Recent Viewing

I recently watched Escape From Tomorrow, in which a straight American middle-class male plays out his mid-life crisis within a Boschian theme park.

"Arms inside the vehicle at all times."

At the time of its release, there was some concern that the physical feat of the movie — shooting the bulk of it on-the-sly at Walt Disney World, inviting censure from Disney's lawsuit-happy copyright trolls — would eclipse what filmmaker Randy Moore was actually hoping to achieve with the film. From the looks of Metacritic and the (increasingly-suspect) Rotten Tomatoes, that fear appears to be well-founded.

"All that sneaking around. And for what?"

I loved it. Moore's surrealist aesthetic brings to mind early David Lynch, and the later, more accomplished films of Guy Maddin. Like Lynch and Maddin, Moore draws narrative tension by exploring the chasm between the deepest and darkest desires of a man, and the object(s) of said desire, framed within an environment seemingly manufactured to inflame, subvert and potentially ruin the protagonist.

So yeah: Lynch, Maddin. But the film I found myself most frequently drawing comparisons to wasn't by either of those guys. No, the film that came to mind was Adrian Lyne's Jacob's Ladder. 

"Wait a minute: what's that you say?"

In fact, I re-watched the latter, just to see if I was off-track. I'll acknowledge it's a bit of a stretch, but not so far as one might think.

"Where we goin'? Who knows?"

But that will have to be a post for another day, as the usual summer distractions are keeping me from the keyboard. Please stay tuned.