What, no cheese and crackers?

Twin Peaks

3.4: ...brings back some memories

(SPOILERS) If anything, the fourth episode goes even goofier than the third, before sobering up dramatically for the final scene. There’s at least one innocuous cameo here, Richard Chamberlain pulling the equivalent of George Hamilton in The Godfather Part III, but it’s most notable for the arrival of Naomi Watts and Robert Forster, and the return of Dana Ashbrook and David Duchovny. And… Michael Cera?

Wally: My shadow is always with me. Sometimes ahead. And sometimes behind. Sometimes to the left. Sometimes to the right. Except on cloudy days. Or at night.

Maybe the battiest thing in the third season to date, and that’s saying something, is Cera’s appearance as Wally Brando (born on the same day as Marlon), Andy and Lucy’s son, his appearance plays like an extended skit, with Lynch cackling away behind the camera, eager to see how long he can string it out. You pretty much get the impression that, when Forster’s Sheriff Frank Truman, Wally’s godfather, turns heel and walks off, Forster really has had enough. Cera’s doing a Brando shtick, dressed out of The Wild One, announcing he’s “decided to let them do as they wish with my childhood bedroom” and waxing philosophical about life on the road. (He also mentions the Lewis & Clark expedition, which is very significant to The Secret History of Twin Peaks). I found it hilarious, but it seems to have provoked the most Marmite reactions of anything Lynch and Frost have served up so far.

Lady Slot-Addict: Thank you, Mr Jackpot. Thank you.

Most effortlessly watchable is the continued adventure of Special Agent Charlie Babbitt, as Cooper finishes up in the casino having scored 29 mega jackpots, giving an old bag lady a few too (“Mr Jackpot, tell me which one”). I love Lynch teasing out scenes in a complete lack of hurry, such as Brett Gelman’s supervisor handing over the winnings and giving it the tough guy act (“That’s right, we’re watching you, Mr Jones”) while having absolutely no idea what’s going on. And then the reveal that Dougie somehow ended up married to Naomi Watts (Janey-E Jones), with a son(ny-Jim). By way of an equally baffled limo driver, prepared to wait outside the house with Cooper… well, forever if she hadn’t come out.

Janey-E: This is the most wonderful horrible day of my life.

It’s still unclear what trouble Dougie had got himself into, but Janey-E knows about it (of the winnings she observes there’s “Enough here to pay them back”), and she’s obviously used to Dougie being as inept as Coop currently is (the scene where he learns how to urinate is priceless). There are several cues to his greater quest (“You were tricked. Now one of you must die” he is told through the carpet), and there’s a memorable repeat of the Season Two finale’s mirror scene, but the biggest treat is his reaction to first pancakes and then coffee – if that won’t bring him back, nothing will (albeit his not-son is also doing a grand job)!

Back in Twin Peaks, the gag with Lucy and cellular phones doesn’t quite play, but it’s a good try. The twist with Bobby now being in the police is a neat one, although again, his breaking down at the sight of Laura’s photo doesn’t quite deliver (I’ve seen praise for the moment, but it fails to play as melodramatically as a similar scene would have in the original). Better is the ignorant deputy having no time for the eccentricities of the town, including Margaret (“I thought that log woman was a 10-96 and not even allowed–”; “I’m going to have a word with my pine cone”). And we get confirmation of more The Secret History of Twin Peaks information, that Cooper was the last person to see Major Briggs alive.

Gordon: There is room in this FBI for more than one beautiful woman.

Denise: That is so sweet.

The FBI side is also kicking into gear, with David Duchovny’s Denise Bryson – I hope there’s more of her in this, as Duchovny’s having a ball, and it’s good that Lynch takes to the character, Dennis/Denise having floated around when he didn’t have much to do with the series and it was generally at its lowest ebb – clearly aware of Gordon’s/Lynch’s thing for the ladies and only comfortable sending him off to South Dakota with Agent Preston when she knows Albert will be chaperoning (given Albert’s reaction to seeing Preston’s sashaying hips, maybe she shouldn’t have been).

Gordon: Albert, we’re in South Dakota. Cossacks are in Russia.

Albert: CAR SICK!

I’d been concerned about Ferrer’s ability to pick up Albert again, but that fades completely here (“We’re not going anywhere near Mount Rushmore”; “I brought a picture for you”), particularly his delivery on hearing that evil Cooper’s personal effects consist of cocaine, a machine gun and a dog leg (“What, no cheese and crackers?”)

The interview with evil Cooper is perfectly off, from the strained thumbs up to his slurred vocal pitch. But the yarn Cooper spins at least has a grain of truth; he says he has been working undercover all these years, primarily with Phillip Jeffrey (and that he’s left messages “so Phillip knows it’s safe”). Albert admits that, years before, he authorised Coop to give Jeffrey information concerning the bureau’s man in Colombia, and a week later the man was killed. Lynch and Ferrer are particularly riveting in this carpark scene – you could hear a pin drop – Lynch particularly notable for holding his own when generally in the past he has opted for sendup. Scenes like this emphasise the director’s masterful sound design; music is remarkably absent from the series, replaced by an unnerving background hum (the interview scene in particular) or even audible silence.

Gordon: I hate to admit this, but I don’t understand this situation at all. Do you understand this situation, Albert?

Albert: No.

Part of the pleasure of this season in its early stages is teasing expectation; of Cooper reconstituted and reintroduced to old faces, and of pieces of puzzle proving vital and others proving irrelevant. But so far, Frost appears to be ensuring Lynch steers a thoroughly engaged ship, and the consistency of this run is already more marked than even the first season, albeit as a very different beast. The ending, referencing blue rose, is a nod to Fire Walk with Me and Cole’s case categorisations (blue rose cases involve supernatural events, is the implication, unsurprising then that a big floating Major Briggs head should have mentioned the phrase in 3.3), but it would appear there’s also a human personification of this (“I know where she drinks”). Laura Dern’s character?

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

In a few moments, you will have an experience that will seem completely real. It will be the result of your subconscious fears transformed into your conscious awareness.

Brainstorm (1983)
(SPOILERS) Might Brainstorm have been the next big thing – a ground-breaking, game-changing cinematic spectacle that had as far reaching consequences as Star Wars (special effects) or Avatar (3D) – if only Douglas Trumbull had been allowed to persevere with his patented “Showscan” process (70mm film photographed and projected at 60 frames per second)? I suspect not; one only has to look at the not-so-far-removed experiment of Ang Lee with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, and how that went down like a bag of cold sick, to doubt that any innovation will necessarily catch on (although Trumbull at least had a narrative hinge on which to turn his “more real than real” imagery, whereas Lee’s pretty much boiled down to “because it was there”). Brainstorm’s story is, though, like its title, possibly too cerebral, too much concerned with the consciousness and touting too little of the cloyingly affirmative that Bruce Rubin inevitably brings to his screenplays. That doesn’t mea…

You keep a horse in the basement?

The ‘Burbs (1989)
(SPOILERS) The ‘Burbs is Joe Dante’s masterpiece. Or at least, his masterpiece that isn’t his bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you masterpiece Gremlins 2: The New Batch, or his high profile masterpiece Gremlins. Unlike those two, the latter of which bolted out of the gate and took audiences by surprise with it’s black wit subverting the expected Spielberg melange, and the first which was roundly shunned by viewers and critics for being absolutely nothing like the first and waving that fact gleefully under their noses, The ‘Burbs took a while to gain its foothold in the Dante pantheon.

It came out at a time when there had been a good few movies (not least Dante’s) taking a poke at small town Americana, and it was a Tom Hanks movie when Hanks was still a broad strokes comedy guy (Big had just made him big, Turner and Hooch was a few months away; you know you’ve really made it when you co-star with a pooch). It’s true to say that some, as with say The Big Lebowski, “got it” on fi…

I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

You can’t keep the whole world in the dark about what’s going on. Once they know that a five-mile hunk of rock is going to hit the world at 30,000 miles per hour, the people will want to know what the hell we intend to do about it.

Meteor (1979)
(SPOILERS) In which we find Sean Connery – or his agent, whom he got rid of subsequent to this and Cuba – showing how completely out of touch he was by the late 1970s. Hence hitching his cart to the moribund disaster movie genre just as movie entertainment was being rewritten and stolen from under him. He wasn’t alone, of course – pal Michael Caine would appear in both The Swarm and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure during this period – but Meteor’s lack of commercial appeal was only accentuated by how functional and charmless its star is in it. Some have cited Meteor as the worst movie of his career (Christopher Bray in his book on the actor), but its sin is not one of being outright terrible, rather of being terminally dull.

I mean, I am just a dumb bunny, but, we are good at multiplying.

Zootropolis (2016)
(SPOILERS) The key to Zootropolis’ (or Zootopia as our American cousins refer to it; the European title change being nothing to do with U2, but down to a Danish zoo, it seems, which still doesn’t explain the German title, though) creative success isn’t so much the conceit of its much-vaunted allegory regarding prejudice and equality, or – conversely – the fun to be had riffing on animal stereotypes (simultaneously clever and obvious), or even the appealing central duo voiced by Ginnifier Goodwin (as first rabbit cop Judy Hopps) and Jason Bateman (fox hustler Nick Wilde). It’s coming armed with that rarity for an animation; a well-sustained plot that doesn’t devolve into overblown set pieces or rest on the easy laurels of musical numbers and montages.

So credit’s due to co-directors Byron Howard (Bolt, Tangled) and Rich Moore (of The Simpsons, Futurama, and latterly, the great until it kind of rests on its laurels Wreck-It-Ralph) and Jared Bush (presumably one of the th…

I can't lie to you about your chances, but... you have my sympathies.

"Predalien" The Alien-Predator-verse ranked
Fox got in there with the shared universe thing long before the current trend. Fortunately for us, once they had their taste of it, they concluded it wasn’t for them. But still, the Predator and Alien franchises are now forever interconnected, and it better justifies a ranking if you have more than six entries on it. So please, enjoy this rundown of the “Predalien”-verse. SPOILERS ensue…
11. Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
An almost wilfully wrongheaded desecration of both series’ legacies that attempts to make up for AVP’s relative prurience by being as transgressive as possible. Chestbursters explode from small children! Predaliens impregnate pregnant mothers! Maternity wards of babies are munched (off-screen admittedly)! It’s as bad taste as possible, and that’s without the aesthetic disconnect of the Predalien itself, the stupidest idea the series has seen (and that includes the newborn), one that was approved/encouraged by ra…

He mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.

Darkest Hour (2017)
(SPOILERS) Watching Joe Wright’s return to the rarefied plane of prestige – and heritage to boot – filmmaking following the execrable folly of the panned Pan, I was struck by the difference an engaged director, one who cares about his characters, makes to material. Only last week, Ridley Scott’s serviceable All the Money in the World made for a pointed illustration of strong material in the hands of someone with no such investment, unless they’re androids. Wright’s dedication to a relatable Winston Churchill ensures that, for the first hour-plus, Darkest Hour is a first-rate affair, a piece of myth-making that barely puts a foot wrong. It has that much in common with Wright’s earlier Word War II tale, Atonement. But then, like Atonement, it comes unstuck.

Supposing I help you fix the bishop?

The Avengers 3.20: The Little Wonders
More memorable for Steed (undercover, naturally) planting a smoocher on a surprised Mrs Gale than its plot of Mafia-esque “clergymen” electing their new leader. This isn’t bad, and Macnee’s having a lot of fun as the Vicar of M’boti, but you can’t help feel it should have been a lot more lunatic.

Beardmore: What if he’s a phoney, and doesn’t know Harbottle was playing a double game?
The mob organisation is known as Bibliotek, and Steed is replacing the deceased Reverend Harbottle who, we learn, has been involved with another group led by Sister Johnson (Miss Moneypenny Lois Maxwell, who strikes a very Bond-esque image at one point, blazing away with a machine gun in a nurse’s uniform). She’s posing as the carer of the Bishop (David Bauer), the head of Bibliotek, while attempting to bring about his demise with Dr Beardmore (Tony Steedman of Citizen Smith). Complicating matters in a way that fails to really elicit interest is a German doll containing mi…

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(1982)
(SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek, but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog