White picket fences, suburban subversion, sexual repression and violence - David Lynch’s recurring themes and obsessions emerge fully formed in this hyperreal nightmare of wholesome Americana and sadomasochism. The term ‘Lynchian’ immediately conjures up dreamy images of small town America distorted by dark forces and although Blue Velvet marked Lynch’s fourth directorial effort it is a film that best encapsulates his entire career as he continues to recycle and reexamine these nightmare fantasies.

Causing a stir upon its release in 1986, Blue Velvet captures a world of contradictions as Lynch contrasts the neat gardens and painted smile facade of suburban life with its dark underbelly of crime and sexual perversion. By the director’s later standards the film is far more…

I basically crawled up from my "cinema cave" to write this. My body, mind, and soul is like half-cooled jello. I feel like I was assaulted and beaten in a nightmare, only to wake up into another nightmare that's even worse. Blue Velvet just gave me a cinegasm, an experience so thoroughly sensational, terrifying, ingenious, and astoundingly perfect that all I could do at the end was cry and collapse onto the floor.

David Lynch's film is both his finest masterpiece as well as the greatest film of the 1980s. It's that brilliant, mind-boggling, devastating, goofy, disturbing, hilarious, and saddening. Let's say that there was a giant semi-truck carrying every emotion in the world, and it just hit me. All…

There is goodness in blue skies and fresh flowers yet for goodness to grow, there is another force beneath the surface that must also thrive: a force of wild pain and decay. The rot of yesterday's suffering fueling tomorrow’s beauty.

These forces fertilize blooming identities as they tumble through the fragile veneer of adolescence, seduced by the sudden onset of adulthood. You drive over the speed limit. You kiss with your tongue. You sip a beer and chew on an expletive.

The dark forces smell kerosene and strike a match on the surface of your mind. A spark catches, grows, and tempts you into the night with the shallow promise of illumination. Embers of sinful curiosity singe your bones, filling…

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MKE Film Fest #5

"Are you the one that found the ear.....?

And then she emerges. Out of a simmering, endless night, one of mystery and strange occurances, Sandy is a figure of innocence; pink and bold, radiant and curious. She's another version of Jeffrey in many ways ("You're a neat girl." "So are you...I mean you're a neat guy."), but still tied to small-town perspective, unraveling clues and revelations long past their due date (particularly when Dorothy is taken back to her parents' household) and unconsciously clinging to the façade. It makes the basement house party scene fascinating in that Jeffrey yearns to regain the shining purity which Sandy beckons, yet he cannot turn back from what he's…