Review of Inland Empire (2006) by Chad V — 09 Jul 2008

Be Kind Rewind, the latest from director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine, Science of Sleep) has a great premise: Jack Black, after being magnetized in a power plant accident, erases all of the VHS tapes in the store that his buddy works at, so they re-film their own versions of all the movies to replace the lost tapes. There are some parts of this that work very well. The re-shooting parts are awesome, really creative and well done, and some of the scenes are pretty hilarious. But, overall, it doesn't quite work, and the end is unsatisfying.

Stephen King's The Mist is kind of like The Fog meets Children of the Corn meets Jurassic Park or something. Basically, a mist moves into town, and there is something in the mist that kills people. Add to this some crazy lady who claims its God's judgment and attempts to gain converts and this is an unusual horror film. Its not very graphic, but primarily psychological, dealing mostly with people's reactions to being trapped indoors and afraid to go out in the mist. When its psychological, it works well. The CGI monsters on the other hand are pretty dumb. The "stunning" ending didn't really do anything for me, but it was pretty cool. Overall, a fairly entertaining time.

Bourne Ultimatum, part 3 in the Bourne series about ex-CIA agent Jason Bourne running for his life and trying to figure out his past, was definitely action-packed. Maybe a little too action packed. The whole film is basically two incredibly long chase scenes. So, entertaining: yes. However, little to no plot, and nothing to make it worth watching again. Still, a good time while watching it.

The In-Laws is a comedy about the fathers of a young couple meeting each other. One of them (Peter Falk) turns out to be involved in some crazy international heist, while the other (Alan Arkin) is just a very normal guy who gets mixed up in it too. Its pretty funny for an old movie in parts, and the two lead actors are great. Lots of people in this that I recognized as being famous in later movies. However, I'm not easily impressed by comdies I guess.

Inland Empire is director David Lynch's latest (Mullholland Drive, Blue Velvet). I'm not really sure what it was about except maybe some actress caught up in a weird time-warp, identity crisis or something due to the movie being cursed. Its incredibly disjointed, and although there was a scene here and there that was really creepy and well done, overall the movie was too incoherent to be enjoyable. If watching this while on lots of drugs I suppose it might either be the greatest thing, or perhaps the most terrifying thing one could watch. It is like a sprawling 3 hour nightmare. I think Lynch is just trying too hard to be weird these days...