{"id":196413,"date":"2025-02-02T22:33:22","date_gmt":"2025-02-03T03:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=196413"},"modified":"2025-02-02T22:36:53","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T03:36:53","slug":"january-2025-viewing-diary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=196413","title":{"rendered":"January 2025 Viewing Diary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Glengarry Glen Ross<\/strong><\/em> (1992; d. James Foley)
\nI saw this one in the theatre back in the day. There’s a revival coming up on Broadway and Bill Burr is going to be in it. It’s kind of perfect! He’ll be playing the Ed Harris part, I think, which is perfect, since the character seethes with a kind of helpless anger. Great cast here, obviously, but it’s pretty schticky. I am continuously amazed that Kevin Spacey was ever considered a good – or, my God, great – actor. No, he is NOT. I felt this way before his fall from grace. I remember talking about it with Sam Schacht<\/a> 2 decades ago, for God’s sake. “He’s a very thin<\/em> actor and he is being overpraised.” said Sam. “Thin” meaning emotionally thin, emotionally limited. Which, forgive me, disqualifies you from being considered a good actor. Being overpraised made him lazy and cocky. His default attitude (not emotion) was amused contempt. If you’re a character actor and that’s what you’re called upon to play – fine. But a leading man? Who won not one but TWO Oscars? The world went MAD for him. I couldn’t believe it. Here he is in Glengarry Glen Ross<\/i>, my first exposure to him, and what he does here is what he did in every role. There. That’s it. That’s all he’s got to give. Amazing to me that he ever was a LEAD in anything. <\/p>\n

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Desire<\/strong><\/em> (1936; d. Frank Borzage)
\nBorzage is so romantic, so deeply interested in atmosphere – the atmosphere around love – its magic, its shadows. This is a heist movie, with Dietrich a cunning jewel thief, on the run across Europe. She basically runs into a corn-fed gee-willikers American, taking his first vacation ever. He’s supposedly a ladies man, although Gary Cooper plays it with more of a “shucks, golly, you’re pretty” kind of way which might not get him too far, except that he looks like Gary Cooper. Shenanigans naturally ensue. He has no idea she’s a thief. She keeps trying to shake him off her tail. But … of course … Desire is at work. <\/p>\n

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Blue Velvet<\/strong><\/em> (1986; d. Blue Velvet)
\nI’m working on a big piece on David Lynch. This loss hits different. Because he was singular. We won’t see his like again. It’s also interesting because I’m old. I witnessed his rise first-hand. If you were born in, say, the late 90s, Lynch was already a “thing” and you got on the train, knowing he was a master. It’s like me with, say, Godard or Howard Hawks. By the time I was born, they were legends and so discovering them was like joining a well-populated continuum. With Lynch, he was an unknown and then suddenly there was Twin Peaks<\/em>. (Eraserhead<\/em> didn’t really crack into the mainstream.) Turns out, though, I had seen The Elephant Man<\/em> when I was in high school, because we read the script in drama class. The movie made a HUGE impression but I had no idea who the filmmaker was and wouldn’t have cared had I known. Years later, my boyfriend and I watched Twin Peaks<\/em> together, it was appointment television and – in a lot of ways – the only thing bonding us together, lol. But before THAT I saw Blue Velvet<\/em> at my local movie theatre. I went into it totally unprepared. (I also had to use my connection with the concession stand guy – he was in my acting class – in order to even get in, since it was rated R.) I had no idea what I was getting into. I didn’t read movie reviews. But we had one movie screen in our town so I went to see everything. I will never forget that first encounter. Ever. There was nothing like it in my experience, before or since. <\/p>\n

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Twin Peaks<\/strong><\/em>, Season 1 (1990; d. David Lynch. Plus: Duwayne Dunham, Tina Rathborne, Tim Hunter, Lesli Linka Glatter, Caleb Deschanel, Mark Frost)
\nI rewatch every couple of years. I’m so glad Twin Peaks<\/em> exists. It’s a miracle. I mean, I still can’t even believe this thing was funded and green-lit. But it WAS. <\/p>\n

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A Streetcar Named Desire<\/strong><\/em> (1951; d. Elia Kazan)
\nAllison had never seen it! So we watched together. (I’ve been in New York a lot this month. I had a massive fall, by the way. Bumped my head on the tile floor. Had to go to urgent care to make sure I didn’t have a concussion. Was a pretty scary couple of days. Natasha Richardson fears. My shoulder is still messed up. It could have been so much worse. Anyway, that happened.) It was frigid cold in New York, in the teens, and Allison and I holed up in her apartment. She’s reading a biography of Brando and I was like, “You have to watch his work. The biography is interesting but the truth of him is in his work.” It was so fun to discover it with her. What is amazing – considering the character of Stanley – is the delicacy<\/i> of his work. It’s still a revelation. <\/p>\n

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The Skeleton Twins<\/strong><\/em> (2014; d. Craig Johnson)
\nAllison and I went to the anniversary screening of this at the Metrograph, and producer\/editor Jennifer Lee was in attendance. There was a discussion and QA afterward. It was so fun. We love this movie so much. <\/p>\n

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Mulholland Drive<\/strong><\/em> (2001; d. David Lynch)
\nI pretty much know this one by heart. It’s a masterpiece. <\/p>\n

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Twin Peaks<\/strong><\/em>, Season 2 (1991; d. David Lynch. Plus: Lesli Linka Glatter,
\nTodd Holland, Graeme Clifford, Caleb Deschanel, Tim Hunter, Tina Rathborne, Duwayne Dunham, Uli Edel, Diane Keaton – !!, James Foley, Jonathan Sanger, Stephen Gyllenhaal)
\nSeason 2 is a wild ride, man. You find out “who killed Laura Palmer” and then there are 19 episodes after that. With interminable plot-lines like James and the Sunset Boulevard-ish lady, and Benjamin Horne losing himself in fantasies of the Civil War, and Nadine being in high school (ugh), and Audrey … what happened to the girl in Season 1? It’s like everyone lost their nerve when it came to Audrey. They had to soften her up, make her less strange. STILL, the larger through-line – which Laura Palmer’s murder merely represented, or was a portal to – of the darkness in the woods and in the world, and how the darkness manifests – is there. Those strange moments still come. The quality fell off so much it’s practically legendary, and the show hemorrhaged viewers. I remember that back then. And without the internet you REALLY had to pay attention to things. Somehow I figured out the show was in trouble, and my boyfriend and I looked back on Season 1 with nostalgia. Season 2 has its points though. The final scene is still shocking. I remember my boyfriend and I being so astonished by it and then the realization dawned “…. wait … what happens NEXT? Is that IT?” (The Sopranos<\/em>‘ final scene has nothing on the final scene of Twin Peaks<\/em>.) We’d have to wait 25 years to find out what happened next. <\/p>\n

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David Lynch: The Art Life<\/strong><\/em> (2016; Rick Barnes, Olivia Neergaard-Holm, Jon Nguyen)
\nWonderful revelatory movie about Lynch’s life and art, with interviews and footage of him at work in his home studio. Which he had to be moved from during the fires. Which probably hastened his death. <\/p>\n

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Eraserhead<\/strong><\/em> (1977; d. David Lynch)
\nI had to catch up with this one later. I think I rented it at Blockbuster in Hoboken, when I lived there. It’s an industrial fever dream. You can see it in all this unconscious anxiety about being a parent. This is not news. It’s right there onscreen. Lynch could only make this because he won a scholarship from AFI. He said he had no idea what would have happened to him if he hadn’t gotten the money from AFI. He was an avant-garde un-commercial filmmaker. <\/p>\n

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Lynch\/Oz<\/strong><\/em> (2022; d. Alexandre O. Philippe)
\nA little pretentious at points but I loved the connections made between Lynch and The Wizard of Oz. You’d have to be actively not paying attention to miss all the red shoes in Lynch’s work. I think in every movie a female character wears red shoes.<\/p>\n

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Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me<\/strong><\/em> (1992; d. David Lynch)
\nA misunderstood – still – masterpiece. <\/p>\n

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Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces<\/strong><\/em> (2013; d. David Lynch)
\nFascinating deleted\/extended scenes from Fire Walk With Me<\/i>. They add up to over an hour of film. Highly recommended. I have THOUGHTS about the deletions, and what they reveal about Lynch – but I’ll save that for the piece I’m writing.<\/p>\n

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Inland Empire<\/strong><\/em> (2006; d. David Lynch)
\nTo quote myself: A misunderstood – still – masterpiece. Honestly, it’s not that obscure to me. I’m not baffled by it at all, at least not the main “plot”. An actress tries to get into her character and it leads her down some pretty dark paths. Very Opening Night<\/i>-ish. It’s a brutal watch, in many ways, and it’s fairly ugly to look at (it was Lynch’s first digital film, and much of it looks like old video transfers). It’s ugly by design. The more I’ve seen this one, the more sense – if that is the word – it makes. <\/p>\n

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More Things That Happened<\/strong><\/em> (2007; d. David Lynch)
\nAnother compilation of deleted\/extended scenes, this time from Inland Empire<\/i>. I’ve seen all these things before but went back to watch them again. Not just because I was writing a piece on him but because I was trying to process this. As well as the LA fires and the new ghoul in the White House. I flashed back to 2017, when Twin Peaks: The Return<\/i> basically helped me – and a lot of other people, I know – get through that terrible year. It came out episode by episode, it wasn’t dumped all at once, and so – briefly – during one of the most divisive years in this country’s history (we were just getting started) – we all came together to watch the same thing at the same time, and then go to Twitter to discuss. Lynch is important to me and it’s personal. And you can see in all the pieces that have been written – everybody feels that way. It’s personal for everybody. <\/p>\n

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Love Me<\/strong><\/em> (2025; d. Andrew Zuchero and Sam Zuchero)
\nNot crazy about it but the opening is intriguing and so are (some of) the ideas. I reviewed for Ebert<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Lost Highway<\/strong><\/em> (1997; d. David Lynch)
\nI still remember where I saw this. At the Lincoln Plaza Cinema (RIP). I was in grad school. I was looking forward to Lost Highway like my life depended on it. I hadn’t yet read David Foster Wallace’s great piece on Lynch and on this film. Libraries of text have been devoted to David Lynch, but I think DFW’s piece wins. By a mile. But again, I wasn’t really “connected” to film criticism at the time, I just wasn’t in that world at all. So I had no idea of the buzz, or how the pressure was on Lynch, and the whole backstory. I was just a fan and I couldn’t wait to see it. It’s one of those vivid movie-going memories. I am still not sure if there is critical consensus on this – I don’t think “critical consensus” exists with his body of work. All I can say is I was pinned to my seat watching this thing. I loved every frame. What it “means” has just never mattered to me, not with him. I don’t try to “figure it out”. It’s a different kind of viewing experience. And I find it soothing, as creepy as his films are. It is TRULY “escapist” fare. <\/p>\n

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The Alphabet<\/strong><\/em> (1969; d. David Lynch)
\nHis early films really show his avant-garde bona fides. People wishing he would just make a POINT, or make things CLEAR, don’t know shit. Starring his wife (his first) Peggy. <\/p>\n

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The Grandmother<\/strong><\/em> (1970; d. David Lynch)
\nA haunting short film about a young boy with two pretty awful parents who abuse him. There’s a bit about a monstrously shaped tree coming out of his bed, with a black space on it, like a hole. <\/p>\n

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Six Men Getting Sick<\/strong><\/em> (1967; d. David Lynch)
\nVomit is definitely a theme for Lynch and has been there from the start! Member Evil Cooper vomiting in the car? Disgusting! <\/p>\n

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The Amputee Version 2<\/strong><\/em> (1974; d. David Lynch)
\nCatherine Coulson – the Log Lady – as the amputee writing a letter as a nurse dresses her wounds. Very disturbing, but funny too. <\/p>\n

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Premonitions Following an Evil Deed<\/strong><\/em> (1995; d. David Lynch)
\nReally more of a fragment than anything else but it reminds me a little bit of the Black Dahlia. And Laura Palmer. <\/p>\n

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Glengarry Glen Ross (1992; d. James Foley) I saw this one in the theatre back in the day. There’s a revival coming up on Broadway and Bill Burr is going to be in it. It’s kind of perfect! He’ll be … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2627,4,31],"tags":[1438,1446,1514,432,1156,1580,2493,2546,2567,116,131,2551,342,1439,2498,2322,435,133,1155,472,2568,190,2489,763],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196413"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=196413"}],"version-history":[{"count":38,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197038,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196413\/revisions\/197038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=196413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=196413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=196413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}