Tears In The Rain: A Tribute To My Father's Favorite Film

This post is dedicated to my father, Charles Sidney Johnson (March 7, 1936-April 28, 2025)

Okay, lemme backtrack a bit. My dad was a chemistry professor at UNC in the ‘70s. He had two kids, with the second one being particularly unbearable because he was a pop culture-addict, and would die if he wasn’t taken to whatever was the big new movie was coming out on opening weekend, who would throw a fit if he wasn’t allowed to stay up to watch SNL, and who he had to fork over a considerable amount of his paycheck to buy STAR WARS toys for. 

You see, my father was a lover of science fiction – real science fiction like Stanislaw Lem, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and Philip K. Dick. To him, STAR WARS was a pop bubblegum version of sci-fi so he relentlessly (and righteously) made fun of it a lot. Then, it hurt my prepubescent feelings, but now I find it hilarious. I remember when THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK came out in 1980, he said, “Oh great, they added a Muppet.” But BLADE RUNNER was different.

 

Ridley Scott’s 1982 adaptation of Phillip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is now considered a classic, but it took a while. When BLADE RUNNER first came out it was buried at the box office during a summer crowded by the likes of E.T., STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN, THE THING, ROCKY III, and POLTERGEIST, with even f-in’ TRON making more money than it did. 

 

At first, my parents didn’t want to take me to see BLADE RUNNER because it was R-Rated, but they relented and I went to see it with my friend Jimmy, and his parents at one of the worst theaters in history, the now long-gone Ram Triple Theatres in downtown Chapel Hill, North Carolina. As a 12-year old, I found the film a bit draggy, and while the city imagery was cool looking there were some bad effects like wires clearly being seen in one shot with the flying cop car.

 

I watched it with my dad for the first time when it came on HBO in 1983, and appreciated it a little more, but my dad absolutely loved it. Over the years, the movie gained stature via runs on cable and videocassette rentals and developed quite a following, particularly in nerd-centric communities. BLADE RUNNER’s reputation intensified when the 1992 Director’s Cut, which did a number of things to clarify plot points (and they fixed that flying car shot) was released theatrically, and that’s when my dad declared the movie to be his all-time favorite film.

 

I remember it distinctly. It was at a dinner at my parent’s house with my mother, her mother (my grandmother, Lilian) and my then girlfriend, where, upon talking about the then recently released Director’s Cut, that my dad declared that BLADE RUNNER was in his opinion, the greatest movie ever, and then he quoted the speech that one of the film’s characters gave at the end:

 

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off (the) shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”

 

Now, I’ve never known my dad to ever quote movie dialogue – like, I don’t remember him ever saying “may the force be with you” – but his recitation of what has come to be known as the “tears in the rain” speech, I’ll never forget. And, I didn’t know this until now, the speech has its own f-in’ Wikipedia page. It’s that iconic.

 

In 2007, yet another version of BLADE RUNNER was released, THE FINAL CUT. I went with my father to see it at the Carolina Theatre in downtown Durham, and the experience was wonderful. It was very special for a number of reasons as the screening was of one of only four 35MM prints in an extremely limited run, it was the first time I’d seen the movie on the big screen since 1982, and, yes, mainly because I was seeing the film with my dad, who had not wavered in considering it a masterpiece.

 

I remember when it started, right as the vivid imagery hit the screen, he said, “wow, it’s like a time machine.” 

 

BLADE RUNNER will always be a crucial, touchstone film for me largely because of my father. It served as the connective tissue between my STAR WARS loving kid self and the more thoughtful film lover I like to see myself as now.

My dad scoffed at the silly space fantasy of George Lucas’s creation, but I know he acknowledged that, without it, such a cerebral sci fi film as BLADE RUNNER wouldn’t have been made. I mean, it got financing from having one of the stars of STAR WARS as its lead!

 

As I am heavily dealing with the death of my dad, I thought I’d share on my film blog my recollections of his favorite film, which I’m about to go watch again. I’m not sure which version as there are five: the Theatrical Cut, the International Cut, the Unrated cut, the Director’s Cut, and the Final Cut. I really don’t think it matters, because as the George Harrison song goes, “any road will take you there.”

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Full Frame 2025: Day Four

Full Frame 2025 wraps up at the Carolina Theatre in Durham, North Carolina, last Sunday night.

This is my third and final post about the 27th annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival which took place last weekend. I only have a few more films to babble about, from day four, and these are quicker takes than before as I’m pretty exhausted, and overstuffed with  all the non-fiction infotainment I devoured, as well as the multiple trips to downtown Durham.

My Sunday morning began with Alix Blair’s HELEN AND THE BEAR, which concerns the marriage between Helen Hooper (nicknamed “Helen”) and Pete McCloskey (nicknamed “The Bear”). McCloskey, who passed away last year at age 96, was a Republican politician that ran for President against Richard Nixon in 1972; Hooper, who is 26 years younger, was a free-spirited hippy during that era (and still is today), but their shared love of nature, the environment, and conservation brought them together. 

Hooper’s diary entries, old photos, and home movies give us fleeting bits of back story, but Blair’s doc largely focuses on the 70-year old dealing with her partner’s imminent death after suffering a stroke. Helen’s reflections on the couple’s ups and downs, including her affair with a woman, whose face is blurred in pictures from decades ago, are touchingly free from sentiment, and emphasize how full of contradictions, and complicated this lady is. A lovely, and lovingly shot portrait of love that’s gone through the wringer.

Next up, I took in a doc short: Alison McAlpine’s PERFECTLY A STRANGENESS, which was presented with the Full Frame Jury Award for Best Short at the Awards Barbeque at the Durham Armory around noon today. 

The 15-minute film features wide shot cinematography that beautifully captures three donkeys walking around an abandoned astronomical observatory (Chile’s La Silla). A visually poetic experience in which nothing much happens, but it's immersive nonetheless.

The last film that I saw at Full Frame was Jennifer Tiexiera, and Guy Mossman’s SPEAK., which received the Kathleen Bryan Edwards Award for Human Rights earlier that day. The film, which was screened on Saturday and given a Sunday evening encore after its win, follows five teenagers (Esther, Mfaz, Sam, Noah, and Noor) as they prepare to compete for the National Speech & Debate Association (NSDA).

It’s fun to watch these kids try to perfect their public speaking skills on such subjects as the stigma of being handicapped, LGBTQ rights, and suicide, with Esther, a child of Nigerian immigrants and the two-time national champion, stealing the doc at every turn. Though it doesn’t go very deep, it was nice to end the fest with such an uplifting, funny, and overall good feeling doc about determination.

So that’s Full Frame 2025! There are many other docs from the fest I didn’t get to like THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT, SEEDS. THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR, COEXISTENCE, MY ASS, COME SEE ME IN THE GOOD LIGHT, and many others that I look forward to seeing in the days to come.

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Full Frame 2025: Day Three

The 27th annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival wrapped up last night in downtown Durham, but my processing of what I took in over the last four days is still going on in my overwhelmed noggin. It’s always a heady experience to see so many fine docs, each one entertainingly expanding my knowledge on their subjects, and what I saw of this year’s roster really got my mind racing. I saw more documentary shorts than at previous Full Frames so I’ll start with the four that kicked off Saturday morning:

YOUR OPINION, PLEASE (Dir. Marshall Granger, 2025)

This pleasantly amusing 15-minute doc short concerns comments from folks who called in to Yellowstone Public Radio in Montana to talk about, well, whatever they wanted to talk about between 1997 and 2007. The callers’ voices are heard talking to Ken Siebert, and the short’s director, Marvin Granger, while tranquil shots of small-town life, and prairie terrains grace the screen. Politics, religion, and a thread about the meaning of poetry are among the topics discussed, with one of my favorite remarks being, “I’m not a member of any organized party; I’m a democrat.” 

 

MAMA MICRA (Dirs. Rebecca Blöcher, Frédéric Schuld, 2025)

In this odd animated short, filmmaker Blöcher’s prickly relationship with her mother is depicted via stop motion imagery involving characters and landscapes fashioned out of wool. Blöcher’s recorded conversation (in German with subtitles), with her mother, Verena, about her life, the last ten years of which she lived in her car, appears as voice-over for the surreal symbolism that’s heavily dominated by a figure of a black crow. The 25-minute film mixes in some black and white photos of its subject, which adds to its haunting, and very personal feel.

 

MAIL MYSELF TO YOU (Dir. Imogen Pranger, 2024)

Something I didn’t know before is that Oberlin College in Ohio houses an enormous collection of mail art made up of the vast archives by artists Harley Francis, and Reid Wood. This fun 16-minute film is filled with many colorful examples of mail art, which is defined by Wood, as “a system or a process where artworks are exchanged using the postal system; it’s also a lot about collaboration, and about gift giving.” Other correspondence artists relay their mail art memories as scores of illustrated postcards, letters, and envelopes are shown as Pranger’s short zips along merrily, bookended by a cover of its title song, originally composed by Woody Guthrie, performed by Jace Mason. I also wasn’t aware that there’s an international mail art network, but now consider me to be in the know.

 

CONFESSIONS OF UNDECIDED WOMEN

(Dir. Milja Härkönen, 2025)

My last doc short of the day was this Finnish film, which is making its North American premiere at the festival. It's another animated offering, but flat unlike MAMA MICRA, and switches styles throughout. The voices of women in their thirties struggling with whether or not to be mothers are heard as the imagery - sometimes smooth, sometimes crude - enhances their words. The dilemma these biological clock watchers are facing is mostly suited by the animation, but at times the sketchiness of the art is creepy. But maybe that's the point as these ladies are navigating through unsettling stuff especially with the societal expectations. The 20-minute movie is not without its insights, but I'm so not the target audience for this.

PREDATORS (Dir. David Osit, 2025)

If you’ve seen the show, To Catch a Predator (2004-2007), which Jimmy Kimmel called “Punked for Pedophiles,” you know the drill. The producers of the program working with the police would set up a sting operation in a house with multiple hidden cameras where they’d lure abusers under the guise of meeting the child they thought they’d been messaging online or speaking to on the phone.

Then host Chris Hansen would appear to confront the offender, they’d have an awkward AF talk after which the abuser would leave the house to be met by police waiting outside to be taken into custody. While this might make for compelling TV, director Osit wants to explore the ethics of the controversial series here, hoping to find an answer for what the show's host Hansen asks the men after they're captured, “What was going on in your mind?”

Osit posits this because he was sexually abused as a child, but he doesn’t think that the show really cares about the answer. An episode in which one of the offenders commits suicide (not on camera, or at least shown) is thought to be why the program was cancelled, but Hansen has gone on to do similar themed shows, and there are many copy cats, one of which, Skeeter Jean with his Predatorial Investigator Unit, gets a little too much attention here.

Hansen appears late in the film for an interview, but his take on the show doesn’t appear to satisfy Osit, or at least the filmmaker's intense final close-up of himself doesn’t look satisfied. PREDATORS is uneven, and not as deep a dive as its subject deserves, but it is still has cutting effect as a thesis questioning the exploitation of such a sickness. 

WE WANT THE FUNK

(Dirs. Stanley Nelson, Nicole London, 2025)

As at previous Full Frames, Saturday night is the perfect time for a music documentary to be slotted, and this year’s selection, about the history of the funk genre, joyously fits the bill. Director Nelson (FREEDOM RIDERS, THE BLACK PANTHERS: VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION, MILES DAVIS: BIRTH OF THE COOL), who specializes in docs about African American history, has had many of his films screened over the years at the festival, and was in attendance for the film that he told the audience at Fletcher Hall in the Q&A afterwards was just finished three weeks ago.

Nelson, and co-director Nicole gather together such luminaries as Parliament/Funkadelic’s George Clinton, Kool & the Gang’s Robert Kool Bell, the Talking Heads’ David Byrne, the J.B.s’ Fred Wesley, and, of course, Questlove, who one doesn’t make a music doc these days without, to talk about the evolution of funk that undeniably began with James Brown, got psychedelic with Sly and the Family Stone, and went on to be sampled by every hip hop artist ever. The doc is wall-to-wall music, and especially smokes when the interviewees have their instruments, and give us examples of the funky form. 

With wonderfully edited, and exciting footage from TV, and concert appearances, and archival decorates the doc, which does a great job of getting down with what defines the style from educating its audience on the “one” - the first beat of the measure to the genre’s influence on white rockers like Elton John, David Bowie, and Byrne, who based the Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House” on a chant from a P-Funk show. WE WANT THE FUNK is a fantastic funking doc that with hope will get a wide release later this year. The standing ovation it got at Full Frame makes a good case that people definitely desire the groove this film is laying down.

Coming soon, day four of Full Frame.

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Full Frame 2025: Days One and Two

It’s early April, the weather is mostly overcast and a bit dreary, so that means it’s time to watch a bunch of documentaries inside at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, going on right now in downtown Durham, N.C. Every year (well, except during the pandemic) since 2009, I’ve been attending and babbling about the great event that offers four days of non-fiction infotainment so I’m pleased to be back to take in a handful of the 49 docs from 30 countries that are on the schedule from April 3-6 for the 27th Annual year for the festival.

 

I’ve just attended the first two days of Full Frame 2025, and am ready to report on what I’ve seen so let’s get right to it. 

 

MISTRESS DISPELLER (Dir. Elizabeth Lo, 2024)

Sometimes the best documentary experience is when it explores a subject that you didn’t even know existed, and the first film I saw at the fest really hit that spot as it was about Chinese professionals who are hired to break up affairs and save marriages. Here we meet a married couple living in Luoyang identified as Mr. and Mrs. Li, and witness the wife suspecting her husband is being unfaithful. Mrs. Li enlists mistress dispeller Wang Zhenxi to go undercover to befriend her spouse, and his lover to discourage their infidelity.

When Full Frame director and artistic director Sadie Tillery was introducing the film, she talked about when writing the descriptions for the festival’s features, they tried not to overuse words like “glorious,” “insightful” and especially “intimate,” but that Lo’s work in this immaculately made, thoughtful study of a love triangle was indeed intimate, and I wholeheartedly agree. The methods that Zhenxi carefully employs to get inside the matter are fascinating to see in action, and while it can feel voyeuristic at times, it’s touchingly engrossing to see how it all resolves.

PRIME MINISTER (Dirs. Lindsay Utz, Michelle Walshe, 2025)

The Opening Night Film at the fest was a this well chosen portrait of Jacinda Ardern, who was the 40th prime minister of New Zealand and leader of the Labour Party from 2017 to 2023. The story of Ardern, who is the world’s second elected head of government to give birth while in office, is told through videos shot by her husband, Clarke Gayford, news footage, and previously classified audio diaries all deftly edited into a very entertaining narrative.

The former Labour Party leader’s struggles with such severe issues as the pandemic, and shootings at Christchurch mosques are handled with care and finesse by the filmmakers, who also give us a lot of examples of Ardern’s humor and warmth, especially towards her newly born daughter, Neve. The crowd pleasing doc tells what it is a very necessary story for our current times, that is one of a progressive leader that stuck to her guns, and successfully mixed compassion into her politics. I knew next to nothing about the woman before, and now am a fan. Nice what docs can do.

MR. NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN (Dirs. David Borenstein, Pavel Ilyich Talankin, 2025)

Pavel Ilyich Talankin is a teacher and school videographer in the small industrial town of Karabash in Russia, which he tells us in his voice-over narration is the “most toxic city in the world.” After the invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, Talankin secretly documented the propaganda his school is spreading through scripts the educators have to go by for their students who are, as Pavel puts it, are being groomed to be future dead soldiers.

As Talankin decries the militarization of his former place of learning, we see his students getting drafted into war, and how demeaning the indoctrination into forced patriotism can be on a daily basis. The doc is shot and presented in a casual manner that makes us feel like we’re in the hallways and classrooms with these people, which sometimes can be unsettling, especially when it comes to one stern Putin-supporting teacher, who considers.

With his many messages to resist authoritarianism, Talankin makes many poignant observations throughout, but the one that might say the most is “Love for your country is not about propaganda - loving your country is being able to say, ‘We have a problem.’” MR. NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN says that strongly, and with the looming threats to our freedom coming closer every day, we should really take it to heart.

BLUE ROAD: THE EDNA O’BRIEN STORY

(Dir. Sinéad O'Shea, 2024)

Having worked in bookstores, I was aware of the Irish novelist, Edna O’Brien, but had no knowledge of her work. This superb biodoc lays out her controversial career which began with her 1960 debut, The Country Girls, which angered her less successful writer husband, Ernest Gébler, who made her sign her royalty checks over to him. After their divorce in 1964, O’Brien, flourished through her sexually frank writing in dozens of novels, and short stories, and held lavish parties attended by the likes of Sean Connery, Richard Burton, and Michael Caine.

Actress Jessie Buckley (Fargo, MEN, WOMEN TALKING) provides narration via O’Brien’s diary entries, and the film is decorated with a wealth of photographs, letters, and archival footage with my favorite bits being clips from her appearances on European talk shows in the ‘60s and ‘70s. O’Brien herself appears in interviews filmed last year, before she passed last summer at the age of 93. BLUE ROAD, named because of a criticism her ex-husband made of one her descriptions (“There are no blue roads”), is a lovely tribute to a inspirational literary figure, and a great introduction for such neophytes like me.

Stay tuned for coverage of days three and four of Full Frame.

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Oscars 2025: My Worst Score Since 2007!

Last night, I got my worst Oscar prediction score since 2007, and that was 13 out of 24, now it’s one worse as there are only 23 categories now (they combined Sound Design and Sound Editing into just Sound). Now, I was expecting this because I knew EMILIA PÉREZ was gonna win multiple Academy Awards, but I just couldn’t go there as I’m so against it. Voting with your heart over your head is never how to go, but that’s how I went this year, and I paid the price.

Otherwise, I did highly enjoy first-time host Conan O’Brien from THE SUBSTANCE parody opening to his goofy monologue, with such lines like, “A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, A REAL PAIN, NOSFERATU - these are just some of the names I was called on the red carpet. I think two are fair,” too, well, just about all of his antics. Yeah, I’m a fan, and he didn’t disappoint. 

Funnily enough, I got all the acting categories wrong except for Kieran Culkin for A REAL PAIN, who probably had the most memorable acceptance speech, but I won’t go into that here.

So let’s take a look at the long list of the ones I got wrong, shall we?

BEST ACTOR: My prediction - Timothée Chalamet, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN / Who won: Adrien Brody, THE BRUTALIST

Conan: “Bob Dylan wanted to be here tonight, but not that badly.”

I said Brody would probably win, but I couldn’t not go with Chamalet as I so adored his performance as my all-time favorite performer. Back when Chamalet was promoting the movie back in December, he was showing up at events cosplaying Dylan, so I was hoping he’d do the same for the Oscars. Not that it would’ve helped him win (the voting ended on Feb. 21), but here’s the butter yellow Givenchy suit he wore last night, and what I think would’ve been better – a light blue tux like Dylan’s at the 1998 Grammys when he won Album of the Year for Time Out of Mind.

BEST ACTRESS: My prediction - Demi Moore, THE SUBSTANCE / Who won: Mikey Madison, ANORA

Now I didn’t like THE SUBSTANCE, but I really thought it was Moore’s time so this was surprising.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: My prediction - Isabella Rossellini, CONCLAVE / Who won: Zoe Saldaña, EMILIA PÉREZ

DOCUMENTARY SHORT: My prediction - I AM READY, WARDEN / What won: THE ONLY GIRL IN THE ORCHESTRA

FILM EDITING: My prediction: CONCLAVE, Nick Emerson / What won: ANORA, Sean Baker

ORIGINAL SONG: My prediction: “The Journey” from THE SIX TRIPLE EIGHT, Diane Warren / What won: “El Mal” from EMILIA PÉREZ

ANIMATED SHORT: My prediction: YUCK! / What won: IN THE SHADOW OF THE CYPRESS

LIVE ACTION SHORT: My prediction: THE MAN WHO COULD NOT REMAIN SILENT / What won: I AM NOT A ROBOT

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: My prediction: A REAL PAIN, Jesse Eisenberg / What won: ANORA, Sean Baker

Whew! Baker really cleaned up as he directed, wrote, and edited ANORA. The only Oscar he’s not personally taking home for it is Madison’s Best Actress award. I loved ANORA, but seriously didn’t expect a four Oscar sweep!

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM: My prediction: THE WILD ROBOT / What won: FLOW

I got this wrong and I saw FLOW, and haven’t yet seen THE WILD ROBOT. Let this be this year’s lesson for me – vote with your head next time! Btw, I loved FLOW, but at first the cat going underwater scenes stressed me out a little. It felt kinda like LIFE OF PI, but with all the overblown symbolism replaced by a resourceful, resilient kitty.

Okay, so that's this year’s Oscars. Next year, I’ll go back to voting with my head, and not my heart.

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Hey Kids! Funtime 2024 Oscar® Predictions!

The world has been on fire lately, but the 97th Academy Awards® is still going down this Sunday night so I’m still going to make my predictions. I’ve been busy finishing a big book project so I haven’t been film babbling much lately (I said the same thing last year), but I’ve seen nine of the ten Best Picture nominees (I'M STILL HERE is the one I haven’t caught up with yet), and a lot of the other films that got nods so I think I’m fairly good to go.

The few things that I can safely predict is that I’m going to be really pissed off if EMILIA PÉREZ wins anything, which is sure to happen because it got 13 f-in’ nominations, and that Conan O’Brien is going to be really funny as the first-time host of the big show. Otherwise this is such a crap shoot that I bet I’ll get more wrong on the following predictions than ever before.

So here are my highly anticipated, not-thrown-together-at-the-last-minute predictions:

1. BEST PICTURE: ANORA

This is a f-in’ excellent movie, and it looks like the odds are in its favor, so this is definitely the voting with my heart year for me.

2. BEST DIRECTOR: Sean Baker, ANORA

3. BEST ACTOR: Timothée Chalamet, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN

Adrien Brody is who everyone’s predicting will take home the award, but I’m going with the wild card, because it was my favorite performance of 2024 (and my favorite film too), and I don’t care if I’m wrong. I did admire Brody in THE BRUTALIST, and he’s won everything except the SAG that Chalamet won last weekend, so he’ll probably win, but I’m still pulling for Timmy as Zimmy.

4. BEST ACTRESS: Demi Moore, THE SUBSTANCE. I hated the movie, but she did a good job, and it just seems like her time.

5. BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Kieran Culkin, A REAL PAIN

This feels like a given too, as Culkin nails his portrayal of a particular kind of guy that I bet we’ve all known some version of. Otherwise I’ll be happy if Edward Norton wins for his excellent turn as Pete Seeger in A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, because it’s crazy he’s never won one before.

6. BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Isabella Rossellini, CONCLAVE

Please don’t let it be Zoe Saldaña for EMILIA PÉREZ! Please don’t let it be Zoe Saldaña for EMILIA PÉREZ!!!!

7. PRODUCTION DESIGN: WICKED, Nathan Crowley, Lee Sandales

8. CINEMATOGRAPHY: THE BRUTALIST, Lol Crawley

9. COSTUME DESIGN: WICKED, Paul Tazewell

10. DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: NO OTHER LAND

11. DOCUMENTARY SHORT: I AM READY, WARDEN

12. FILM EDITING: CONCLAVE, Nick Emerson

13. MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING: THE SUBSTANCE

14. VISUAL EFFECTS: DUNE: PART TWO

15. ORIGINAL SCORE: THE BRUTALIST, Daniel Blumberg

16. ORIGINAL SONG: “The Journey” from THE SIX TRIPLE EIGHT, Diane Warren

17. ANIMATED SHORT: YUCK!

18. LIVE ACTION SHORT: THE MAN WHO COULD NOT REMAIN SILENT

19. SOUND: DUNE: PART TWO

20. ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: A REAL PAIN, Jesse Eisenberg

21. ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: CONCLAVE, Peter Straughan

22. ANIMATED FEATURE FILM: THE WILD ROBOT

23. BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM: I’M STILL HERE

Did I mention I don’t want EMILIA PÉREZ to win anything? I know, I know, with 13 noms, it's probably going to take home some gold, but I’m still gonna dream.

As I always say, tune in on Monday to see how many I got wrong.

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A Film Babble Blog Retrospective: David Lynch In Three Films

The passing of one of my all-time favorite filmmakers, David Lynch (January 20, 1946-January 15, 2025), made me go back to the reviews I’ve written of his work over the years for Film Babble. In the almost 21 years that I’ve had this blog, I posted about three of the ten theatrical releases he made from 1977-2006: ERASERHEAD, MULHOLLAND DRIVE, and INLAND EMPIRE. These were interesting for me to revisit, as I had forgotten some details like I wrote that I had a “love/WTF? relationship with the films of Lynch,” and that one of my first dates with my now ex-wife was a midnight show of ERASERHEAD, so I thought I’d gather the reviews for this tribute post.

My first review is from that midnight movie screening that was at the Colony Theater (sadly closed in 2015) in Raleigh, North Carolina as part of their Cool Classics series in the summer of 2008. 

I was mounting a series that didn’t go on very long called “Hey, I finally saw…” where I blogged about seeing a classic film for the first time, and before that night, I’d never seen Lynch’s mesmerizing debut ERASERHEAD in full (I think I saw parts of it in the ‘80s on cable, but I’m not sure). Here’s how it went down (click on the title to read the post):

Hey, I Finally Saw ERASERHEAD (August 8, 2008)

Later that year, the North Carolina Museum of Art presented a screening of Lynch’s ninth film, 2001’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE, which my then girlfriend, and I attended. I had seen the movie before, but only when it was released on DVD in 2002, so it was great to see it on the big screen in the museum’s auditorium. 

The film was introduced by a great local film critic, INDY Week writer/editor David Fellerath, who I quote the in the piece, which amuses me because like with ERASERHEAD, I was trying to figure it out. I also am amused by something I had forgotten, the confused reaction of one of the attendees at the end of the movie. I believe it’s worth the read:

Seven Years Later, Does MULHOLLAND DRIVE Make Any More Sense? (October 28, 2008)

Lastly, I go back further in time (just a  year earlier) to my first review of a Lynch film, his last feature-length production, INLAND EMPIRE, which came out in late 2006. 

I viewed, and reviewed the DVD when it was released in 2007, and I enjoyed re-reading, and re-living my thoughts on the bizarre film (I know, they’re all bizarre). I had forgotten the line “One can not casually watch INLAND EMPIRE - that would be like casually visiting somebody in prison.” Read the rest:

INLAND EMPIRE Burlesque (September 4, 2007)

So that’s what I had to say in the past (the 2000s) about three of Lynch’s films. I’m definitely going to revisit his work in the weeks to come, and may post some new re-evaluations here. As for the rest of the master’s movies, I saw THE ELEPHANT MAN and DUNE on cable, but was too young to appreciate them as Lynch works. It was BLUE VELVET (1986) on VHS in the late ‘80s that blew me away, and made me a fan. The others that followed, I saw mostly on home video, but did see a Cool Classics showing of WILD AT HEART at the Colony in 2012.

The Carolina Theatre in Durham, NC, is hosting a free screening of BLUE VELVET as part of their Retro Film Series next Tuesday, January 21, at 7pm, which I might attend, and I’m sure there’ll be a number of other showings of Lynch films in the area in the months, and years to come.

In the mean-time, I posted this handy guide on Facebook, and  it’s worth re-posting:

R.I.P. David Lynch

 

More later…