Return to the complete Twin Peaks index Written by Mark Frost & David Lynch Directed by David Lynch Airdate: 11 June, 2017 Author’s Note: This and all subsequent reviews of Twin Peaks: The Return episodes will freely give away details from the episode at hand, and all those preceding it. The spoiler-averse should back away slowly. I am torn in two. Given the choice, I would never have wanted to […]

Return to the complete Twin Peaks index Written by Mark Frost & David Lynch Directed by David Lynch Airdate: 28 May, 2017 Online streaming premiere: 21 May, 2017 Author’s Note: This and all subsequent reviews of Twin Peaks: The Return episodes will freely give away details from the episode at hand, and all those preceding it. The spoiler-averse should back away slowly. I won’t say that it’s inevitable, because I’m […]

Return to the complete Twin Peaks index Written by Mark Frost & David Lynch Directed by David Lynch Airdate: 21 May, 2017 Author’s Note: This and all subsequent reviews of Twin Peaks: The Return episodes will freely give away details from the episode at hand, and all those preceding it. The spoiler-averse should back away slowly. Prior to the first episode of Twin Peaks: The Return, or Twin Peaks, Season […]

Return to the complete Twin Peaks index Within the last ten years or so, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me has undergone a substantial re-evaluation, and what was once greeted as one of David Lynch’s worst features has since been reclaimed by many fans as one of his best. I am a little sorry to admit that I’m not at all one those fans. I’m grateful that it exists; without […]

Return to the complete Twin Peaks index Written by Mark Frost & Harley Peyton & Robert Engels, with uncredited re-writes by David Lynch Directed by David Lynch Airdate: 10 June, 1991 The end of Twin Peaks isn’t really “The End” of Twin Peaks. It would certainly seem, from the way the writers have talked about in years since, that they genuinely hoped for a third season when they set up […]

Return to the complete Twin Peaks index Written by Mark Frost Directed by David Lynch Airdate: 10 November, 1990 Episode 14 – by number of episodes, we’re now halfway through the original run of Twin Peaks (by number of hours, we arrived there at the end of Episode 13). And now we know who killed Laura Palmer. I’m not interested in spending a whole lot of time on the who […]

Return to the complete Twin Peaks index Written by Harley Peyton Directed by David Lynch Airdate: 6 October, 1990 The scariest thing I’ve ever seen in any audio-visual medium (and I know I’m not alone in this) comes near the end of Episode 9 of Twin Peaks. If you know the show well enough to know where we are in the run, I bet you can guess exactly what I’m […]

Return to the complete Twin Peaks index Written by Mark Frost & David Lynch Directed by David Lynch Airdate: 19 April, 1990 It is with its second regular episode that Twin Peaks truly becomes Twin Peaks. I have all the affection in the world for the series pilot, which I think is one of the greatest things ever made for American television, but for all its rampant weirdness and unsettling […]

A third review requested by Sara L, with thanks for contributing three times to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. I expect that some of my loyal readers will be surprised to learn that it is only now, in the year 2016, that I’ve finally seen The Ring. There are reasons for this: in 2002, I wasn’t in the habit of watching horror movies in the theater, and […]

(Part 1 of 2. Be sure to check out the companion review!) My Hollywood Century project has, I confess, been subjected to some mission drift over the last twenty-odd entries. I described it, at the start, as: Sometimes it will be a well-loved consensus classic, and sometimes a lost masterpiece. Sometimes an ill-made but important signpost in the course of mainstream cinema history, sometimes a forgotten piece of commercial junk […]

Writer-director Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio works, I am tempted to say, in spite of itself; it works “for all the wrong reasons” might do just as well. They key is that it works. The film is smart as hell, for one thing. It has been carefully worked out just so, with a final third that significantly up-ends what we think we’ve been watching in a way that at first […]

With 1989’s Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out!, the Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise made a jump that was not uncommon for horror around the start of the ’90s: onto VHS. Usually, the shift in a series from theatrical releases, even very trifling, meaningless ones, over to direct-to-video productions is the clearest sign that the ship is taking on water and there aren’t enough lifeboats; except that Better […]