Blue Velvet (1986)

Back in the days when David Lynch's movies used to be coherent, this film proves to be one of the most powerful in a long line of odd and strange films. I felt all of the actors were exceptional in this film, reflecting the power and evil in Dennis Hopper's character. I can't see anyone else in this role, and Hopper proved once again he is the go-to guy when it comes to portraying a lunatic. Lynch's cinematography and artistic endeavors fit in so perfectly with each other, the film reeks of noir and suspense. An excellent film to watch for any first time Lynch watchers.

Fmovies: David Lynch is a very love-him-hate-him director, with people fascinated by his style and imagery and others who find his films not easy to follow and too weird for their tastes. As somebody who loves Lynch and a lot of his films(the only one I've disliked is Dune), Blue Velvet is up there at the top. The Elephant Man(never has there been a film that moved me more) may be my personal favourite but Blue Velvet is quite possibly Lynch's masterpiece. Loved Mulholland Drive as well, but it is not as accessible as Elephant Man or Blue Velvet- films that even those who aren't fans of Lynch are likely to love- and is his most polarising most likely.

Blue Velvet is an incredible-looking film. All of Lynch's films are beautifully shot and that is true of Blue Velvet as well, and the imagery is both hauntingly surreal and beautiful, all the different colours really popping out at you. The music is hypnotic with a very haunting undercurrent and really adds to the story's strangeness and mystery elements. The script is thoughtful and cohesive with a dose of weird but subtle humour as well as some deliberately not so subtle parts(especially with villain Frank Booth). The atmosphere created is the very meaning of scintillating and suspense levels are to the maximum. The story- one of the most coherent and accessible of any Lynch film- is always interesting and entertaining, the detective story elements are genuinely suspenseful and at times scary, Lynch has never directed a tenser scene than the climax here.

Lynch's direction is superb; along with Mulholland Drive it contains some of his best. The characters all serve a point to the story and they are very interestingly written, in the case of Frank Booth, one of the most evil and fascinating villains on films, iconic. The acting is superb as well, especially with Dennis Hopper who's terrifyingly sadistic and sometimes hilarious, he is very over the top but in a gleefully enjoyable way. Kyle MacLachlan has never been in a better film or given a better performance than here, he's certainly not had a character as interesting either, Laura Dern is great and sensual Isabella Rossellini has a challenging role that she plays to truly devastating effect. Look out for an oddball but memorable appearance from Dean Stockwell as well. Overall, a strange but utterly mesmerising masterpiece. 10/10 Bethany Cox

I just want to say that I fell in love with this film after seeing the 25th anniversary edition blu ray. It looks beautiful. Having only seen it in the early 90s on a run-of-the-mill videotape that was probably pan and scan and full of color and toning problems, it truly is a different experience on blu ray.

The brutally honest performances, visionary aesthetic and the beautiful style make Blue Velvet an absolutely unmissable film and a wonderful addition to Blu Ray. Despite the films fame and notoriety, all these years later, the film still seems completely original, invigorating and unsurpassed.

Everyone assumes that Blue Velvet opens with the infamous ear-in-the-grass scene, but the film's opening is even more disturbing than that. A suburban fantasia of white picket fences, blood-red roses, waving fireman, happy children and a man watering his lawn gives way to the disturbing moment when the watering man collapses and the camera pans down to dirt level where a number of horrific insects are scrabbling in the dirt at the base of the lawn. The soundtrack changes from Leave It to Beaver-style music to the loud, gnawing, electric saw-like noises emitted by the creatures. Only subsequent to this scene does Jeffrey Beaumont (a wide-eyed, snoopy Kyle MacLachlan) find the ear in a field of overgrown weeds.

The ear leads Jeffrey through a sordid underworld involving kidnapping, masochism, drug- dealing, and murder. But while there's a whole lot of plot in Blue Velvet, Lynch's more elemental concern is with unearthing the truth behind the facade (i.e. showing what lurks under the lawn). Even the blue velvet dress that chanteuse Dorothy Valens (Isabella Rossellini) wears hides a secret — namely, the bruises on her body which are delivered by the vile Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper, in the role that brought him back to the limelight).

When Jeffrey asks the naive Sandy (Laura Dern), the prim girl on whom he has a crush, why there is so much trouble in the world, the answer is clear — without it, our lives would be far duller. Jeffrey himself admits that he loves a mystery and the curiosity that his desire entails is the same one that fuels Lynch's own vision. When Frank says to Jeffrey, "You're like me," it could be Lynch speaking to the audience. We want to know more, even if what we find out hurts or is ugly. Like the scene of an accident, we cannot look away.

Fueled by a vibrant and always-surprising dream like surrealism, Blue Velvet reminds us that the dreams and fantasies of our subconscious are dangerous and thrilling; it's surface reality that is superficial and mundane.

This is definitely a film worth watching multiple times. It gets better and better on every viewing. There are so many questions, and at the same time, so many answers, which seem to bring up more questions. Blue Velvet is a timeless film and it looks absolutely superb on Blu Ray. I will happily get lost in this film from time and time again, it's absolutely remarkable. 10/10

Blue Velvet fmovies. The sexual revolution in film came some ten years after the label's coinage in the late Sixties. It probably began with Last Tango in Paris. Directed by the acclaimed Bernardo Bertolucci, Last Tango is notorious for a sex scene involving Marlon and roughly a third of a stick of butter. Theretofore sex in film could potentially be used as a means of revealing the lightest or the darkest character's traits: primarily, vulnerability, instinct, sadism and impulse. Blue Velvet is a good example of a movie using such a dynamic. Blue Velvet is not a film that is easily appreciated. Likewise, it is not a film that is easily forgotten. It is a timeless controversy, and it is a vision demanding attention if not praise.

Set in a small American town, Blue Velvet is a dark, sensuous mystery involving the intertwining lives of four very different individuals. The film's painful realism reminds us that we are not immune to the disturbing events which transpire in Blue Velvet's sleepy community. There is a darker side of life waiting for us all. And as a critic said 'you either think it's dementedly wild at heart or a lost highway to nowhere'. Even some eighteen years after the release of Blue Velvet its vision remains wildly adamant relative to the stride of other works of contemporary noir. There have been many films about suburban crime, but none as dangerously imposing as this. Why is that so?

If Blue Velvet might not be labeled as a masterpiece one has to acknowledge that there are in this movie a lot of so called 'masterpiece element' and if Blue Velvet will never be considered as Mr. Lynch best feature, I personally can see a lot of David Lynch's genius flowing in that movie.

First of all, the way David Lynch makes Blue Velvet increasingly disturbing is a perfect example of how pristine the dynamics of weirdness and tension are built (remember Eraserhead and Elephant Man). Through this process Mr. Lynch indeed deconstructs the audience expectations. The film setting and mood are introduced in an exposition lifted directly from older films (there are numerous references to It's A Wonderful Life). In result the film is initially expected to follow a particular path. The way Mr. Lynch associate elements of classic narrative methodology and 'his dynamics of noir' (previously explained) appears to be original at worst 'avant gardiste' at best.

Second of all, the opposition between the creepiness of the plot and the setting of it is definitely for me a masterpiece element. The film is set in Lumberton. This does not represent a quaint, small town by similarity; it is one. Lumberton is filled with characters that are completely typical. I can almost see the cops eating doughnuts in the coffee shop and the local football star dating the head cheerleader. This typicality is definitely not out of coincidence but of intention. In fact these characters function to punctuate the story, not to distinguish it. The 'infamous' individuality of Lynch's vision is established in the darker side of Lumberton. Our perspective throughout the film is fixed on Jeffery, and is deliberately biased by his good nature. Jeffery is portrayed with great subtlety by Kyle MacLachlan (FBI agent from "Twin Peaks"). He is paired with Sandy (Laura Dern), the daughter of a neighborhood investigator who epitomizes to perfection the 'girl-next-door'; in Blue Velvet it is her literal function. Completing this diverse list of roles is a haunting and brief per

To watch Blue Velvet for the first time 31 years after its original release is a treat of unexpected proportions. I'm not going to tell about the story because, I'm sure, each one of us could tell it in very different ways. The blandness of Kyle MacLachland here is a major plus. It's not him that rivet us but his circumstances. And the circumstances are truly riveting, terrifying, unpredictable and gloriously cinematic. Dennis Hopper is superb, disgustingly so and Isabella Rossellini creates a character that was totally new to me. Related to many others but new, disturbingly so. Dean Stockwell has a moment that I know already will stay in my mind for ever. I'm so glad I finally saw it.

What surprised me was how very different this was from the two other great David Lynch films I'd seen: "Lost Highway" and "The Straight Story", which are in turn very different from one another. I'd been told by a disappointed David Lynch fan, back in 1997, that the only reason I was so deeply impressed with "Lost Highway" was that I hadn't seen "Bue Velvet", in which he does much the same kind of thing better. "Blue Velvet" may indeed be better (I wouldn't want to say), but in no respect is it the same kind of thing. (The only instance I've encountered so far of Lynch making the same film twice is "Lost Highway" being remade as "Mulholland Drive", which partly accounts for the latter film being so stale and uninvolving.)

"Blue Velvet" is a simple amateur sleuthing story, but the genius is in the telling of it. It's hard to avoid the feeling that something supernatural is somehow involved, although it isn't, and we know that it isn't. It looks and feels as though we're watching the world through a special enchanted (or cursed) prism: the image has been pulled apart, ALMOST into two distinct images, with the elements of pure evil and pure wholesomeness now distinct from one another, sitting just millimetres apart.

Unrelated to this, but still contributing to the intense suspense and the overall creepiness, is Lynch's ability to make us familiar with a few ordinary locations, which grow more sinister - or at least more meaningful - every time we see them, until the sight of a simple concrete stairwell in the dark is enough to make us start to panic.