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David Lynch’s second feature film, The Elephant Man (1980), is one of his finest works. In many ways, The Elephant Man is Lynch’s most conventional “Hollywood” film. (Dune too is a “Hollywood” film, but a failed one.) The cast of The Elephant Man is quite distinguished, including John Hurt, Anthony Hopkins, Sir John Gielgud, Dame Wendy Hiller, and Anne Bancroft. The film was produced by Mel Brooks, who left his name off so that people would not expect a comedy. (more…)
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David Lynch’s 1992 movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is his prequel to the Twin Peaks series, which ran on ABC from 1990 to 1991. Fire Walk with Me was a flop with critics and moviegoers, except in Japan. This is unjust, because Fire Walk with Me is a very fine movie. I won’t say it is Lynch’s best work. That praise belongs to Blue Velvet alone. But the music to Fire Walk with Me is composer Angelo Badalamenti’s best work ever. (more…)
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I feel like I grew up in Twin Peaks, the fictional Washington logging town that gave its name to David Lynch’s iconic TV series, which aired on ABC from the spring of 1990 to the spring of 1991. Twin Peaks has one of the best pilots in television history, which was followed by an abbreviated first season of seven episodes. (more…)
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When I saw Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, I was convinced that David Lynch is an essentially conservative and religious filmmaker, with a populist and mystical bent. Arguing that thesis was an uphill battle as his work got increasingly dark in the nineties. Many people interpreted Lynch’s portrayals of quirky, salt-of-the-Earth white Americans as parody, his mysticism as arbitrary weirdness, and his depictions of evil and violence as inconsistent with having a conservative and religious moral center. (more…)
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Lost Highway is probably not a lot of people’s favorite David Lynch film. I would rank it in the lower rungs of his canon. But it is still a masterful film that draws me back again and again.
The big question about Lost Highway is what actually happens. This movie has a plot that you can fully summarize without really spoiling it, because the meaning is never really given away. (more…)
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The Criterion Collection’s new Blu-ray of Blue Velvet contains 53 minutes of lost footage. Does this footage in any way alter my reading of the film’s psychological and political meaning? The short answer is no, but read on.
Blue Velvet was released as a two-hour film, but originally it was about two hours and fifty minutes long. The material Lynch removed is not raw footage that was never part of the film. (more…)
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Jeffrey: I’m seeing something that was always hidden. I’m involved in a mystery. And it’s all secret.
Sandy: You like mysteries that much?
Jeffrey: Yeah. You’re a mystery. I like you. Very much.
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David Lynch’s third feature film is his 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s science fiction classic Dune. Herbert’s Dune is widely hailed as a masterpiece, while Lynch’s Dune has a much more mixed reputation, tending toward the negative. When I first saw Lynch’s Dune, I was deeply disappointed. Herbert’s novel had left a powerful and vivid impression on me, and Lynch’s vision was not my vision. (more…)
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Wild at Heart is not David Lynch’s best movie, but it is my favorite. I would argue, for instance, that Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man, and The Straight Story are all better films. But for some reason they do not call me back year after year like Wild at Heart.
Wild at Heart was released in the summer of 1990, when Lynch was riding high on Twin Peaks mania. It won the Palme d’Or at the 1990 Cannes film festival, albeit over vocal protests. (more…)
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I have read about 40 books in 2018 (so far). These are my five favorites. (Modesty requires that I exclude my own books and other Counter-Currents titles.)
1. Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin, National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy (New York: Pelican, 2018).
As I mentioned in my “Toward a New Nationalism” essay, Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin’s National Populism is a very exciting book. (more…)
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David Lynch’s first movie Eraserhead (1977) combines surrealism, low-budget horror, and black comedy. It rapidly became a staple of the midnight movie circuit and provided endless fodder for coffee-house intellectuals and academic film theorists.
Eraserhead is quite simply a gnostic anti-sex film. The film is premised on a gnostic dualism, which holds that the material world—including sex and childbearing—is fundamentally evil, (more…)
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Jodorowsky’s Dune, Frank Pavich’s 2013 documentary, tells the story of the “greatest movie never made,” (more…)
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David Lynch’s Dune (1984) is a flawed masterpiece. When I first saw it, I was deeply disappointed. Frank Herbert’s original novel made a powerful impression on me. I could see Herbert’s world, and Lynch’s vision was not my vision. But when my initial impression faded and I returned to Lynch’s film with an open mind, I found it immensely imaginative and compelling. Even the score by Toto managed to grow on me. (more…)
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Part 3 of 3 (Part 1 here; Part 2 here)
Jay Dyer
Esoteric Hollywood: Sex, Cults and Symbols in Film
Walterville, Or.: Trine Day, 2016 (more…)
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Part 2 of 2
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Greg Johnson and John Morgan conclude their discussion of the films of David Lynch. (more…)
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There is little satisfying critical literature on the Coen brothers’ 1991 film Barton Fink. Most viewers are inclined to think that this is because the film is a pretentious, meaningless piece of crap. And Barton Fink is surely the most widely detested film by the Coens. The fact that it swept the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, winning the Palme d’Or, Best Director, and Best Actor (John Turturro) can simply be chalked up to French perversity and anti-Americanism. These people think Jerry Lewis is a genius, after all. (more…)
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Author’s Note:
The following text is a scrap rescued from obscurity and buffed up a bit. In 2002, a reader of VNN suggested that the site’s movie reviewers post their “Ten Best” lists. I found it impossible to settle on just ten best films. So I decided to produce a “Favorites” list instead. I came up with more than thirty movies. These are films I like to re-watch and show to my friends. I think the list includes some of the best films ever made, (more…)
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Nebraska is a low-budget, black and white movie starring Bruce Dern and Will Forte (Saturday Night Live), as well as Bob Odenkirk (Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad). Nebraska was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, where Dern won the Best Actor award. Since then, Nebraska has been nominated for 6 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (Alexander Payne), Best Actor (Dern), Best Supporting Actress (June Squibb, who plays Dern’s wife), and Best Original Screenplay (Bob Nelson). (more…)
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Martin Aston
Facing the Other Way: The Story of 4AD
London: The Friday Project, 2013
Towards the end of Martin Aston’s monumental history of the 4AD record label he claims that one of the label’s later signings was “guilty of lacking transcendence” (p. 550). (more…)
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The conclusion of my interview with Chip Smith of Nine-Banded Books deals with anti-natalism, cosmic pessimism, H. P. Lovecraft, Hollister Kopp’s Gun Fag Manifesto, and other future 9BB publications.
Anti-natalism is the theme of two of your titles: Jim Crawford’s Confessions of an Antinatalist
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Podcast here
Welcome to Counter Currents Radio. I’m your host Greg Johnson. With us today is Jonathan Bowden. First of all, I need to ask you is it “Boden” or Bowden?
JB: Depends where you are in England basically, if you are in the North of England you say “Boden,” but if you are from the South of England, and I’m from the South of England, you say Bowden. (more…)
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David Lynch is the greatest director working today, one of the greatest of all time. Mulholland Drive is his latest film. It is one of his best. Those who took their grandmothers to see Lynch’s last film The Straight Story should not take them to Mulholland Drive, which most closely resembles Lynch’s Lost Highway. Like Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive is filled with sex, violence, decadence, and dark humor. Both films have almost unintelligible plots. Both are set in Los Angeles. (more…)
