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My favorite Nicholas Ray movie. A Proto-Lynchian descent into madness that picks apart the American dream. I love how subjective the film becomes, as we get closer and closer to a completely unhinged James Mason. A true portrait of a disintegrating man.
Feb 11, 2021
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watched in a theater the other week. so dense. a fragmented psychiatric nightmare with themes that spin with the centrifugal force strong enough to pull your soul out of your body as you stand in the middle of it, inland empire is a very individual experience that you can tell lynch used as a collage to express ideas he’d been trying to hone in on for many years already. shot entirely on digital handicam, giving it the feeling of a dream transmission being broadcast directly into your head, highlighted by the handicam grain and the washed out colors from the ai upscale, the movie is woven together like a disjointed and disturbing web akin to both a wired cyberscape’s and an arachnid’s. lynch’s experimentation with form allows the film’s sequences to shine in tandem with one another through a disjointed structure and nonlinear narrative, with sequences cutting into each other like popup ads. through this structure it conveys a deep-seeded desire to express the convergence of life and technology in a way. accentuated by many themes we’ve encountered before in lynch’s work, such as exploring a strange and malicious side of hollywood akin to mulholland drive or the lost girl motif as in darkened room, it’s really the film’s tagline which succinctly encapsulates everything i gathered from my second watch: “a woman in trouble.” nikki grace, famed actress, is placed in the role of susan blue, and soon their lives and consciousnesses begin to converge as they uncover the paralleled life and death of a lost polish girl, a mysterious one that cursed the prospective screenplay.
circles/repetition symbolic for karmic rebirth. phones and electromagnetic references (axxon/axon) as indicators of human connection. industrial factories and trains as  symbols of pregnancy alongside many euphemisms for back-alley abortions. the price of fame and fading into obscurity. lost in the wires of radio, tv, and film, inland empire is a symbolic labyrinth waiting to be uncovered, and a solid contender for the greatest film ever made.
look at me and tell me if you’ve known me before.
Apr 14, 2025
Recommending this because I just watched it and was blown away. Kind of experimental, off-putting but realistic sci-fi, like a film length Twilight Sone episode starring Rock Hudson. Some gorgeous cinematography and a great reflection on what it means to live a fulfilling life.
Oct 27, 2024
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one of my favorite flicks. every image achingly gorgeous, dripping with the kind of boredom, decay, insomnia, dirt, silence, and the aimless menial labor death drive towards some kind of unquantifiable success or betterment that is met with only futility and runs us down into husks of ourselves that only exists in america.
everything is falling apart, we are all being led to slaughter, the best we can do is try and love and forgive one another.
Jan 21, 2024
Top Recs from @lance-oppenheim
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My favorite Todd tune. Hauntingly cinematic. This was a big reference for us on our score. We attempted to combine elements of Todd’s psychedelic breakdowns with exotica and romantic noirs (Nelson Riddle and Hermann) to capture the mental and emotional landscapes of our subjects. This song felt that way for us. Something that felt more like a dreamscape.
Feb 11, 2021
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Todd Haynes’ SAFE is one of the best films of the nineties, and it’s a film we referenced a lot during our time on SOME KIND OF HEAVEN for its visual language. Julianne Moore plays Carol, a LA homemaker who inexplicably becomes ill with what seems to be a chronic and extreme aversion to her environment. When mainstream medicine offers no answers, she has to search elsewhere for help. The movie plays as a horror film where the only villains are Carol’s environment and frail body. The movie is engrossing and enigmatic, refusing easy answers and tidy resolutions. And lord knows, it’s become far more relevant today.
Feb 11, 2021
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Larry Sultan’s masterworks. My cinematographer David Bolen and I drew so much from both of these books, not just stylistically but also from Sultan’s process of “riffing off of reality.” These two books informed the look of our film, encouraging us to dig deeper and find the proper visual language that reflected our Utopian setting. We wanted the film to look somewhere between a Sultan photo and the Technicolor sheen in a Douglas Sirk Melodrama.
Feb 11, 2021