Tag / hope lange

by Jaime Rebanal

‘Blue Velvet’ Review: The Hypnotic Aura of David Lynch’s Strange World

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David Lynch’s films are so easy to characterize for carrying a weird aura that only he could ever perfect, yet the world that we’re seeing in Blue Velvet is one that is as ordinary as they get. Yet it’s also what makes everything about Blue Velvet so wonderful too, because it invokes his viewers to look at the world that they know a whole other way, beneath the cracks of the perfections in the “ordinary” as David Lynch brings you to see the underworlds that take the screen. It’s all a part of what makes Blue Velvet so intriguing too, because it’s characteristic of everything that has fascinated David Lynch through his long career in the form of a neo-noir mystery, yet it also happens to be one of the very best films of that sort too. Some can even say that a film like this best captures what also is best described as David Lynch’s America, for his subversion of the idealized lifestyle brings you on a journey of innocence slowly fading away through the exposure to a dark underworld unlike any other. You’re taken into a strange world by David Lynch, but maybe that might very well be the world we live in and we’ve convinced ourselves that everything happens to be moving along like it’s all fine.

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by Jaime Rebanal

Death Wish – Review

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Most certainly a product of its time, but not in a good manner at that. Michael Winner’s nihilistic Death Wish is a ruthless film on all counts where it is expected most, but in the end, it never seems to be a film that goes beyond that. That wasn’t the worst thing I found about Death Wish, but it was also difficult enough trying to keep myself staying invested. It was difficult to stay on board with all of the ugliness that was on display, for apparently the philosophy wasn’t what Brian Garfield had intended with his original novel – and that isn’t even the worst part of Death Wish from my own perspective. Perhaps it already has found itself speaking to what America had been going through at the time, but considering how quickly have times changed decades within its own release – it’s clear how much of this does not hold up.

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