Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (2012)

“Delirious Lynchian mind-screw” doesn’t come to the mind when one sits for an action flick (and fifth in a series) starring Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren, but that exactly is “Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning,” a skull-smashing, gun-heavy treat. 

Director John Hyams (son of Peter) daringly switches-up the concept of the first (and awful) film about slain U.S. soldiers genetically reengineered as unstoppable warriors, and plops them right in the U.S. of A., playing on Tea Party paranoia, government black ops, and “Apocalypse Now” showdowns with Van Damme as Kurtz, ghoulish in heavy makeup. 

The plot follows a man (Scott Adkins) who awakens from a coma nine months after watching his family slain by mysterious intruders. Grieved and lost, he obsesses over the attackers. He’s also hunted by seemingly unkillable men who unexplainably like his own body can grow back appendages after they are chopped off. 

The less you know the better, because it’s a kick of a nightmarish journey with hidden meanings about NRA kill-or-be-killed addictions so off kilter from this typical genre, I wanted more. The junk dialogue and headache-inducing strobe-light effects are easily forgiven. B+

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2010)

Indie film god Werner Herzog directed “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done,” a fictional take on a real San Diego man who slew his mother with a sword because God told him to, or so he thought. But David Lynch’s vibe is wholly present. He produced this low budget, quiet psychological horror film. There’s an unreal dream quality to the drama, an off-time click to the speaking roles, and yet the setting and actions strive to be realistic. When the killer (Michael Shannon of “Revolutionary Road”) apparently takes hostages, a SWAT team is called. These men are professional and calm, as they are in such cases. (As a reporter I went to a dozen or more hostage situations, I never saw Hollywood gung-ho theatrics.) More so, there is no violence. The death of the mother (Grace Zabriskie of “Twin Peaks”) is off screen. “My Son” focuses on cause and effect, and psychology, and character. Not gore. What a fine treat. Shannon again nails a man bent beyond madness, with no way to see right anymore. B+

Inland Empire (2006)

“It’s kind of laid a mind fuck on me.” Laura Dern drops this non sequitur after the second hour in “Inland Empire,” a film that sees Mad Hatter filmmaker David Lynch dive gloriously off the cliff and deep into his own endless subconscious. And a deep dive it is.

This is Lynch’s most avant guard film since “Eraserhead,” but infinitely more complex and with a sprawling multi-language cast that touches on infidelity, Hollywood, Poland, a killer hypnotist, screwdriver murders, and giant talking rabbits that live in an old urban apartment. That’s not a typo. It is a fascinating, maddening, over-long, never-boring trip that is brilliant, both horrific and hilarious, and just plain WTF strange.

Diving into the plot may be pointless, but here goes: The film opens on a Polish man and woman, faces blurred, as they enter a hotel room for sex. We then switch to a crying woman watching TV. Cue the bunnies. Then we focus on a L.A. film star (Dern) as she is visited by a neighbor (Grace Zabriskie), just before the former starts work on a film with a cad actor (Justin Theroux). From there … it’s down, or rather up, Lynch’s twisted brain stem, and onto his cinematic themes of identity, multiple bodies in one persona and the way Hollywood splatters, not realizes, dreams.

This all makes the story of “Mulholland Dr.” seem as daring as “Horton Hears a Who.” And that fact actually lends the films its surrealist Dali-on-film kinetic kick. This is art. Hands down. A Lynch regular, Dern’s multi-arc performance here is an amazing to behold, on par with Daniel Day-Lewis in “There Will Be Blood.” She’s in virtually every scene, and plays characters playing other people who, in fact, may be an entirely different third person.

Not all of “Inland” scores: At three hours, the film takes far too many side trips into nowhere, and the cheap film stock used by Lynch can be frustratingly blurry in darkness and blown out in bright light, rendering many scenes indecipherable. But when the credits roll, one can’t deny that they just took a singular trip. B+

Wild at Heart (1990)

David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart” is another slice of a dream-state American pie. Burned to a crisp. Nobody sets a mood quicker or with romantic/doomed/thrilling atmosphere than Lynch, and this film is loaded with scenes beautiful (a couple in love dancing wildly on a desert side road) and hellish (Grace Zabriskie as a wordless demonic killer) and downright weird (Crispin Glover, going 111 on the nut-bucket scale).

The dancing lovers are Nicolas Cage’s Sailor, a newly paroled convict, and Laura Dern’s Lula, an innocent with a her bat-poop crazy momma (Diane Ladd, Dern’s real mother). The couple head West, fleeing mom, who sends a private eye (Harry Dean Stanton) and then a troupe of killers. I won’t dish on the rest of the pretzel-twisty plot, but say only that Lynch riffs off “The Wizard of Oz,” but with hard-core graphic sexual and violent content. There literally is a magic globe, a Wicked Witch and a Good Witch.

There’s so much to love here. A roadside car accident in particular is a dip into tragic/magic life and death as a Sherilyn Fenn plays a young girl whose head literally splits open. (Half the cast came from “Twin Peaks.”) Yet, this whacked trip Cannes Film Festival winner has its faults: Sheryl Lee, the dead Laura Palmer, plays a great corpse. Playing the Good Witch, not so much. She sucks, actually. And Willem Dafoe plays a disgusting, ill-conceived, seedy reincarnation of Frank Booth from “Blue Velvet,” but with a dash of “Deliverance” teeth and the strut of a 13-year-old boy. Dennis Hopper’s Booth came from Hell and remains the absolute movie psychopath. Dafoe’s bonehead is an unfunny joke. And, sure enough, someone’s head is blown off into tiny chunks. Is this Lynch on autopilot?

Side note: I still don’t get Lynch’s apparent fear of North Carolina. (Is it the barbecue?) “Heart” opens in Cape Fear, N.C., not too far off the map from Lumberton, where “Blue Velvet” was set. Or is he just paying homage to the original “Cape Fear” from decades back, as the 1992 remake was not yet released? Not sure...

Oh, this is where Cage’s Elvis homage began, and several years before the former’s career crashed deader than the latter's fat butt. Cage is throbbing with energy here, frightening one moment (the opening scene) and insanely funny the next (“What do you f-----s want?”). He is on 100 percent, though, in a daring, damn the rules role. He needs good directors. Alas, Dern plays another pure girl who bemoans if love is enough to conquer evil and death. Lynch loves a blonde like Hitchcock.

Not Lynch’s best by a long shot, but still a shocking, mind-blowing Avant-Garde treat with scenes that dead end but nevertheless fascinate. “Velvet” from start to finish stays on the soul, and is part of me, whereas “Heart” comes and goes in spurts. Still, less than perfect Lynch is one amazing ride. B+

Surveillance (2009)

Jennifer Lynch -- daughter of David -- directs “Surveillance,” a grisly mystery set in a speck of a New Mexico town. The film opens with some daddy trademarks … coffee pouring, small town landscapes and shocking violence, but Ms. Lynch spins toward “Se7en,” with solid “B” movie intensions. The plot: FBI agents (Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond) arrive in a small town to help local police investigate a mass murder. The sun-baked cops are snarky, and at least two are psychopathic. The film is tense, dark and stuck in my head all night. Red herrings abound as almost every character is over-the-top nuts or appears to have secrets, and that hurts the film. Whether you catch the ending before Lynch pitches it depends on what weirdo has your attention. I missed it. What won me: Pullman and Ormond in black suits, white shirts and oozing badass appeal. Great actors. B

Eraserhead (1976)

David Lynch’s nightmarish city scapes and twisted viewpoint have never been more warped than in “Eraserhead,” his mid-1970s freakish debut masterpiece. I can’t describe the story, but it follows a frizzy haired loner (Jack Nance) who lives in an apartment right out of a Depression-era nightmare, as far from Wyeth America as one can get. He has a sort-of girlfriend (Charlotte Stewart), who turns up pregnant and delivers … a fetus. Not a baby. But a monstrous, twisted, writhing and screaming fetus that looks more animal than human. Like a Pollack painting, this mind fuck is endlessly debatable. Certainly alienation, probably fear of fatherhood and marriage. I love Lynch’s madness, and this is one of his most bizarre films. All his trademarks are here: curtains, stages where actors sing and perform, angels and demons (that fetus, the monstrous man - the fetus grown up?). Black and white beauty. I’ll say this, nothing in a Lynch film is more poetic than the Woman in the Radiator (!!!) singing, “In heaven, everything is fine.” Brilliant. Warped. Godlike. Unexplainable. One of my favorites. So sad Nance was murdered. A+

Coraline (2009)

The dark and beautifully weird stop-motion animation "Coraline" is surely due some year-end Oscar love. It's neck and neck with "Up," maybe surpassing it, as my favorite animated film of the year. How much do I love this film? It struck me the same way David Lynch's surreal trips down warped minds get to me, and that is huge.

Based on a story by Neil Gaiman and directed by Henry Selick ("The Nightmare Before Christmas" - an absolute favorite), it follows lonely Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning) as she moves into an apartment of a strangely pink pink house with her busy garden magazine writer parents (voiced by Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman). She soon meets a geeky boy next door, an acrobat and two former actresses as her neighbors, but nonetheless feels neglected. Stranger still is the tiny door in her parents' living room that leads to a new world, perfect in every detail, form and action except that everyone has buttons for eyes. (Take that as no soul. Or just buttons for eyes.)

I won't spoil anything more because this is a brilliant film not so much for young children, but the child buried in all adults. It may actually be too scary for young children. The stop-motion animation and visual effects improve upon anything I've seen before, including the classic "Nightmare." The film isn't as much a take off of "Alice in Wonderland" as it is a prelude to "Pan's Labyrinth," where the magical world a child escapes to is far, far worse than the life they want to leave behind. (I say prelude as the book "Coraline" came out in 2002, and "Pan's" original-screenplay film was released in 2006.)

Hatcher is a marvel as the Mother, Other Mother (with the button eyes) and so much more, and who knew Hodgman (he of those IBM/Mac commercials) had such a stellar singing voice? Selick is an ace director, a creator of worlds more frightening, magical and deep than Burton has realized in a long, long time. Or Lynch. This will be on my year end best list. Gaiman is a god of writing. A

Blue Velvet (1986)

"Blue Velvet'' is David Lynch's nightmarish masterpiece about the evil in small town America.

From the get-go we know we're in for a trip to hell as the camera settles in on a seemingly perfect Lumberton, N.C., house with perfectly upbeat music in the background, and then inches ever closer to grass in front of a white picket fence. Within that grass are insects -- filmed so close they appear as monsters, destroying the land they crawl on as they devour each other. The man watering that grass then falls upon the ground from a stroke. With this cooler than hell montage and much of his other work (the pilot to "Twin Peaks" and "The Elephant Man"), David Lynch remains at the top of my list of favorite film makers.

We soon follow Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan), the college age son of the stricken man, as he walks home from the hospital. In a field, he starts throwing rocks at an old shack, letting off the anger and grief he feels at his father's illness. Picking up another stone, he finds a severed human ear in the grass. The Intrigued Jeffrey then plunges into a dark, disturbing investigation involving a mysterious singer (Isabella Rossellini), a teenage girl (Laura Dern) and a man (Dennis Hooper) so monstrous you can't argue that he's come directly from Hell.

This is the ultimate FUBAR cult film and Lynch's best work, a brilliant, surrealist drama-noir-mystery with scenes strange (Dean Stockwell lip syncs "In Dreams") and shockingly violent (the physical assault of a woman) that play alive and real. As in his other works, Lynch uses music (the song "Blue Velvet") and the notions of teen love, white picket fences and stoic square-jawed WASP heroes from the 1950s, America's "glory years," to show us the evil that is all around us.

Although Lynch shows us monstrous acts that are as shocking now as when the film premiered more than 20 years ago, he also shows us that love eventually will overcome that evil. His world isn't hopeless after all. You can watch this film a dozen times ands pick out new mysteries and points, or images (red curtains) that appear in nearly all of Lynch's work.

The cast is brilliant, especially MacLachlan's stalwart college boy, but Hopper stands out as what has to be the most depraved, psychopathic character ever put on film. This is a must watch film, if you can stomach it.

One note, I almost moved to the real Lumberton, N.C., to take a job -- while in college. I didn't go. A+