Simon's Movie Reviews

  Some movies have their main characters fight against nature, some against armies and others have them fight against institutions, always with the odds against them. Cool Hand Luke (1967) falls into that last category as it follows a character who clashes against the often-troubled institution that is the American prison system. It helps that the people in charge of said prison are borderline sadists and that the convict rebelling against the system is the legendary screen presence that is Paul Newman. I had a great first impression of this movie even though the first time I saw it was years ago while it had already started playing on TV. The dialogue was dubbed in Spanish since I was living in South America at the time, but once you get into the story it is hard to let go. Watching Paul Newman defy and outsmart prison guards is not on par with all the spectacle you see in cinemas nowadays, but it is certainly engaging. I recently rewatched the movie, from beginning to end, on ...

Exactly how do you describe a David Lynch movie? He is one of the few directors whose style is so distinctive that his last name has become an adjective. According to Urban Dictionary, the definition of Lynchian is: “having the same balance between the macabre and the mundane found in the works of filmmaker David Lynch.” To see a prime example of that adjective film lovers need look no further than Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986), which does indeed begin in the mundane before slowly sinking in macabre violence. My first introduction to the world of David Lynch was through his ground breaking, but unfortunately interrupted, early 1990s TV series Twin Peaks . This was one of the first television shows to grab viewers with a series-long mystery: who killed Laura Palmer? A mix of soap opera, police procedural, and the supernatural, it is a unique show that showed the darkness hidden in suburbia and remains influential to this day. Featuring Kyle MacLachlan as an FBI investigator with a l...