Five Cool Things and David Lynch

At the beginning of 2017, I started this series as a way of bringing a little joy and a little light into what I thought was a world full of darkness and despair (if I’d only known what was to come). Every Friday, I talked about five things (really six because there was always an “and…”) that I enjoyed and that I thought was cool. In October 2020, I took what I thought was going to be a short break. Things had gotten a little too dark for me at the time. Things like…well, it was October 2020 so you can remember how difficult it was for everybody back then. Add to that some really tough stuff goings-on at my work and I just couldn’t handle the added stress of writing a weekly column.

That short break turned into a little over four years, but here I am. There has been a lot of cool stuff that has come out in that time, and I’ve discovered many other things that had been waiting for me to find it. I don’t know if I’ll cover all the things that I found during my break as there are many more discoveries up ahead, but I hope it is fun for all of us.

I’ve decided a weekly article is still a bit too much so this is now a bi-weekly series and I’ve moved it to Wednesdays instead of Fridays, but everything else should be the same. I’m looking forward to talking bout all the cool things to cross my path.

The Ipcress File (2022)

Based on the novel of the same name by Len Deighton (which was also the basis for the 1965 film starring Michael Cain), The Ipcress File is a terrific little 1960s spy story. Like all the best spy stories, the plot is overly complicated and sometimes confusing. It revolves around three agents of a fictional British Intelligence Agency. At first, they are looking for a missing nuclear scientist but by the end, they wind up thwarting an assassination attempt on JFK.

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I don’t mind a convoluted plot as long as it zips at a quick pace and the thing flies. But what makes it sing are the performances from the three leads (Joe Cole, Lucy Boynton, and Tom Hollander) and the excellent costumes and set designs. This thing looks and feels like an old-school 1960s spy thriller but with style —like a gay Bond on really good designer drugs.

Irvine Welsh’s Crime

I’m a big fan of Danny Boy’s 1996 film Trainspotting which was based on Irvine Welsh’s novel of the same name. I’ve read the novel and I suppose I liked it, but it was a difficult read. It was written in a stream-of-consciousness style using a heavy Scottish dialect. I suspect if I had never seen the film I’d not have a clue what was going on.

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In fact, I’m sure that’s true because I tried reading the sequel, Porno, and I couldn’t get halfway through it because the language made it so difficult to understand what was happening half the time. The same thing happened to me when I tried reading Filth. There is a lot to like about Welsh’s writing which is why I keep trying, but being so unfamiliar with the dialect, I struggle to understand. Filth was made into a film starring James McAvoy. Welsh wrote a sequel to it which was subsequently turned into this television series for Britbox.

Though the series was created and co-written by Welsh, it bears little resemblance to the novel, save for some of the characters. It stars Dougray Scott as Ray Lennox, a Detective Inspector for the Edinburgh, Scotland Serious Crimes police. He’s a good cop but struggles with his personal life and both alcohol and cocaine abuse. He’s partnered with Amanda Drummond (Joanna Vanderham), who is much younger, less experienced, and a progressive feminist. Ray is old school police, but unlike most of the other coppers on his team, he’s willing to adapt to new methods and ways of thinking.

For the first series, they are trying to track down a child abductor (who doesn’t show up until the penultimate episode and I won’t spoil who plays him but when I caught his name in the credits, I audibly yelped). The second series has them on the trails of a serial killer who is literally carving up the bodies of prominent people in the city.

The mysteries are intriguing and it is very well written. The acting is top-notch across the board making it one of the better crime series I’ve seen in a long while.

Victims of Sin

I know virtually nothing about Mexican cinema. I’ve seen some early films from Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro González Iñárritu, but that’s about it. Certainly, I’m at a loss in terms of cinema from their Golden Age. So, I was pleased to see this film pop up on the Criterion Channel. If there are more films like this, I hope to become a true fan of Mexican cinema.

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Victims of Sin is a wonderful mix of film noir and melodrama with a lot of singing and dancing thrown in for good measure. Ninón Sevilla stars as a dancer in a seedy nightclub. One night, she finds a baby lying in a trashcan and decides to rescue it. This irks her boss (the baby cries a lot and she keeps missing her queues), and so she finds herself without a job. She’ll turn to prostitution before being taken in by the owner of a slightly less seedy nightclub. Before too long, she’ll find herself at odds with the baby’s father (a deliciously evil Rodolpho Acosta), which erupts in tragedy and violence.

It is deliriously plotted and moves at a bullet’s pace. It can be a bit too melodramatic at times, but it is still a ton of fun to watch, and it is gorgeously shot by Gabriel Figueroa.

The Outsiders

My daughter recently had to read this classic YA novel from S.E. Hinton in school and then they watched the film. And since we live near the actual Outsiders house where they shot parts of the film, they visited that on a field trip. The daughter and her friends are obsessed. She now has pictures of C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, and Patrick Swayze on her wall. (My wife keeps getting flashbacks to her childhood!) Over the Christmas break, she made me read the book and then we watched the film.

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The story can be a little too Young Adult for this nearly 50-year-old man, but mostly, it holds up quite well. It follows a group of teenagers living in Oklahoma in the 1950s. They are known as “greasers” due to their long, unclean hair, which they slick back with a greasy gel. But they are also from poor families whose parents are either completely out of the picture or abusive. They are in constant conflict with the “Socs” who are rich kids from the “good” side of town. Over the course of the novel, they must face huge challenges and ultimately learn that all people, no matter their social status, face all sorts of difficulties.

It is easy to see why my daughter and her friends identify with the characters in the novel. They are nerdy, and arty, and don’t fit the standard junior high kids in Oklahoma mode – in a word, they are outsiders. I love that about them and I love that they found this story to obsess over.

Deathtrap

Based upon the stage play of the same name, Deathtrap is a twisty murder mystery that works as a meta-commentary on murder mysteries. Sidney Bruhl (Michael Caine) is a successful playwright whose best days are behind him. When his latest play flops, he despairs. When he receives a fantastic script from Clifford Anderson (Christopher Reeve), a former student, he hatches a plan to invite him over under the guise of mentorship, but instead murder him and take credit for the play. His wife (Dyan Cannon) does her best to stop him.

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To say any more would spoil the many twists and turns of the plot. It has a lot of fun playing with the very idea of murder mysteries, always winking at the audience while it sets up another unexpected twist. Michael Caine is great as always, but it is Christopher Reeve who steals the show for me. I always love watching him play a character that isn’t Superman. Cannon was unjustly nominated for a Golden Raspberry for her role (which does involve a lot of screaming) but I found her quite good.

David Lynch (1946-2025)

Whenever anyone famous dies there are always numerous memorials in my social-media feeds. I follow a lot of different types of people so usually the memorials come from similar circles – my music nerd friend responds to the loss of musicians, etc. The day David Lynch died my entire feed for the entire day was nothing but memorials to the great director. Everybody was mourning.

Lynch’s films were often confounding and never huge box-office successes, but I think they spoke to anyone who loved art, no matter your preference of medium. He was a true original. His death is a great loss to cinema and the world.