Lizzy’s review published on Letterboxd:
Ten things about Donnie Darko that never get old, or ten things about Donnie Darko that I love dearly that always keep me coming back:
1. The "Head Over Heels" sequence. One of my five favorite scenes in all of cinema, and an introduction to the twisted Darkoverse that transports you to the era of the narrative better than most movies that spend the whole run-time trying to capture the atmosphere of past times. Every single detail of this scene is orchestrated solely to fit with its soundtrack, but more importantly, it exudes so much cool and so much expertise.
2. The fact that this movie exists in its own renegade world of time and linearity that coincides with this universe and feels like it's from its own. The Darkoverse is a place where time ripples and rips open, and reality lives in duality. None of it makes sense, but it's up to us to find the logic and meaning.
3. Cellar door.
4. The way that there's something about the concepts of fear and love as the two extremes and the two halves of perception and reaction that feel deeply tied to what the movie is or isn't trying to say. The town of the Darkoverse lives on fear. Fear of what's lurking beneath the suburbia calm. Fear of being corrected, fear of being proven that there's more than what we see right in front of us. And on the other side, the faint glimmers of love and connection are what seem to hold it all together.
5. "Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!"
6. The search for God and believing in the higher power or a benevolence or malevolence. There's something about Donnie's therapy musings on death and life that feel intrinsically intertwined with the rest of the movie but right now I can't put my finger on it.
7. The constant tension over the ordinary meshing into the extraordinary and the darkness. Watching this movie is like watching a world beneath thinly veiled glass that's slowly cracking.
8. The inevitability and tragedy of it all. All of the craziness and corruption feels like a work of destiny and prophecy, and Donnie is the sole object of force keeping his world from destruction. Donnie breaks the rules of time for love to prevent fear, and it consumes him. At its heart, this movie is as mythical as it is sad.
9. The fact that this is a debut movie and it's already better than most movies.
10. "I'm voting for Dukakis."