No, I don’t think I’ll call Mr Strawberry.

Twin Peaks

3.5: Case files

(SPOILERS) I didn’t find the fifth instalment quite as compelling as the previous quartet, I suspect mainly because it flits about so much, from character to character and plotline to plotline, never alighting quite long enough to pick up steam. Nevertheless, it’s only comparatively weaker, as there’s some great, inimitable material here, and several lurches from comedy to extreme violence that couldn’t be more Lynchian.

Most substantial in coverage are the dual Coops. Real Coop-as-Dougie’s Chance the Gardener interactions are still diverting, but I’m definitely feeling it’s time to cut to the chase now. We’re almost a third of the way through the run, and you don’t want to end up feeling short-changed on having the series’ main character resuscitated. Although, that’s exactly the kind of thing Lynch would probably do: prevaricate by avoiding his most iconic figure.

Nevertheless, the ongoing theme of the instinctual essence of Coop, reduced to a guiding intuition whilst he’s operating on barely any motor functions at all, continue to mine rich comic seams. So he follows the guidance of a cowboy statue to work, and follows the coffee his well-meaning co-worker Phil (Josh Fadem) is carrying, managing to appropriate a cup through persistence (“Damn good Joe”; naturally, it belongs to Frank, although more surprisingly – and hilariously – Bob Stephenson’s Frank, initially put out, discovers he really loves green tea lattes).

Further signs of synchronicity and destiny are Dougie working at Lucky 7 Insurance; having covered the domestic scene, new-born Coop’s odyssey of American life now segues into the work arena. The highlight of which is another light switching on over a particularly ravaged looking Tom Sizemore as Anthony Sinclair when he claims “Littlefield’s legit”; “He’s lying” pronounces Coop, before returning to a torpor. The rest is par for the course: more japery involving a bursting bladder, being loaded with case files to look through, facing the wrong way in an elevator and finishing up once again at the cowboy statue as dusk falls.

Bradley Mitchum: And you let us know if this man ever comes through here again.

Other odd Coop-related scenes include Jade putting the key to Coop’s Great Northern room in the mailbox, and carjackers mirthfully blowing themselves up when they attempt to steal Dougie’s car, a particularly twisted Lynch set-up as we wonder if the druggie mum’s kid is going to get it. And there’s more, particularly unrestrained, violence as the Mitchum brothers lay into poor Supervisor Burns (“Are you trying to tell me you weren’t in on this?”), blaming him for Coop’s multi-jackpots (the disinterested casino girls are a classic Lynch tableau). Robert Knepper is the particularly vicious one (Rodney) but something tells me Jim Belushi (Bradley Mitchum) isn’t much better. It’s also impossible to believe Lynch and Frost would set this up without Coop finding his way back to the casino at some point (hopefully sooner rather than later).

Warden Murphy: What did this guy just do?

If Coop is just batty, Evil Coop is coming out with some bonkers stuff to more malignant ends. I wondered about the “You’re still with me. That’s good” in reference to Bob (complete with face morphing) as he looks in the mirror (Lynch’s use of jump cuts in these original series flashbacks is effectively jolting), suggesting that there’s more than one constituent to his form than simply Bob (the Coop facsimile is a separate shell, as was Dougie?) Most uncanny, though, is Coop’s phone call; aware that he is being listened to, he punches a botch of numbers into the phone after explaining to his watchers “No, I don’t think I’ll call Mr Strawberry”. Then announcing the key phrase “The cow jumped over the Moon” as all are distracted by the prison entering alert mode (James Morrison brings his best 24 super-seriousness to Warden Murphy). And a call box reduced in size to what? Why (something to do with Lorraine’s role)? All very baffling. I half expected evil Coop to spirit himself away at that moment, given his evident abilities, but maybe he’s just initiating an offbeat prison break plan.

Constance: Cause of death. It took me a while, but I think someone cut this man’s head off.

There are also separate examinations of his trail underway, with Constance winningly irreverent as she details her post mortem verdict (it looks like it is Major Briggs, and he has Dougie’s ring inside him, somehow). I hadn’t realised Don Harrison was played by Buffy guy Bailey Chase (probably because he was so non-descript in Season 4) Linking to this is Colonel Davis (Ernie Hudson) sending Lieutenant Knox (Adele Rene) to investigate the Major Briggs database hit. Then there’s Tammy looking at Coop’s/Evil Coop’s finger prints…

Jacoby: The same vast global conspiracy. Different day. You can’t see it, without a cosmic flashlight. Guess what? I’ve got mine. Oh yeah.

The rest of the incidents are Twin Peaks-based, which has perversely become the less interesting place to be in the season thus far, despite there being several standouts here too. Among them, learning why the former Dr Jacobi was spray-painting all those shovels gold; cashing in on conspiracy theorists, of course, the same saps who lapped up Mark Frost’s The Secret History of Twin Peaks, and selling them their own “shiny gold shovel. Dig yourself out of shit”. Only 29.99. Dr Amp’s Gold Shit-Digging Shovel. That’s right, “Shovel your way out of the shit!” He has his devoted viewers, two at least: Jerry Horne, who obviously likes a toke and a titter in the woods, and Nadine, who has probably ordered that shovel tout suite. It’s 7 o’clock, do you know where your freedom is?

Talking of the Hornes, perhaps the most disturbing scene comes from a previously unseen junior (Jerry’s junior, or a Ben offspring? Surely not Audrey’s? Or Johnny’s?) Eamon Farron’s Richard Horne, up to no good (drug deals, most likely) and meeting his contact by smoking by a non-smoking sign in the Bang Bang Bar, is a thoroughly irredeemable piece of work, grabbing and threatening Charlotte (Grace Victoria Cox), who mistakes his cool looks for a cool guy (“I’m gonna laugh when I fuck you, bitch!”) It’s a highly effective scene, as razor-edge in its impending violence as the evil-Coop lockdown scene is uncannily odd.

Only marginally less deplorable is Caleb Landry Jones playing his usual type (“What an asshole”) as, presumably, Shelly’s son-in-law Steven Burnett – he’s married to Amanda Seyfried’s Becky and appears to be a cokehead, which is a good fit for Jones, as he always looks like one (or grown-up Macauley Culkin’s little brother). Amusing too to see jock Mike Nelson (Gary Hershberger) now reconstituted as a straight-edged boss. The season’s blissed-out par excellence moment so far finds Becky staring skywards from Steven’s sports car, listening to The Paris Sisters’ I Love How You Love Me; it’s Lynch girl overdrive (certainly more infused than coffee or green tea lattes will make you)

Andy: I haven’t found any Indians. Hawk, have you found any Indians, anywhere?

Hawk: No, Andy.

Apart from that, there’s a reminder that Hawk and Andy aren’t getting anywhere (these Indian jokes may run and run) and a marvellously unruffled Sheriff Truman, refusing to be stirred up by his on-the-warpath wife Doris (Candy Clark), who is enraged by a house full of leaks (“Can you get a bigger bucket?” he suggests nonchalantly) His unwillingness to be bated into an argument only adds fuel to her fire (“You’re impossible!”) The continued references to Harry are odd, though, since we know he won’t be appearing. He’s turned into Mrs Columbo.

This episode feels like it’s caught midway between events either side, without even a glimpse of Gordon and Albert. It’s still a cut above, but a shift down from earlier weird and wonderfulness.

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

Abandon selective targeting. Shoot everything.

28 Weeks Later (2007) (SPOILERS) The first five minutes of 28 Weeks Later are far and away the best part of this sequel, offering in quick succession a devastating moral quandary and a waking nightmare, immortalised on the screen. After that, while significantly more polished, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo reveals his concept to be altogether inferior to Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s, falling back on the crutches of gore, nihilism, and disengaging and limiting shifts of focus between characters in whom one has little investment in the first place.

If this were a hoax, would we have six dead men up on that mountain?

The X-Files 4.24: Gethsemane Season Four is undoubtedly the point at which the duff arc episodes begin to amass, encroaching upon the decent ones for dominance. Fortunately, however, the season finale is a considerable improvement’s on Three’s, even if it’s a long way from the cliffhanger high of 2.25: Anasazi .

The Bible never said anything about amphetamines.

The Color of Money (1986) (SPOILERS) I tend to think it’s evident when Scorsese isn’t truly exercised by material. He can still invest every ounce of the technical acumen at his fingertips, and the results can dazzle on that level, but you don’t really feel the filmmaker in the film. Which, for one of his pictures to truly carry a wallop, you need to do. We’ve seen quite a few in such deficit in recent years, most often teaming with Leo. The Color of Money , however, is the first where it was out-and-out evident the subject matter wasn’t Marty’s bag. He needed it, desperately, to come off, but in the manner a tradesman who wants to keep getting jobs. This sequel to The Hustler doesn’t linger in the mind, however good it may be, moment by moment.

Captain, he who walks in fire will burn his feet.

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) (SPOILERS) Ray Harryhausen returns to the kind of unadulterated fantasy material that made Jason and the Argonauts such a success – swords & stop motion, if you like. In between, there were a couple of less successful efforts, HG Wells adaptation First Men in the Moon and The Valley of the Gwangi (which I considered the best thing ever as a kid: dinosaur walks into a cowboy movie). Harryhausen’s special-effects supremacy – in a for-hire capacity – had also been consummately eclipsed by Raquel Welch’s fur bikini in One Million Years B.C . The Golden Voyage of Sinbad follows the expected Dynamation template – blank-slate hero, memorable creatures, McGuffin quest – but in its considerable favour, it also boasts a villainous performance by nobody-at-the-time, on-the-cusp-of-greatness Tom Baker.

Your desecration of reality will not go unpunished.

2021-22 Best-of, Worst-of and Everything Else Besides The movies might be the most visible example of attempts to cling onto cultural remnants as the previous societal template clatters down the drain. It takes something people really want – unlike a Bond movie where he kicks the can – to suggest the model of yesteryear, one where a billion-dollar grosser was like sneezing. You can argue Spider-Man: No Way Home is replete with agendas of one sort or another, and that’s undoubtedly the case (that’s Hollywood), but crowding out any such extraneous elements (and they often are) is simply a consummate crowd-pleaser that taps into tangible nostalgia through its multiverse take. Of course, nostalgia for a mere seven years ago, for something you didn’t like anyway, is a symptom of how fraught these times have become.

Out of my way, you lubberly oaf, or I’ll slit your gullet and shove it down your gizzard!

The Princess and the Pirate (1944) (SPOILERS) As I suggested when revisiting The Lemon Drop Kid , you’re unlikely to find many confessing to liking Bob Hope movies these days. Even Chevy Chase gets higher approval ratings. If asked to attest to the excruciating stand-up comedy Hope, the presenter and host, I doubt even diehards would proffer an endorsement. Probably even fewer would admit to having a hankering for Hope, were they aware of, or further still gave credence to, alleged MKUltra activities. But the movie comedy Hope, the fourth-wall breaking, Road -travelling quipster-coward of (loosely) 1939-1952? That Hope’s a funny guy, mostly, and many of his movies during that period are hugely inventive, creative comedies that are too easily dismissed under the “Bob Hope sucks” banner. The Princess and the Pirate is one of them.

My hands hurt from galloping.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) (SPOILERS) Say what you like about the 2016 reboot, at least it wasn’t labouring under the illusion it was an Amblin movie. Ghostbusters 3.5 features the odd laugh, but it isn’t funny, and it most definitely isn’t scary. It is, however, shamelessly nostalgic for, and reverential towards, the original(s), which appears to have granted it a free pass in fan circles. It didn’t deserve one.

I think it’s wonderful the way things are changing.

Driving Miss Daisy (1989) (SPOILERS) The meticulous slightness of Driving Miss Daisy is precisely the reason it proved so lauded, and also why it presented a prime Best Picture pick: a feel-good, social-conscience-led flick for audiences who might not normally spare your standard Hollywood dross a glance. One for those who appreciate the typical Judi Dench feature, basically. While I’m hesitant to get behind anything Spike Lee, as Hollywood’s self-appointed race-relations arbiter, spouts, this was a year when he actually did deliver the goods, a genuinely decent movie – definitely a rarity for Lee – addressing the issues head-on that Driving Miss Daisy approaches in softly-softly fashion, reversing gingerly towards with the brake lights on. That doesn’t necessarily mean Do the Right Thing ought to have won Best Picture (or even that it should have been nominated for the same), but it does go to emphasise the Oscars’ tendency towards the self-congratulatory rather than the provocat

I’ve heard the dancing’s amazing, but the music sucks.

Tick, Tick… Boom! (2021) (SPOILERS) At one point in Tick, Tick… Boom! – which really ought to have been the title of an early ’90s Steven Seagal vehicle – Andrew Garfield’s Jonathan Larson is given some sage advice on how to find success in his chosen field: “ On the next, maybe try writing about what you know ”. Unfortunately, the very autobiographical, very-meta result – I’m only surprised the musical doesn’t end with Larson finishing writing this musical, in which he is finishing writing his musical, in which he is finishing writing his musical… – takes that acutely literally.

Who gave you the crusade franchise? Tell me that.

The Star Chamber (1983) (SPOILERS) Peter Hyams’ conspiracy thriller might simply have offered sauce too weak to satisfy, reining in the vast machinations of an all-powerful hidden government found commonly during ’70s fare and substituting it with a more ’80s brand that failed to include that decade’s requisite facile resolution. There’s a good enough idea here – instead of Charles Bronson, it’s the upper echelons of the legal system resorting to vigilante justice – but The Star Chamber suffers from a failure of nerve, repenting its premise just as it’s about to dig into the ramifications.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog