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Pretty Good

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

It's an American suburban crime movie with great acting by Dennis Hopper (bad guy) but overall pretty unmemorable.The story didn't really offer anything to stand out as most of the actions of the main character did not have meaningful reasoning behind them. Also what was portrayed as bizarre or shocking in here doesn't really convey similar emotions now in 2018 as opposed to what they probably did in 1986. It's about a young guy who finds a chopped human ear and starts playing detective for no apparent reason.

There seems to be all kind of misdirection in this story, as things you expect to happen never come to pass. For example, I expected Detective Williams (George Dickerson) to be just as much a corrupt cop in the story as the Yellow Man/Detective Gordon (Fred Pickler) turned out to be. And when Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) came up with his theory that Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) kidnapped Dorothy Vallens' (Isabella Rossellini) husband and son, I thought that was just so unlikely that I dismissed the idea out of hand. Turns out both of those assumptions were pretty much blown to bits as things came to pass.For a weirdly strange film with a lot going on, I thought the story was relatively easy to follow if one isn't distracted by the slick filming and Dorothy's bizarre behavior. No stranger to odd roles, Dennis Hopper excels at being a villain, just check him out in such diverse characterizations as "Mad Dog Morgan" and "Kid Blue" in completely different film genres. One hint offered by the script that Frank Booth actually DID cut off the ear of Dorothy's husband was when he remarked "Do it for van Gogh". At that point I had to reconsider my earlier reservations about just how accurate Jeffrey's assumptions would turn out to be.My favorite scene in the picture - Dean Stockwell lip-synching an old Roy Orbison tune 'In Dreams'. It almost looked like Stockwell was camping it up for real except that the voice was distinctively Orbison. The only real question I'd have about the entire picture was the one that set in motion the entire misadventure. How did Dorothy's husband's ear ever wind up in the open field in the first place?

This movie has become notorious or should I should say Roger Ebert has become notorious. This is the highest rated movie ever made that Ebert gave one star to. This has a 94% on RottenTomatoes and what do you know? I happen to be among the 94% who like it. This is David Lynch's best movie and it's actually one of the least surreal. All of the characters are so likeable in this.You have the main character, Jeffrey who falls in love with two women. What's amazing is that they manage to make both of these women very likeable characters. It's to the point where you don't really care which one he ends up with as it's a win-win situation. Frank Booth played by Dennis Hopper is simply amazing. What makes this villain so effective is that he's literally the only character who says the f-word except for literally ONE instance and that's by someone who's paraphrasing him! This is a great way of using bad language effectively. It makes the villain all the more menacing.I believe there was a magazine (possibly "Empire"?) that ranked this as the best movie of the 1980's. Well, they listed a bunch of movies and this was the highest ranked one from the 1980's. It's in fact the best film I've seen for Cult Month. It starts off by showing a severed ear. That's quite a funny coincidence as I just saw "The Fly" which had a scene where Jeff Goldblum's ear came off. Hey, it was Jeff Goldblum's ear! ****

Right now, while I'm trying to get some inspiration, the melody of "Blue Velvet" is playing in my memory and I can't get that "she wore blue velvet" out of my head... you expect movies to fascinate you on a visual, emotional and intellectual level but it's often the music that ends up winning you. But is that really a surprise for a movie whose starting point is the discovery of a severed ear.The film opens with the now iconic shot of the beautiful flowers towered by proud, white picket fences, a jolly fireman waving at the camera, images of a perfect and harmonious suburb in some middle town of America... but it immediately invites us to look closer and what we see are crawling bugs under the land. All it takes is just to be curious enough to make the ugliest discoveries. And Lynch sure knows how to make ugliness hypnotically attractive.And even beauty can have the opposite effect. I know it's a movie that invites for a deep analysis and I'm never stingy on paragraphs when a film arouses my mind and my feelings, but I want to give a personal and sincere approach to "Blue Velvet". And for that, I'll mention the first Lynch work I was familiar with, "Twin Peaks". I was a kid when the TV series aired and there was so much publicity that I started to watch it, I wanted to know who killed Laura Palmer and I really expected a banal detective mystery. After three or four episodes, I gave up as it became too creepy for my taste.But Friday was the 'Twin Peaks' day and even though I was watching another program, I was always tempted to have a peek on the series, as but I felt weirdly drawn to it. And you know what scared me the most about it? The ending credits' sequence, for some reason, the prom picture of Laura Palmer scared the hell out of me, not because of the picture but for all the creepiness it carried, all the secrets lying behind that adorable face. It was the symbolic content. That is how Lynch movies works, nothing is about what it seems to be about, and beauty and ugliness are such intertwining notions that you can only take some perspective by admitting that the world is strange.So "Blue Velvet" starts with a severed ear that leads to one discovery after another : a beautiful singer named Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini); then another a pervert sadomasochistic man named Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) and as the investigation progresses, so many new strange protagonists unfold, it just gets out of control. "Twin Peaks" started like routine murder investigation and see how it ended. But I think "Blue Velvet" works better than "Twin Peaks" because the investigators are amateurs.Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) discovers the ear and stars his journey into the heart of the city's darkness with the help of Sandy, a perfect pretty blonde girl played by Laura Dern. The most emblematic moment is when Jeffrey hides in a closet and watch Dorothy getting naked and just when you thought you're watching a beautiful woman, she opens the door, threatens to kill Jeffrey... but it's all an act, she's actually aroused. And when Frank comes, she literally gives herself, but it's a rather one-sided sex that ensues, and disturbing."What a strange world we live on" is the comment Jeffrey shares with Sandy, and it's quite neutral. Sandy is shocked. Both youngsters embody our own point of view, we're disturbed but aroused, it doesn't just work on a rational level, that's how it surpasses "Twin Peaks". That the two sleuths fall in love isn't even surprising, it represents the side of our perspective that wished they could just drop the whole case and enjoy their growing attraction. And again, music always finds a way to seal a relationship like "Blue Velvet" is Dorothy's seduction weapon, there's a beautiful romantic dance scene between Jeffrey and Sandy that elevates the film as a tender romance.Yes, tender. Sandy wonders if Jeffrey's a detective or a pervert, but strangely enough, I never questioned his moral outlook, and I knew he cared for Dorothy out of sympathy and decency. The film never plays it like a love triangle and I applaud Lynch for not having swum in the usual waters. The film is noir in its themes and motifs but the characterization is rather straight, we know who the victims, villains and heroes are. The film is considered one of the greatest mysteries, but I doubt it has to do with the crime but on the thought-provoking questions it raises: , why are we attracted by what can kill us? Why do we take risks? Maybe because that's the most thrilling part of life. Maybe for ethical reasons, to help those who can't be seen? Maybe that's what this ear found on the ground is about people who scream every day but we can't hear them, the film invites you to look and hear closer, for you might confront a Frank once in your life. Fear doesn't avoid danger. "Blue Velvet" is a movie so rich and visionary that it can easily fool you at a first viewing, it even fooled Ebert who got the raw realism of the darker scenes right but took the other ones with "corny" dialogues as artistic licenses meant to distract from the gripping realism. I don't think it did that more than it established the contrast between two worlds that are so close they might represent the own duplicity of our soul, from the secrets and fantasies hidden in our souls' closets.This is a disturbing movie raising disturbing questions. And it's so beautiful; I wouldn't mind asking myself as many disturbing questions as it'll take to admire its beauty.