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Hotel Room (1993)   In terms of visual flourish and scope, Hotel Room couldn’t be more different to David Lynch’s previous couple of features. Even in comparison to his two prior TV series. This trio of shaggy-dog stories, centring on the Railroad Hotel at different intervals in its history, is theatrical in its minimalism, consisting mostly (in the two Lynch-directed segments) of two or three-handers. Barry Gifford, the writer of the Lynch episodes, fully gets on board with the eccentric Lynch quality, but it’s channelled into something for more verbalised and so less stylistically provocative. As such, it’s interesting that the most

Youth (2015)   I greatly enjoyed Paolo Sorrentino’s last feature, The Great Beauty (or, La grande bellezza), in spite of its overt debt to Fellini, a director I’ve never really gotten on with. That same devotion is also evident in Youth, marked as it is by a series of surreal interludes, culminating in moviemaker Harvey Keitel surveying a field of starlets (all very 8½). It also exhibits the kind of beautified, musically sumptuous, existential sogginess of recent Terence Malicks, however; there’s a desire to grasp at the flighty meaning of it all, whatever that all may be, and thus all it ends up revealing is

A Pigeon Sat on A Branch, Reflecting on Existence aka En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron (2014)   I haven’t seen the previous instalments of Roy Andersson’s “Living” trilogy (“a trilogy about being a human being”), and on the evidence of A Pigeon Sat on a Branch, Reflecting on Existence, I won’t be in any hurry. This Swedish black comedy appears to have been nigh-on universally acclaimed, including winning The Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, which rather suggests I’m an ingrate for failing to appreciate it. I was frequently put in mind of the sort

Enemy (2013)   If Enemy is anything to go by, Denis Villeneuve is an ideal choice to direct Blade Runner 2 in the place of Ridley Scott. Not because he has the auterish visual sense of Scott at his zenith, because he has an equally incontinent grasp of narrative. The excuse of Enemy, which its defenders would likely summon, is that, as an exploration of its protagonist(s)’s subconscious, a formally coherent plot can be thrown out the window. Unfortunately, that leaves the film open to anything and everything and leaves the viewer with a shrug of “Well, I guess it really doesn’t matter”. Enemy does have a lot

Twin Peaks 2.1: May the Giant Be with You   The ninety-minute Season Two opener finds Twin Peaks back in the finest of form, following a slow glide to normalcy during the last part of the first season. It can in no way be coincidental that the freakish fingerprints of David Lynch are all over the episode; he shares a story credit with co-producer Mark Frost (who wrote the teleplay) and also directed. This has everything one would want from the show; instructive giants, singing lawyers, bizarre poetry, uncanny dreams, and, of course, Bob. There’s even a Three Stooges reference, and from the most

Twin Peaks 1.1: Northwest Passage (Pilot)   It’s unlikely that the first thing one thinks of, when one thinks of Twin Peaks, is intricate plotting. This, despite the “Who killed Laura Palmer?” hook that heralded its first (truncated) season and just short of the first half of the second. No, it’s a safe bet that the David Lynch trademarks of mood, atmosphere, surrealism and eccentricity will be front and centre of one’s thoughts. And what the hell befell Agent Cooper after his encounter in the Black Lodge, of course. Those aspects have not diminished in the 25 years since, despite the

The Prisoner 17. Fall Out   We want information. Six is lead to a cavern beneath the Village, in which the President presides over a masked committee. Six is applauded for having passed the ultimate test; he is no longer to be known by a number. Six is enthroned and observes the trial of two lesser rebels; Number 48, the embodiment of motiveless youth, and Number Two, who has been resurrected following his demise. Both are convicted. Six is contrastingly venerated and asked to lead the Village. However, when he is asked to address his audience, his every word is

The Prisoner 15. The Girl Who Was Death   We want information. Colonel Hawke-English, batting at a cricket match, is killed when he hits an exploding ball, done in by a mysterious woman dressed all in white.  Six is assigned to the case, involving a plan by Professor Schnipps to destroy London with a rocket. Six replaces the colonel on the field and foils an identical attempt on his own life. He follows clues that lead him to his local pub, where the woman poisons his pint. Six improvises an antidote by imbibing a series of tipples that make him sick.

The Prisoner 14. Living in Harmony   We want information. A sheriff (known as the Stranger; Number Six) resigns, is attacked, and dragged to the Wild West town of Harmony. There, he meets the town mayor, the Judge. After refusing to assume the mantel of town lawman, the Stranger is taken into protective custody as refuge from an angry mob of townsfolk. In the jail, he is guarded by a silent psychopath gunslinger, The Kid. The Judge accedes to the replacement of the Stranger with another prisoner, who is lynched to appease the crowd. He was the brother of Kathy,

The Prisoner 12. A Change of Mind   We want information. After two Villagers pick a fight with Six, which he wins, he is accused of anti-social behaviour. He is summoned before the Committee and is asked to confess his crimes, which he refuses to do. Subject to further investigation, Six is warned by Two that defiance of the Committee could be very dangerous. 86 has been appointed to guide Six through the process of public contrition, but he shows complete disinterest. He attends the Social Group where he ridicules those seeking help. Following this, the Committee classifies Six as

The Prisoner 9. Checkmate   We want information. Six takes the role of the Queen’s pawn in a game of chess with human pieces. He is intrigued when a rogue Rook, who moves across the board without orders, is taken away for rehabilitation treatment. The Man with the Stick, controller of the chess game, furnishes Six with the means to tell the Village’s prisoners from its guardians. Six uses this method to win the support of the Rook. Together they assemble a team of fellow prisoners with the intention of mounting an escape bid. Meanwhile, the Queen has been hypnotised

Holy Motors (2012)   Holy Motors was a fixture of 2012’s Top 10 lists; a critics’ darling. As a consequence, anyone who doesn’t fall for its charms runs the risk of being labelled a philistine (or “une philistine”, perhaps). I could claim relief that I did like it, although I’ve never had much compunction about dismissing arty pretentiousness as arty pretentiousness when I see it. A significant portion of Holy Motors is arty pretentiousness, but a fair amount of it is also genuinely quite clever, interesting, entertaining and amusing (all of this with the caveat of “probably”; it might all be a crock). I didn’t fall for it

The Prisoner 8. Dance of the Dead   We want information. An attempt to extract information from Six, using a fellow prisoner named Dutton, meets with failure. Two, who was not party to the experiment, has other plans. She intends to use persuasion with Six, who is invited to the annual Village Carnival. Six discovers a body on the beach. He retrieves a radio from the dead man and sends the corpse back out to sea with a distress message attached. Dutton encounters Six, and tells him he spilled his secrets but that the Village did not believe him. Six

The Prisoner 4. Free for All   We want information. Number Two persuades Number Six to run in the Village elections. Six is to be assisted by Number 58 (who speaks no English). He accuses the town council of mindless complicity and as is consequently forced to undergo the Truth Test. When he emerges, he begins to crack and mounts an escape bid. Following a stint in the hospital he begins running an effective campaign. Despondent again, he is led to a bar in a cave that serves real booze, where Number Two is having a tipple. Six is drugged again and

The Fantastic Journey 7. Funhouse   Funhouse is the first of two episodes of The Fantastic Journey that actively embrace the surreal. It’s likely not coincidental that they are also the best episodes of the series; the chance to tread unfamiliar ground and engage with altered states throws the generally pedestrian plotting into sharp relief. Willaway: I’ve got a funny feeling… Let’s just leave it alone. Roddy McDowall is in pole position again, where he’s most comfortable. But this time Varian is back to being the perceptive strength behind the travellers as Willaway finds his body possessed by Marcus Apollonius, the first century AD

The Prisoner 2. The Chimes of Big Ben   We want information. Number Six agrees to collaborate; if Number Two agrees to halt the interrogation of new arrival Number Eight. Six enters the Village Arts and Crafts Competition, but this is a cover for an escape bid he is planning with Eight. Six’s art doubles as a sailing boat, and he and Eight travel to London. Meeting with his bosses, Six is on the verge of discussing his resignation, but realises he is still in the Village when the chimes of Big Ben match the time on his watch; there

The Prisoner 1. Arrival   Where am I? Much has been written of The Prisoner over the years. Perhaps even more than comparable cult series, it’s very finite duration has encouraged fans to pore over its every nuance and quirk. I have to admit that, whilst I’d count it among my television favourites, I have tended to resist over-analysing the series or any impulses to weave together its disparate threads into a text providing clarity and definition. I don’t much care whether Number Six is really John Drake, why he resigned (it’s pretty much the series’ MacGuffin; unimportant except in that it

Inland Empire (2006)   David Lynch’s last feature film (to date) begins in typically Lynchian fashion; a scratchy record plays, subtitled Polish is heard. Figures are seen in a hotel room, their faces blurred; one of them, a woman (a prostitute), is then seen crying as she watches a peculiar “sitcom” involving the domestic lives of characters with rabbit heads. The music on the soundtrack suggests the kind of melancholy Julee Cruise evoked in decades past, while the eerie sound effects are the director’s calling card. Even more than the most obscure of the filmmaker’s previous pictures, there appears to