Twister | Harry Dean Stanton, Suzy Amis | Crispin Glover fans be happy

Twister | Harry Dean Stanton, Suzy Amis | The Best Film About Kansas Since The Wizard of Oz

DVDs:

Twister

	Twister Harry Dean Stanton, Suzy Amis Lions Gate, 2003 average customer review:based on 5 reviews view larger image
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Studio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 11/18/2003 Run time: 93 minutes Rating: Pg13

Crispin Glover fans be happy

Real excited about this DVD. If we could just get "The Dark Backward," and "Rubin and Ed" to be released on DVD, we could view these strange oddities all the time. "Twister" is a very strange movie with a nice cast. Everyone is pretty damn nuts, it's nice to see all these actors out of their minds. This is Crispin's strangest role to date, and that is a BOLD statement. Be sure to buy this if you like a dose of insanity once and a while.

The Best Film About Kansas Since The Wizard of Oz

Crispin Glover fans will be in hog heaven when they see this neglected classic. He chews up the scenery, spits it out, and chews it up all over again. He wears leather jackboots, cracks a whip, and plays echoplex guitar-drenched love songs that don't seem to go anywhere. He also sings a great song called "Daddy Was So Mean". His delivery is so delicate that every line spoken trembles with sensitivity.
Watch out for the million-dollar cameo from Bull Lee, author of "Junky".

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as great as you want it to be....

This movie is an interesting snapshot of some gifted actors in the late 1980's. Tim Robbins, who appears briefly in a cameo, obviously went on to have a major career. Crispin Glover found a unique niche of his own as an on- and off-screen eccentric. Suzy Amis appeared in a succession of minor roles and disappeared from movie screens. But more than that, Twisted in its entirety represents one of the signal artistic successes of that largely reactionary decade.

This is a film that can be watched as pure entertainment, and indeed it is hugely entertaining watching the Clevelands lurch from one catastrophe to another. But beyond that, it is filled with an unforgettable sequence of cinematic images: the opening shot of Violet dragging a vacuum cleaner across an empty field; the scene where Dylan McDermott deflates a large inflatable dinosaur with a smoldering cigarette butt; the plastic lizard that keeps migrating from one body of water to another; the voyeuristic helicopter; the golf shot from the widow's walk of the mansion; a lawn table floating in a swimming pool, a giant mascot lying in the wreckage spawned by a tornado. These images are precisely and beautifully composed but they are never presented as obvious symbols or filmic metaphors. Instead, they just exist alongside the capricious whims and behaviors of the Cleveland kids.

And that's not all. This is one of the few movies I can remember in which there is frequently no distinction between diagetic and non-diagetic musics. During the early interior scenes, the attentive listener will note that Milt Jackson has been tied up in the Cleveland's basement and administered a large dose of psilocybin--or so it sounds. Clearly, no Muzak could possibly sound like this, and so the question is: where is it coming from, what is it, and what does it mean?

The film of course does have a theme. It's the familiar old tale of materialism gone awry. The Clevelands, by virtue of their wealth, have been insulated from both the effects of nature and the consequences of their actions. A tornado destroys a nearby town while the Cleveland's revival mansion is spared. Howdy and Mo vacillate between morose withdrawal and sudden violent outbursts, with no concern for those around them, and yet survive in the bowels of their bloated affluence. And in the end, Lola--the moral center of a movie without a moral center--goes off with the rich and dissembling patriarch rather than remaining with the monstrous children as their surrogate mother. Can't say I blame her there.

This movie would be a leaden failure if it were as depressing as I'm making it sound. Actually it's exhilarating, funny, brilliantly acted--and allows William S. Burroughs his 15 minutes of screen fame (the target practice came a little late for old Bill's wife). Add it all up and you have a film that allows cineastes to uncover subtleties while never veering into pomposity or arthouse cliches. A terrific film from Michael Almereyda.

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