Title: Donnie Darko |
Release Date: 2001, 2004 (Director’s Cut) |
Nationality and Language: |
Running time: 142 min |
|
Distributor and Production Company: New Market Films; Pandora/Darko |
Director; Writer: Richard Kelly |
Producer: |
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mary McDonnell, Holmes Osborne, Drew Barrymoore, Daveigh Chase, Patrick Swayze, Katherine Ross, Noal Wyle |
Technical: Panavision |
Relevance to DOASKDOTELL site: |
Review: Originally released in late 2001 but hampered by 9/11
(since the central catastrophe in this film is a piece of a spacecraft crashing
into a house), it has been re-released in an expanded version in 2004. This
is another one of those end-of-life/alternative universe fables that you
interpret in more than one way. The central problem is the tragic accidental
death of a gifted if troubled teenager (Donnie, Jake Gyllenhaal)
in his own bedroom. So, the last four weeks of his life are replayed in a
time warp, with worm holes, out-of-body experiences, talking to monsters that
look like rabbits, tornadoes, and an interesting English teacher who gets
fired for teaching a story “The Destruction” by Graham Greene. (Watership Down by Richard Adams is more
acceptable fare! – hence the rabbits.) A babyfaced Gyllenhaal is quite charismatic in the role. I have some
technical gripes—why use The film does have a David Lynch/Twin Peaks kind of feel, but less pronounced than in the real kahuna. For a particularly provocative photo of Jake, see http://www.ew.com/ew/allabout/photos/0,9930,6529_11_0_,00.html (you must be logged on to These actors mature quickly once they reach their twenties. Southland Tales (2007, Samuel Goldwyn /
Destination, dir. Richard Kelly, R, 144 min) expresses a curious concept for
an apocalypse film. The opening is This film is fascinating to watch – it is rather David Lynch like (with dwarf and distorted characters working for the government aka Boxer’s screenplay). It lacks the tension, however, to make us believe in or care about the happenings the way we should. The Box (2009, Warner Bros., dir. Richard Kelly, story “Button, Button” by Richard Matheson, PG-13) In 1976, a NASA Mars engineer and his wife are confronted by a moral dilemma when tested by a mysterious disfigured man who leaves a box and a puzzle. Blogger. James Marsden never looked younger, and Cameron Diaz is a true Richmond southern belle, quick to press the wrong buttons. Peaceful
Warrior (2006, Lions Gate, dir. Victor Salva,
based on The Way of the Peaceful
Warrior, novel by Dan Millman, 1980) is both a
feel-good comeback sports movie, and a story about weird spiritual
interventions. College-age gymnast Dan Millman
(Scott Mechlowicz) seems like a tremendously
energetic and articulate kid most of the time. In the opening scene, he falls
from the rings and an artificial leg shatters, and we are relieved that this
is a dream. It is a foreshadowing, but not literal. He starts meeting
Socrates (that sounds like a name for a cat, but it is played by veteran Nick
Nolte) and talking to himself through this man. He imagines he is almost
superman. Yet Socrates encourages him to “be here now,” for the moment, to
prune out anything that keeps him from his goals. An hour through the movie
he is critically injured in a motorcycle accident. (Why is such a sensible
kid riding a bike aggressively, weaving in traffic?) His thigh is shattered,
although it gets repaired with a steel pin. (The actually history took place
in the 1960s, and I don’t know if orthopedic surgery could have done this
then; I had an acetabular hip fracture from a fall
in 1998 and was successfully restored with an experimental titanium pelvic
plate.) Dan, who had been ravished
upon by his girl friend (Amy Smart), starts to change, even showing just a
little chest hair now in a few scenes. He swims and runs his way back to
health, after some imaginary challenges (as one on the Lost Highway
(1997); Written and directed by David Lynch; October Films; Also Cremaster The Family Man Here we go again, David Lynch explores the limits of reality and its
cancellation, with a weird vision (in the tradition of Eraser Head, Wild
at Heart, This time, a physically
attractive married male musician with the Theta Property (Bill Pullman, and
I'll leave the reader to figure out what I mean with the "tp") is living in relative psychological isolation
despite his marriage (Patricia Arquette is the
wife) in this very dark, orange-and-black Halloweenish
Beverly Hills mansion. One day a video tape shows up on their front door,
depicting their sexual activity. Their investigations lead to a party in
which an omnipresent millstone armed by cell-phone threatens to watch then
always and warns, like a Shakespearean soothsayer, of disaster. His wife gets
murdered and One night, he transmutes into somebody else, an auto mechanic (Bethezar Getty) and gets released, and goes on to lead the mechanic's life (and meets up with a reincarnated Arquette) until, after some particularly gratuitious violence, he comes full circle and gets himself back. Some good reality-testing questions. If you become somebody else, do you remember yourself? Can you be two people at once? Is this what reincarnation is all about? Does the premise really make sense? With David Lynch, the vision is so compelling that it doesn't matter. David Lynch aficionados
will want to check out the 2001 film There is a documentary about David Lynch from Image: Pretty as a
Picture: The Art of David Lynch (95 min). It lets you relive a bit of Blue Velvet (1986, United Artists/de Laurentis, dir. David Lynch, 120 min, R) is one of the
famous Lynch films that just draws you in to it’s
looking-at-your-navel fantasy. A young man Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) is walking home through a field when he finds
a severed ear. Pretty soon he is exploring a dark apartment with the police
detective’s daughter Sandy (Laura Dern). Outside
the radio commentators tell us this is Wild at Heart (1990, United Artists/Polygram, dir. David Lynch, 124 min, R) is a weird road movie with Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern, starting at Pee Dee prison in Lynch’s North Carolina (Tree Hill, anyone?) and taking us through cockroaches and vomit, and apparitions flying through the air. We are wild at heart. Eraserhead (1977, Columbia TriStar, dir. David Lynch, 89 min, R) is a wonderful black-and-white horror nightmare classic where Henry Spence (Jack Nance) lives a simple life next to a Bessemer converter (so it looks) and deals with mutant babies dropped by a irl friend (the fetus looks like a live roast chicken) and a spirit that sings weird rhymes in a bar. The
Elephant Man (1980, American artist and filmmaker Matthew Barney has produced a video series
called “Cremaster,” and I viewed “Cremaster 4” (42 minutes) at the Universal/Beacon goes out on the limb of forced corporate “creativity” in this messy comedy about “family values” where Nicolas Cage’s entry into a different life for the movie’s long Chopinesque “middle section” sounds more like a rhetorical device that needs no story-telling explanation. Is it really just a dream? Anyway, the idea that one has to “choose” between a Wall Street career as a single person and a suburban tire salesman with enough “time” to raise a family seems a bit trite, at least the way it is treated here. (A choice between “art” and “family” might seem more real.) But the Sinfonia Domestica scenes are quite amusins, as when Cage has to deal with pooh and urine from a naked baby boy whose immaturity is fully displayed on camera. |
Related reviews: The Straight Story Fallen Strange Days |
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