Twin Peaks
Sometime during Twin Peaks‘ original run, I wanna say it was just before Season Two aired, Laura Palmer’s killer had definitely not been found yet, some magazine, probably People but possibly Entertainment Weekly, ran a multi-page spread about the show. I remember one layout had a map of the town with little pictures of the various characters and a blurb about their relationship with Laura and how they might be guilty. I wasn’t watching the show, but I was fascinated by the article. I especially remember reading about the Log Lady and wondering what the heck was this show. It sounded so interesting.
Buy Twin Peaks: The Television Collection Blu-rayBut this was the 1990s. There was no streaming. You couldn’t instantly pop on a show and start watching. You had to turn your TV on when each episode was airing. We had a VCR but I hadn’t recorded any of the episodes before reading this article so that was no good. Twin Peaks was not the type of show you could just turn on in the middle of it and expect to understand anything that was happening. So I shrugged and carried on without Twin Peaks in my life.
Fast forward many years, me and my wife are at the local library looking for something to watch. We grabbed the first part of Twin Peaks Season One (the library loaned the TV series out one disc at a time) and gave it a watch. We instantly loved it. I think we may have gotten the second disc, but we definitely didn’t finish it. I wanna say the next disc wasn’t immediately available or maybe we just got busy and put off grabbing the next one but whatever happened we didn’t finish the season. Time passed and it reached the point where we felt like we would need to start at the very beginning to remember what happened.
Decades later and I’m proud to say we have finally finished the original series. I don’t need to tell you, but it’s great. What an imaginative, weird, wonderful little series. What a miracle it was to have lasted even two seasons on Network TV. I was surprised to learn that they solved the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer in the middle of Season Two. I had always assumed that was an ongoing mystery up until the end. Even more surprising is that season two ends on an absolutely insane cliffhanger. I can’t wait to watch the movie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me and then the relatively recent return series that apparently clears up what happened with the cliffhanger.
Hannibal
Hannibal Lecter changed my life. Growing up, I was never much of a reader. I liked books, okay, but TV, movies, and video games were much more interesting. I was a freshman in high school when The Silence of the Lambs hit theaters. I loved that movie. I must have talked about how much I loved that movie a lot because my mother bought me the novel by Thomas Harris for Christmas that year. I devoured the book. I read it three times over the Christmas break. I loved the way it delved into what makes a serial killer tick and the forensic and psychological means by which the FBI catches them. That book made me a lifelong reader. That book made me decide to major in English at college. That book is partially why I am here today, writing this series.
Buy Hannibal: Season 1 Blu-rayI’m not the only one who loved that book and movie, especially Hannibal Lecter, the brilliant (and already incarcerated) serial killer (and cannibal) with whom fledgling FBI agent Clarice Starling shares a bit of quid pro quo to capture Buffalo Bill. Harris had previously written about Lector in his novel Red Dragon (which has been cinematically adapted twice) and he’d go on to write two more novels about the killer.
Hannibal, the TV series, is ostensibly an adaptation of Red Dragon but with a lot of changes. The book follows Will Graham as he tries to catch a serial killer nicknamed the Tooth Fairy. In that search, he meets with Hannibal Lecter (who Graham had captured before the events of the book) to gain insight into the mind of the Tooth Fairy. In the series, Hannibal has not yet been captured and he and Will become sort of friends. For the most part, the series follows a “serial killer of the week” format with Graham and Lecter working with the head of the Behavioral Science Department of the FBI to catch them. It isn’t until Season Three that the series begins to follow the plot of the book. It isn’t until halfway through that season that we meet the Tooth Fairy. Ironically, those episodes are the weakest in the series.
Hannibal Lecter has become one of the great modern horror icons. But like so many icons before him he’d become rather stale. Hannibal made him interesting again. He’s portrayed wonderfully by Mads Mikkelsen who has somehow managed to make the human much more interesting than the cannibal. Hugh Dancy likewise is great as Will Graham and Laurence Fishburne shines as Jack Crawford. The series mixes in lots of varying parts of the novels and films while forging its own unique path. It is also beautifully shot making even the most gruesome death scenes gorgeous to look at.
Dark Winds
Set in the Four Corners tribal lands during the 1970s, this AMC series follows Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon), a Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant, trying to solve various crimes while navigating the difficult politics of being a tribal policeman in a country that doesn’t accept him. Native Americans are naturally distrustful of authority and law enforcement even if they are from their tribe, and the FBI treats him like some dumb lackey. In the first season (and I’ve only watched the first season), Leaphorn is trying to solve a double murder while an FBI agent (Noah Emmerich) pesters him about a daring bank robbery in which the thieves escaped in a helicopter, which was last seen over tribal land.
Buy Dark Winds: Season 1 Blu-rayLephorn is assisted by Sergeant Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) and Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon), who grew up in the area but left for college and a better life but who is now back but may be hiding something. The show has a lot to say about the Native American plight while remaining a thrilling mystery. It is beautifully shot on location and wonderfully acted. I really enjoyed McClarnon on Longmire and his brilliant here. The back half of Season One felt a bit rushed, and its conclusion was disappointing, but mostly, I enjoyed it and am looking forward to Season Two.
Yellowjackets
There is a lot of Lost‘s DNA in this Showtime series. It follows a group of high school soccer players in two different timelines. In 1996, while flying to the national competition, their plane crashed deep inside the Canadian Rockies. For a year and a half, they must survive by any means possible (the opening teaser indicates they won’t be above murder and cannibalism), and there might just be supernatural forces hiding in the wilderness. In the present day, some of the survivors learn that the sins of the past have a way of catching up to them.
Buy Yellowjackets: Season 1 Blu-rayLike Lost, Yellowjackets uses the timelines in interesting ways. They play off of each other, and the juxtapositions give us insight into the characters. But whereas Lost tended to focus on a single character in each episode, Yellowjackets is very much an ensemble piece. Also like Lost I’m not sure the writers know where they are going with it, and two seasons in, I’m starting to feel as if they are adding in more mysteries just for the sake of it.
But I’m here for the ride. It is a show that very much makes me want to binge-watch, but also one that makes me feel a little depressed when I do. It goes to some very dark places and too much of that brings me down. But I feel like I’m complaining when really I love it. It is very well made and impeccably acted (the adult cast includes Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, and Juliette Lewis) and the mysteries are thrilling. It is the type of show that has multiple Reddit threads full of theories. You gotta love that.
The French Connection
I’m still reeling from the tragic loss of Gene Hackman. He was one of those actors who made everything better for him being in it. Even when he took paycheck jobs like The Poseidon Adventure, he never phoned it in. He was always present, always great. He was possibly never better than he was as Popeye Doyle, the racist, dirty cop in William Friedkin’s The French Connection.
Buy Godzilla vs. Biollante (Criterion Collection) Blu-rayWhen I first watched the movie, back when I was a teenager, I thought it was a fairly straightforward police thriller with a cop doing what he needed to do to catch the bad guys. It had a bit of a downer ending, but mostly, it was the type of movie I saw regularly in the 1980s. Cops were always having car chases in those movies and blowing things up. That was just how you did things. It was only later that I realized that Doyle was a terrible cop. Chasing drug dealers, he regularly puts regular citizens’ lives in danger, destroys property, and barely conceals his hatred of African Americans. That downer ending I mentioned just underlines how all of that still didn’t manage to put the real bad guys behind bars for very long.
It is a powerhouse performance with Hackman giving it his everything. He is riveting for every moment he’s on the screen and he’s on the screen for most of them.
Carrie Coon visits the Criterion Closet.
The Criterion Collection regularly invites various actors and directors into their closets to pick out some of their movies and talk about them. It is a fascinating glimpse into the heads of some of my favorite artists. I love seeing what movies they pick out and what they have to say about them. Sometimes you can tell the artists aren’t that interested, this is just another stop on some promotional tour. Sometimes they just find films they made and stroke their egos. But sometimes you can tell the person is a true cinephile and they just found their heaven. Carrie Coon is one of those people. You can feel her excitement coming off the screen. She admits to already owning a good chunk of the films and struggles to find some to add to her collection. Her excitement about movies is a wonderful thing.
