strong identification with it, which causes her so much pain and torment and vanquishes her from the world, although as we see at the end, her spirit lives on.  She dies, the dream does not.  It is all a recording.  Silencio...

Blue Velvet (1986) (spoilers again I guess)

Blue Velvet is the best film I've ever seen, along with the handful of other best films I've ever seen.  It has this visual style that became David Lynch's signature for the rest of his career, although it was never quite so openly naked, clear and illuminated as with this film, which is like a noirish trip into the sleazy, wasted back alleys and hidden dens of a seemingly idyllic small American town.  All white picket fences, green grass and smiles on the outside, Jeffrey is sucked into the innermost void of his town after he discovers a severed human ear hidden in a field on his way back from visiting his father in hospital.  In the opening of the film his father is watering plants in his garden while Bobby Vinton's "Blue Velvet" plays.  The camera then descends to the ground and through the grass shows ravenous bugs consuming the decay and dirt that falls from above.

Upon turning in the half-decayed ear, Jeffrey is eager to know more so he goes to see the town police chief, who warns him away from the case but only feeds his natural curiosity.  He meets Sandy, the chief's daughter, who might as well have stepped straight out of Grease or something.  Like Twin Peaks, Lumberton is a town with one foot in the 1950s.  Together they decide to go sleuthing because they're youngsters with a lot of free time and why not?  Plus, as Jeffrey says, who would suspect two such outwardly innocent and well adjusted youths to sneak into a woman's apartment and dig for dirt?  They don't even question their intentions, they just want to find out, and the law is broken very easily by Jeffrey's intense inward curiosity.  He doesn't question his intentions so he can truly discover them, there's no second guessing or doubt so his foray into the underworld is complete and revelatory.  He crosses the line when he sneaks into Dorothy's apartment and hides in her closet, witnessing her get undressed and bow to the floor in distress.  He sees her at her most naked, but she finds him and and then he is stripped naked.  The nudity in this film is sexual but the sexuality is also metaphorical.  Jeffrey is no longer the observer but the participant, and his mere act of observance forces him into action seemingly against his will.  Naked and with a knife pointed at him he is no longer in the safety of his corner, and as events unfold he painfully discovers his own complicity in the cruelty and horror inflicted by the nitrous oxide huffing monster Frank, who it turns out has kidnapped Dorothy's wife and child so he can force her to do things for him.  Frank is a beast, but is he the devil?  Rather the opposite, if the film is to be viewed non-literally as I view it.  If anything Frank is the life and soul, unashamed and the great performer and demonstrator, totally humble and beyond all judgement, a god, or a part of it.  He is Jeffrey's inner doppelganger, the beast that makes the whole machine go, and as Jeffrey crosses that line further and further, he transforms more and more into Frank, though plagued by shame, doubt and fear.  He meets Sandy to tell her what he's discovered.  Shocked, she tells him about her recent dream in which she describes robins descending on  a dark and desolate world and spreading light and love.  If Frank represents the demon derailer of Jeffrey's subconscious, Sandy is the angel driver.  Whereas Frank is unashamedly evil, Sandy is unashamedly good.  He is Jeffrey's inner doppelganger, the beast that makes the whole machine go, and as Jeffrey crosses that line further and further, he transforms more and more into Frank, though plagued by shame, doubt and fear.  This is the real disease of Jeffrey's psyche, his denial and shame, not Frank's monstrous demonstration of power and control, although it is that illusory pride, vanity and desire for power that feeds his shame and keeps him weak and vulnerable to attack from Frank and his horde.

As though set up by Dorothy, Jeffrey is found by Frank upon leaving her apartment.  He refused to go for a ride with Frank and his crew, but Frank doesn't hear the words "no thanks."  They have no meaning to him.  "Ride" is all he does.  They take Jeffrey to Ben's place, a light purple lounge with green curtains that is sparsely populated with old ladies, hookers and beer bottles.  Jeffrey, afraid and hesitant, stands around confused and bewildered, allowing himself to freely be bullied by Frank's gang of misfits, who threaten him and tease him.  Ben is a weird looking androgynous curly haired man in make-up played by Dean Stockwell, the only man Frank seems to worship.  He holds a light to his mouth and mouths the words to "In Dreams" by Roy Orbison, until Frank has enough and takes leave screaming that he'll fuck anything that moves.  Frank hates the dissonance between the sight of Ben mouthing the words to In Dreams and the sound of the song itself.  It tears at something in him, and fires up his greed, his need for something vital, like destruction and performance.  Frank has totally succumbed to his own impatience and greed, his nitrous-oxide fuelled dissociative episodes only priming and strengthening it.  When Jeffrey feebly confronts Frank when he fondles Dorothy Frank makes an example of his weakness and takes on the role of the pretty lady of Jeffrey's desires and fancies, vaguely and grotesquely morphing into Dorothy, donning lipstick and kissing him, playing the mother Jeffrey still clings to, before finally destroying that image by beating him senseless.

Blue Velvet is of course very entertaining on a surface level, a great thriller, although on this level lacking in plausibility.  Delving below the surface I think it's an exploration of one man's psyche, Jeffrey being forced to confront his devil through a series of escalating situations.  All of it is plausible because it is all tied together by a strange psychic force.  Alan Splet's incredible ambient sound design intermingled with Angelo Badalamenti's great score gives voice to that.  Each character is a demonic or angelic manifestation of his psyche, and he is forced to reconcile them and finally come clean, which he does when Dorothy reveals how he "put his disease in her," before an appalled Sandy.  Dorothy appears to carry a lot of diseases, so it is only by becoming responsible and saving Dorothy from Frank that Jeffrey can cure his illness.  As the police raid Frank's place, Frank disguised as a well dressed man reveals himself and chases Jeffrey up the stairs to Dorothy's apartment for the final confrontation.  Finally Frank is killed when he opens the closet (Jeffrey opening the door to himself?) and Jeffrey and Sandy embrace.  He awakens out of the ear into a sort of unreal paradise version of Lumberton, a bright, vibrant surface full of animatronic robins devouring bugs and gawking old people.  Suddenly the ordinary life Jeffrey found so dull to pursue the bugs that tainted his eye is seen anew as a heaven.  Jeffrey redeemed from within and grown up is free and in heaven everything is fine, but the underworld still exists as we see mother reunited with child and hear Rossellini sing "but I still can see blue velvet through my tears, into the blue sky.

It really is a contender for "best film ever made."  That the medium can produce a work of art like this in an entertaining mystery thriller says something.  This was the first film I saw that showed me what the medium could really do at an age when 80s action flicks dominated my sight. 

Dune (1984)

Often called David Lynch's worst film, I might call Dune a confused, shoddily told story were it not for how awesome the film is.  Yeah the story is told through long scenes of plotting and exposition and through rushed montages but the great bits more than make up for it.  The sets look amazing, the effects are great (for the time), and there are plenty of great, surreal, dreamlike images.  It's also hilarious, especially any scene involving the Baron and his minions.  It features many of the actors Lynch would come to use in his later films, although aside from that and despite the great direction and an appearance from Lynch himself, I wouldn't have been known that Lynch had made it without foreknowledge, as it's just not in his particular style.  Kyle MacLachlan, sporting a mullet and glowing blue eyes is Paul Atreides, the saviour of Aractus (I think?) a planet full of mind-altering substances and the spice, a substance that makes interstellar travel instant without requiring movement by folding space.  When his people are sold out and betrayed by shifty eyed Dean Stockwell in a bid to get revenge on the Baron, Paul is forced into hiding with his mother and then is found by the Fremen, natives of the planet, who he ends up leading into battle against the powers that control the universe.  Or something.  The spice is the key to control of the universe so they destroy spice production, and then they defeat the Baron and the Emperor and Sting all in one climactic worm-riding battle.  The first worm-riding scene is one of the most epic things I've ever seen.  Apparently Frank Herbert, the guy who wrote the book, had a problem with Paul being portrayed as a literal god figure in the end, but looking at the story a certain way it makes more sense that he's not a literal figure but rather the logical removal of the false emperor of the known universe and his "plans within plans."  The way it's all put together it seems really rushed in places because the studio screwed with it, but it's still good.

Eraserhead (1977)

I saw Eraserhead for the first time several years ago in the cinema, as part of some David Lynch special for the birthday of someone who was a fan who worked at the local arty cinema.  It was one of the best outings to the cinema I've ever had, because it was packed with both fans and newcomers, so there was both hysterical laughter and people going "what the fuck???" in equal measure, the perfect mix of hilarity and repulsion.  And it was awesome on the big screen.  On a big or small screen the film is an experience.  

The film is unique for Lynch because aside from Dune it's probably the furthest removed from the "real" world.  Most of Lynch's films have some strong relation to reality, set in real places with real things and relatable characters, but filmed, acted and photographed in just the right way so that it looks and feels unreal...like most great films, though Lynch does it very well and in his own uniqe way.  Eraserhead on the other hand makes no effort to be half-grounded, its' world a claustrophobic industrial nightmare of undersized living edible chickens and mutant offspring that are apparently expected.  So it's the perfect midnight movie, funny, dark, and really uncomfortable.  It's also the most obviously metaphorical of his films, featuring abstract symbolic images like the man in the planet who controls the actions of Henry with levers beside cracked window, and the giant squishy sperm infesting his girlfriend, and the weird white shape that keeps falling into a bunch of holes and coming out again that never goes away.

The film is a sort of machine nightmare about creativity.  I don't think it's a literal tale about a troubled couple who have a mutant baby, I think the endlessly crying mutant baby is Henry's inner baby, his neediness, anxiety and confusion in bandaged bondage, only it is no longer needed and is starting to ruin him and his relationship with his girlfriend.  Jack Nance's performance as Henry is great and funny.  His terrified, awkward expressions are hilarious, especially when he has to cut up miniature chickens for dinner with his girlfriend's parents, and the chicken's legs start moving while it secretes a weird fluid.  It has to be seen.  The guy who plays the father is also brilliant, and after the chicken apparently craps on the plate he grins at Henry and asks "So Henry, what do you know?"  That was the cherry on the cake, and just slayed me.

One of my favourite parts of the film is the dream sequence in which Henry loses his head and it's taken to a factory to be made into pencil erasers.  I think it's Henry being given control, his mind erased and re-written anew.  One he has this, he kills his screaming child and the man in the planet loses control, his levers stuck and flinging sparks.  In that one moment after killing his imaginary second controller through his baby he is free.  It's a great sequence that has to be seen, because it's really a visual film.  Of course it's up for interpretation, but that's mine.  The film took 7 painstaking years to make, a real labour of love, and it all looks effortless on screen.  It was a creative process about a creative process.