Muriel's Wedding (1994)

Muriel's wedding is a sham, a staged, set up display designed to further the false goals and aspirations of a sad group of people so enamoured with winning and getting ahead that they forget to care.  In the beginning of the film Muriel is a down-and-out unemployed girl with no self-esteem who is constantly belittled by everyone around her, so she feels the need to act out, lying and stealing to live the ideal of a life she sees her peers living and appease her greedy, success obsessed father.  Eventually she meets a friend from school and they move in together and they think they're free but things go wrong again and her friend his rendered paraplegic due to a tumor in her spine.  Another blow and Muriel, ever desperate to live up to the idea of success, sees it in marriage, her new ultimate goal, overlooking her friend in favour of a phoney wedding to a professional swimmer so he can get citizenship because she's so desperate to be somebody and feels as if she has nothing, when she always had all she ever needed but was blind to it and had to learn through the suicide of her long suffering mother who always stood by her and believed in her no matter what but was ignored at the wedding as she grinned for the cameras.

Muriel's Wedding is a great film because unlike other "cinderella stories" this completely subverts that idea and dodges every cliche because it's not about success, it's about failure, or the failure in success.  In the end Muriel and her friend finally break free of it and ride off to live together but they don't really gain anything, they simply accept themselves and give up.  Most of the characters end up worse off than they began, and while portrayed comically, none of them are villains, and instead all seem just as sad and desperate as Muriel, her thieving, lying timidity just a symptom of the bind denial that afflicts them all.  Her father is an abusive, greedy, status obsessed businessman who tries repeatedly to run for governor, her siblings all sit around watching TV and doing nothing, her peers are all image and sex obsessed bitches and her mother, plain, simple and wanting for nothing, is caught in the middle of it all and when her own daughter ignores her because it she eventually has enough and self-destructs.  He leaves her for some glamorous, well-to-do woman he keeps meeting "coincidentally," and she's in just as much of a prison as the rest, who all need to make noise and shout about how great they are by the standards of a sick society that seems so loud and purposeful and keeps grabbing and taunting but is only an outward symptom of self-hatred.  

It's a great film, full of great characters and the ABBA soundtrack compliments it wonderfully.  Toni Colette is excellent as Muriel and the whole cast is great.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine pilot episode (1993) (some spoilers)

I'm an avid fan of Star Trek TNG, and while it's a great series, it's far from perfect, often preachy and pandering but with a perfect send-off in all good things, a time jumping episode in which Picard is forced to give himself up and conform to a truth in order so that humanity and all that he loves does not cease to ever have existed, the ultimate sacrifice, leaving Star Trek Deep Space Nine to take the franchise and the ideas of the series so far further into the realm of the metaphysical, and Deep Space Nine is a marvel with great characters and ideas that explores ideas of faith, time, conflict and power on a galactic scale but all aboard one station under the command of Benjamin Sisko, the Emissary of the Prophets, a race of god-like being who exist beyond humanoid perception of time and space.

The whole pilot episode is about time and timelessness and the contradictory nature of time-continuing existence existing within timelessness and destiny, and the tightrope of faith.  Whereas the Enterprise is a perfectly oiled machine and the whole crew is pretty much perfect and know how to overcome all obstacles in a rigid, literary surface sense, Deep Space Nine is a broken space station abandoned and left in pieces by a totalitarian race of control freaks who oppressed the people of Bajor and committed atrocities against them for an era.  When they leave and Bajor is "free" under a provisional government, Starfleet steps in to help out and Benjamin Sisko reluctantly takes command of the station having lost his wife at the battle of Wolf 359 seen in TNG in which Picard was assimilated by the Borg and forced to assist them in an assault on Earth.  Therefore Sisko starts out with a resentment and hatred of his predecessor in the Trek story.  The way the pilot works as a continuation of the ideas explored in the best episodes of TNG, the final episode as well as the brilliant two parter in which Picard is assimilated, is poetic in the way it comes together and adds up as a profound demonstration.

As Sisko reluctantly arrives on the station struggling to deal with loss and carrying the baggage of hatred and resentment for the previous Captain incarnation of Picard, he unwittingly sets the stage for what is to come and puts the pieces in place.  As the episode begins it is far more of a slow burner, more mysterious and mystical than the fantastical and adventurous pilot of TNG, for this is a very different show and no one is eager or agreeable, every first encounter an argument or confrontation rather than a reunion or instant friendship, at least not on the surface, for these characters thrive on conflict, uncertainty and doubt, instead of the outward goodness and purity of the Enterprise crew, although that worked for a show that had only a partially continuing story but was for the most part an adventure of the week kind of thing.  Rather by having a continuing story the show unfolds and suprises you and tries the faith of its characters whose struggle is compelling and difficult but fits in place in a larger picture.  In this way the show combines religion and science as its foundation and achieves a grander scope than its predecessors.

In TNG's brilliant two-parter "The Best of Both Worlds," aptly titled as it explores the illusory conflict between the surface reality of culture, personality and freedom and the underlying cybernetic control structure which assimilates Picard in servitude to them as humanity is forced to fight in order to save their freedom.  In the beginning of Deep Space Nine Sisko is aboard one of the ships assaulting the Borg cube.  The ship is catches fire and begins to break up and in in the chaos Sisko loses his wife but saves his child.  This loss leaves him hardened but better for it, and three years later he is assigned to oversee the station as Bajor recovers from the occupation of a controlling occupying force similar to the Borg but less absolute and more reptilian and sadistic, a kind of lingering disruptive presence throughout the series, powerful but also deluded and arrogant,their rigid control and domination their downfall as with the Dominion allies later in the series.  Deep Space Nine is very much about power play both real and illusory.  As I've mentioned before there are races of varying levels of technological advancement and power in the Star Trek universe.  The systems at the higher end of the spectrum like the Dominion and moreso the Borg tend to be more rigidly controlling, systematic, invasive and powerful, or seem so, assimilating other cultures and civilisations or assimilating them so the Federation and Bajorans have to take leaps of faith and accept and overcome their flaws in the face of the ultimate power, the beings the Bajorans worship as gods, the prophets, which speak to Sisko after giving him his test in the pilot.

At some point Sisko and Dax get in a runabout to investigate anomalous readings in an attempt to find out more about mysterious orbs that have appeared in the skies above Bajor for millenia.  Suddenly in the same way a Bajoran pilot once described the heavens open up and swallow them, and they are sucked into a wormhole a folding of time and space, the celestial temple of the prophets in which they reside beyond time forever.  It is here that Sisko's time continuing existence is tested, and as he explains how he goes from one moment to the next in life as a human being, is is thrust into different meaningful events in his life, back and forth between meeting his wife, the death of his wife at Wolf 359 and playing baseball.  The prophets speak to him through figures from his life, from Picard, who in one shot appropriately as a borg stands alongside Sisko as the prophets deconstruct from within the mechanics that get Sisko from one point in time to the next, Sisko struggling to explain that he moves forward in time while he is repeatedly thrust back into the moment his wife died with the ultimatum from the prophets "but you also exist here."  They are learning one another in order for Sisko to become the emissary.  His being is deemed intrusive to them for trying to explain how he moves and how things are lost and his mortality, but as the prophets learn this Sisko also learns of timeless existence, of destiny, and so they are bonded forever by this and Sisko returns from his experience renewed as the emissary.  

At the same time the demonstration is taking place in the temple it is also happening on Deep Space Nine as the crew races against time to stop the Cardassians from staking a claim to the wormhole.  The tension lies in the fact that the station is barely functional and could tear apart at any moment, and the crew has to rely on blind faith to get them from point A to B.  At one point O'Brien tries desperately to get a computer console working before literally kicking it into action.  Everything seems to just happen instead of being controlled completely by the crew and as Sisko returns triumphant Deep Space Nine begins.  My favourite Trek series, fascinating.  

Die Hard (1990)

Die Hard is not only one of the best action films ever made, it's also a brilliant film of ideas, the skyscraper the setting for a climactic confrontation, the psyche of one out-of-place, everyday man who against the odds must reconcile with his estranged wife and defeat the evil Hans Gruber, a pretentious, materialistic thief and control freak.  When he invades the Nakatomi skyscraper it's time for John McClane to clean house, which he struggles to do but does so effortlessly in the fashion of the old action films which were less shallow and aesthetic, vulnerability and danger part of the equation rather than dispatching enemies with precision, dodging bullets and being a literal god-man.  There is no room for any of that in this film, John McClane is not a pretentious, insecure show-off like his nemesis Gruber who has to make big speeches and surround himself with a band of strongmen to get by, all that nonsense does is force him to rely on instinct and do what is absolutely necessary even if it means bombing out the building with C4.  He has no time, Gruber believes he has all the time in the world, and this is why Gruber, with his fancy suit and fancy watch, fails.  After rescuing the hostages and killing the terrorists he is forced into confrontation with Gruber who is  holding his wife hostage.  The final confrontation is brilliant, as Gruber is blown back out a window.  McClane's wife tries to save him, and is frantically holding onto the fancy watch, while McClane unbuckles it because Gruber must die.  Finally Gruber, out of time, his watch unfastened, falls, defeated all along by his own sense of himself as an autonomous, all-powerful mastermind with time in his hands, which he never was, and McClane and his wife, the male and female counterparts are reunited as the snow falls and Merry Christmas.  That is why it is not only a great action film, but a great Christmas film, and a great ideas film, and the same can be said for number 2 and Die Hard with a Vengeance.  Like many great films it's just another trip into the depths, into the infrastructure.  Blue Thunder is another film that comes to mind that does something similar.  

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.