It’s a goddam bad story, isn’t it, Hawk?

Twin Peaks

3.12: Lets rock.

(SPOILERS) I have to admit, this is the first episode of the run that felt merely “okay” to me. Not bad in any respect, but having little to really distinguish itself. You have to think Lynch stuck in that one sliver of a scene of Dale-Dougie playing ball (or rather, having a ball bounced off his head) because he realised Kyle McLachlan would be otherwise absent.

Instead, it’s almost The Gordon Cole Show. Repeated business with his hearing aid, and with some floozy (Bérénice Marlohe) he picked up in the hotel bar (leading to another mirthfully extensive sequence as she very laboriously prepares to leave when Albert calls by; this is evidently the kind of carry on Duchovny’s Denise was warning Cole about, in very meta fashion, way back at the beginning of the season). And Albert delivering some extensive exposition Tammy should surely be partially aware of, having compiled The Secret History of Twin Peaks, regarding the Blue Rose as a follow-on group from Project Blue Book.

Notably, Lynch and Frost are most definitely taking the interdimensional rather than extra-terrestrial path here, with Philip Jeffries, Albert, Coop and Chester Desmond (poor old Chester) – but no Windom Earle – on a quest to find answers to Blue Book anomalies that could not be reached “except by an alternate path”. Tammy’s induction, in a red-draped room, drinking quality vino (this is the new coffee of Twin Peaks, clearly) is accompanied by some of Chrysta Bell’s most oddball performance choices yet, as she attempts to express her enthusiasm in a manner that would make you squirm for her acting coach, if she had one.

Gordon Cole: What do we know, that we haven’t asked her about?

There’s also Diane’s cryptic text message (Q: Las Vegas? A: THEY HAVEN’T ASKED YET), the co-ordinates revealing, surprise, surprise, the town of the title, and, most disconcertingly, Diane uttering, Man from Another Place styl-ee “Let’s rock” in response to being deputised.

Ben Horne: I loved that bike that my father got me.

The second most significant chunk of the episode consists of the Hornes. Jerry finally gets out of the woods. Ben expresses regret over his grandson’s actions like a man struggling to look concerned (although he does stump up for the operation bill), and most importantly, finds his way to giving Sheriff Truman Coop’s Great Northern key, to give back to Harry (why not, there’s about as much chance of seeing the latter again as the real Coop).

Audrey: You’re not going to tell me what she said?

And then there’s Audrey. She’s back… and she’s a real bitch? Is this Lynch playing sadist with his once-prized Peaks totty? Now she’s middle-aged and heartless, reduced to some sort of marriage of convenience with Charlie (Clark Middleton, who I know best from Fringe), her “spineless no-balls loser” of a husband. What exactly is going on here is at least partially inscrutable, but Audrey’s waving her infidelity with Billy under her Charlie’s nose, who retaliates with audible silence when she demands to know the contents of his phone conversation with Tina (Billy’s other half).

First Albert’s notable silence, now Charlie’s. A running theme? I half-expected a reveal that Audrey now has one leg (post-bank explosion), but thus far the explanations for how she got to where she is are entirely elusive. Also referenced: Paul and Chuck? Keep watching, and we’ll hear about more people we’ve never met.

Yes, I had a similar lack of a frame of reference for the bar scene at the end – Heineken aside – between Abbie (Elizabeth Anweis) and Natalie (Ana de la Reguera), discussing how Angela is off her meds and hoping Clark doesn’t fuck this up, and the arrival of Lynch regular (going back to Wild at Heart) Scott Coffey, as Trick, showing up shaken after a traffic altercation. At least there’s the comforting return of the Chromatics.

Sarah Palmer: I don’t feel good!

The rest is kind of piecemeal. Sarah Palmer gets freaked out – no one does freaked-out quite like Grace Zabriskie – with an extended meltdown in the supermarket when confronted by some newly arrived beef and turkey jerky and later rejecting Hawk’s offer of assistance in whatever way she needs (that ominous shot of the turning ceiling fan in her home, and Hawk thinking he heard someone else inside is almost as eerie as Lynch’s sound effects). Hutch and Chantelle put an end to the warden, much to the distress of his wee bairn. Doctor Amp is doing the vamp for liberty (“It’s working for me, Doctor Amp”), and Carl advises neighbour Kriscoll (Bill O’Dell) not to sell his precious red stuff (“Keep your blood”). Tres chic, tres bon, or turnip farm? I expected Let’s rock to rock a bit more than it does, with that title.

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

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