Old Man Angelo’s review published on Letterboxd:
To celebrate the GOATs birthday Apple had this available as a 99c rental. This was a pretty major blind spot for me as a film fan and I’m glad I can finally say I’ve seen it. I’d say Blue Velvet is my favourite Lynch movie but this was really good as well.
You can’t go wrong with making the first hour of a film Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern fucking each others brains out non stop. Especially since it’s a love story between the two. They’re absolutely fantastic together as a couple and the earnestness in their freakishly relatable trashiness and devil may care attitudes, I saw a younger me on this story a little more than I’m comfortable with thinking about, not gonna lie.
I didn’t know what to expect from Cage acting in a Lynch movie but I’m not disappointed, he spends the entire film playing Elvis and despite being as ridiculous as you’d expect from him, he’s the most toned down performance in the entire film. We get an especially bizarre appearance from Willem Dafoe whose last moment in the film had me laughing so hard I had a coughing fit and lord of other general Lynchian weirdness.
As with Lynch’s films I’ll need to watch it a few more times to get my head around it a little more but right no I really dug it, but I’d still say Blue Velvet remains my favourite.
