Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

David Lynch – 1992 – USA

• One of the most unfairly maligned films of its day; one of several – like The Godfather III and Carlito’s Way – that were critical bombs more because of a cultural bandwagon effect than because of their own merits.

• Fire Walk with Me is Lynch’s reassertion of authority over Twin Peaks; abandoning the quaint and quirky aspects that had taken over the TV show, and had leaked into TV in general to an annoying degree, and making it a purely Lynchian work in harmony with his other features like Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart.

• Revolves around a tour-de-force performance by the ethereal Sheryl Lee as troubled and doomed Laura Palmer, whose presence in the TV show was primarily as a corpse.

• Not a straightforward plot as much as a series of interconnected, surreal set-pieces that are extremely memorable for their experimental techniques; i.e. Laura's dream of stepping into a painting on her wall, and a sequence in a bar where characters’ words appear in subtitles in lieu of the standard movie practice of lowering the background music so dialogue can be heard.

• A 90-minute appendix film called The Missing Pieces was also made, comprised of deleted and extended scenes.  It is fascinating as a parallel film to Fire Walk with Me and it’s even more abstract since it has no context.