David Lynch

David Lynch (1946 - 2025)

Like many other US film-makers, Lynch was a director who peaked early. After the experimental artistry on his debut feature ERASERHEAD (1977), Lynch’s work on THE ELEPHANT MAN (1980) proved that he could make a commercial bio-pic drama within the studio system. Epic space opera DUNE (1984) was initially thought a failure, but it’s a masterpiece of sci-fi horror that daringly combines generic styles and textures from Star Wars and Alien, into a darkly surrealistic, magnificently cinematic, cosmic fairy-tale... one that a genre-thieving George Lucas had clearly wished his shiny franchise-starter to be. The strangeness of science fiction and bio-horror themes in DUNE eclipsed nearly all previous space movies, including Fred Wilcox’s classic FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956).

Lynch became widely and rather wildly celebrated for his almost unique oeuvre of Americana, following DUNE. But various later pictures, especially the modern noir mysteries, focused largely on how so many American dreams became nightmares, with little difference between an uncanny noon daylight and moonless nocturnal scenes. Eerie might have been Lynch’s middle-name, and his sublime visions were extraordinary... but (for me, anyway) he never manages to produce anything that was a match for, or superior to, DUNE.

The only Lynch film I’d not seen, before today, was David’s own Disney adventure THE STRAIGHT STORY (1999), a melancholic, slow-drive road-movie that quickly evoked marvellous nostalgia for me, with my fond childhood memory of riding a red toy pedal-tractor up and down a back lane (access for garages), especially when he’s overtaken by racing cyclists. It’s based on a true story about WW2 veteran Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth, his final film), driving a 1960s’ lawn-mower engine, 240 miles from Iowa to Wisconsin. There’s a super-cool whimsy about its 'western' style trek, despite the obvious character-study source material, and Lynch’s profound loyalty to exploring American truth. 

Dune TV

Always thought bad-SF on TV was better than none at all. I also prefer weaker SF to average or even good non-genre stuff. Franchise drama DUNE: PROPHECY looks like usually poor sci-fi when presenting a civilisation seemingly unchanged for the next 10,000 years. Technology upgrades and/or any societal advancement, should push cultures towards stability, not stagnation. This epic prequel to DUNE movies is apparently aimed at anti-Gilead viewers who might like dystopian, or plainly dysfunctional, worlds but often support a matriarchal regime, instead of a more typical patriarchy-centred futurism.

Seeming positive, despite variously sinister sisterly ambitions, and mind-games, stars Emily Watson and Olivia Williams play rival ‘HarkonneNuns’, Valya and Tula. Travis Fimmel (VIKINGS) embodies a survivalist warrior - in royal service of sadly weak-willed Emperor (Mark Strong), frequently guided by savvy diplomacy of his wife Natalya (Jodhi May). Despite smart gadgets and techno toys quite clearly in evidence, history notes that machine wars led to formal rejection of any robots as overlords, while super-soldier Hart demos deadly pyrokinetic powers, and claims leadership of new Imperial shock-troops as his unjust reward. While Landsraad houses seethe with sundry family plots, the Bene Gesserit sisterhood forms with greater legacy of their witchy agenda. Above all, before you can say melange or mentat… the frequent symbolic imagery appears, including eye and mouth, portal and pit, signalling tragic horrors for this dark-space opera where tears, like spice, ‘must flow’.

UK Blu-ray, 14 April.

Better Angels

This 2019 movie is the best version of Charlie’s Angels, so far. It’s a supremely charming combination of topical sci-fi adventure (about broadcast electricity), plus engagingly witty action-comedy that cleverly, and very skilfully, avoids all the silly parody, or the often dumbly contrived jokes, that marred previous cinema efforts in this franchise. But still maintains levels of good humour now inventively centred on the characters, instead of merely spoofy caricatures for its crime-busting trio. 

It’s also the first ANGELS scenario to be written and directed by a woman, so this distinctly benefits from socially-aware actresses keen to ‘make a difference’ here with roundly feminist attitudes. The result delivers plenty of great fun with freshly stylish pragmatism. This is not only an admittedly-laudable, and next-generation, project that’s aimed at creating or reframing positive role-models. It shrugs off nearly all the faults of earlier gleefully-daft cinema versions and re-imagines the TV show’s basic format.

Elizabeth Banks, who also co-stars here as a key BOSSley ‘lieutenant’ (other ‘Bosleys’ are played by Djimon Hounsou, and Patrick Stewart), directs this re-fashioned media property so that her upgraded movie sequel is more than simply an updated expression of this usually awkwardly-flawed property (see 2011’s merely average TV remake). Newly developed for international scale, it’s an inventive attempt at re-branding all inherent qualities of the small-screen 1976 original’s cheesecake formula, viably re-vamped to be in tune with post-modern ‘sisterhood’ concerns. 

It’s probably better appreciated if you’ve not actually seen Kristen Stewart before in her five-movie TWILIGHT saga. With all of that career baggage left behind, she makes quirky rebel Sabina an honestly likeable heiress-turned-heroine, at first clashing, and then chiming well enough, with ex-MI6 spy Jane (Ella Balinski), so they’re in synch for the dance-floor choreography. Meanwhile, in lively ‘Candide’ style, the new-girl techie Elena (Naomi Scott, POWER RANGERS), offers effective intro-POV angles for any uninitiated viewers on these Angels gone global.

Imaginarium

While Tideland and The Brothers Grimm (both 2005) were somewhat flawed genre pictures, Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus (2009), is a surprisingly delightful compendium of themes and imagery from the auteur’s back catalogue, especially his loose trilogy of Time Bandits (1981), Brazil (1985), and The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen (1988), plus The Fisher King (1991). 

As the head of a strong cast, Christopher Plummer is excellent as tiredly immortal Dr Parnassus who presides over a ‘magic mirror’ portal to whimsically animated realms of subconscious thought, both touchstone anchor and escapist release, to the fabulous primacy of ‘story’ which “sustains the universe” for all humanity. Disrupting its soul-grinding routine, the initially-amnesic ‘victim’ of a lynch–mob, Tony (Heath Ledger’s final bow, though the character’s played in dreamscape appearances by Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell), revitalises a rundown carnival caravan - from the appealing charm of ye olde travelling sideshow to the slick freshness of post-modern street-theatre.

Trouble looms for Parnassus’ troupe when he’s reminded that repayment is due soon for his Faustian pact with Nick (Tom Waits), and so his daughter, ‘scrumpy’ Valentina (elfish model, Lily Cole - ‘Lettuce’ in Sally Potter’s Rage) is forfeit on her 16th birthday. There are fantastical Monty Python-ish wonderland visions beyond a stage facade, song ‘n’ dancing numbers, building structures or unrealities fall apart like crooked schemes unravelling, for topsy–turvy surrealism wherein the devil ‘walks’ on clouds and London police wrestle drunken bystanders to passivity, while (un-)lucky souls return to Earth from ‘acid’-trips of blissful exuberance, and gambling for a secret prize of redemption is worth a sacrifice or two.

“Don’t worry if you don’t understand it all immediately.” Please give generously, though - if you enjoyed the show. Gilliam may well have become a sentimental old fool - still believing, passionately, that the grandest of all possible dreams are simple romantic ones, even if they have no guarantee of a happy ending - but, Imaginarium... is a fairy-tale journey that’s worth taking, repeatedly. As an auteur’s medley, this sorely needed to be more than sum of its parts... And so it is!

Pacific Rim

For years after first watching my favourite Toho kaiju movie, Destroy All Monsters (1968), I wondered what a blockbuster version, with Hollywood special effects, would look like. I enjoyed the US remake of Godzilla (1998), but it whets the genre appetite for even greater scaled creature-feature mayhem. Could new standards of photo-real animation generate some anticipatory excitement for the ultimate monsterama - like Robot Jox versus Lovecraftian beasts - for bringing recent anime, where big mecha fight giant things, to life?

While the wildly different perspectives of British picture Monsters (2010), and very American game-derivative, Battleship (2012), examined - somewhat blindly - the big feet and head of such an imaginary movie-elephant, Pacific Rim (2013), as directed by genius Guillermo del Toro, is a valiant attempt to depict the whole mega-animal in a native cinematic habitat of comicbook colour and magnificently spectacular action. A winningly off-beat combination of Independence Day pulp sci-fi heroics and weird science, wearing the fan-boy credentials of its 50th anniversary Harryhausen-tribute on its sleeve. With tongue-in-cheek appeal, Pacific Rim focuses upon Top Gun styled pilots of the Jaeger machines as its warrior elite, unlike Marvel’s Iron Man 3 (2013), where the unacknowledged true hero is Jarvis - surely the most undervalued A.I. of recent years, despite orchestrating combat systems in that busy movie’s battle scenes.

The various alien behemoths are amusingly reminiscent of many other designs from creature movies. Whether in coastal defence or pre-emptive nuclear strike mode the smack-down encounters between Jaegers and kaiju are vividly depicted without a hint of the crazily edited havoc popularised by Transformers (2007) and its sequels. And yet, del Toro’s epic skates happily over the highly implausible, and completely ignores the physically impossible (even eight Chinook helicopters would be quite unable to airlift such massive robots!). When the screen shows us this much fun, it’s easy to overlook the bad SF content, and accept Pacific Rim as a gloriously irreverent exercise in fantasy. Just set aside your cynicism for 130 minutes and revel in the harmless nightmare of it all!