Blue Velvet (Special Edition)
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Movie Reviews of Blue Velvet (Special Edition)
Movie Review: A classic.
Summary: 5 Stars
Anyone who has ever lived in a small community where normality is assumed probably also suspects that beneath the surface of everyday life lurk malevolent happenings. Blue Velvet is about the moral rot underlying the seemingly hopeful and idealistic American Dream.
Blue Velvet explores the dark side of human relationships built upon power and perversion. This film, written and directed by one of my favourite directors, David Lynch (cutl classic Eraserhead, 2001's greatest Muholland Drive, masterful The Elphant Man and the dark and unsettling Lost Highway), is one of the most hallucinatory, interesting movies ever released in the history of cinema. It elicited a wildly divergent critical and commercial response upon its release ranging from laudatory praise to complete damnation. It is not a movie for everyone. Those who savor exotic experiences are sure to find it both frenzied and exhilarating. I found it the later, Blue Velvet is a visually stunning film, it has beautiful, haunting and unforgettable images, and dark nightmarish scenes, some of which, will propably never leave my mind, and a film that can manage to accomplish that certainly deserves my praise.
The performances are exceptional, and brutally honest, especially the ones that come from the leading man Kyle MacLachlan. All of the actors seemed to fit their characters perfectly, especially Dennis Hooper, who is terrifyingly abnormal and pure evil as one of the best cinema villains to grace the screen. Laura Dern and Isabella Rossellini are both among the top notch, exceptional cast.
What is so stunning about Blue Velvet is its visual appeal. Laced with arresting beautiful and horrfying images that range from realistic and surreal. The music on the soundtrack demonstrates the eerie effects of many songs (including Roy Orbison's "In Dreams", which is lip-synchs in a disturbing way), which can transport us and have great impact on us, into realms of nostalgia and fantasy. And what is so scary about this film is that despite its heavy dosages of surrealism and fantasy, the film is very real. This kind of underworld could exist absolutely anywhere, and was is evern more chilling is that it already does.
Despite its inferior imitations and stylistic features that have been borrowed, stolen and reused over and over again (Blue Velvet's visual feel can be seen in American Beauty, Lantana etc.), the film will remain the pinnacle of them all. Blue Velvet is a stunner. Daring, beautiful, horrifying, exhilarating, influential, bold and simply amazing, worthy of a ten out of ten.
Movie Review: A technical masterpiece; abhorrent Lynch message.
Summary: 3 Stars
On one hand, Blue Velvet is a brilliant channeling of Nicholas Ray, it displays a stunning use of Cinemascope and Dolby Stereo, and is the cresting wave of Lynch's technique that he developed with Eraserhead. But for all of its technical glory, it is also a disgusting concoction of a film that takes the Sam Fuller moral universe to its repulsive denoument.
Lynch creates some incredibly humiliating and violent scenes. He reveals human beings at their most horriffic, abusive, and vulnerable. For this alone, Blue Velvet is quite amazing and certainly unique in the annals of American film. But Lynch shows almost no ability to counteract this with any semblance of structure or decency. In fact, the only characters in the movie who might signify compassion are treated as dupes, turncoats, or ignorami.
I had the experience of seeing Blue Velvet many years ago at a screening where cinematographer Frederic Elmes spoke. I was about 16 at the time and I could not believe that during the entire film a group of hipster kids were laughing hysterically. I mean, laughing at a brutalized, raped woman standing on a lawn, delusioned into thinking she has found a kindred spirit from her nightmarish life. It was simply awful -- because here was a film that I had been so mesmerized with, found it so powerful, only to have it mocked by these obnoxious jerks. I wound up getting into an argument with them at the screening -- Elmes was there, it was bad.
But there are simply laughably awful things in Blue Velvet. Like the bird. The last shot with Dorothy. It has to be a mockery of Judeo-Christian middle-American values. Or is it?
The more I watch Blue Velvet, particularly in light of Lynch's subsequent films, the more it becomes apparent that he is frequently inept at conveying any meaningful message. After the monomaniacal, relatively simplistic tour-de-force of The Elephant Man, he has lapsed into the worst kind of cornball sentimentalizing (The Straight Story). Does Lynch want his characters to be laughed at hysterically for being stripped naked, raped brutally? Maybe he doesn't care, it's hard to tell. Blue Velvet is extremely confused about what it wants to say. That would be one thing if it were simply an art film, but this film depicts such shocking inhumanity, I find the lack of focus disturbing. Frank is nothing short of a homicidal maniac -- these people really exist in the world. Lynch gets the visceral cinematic payoffs of violence, but he does nothing to countermand them. If that isn't exploitative I don't know what is.
Movie Review: if you havent seen this yet, give yourself a gift.
Summary: 5 Stars
i can say various things about why i love this movie, but most importantly i think is the hitchcock-esque atmoshpere and the dark alien underworld alongside the innocent down to earth relationship between kyle's and laura's characters play a lot on how a person will view the film. lets say this...if you enjoy movies like pulp fiction, big lebowski, and rear window, lynch is really a treat..especially here. i mean, i personally felt like i was in the character, Jeffrey's shoes the whole time.
i dont know how some folks dislike this film, but im not going to argue since that is their opinion...just give it a viewing iif you never saw it. at least once.
Movie Review: Nice to see Dennis Hopper up and around
Summary: 2 Stars
another ego Lynch mess. How he became so avante guard is beyond me. Isabella is beautiful, Laura Dern looks like a bannana, Kyle is ok, Dennis is convincing as the impotent thug who kidnapped Izzy's baby in order to get her to do things to him, couldn't he have hired a hooker? Usual Lynch mess, try to figure out who's who, after a while you just don't care. At least I didn't. Don't bother.Movie Review: Dissappointing
Summary: 3 Stars
This movie wasn't near as disturbing as I had hoped. I was actually bored during quite a few scenes. It would have been better if I hadn't expected so much, from reading all sorts of reviews. I'm actually watching the end of it right now while I'm writing this review, that's how interested I am. lol Oh, well.