Fire Walk With Me is Laura's perception of Twin Peaks the town, and more so, the television series it ties into. The cinematography is hardened with terse contrasts and heavy blacks, the niceties and quirk of its more disarming characters all but missing, and the frames often more disjointed and disorienting. One could even say the casting changes are a product of Laura's perspective. Her best friend Donna has been replaced with someone less discerning—Moira Kelly's widened eyes and quivering…

For years, Hollywood and the surrounding Culture Wars have asked a question: Do Critics Matter? It's a frankly boring question, but the main anxiety has developed out of a growing disconnect between Rotten Tomatoes Favorites and the American Box Office. But Disney and their expanding intellectual properties have put a new spin on this story: critics don't matter, but studios deliberately position / design films to harness their words in order to enter The Cultural Conversation. Their movies are no…

I could talk about how this film's structure finally achieves the blissful melancholy that has been at the heart of all of Wes Anderson's films. I could talk about the precision of his framing and tracking shots, and how often he finds visual comedy through a perfect edit, or the slight entrance of new material into the frame. I could talk about how depressing the film is, the hints of both a traumatizing past, and that in a way, Sam…