Platoon and Blue Velvet

Platoon was a good choice by Oscar, but I dunno, something about Oliver Stone's directorial style, the pitch and rhythms of his productions, and the way he gets on his pulpit and lectures - it generally doesn't stir my pot. Saying that Platoon is frequently stunning, the best thing he has filmed. It was the first movie to really show what it was like to be a soldier in combat in Vietnam, written a guy who lived through it. I like how Stone created a sense of confusion during the battle scenes; there was no cinematic safe haven or hiding place. I felt the chaos, the fear of it all. And it achieves this without glorifying war, which is a difficult trick. It filled me with revulsion and outrage, and that makes it an effective anti-war movie.

The acting is top rate – I really hated the guy Tom Berenger played and really loved Willem Dafoe (which might say a lot about my own character). And while it is overwritten and heavy-handed, it did generate a powerful emotional response in me.

David Lynch messed with my mind with his offbeat Blue Velvet, which I can only describe as Norman Rockwell meets Hieronymus Bosch, where wholesome suburbia is split open to expose the corruption and sickness inside. It's an odd melodramatic Oedipal nightmare that pendulums in style from ‘slick Hollywood’ to ‘grade Z’ production. While it is sometimes too goofy for its own good (too goofy to be a complete success in truth) and it leaves more questions than answers - it is an eye-opener - a screwed up ‘happening’, to be experienced more than understood. From the moment Kyle MacLachlan’s Jeffrey finds a severed ear in a field, the film spirals into a demented adventure that’s akin to a Hardy Boy stumbling onto a perverse freak show of crime. And no Hardy Boy ever met anything as unhinged as Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth. 

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