misterduval Reviews

Inland Empire (2006)

Dreamlike journey into the mind of an actress--and David Lynch

[8/10 · 29 January 2010]

Dreamlike experience, this one. Watched it on DVD in two sessions, due to its three hour length. In a theater this would have been a butt buster.

The uninitiated should watch "Blue Velvet" first.

As a Lynch fan I enjoy most his efforts to turn everyday scenes and objects sinister and/or foreboding. The sound design is always a gas in his films, and heightens that foreboding.

It's difficult to put this in a category, but I'd vote for psychological horror film if I had to choose. The cop out answer would be "It's a Lynch film."

This appears to be filmed on standard DV, cropped to widescreen, the image in places is flat out awful. Hopefully Lynch's next film can be shot with the upcoming cheap model Red. That would come as a relief to the eyeballs. But this is second guessing him, I'm sure he'd say this is the look he was after.

The bottom line is that this is an unabashed art film that is opaque and not for viewers looking for a straight forward narrative. It drips with fragments from Lynch's unconscious, it could be called a "stream of consciousness" film. I'm glad I watched it, it was like a trip to the art museum. I loved what he was doing in a number of places, but at other times I felt like I was locked up in a padded cell with the filmmaker.

Proceed with caution.

Destilando amor (2007)

The DVDs I watched condense the story

[6/10 · 1 November 2009]

I watched this on DVD from the local public library. I was hoping I'd get a good understanding of the Mexican soap opera, but I see here that there's 170 episodes. I told a friend that the story moves along quickly--well it would, won't it, if well over a 100 hours had been distilled to 13 or 14 hours. I often felt like I was watching the Reader's Digest version of a soap opera, and found out I was indeed. So I'm guessing the pace is really like, say, a Korean drama-if one had watched the original "Destilando Amor" on broadcast TV.

I like the male and female leads well enough, they're likable characters. Yanez looks and acts like a Mexican Clark Kent in this yarn, causing me a few smirks.