“In heaven, everything is fine,” but in Eraserhead (1977) nothing is fine. David Lynch’s debut feature is grim, disturbed, mutated, claustrophobic, a world that appears to be unraveling—or, more accurately, decaying—before our eyes. Jack Nance stars as the doughy, dim factory worker who is suddenly thrust into marriage and parenthood and escapes his grimy, oppressive […]
David Lynch looks behind the smiling faces and stucco houses of small town America and finds a shadow world of pure evil in Blue Velvet (1986). From the opening shots Lynch turns the Technicolor picture postcard images of middle class homes and tree lined lanes into a dreamy vision on the edge of nightmare. College […]
Mulholland Dr. (2001) – David Lynch pulled a near magic trick in what can only be an exercise in creative rewriting and re-conception. Taking an open ended TV pilot rejected by the networks, he added 45 minutes and created closure in a weird, mystical logic that, in its unique Lynchian way, makes a twisted emotional […]
Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series (Paramount, Blu-ray, DVD) More than 25 years after the original Twin Peaks ended on network TV in 1990, creators David Lynch and Mark Frost were given complete freedom to produce a sequel series for Showtime. Almost every member of the original cast returned to reprise their characters (including a […]
Election (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD) A wicked satire of power and (social) politics set in the overheated incubator of a high school student body election, Election (1999) is as sharp and perceptive now as it was in 1999. The confident second feature from director Alexander Payne and his screenwriting partner, Jim Taylor (coming off the critical […]
The Straight Story (1999) is not the kind of film you expect from David Lynch, a G-rated, family friendly tale from America’s most subversive filmmaker. Yet it’s a genuine David Lynch movie. His often mesmerizing, measured pacing, and out-of-step conversational style is put the true story of Alvin Straight, the 73 year old man who […]
David Lynch’s long-awaited return to ‘Twin Peak,’ a TV series like no other, comes to Showtime on Sunday, May 21. It reunites almost the entire original cast to carry on the story over 25 years after the final episode left audiences hanging. To prepare for its return, Stream On Demand revisits the original series and […]
Pour yourself a cup of joe, cut a slice of cherry pie, and let your mind free to roam the surreal TV noir that could only have sprung from the mind of David Lynch. Twin Peaks changed our ideas of what kinds of stories and storytelling was possible on television, and it did so on […]
In 1979, students from UCLA film and television class interviewed David Lynch about his debut feature, Eraserhead (1977). Affable and soft-spoken, Lynch happily talks about the production but refuses to analyze or explain. “It’s up to whoever’s writing and whoever’s viewing to make up their own mind about what’s going on, so it wouldn’t do any good for […]
