David Lynch is rightly considered among the most impenetrably bizarre and allegorical filmmakers of his generation; however, there’s always a resolutely singular sense of authorship and intention to his work (even if he’s literally the only person who knows what he’s trying to say). That’s as true of 1977’s pioneering Eraserhead and 1986’s revered Blue Velvet as it is 1999’s comparatively conventional The Straight Story and 2006’s maligned Inland Empire. It’s certainly also valid for what’s perhaps his most unjustly disparaged creation: 1997’s Lost Highway. Celebrating its 25th anniversary this week, Lost Highway arrived in the midst of a career slump for Lynch. Neither 1990’s Wild at Heart nor 1992’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me earned the same kind of accolades as his 1980s run of films...
Work-life balance gets cut off at in the head in the new teaser trailer for Apple TV+’s Severance. Coming from first-time creator Dan Erickson, the sci-fi thriller series is directed and executive produced by Ben Stiller. (Stiller helmed six of Season 1’s nine episodes, with Aoife McArdle handling the rest.) The show centers on Adam Scott’s Mark Scout, head of a team at Lumon Industries. What exactly the company does might not be as important as how they do it: Using an invasive surgical procedure called “severance,” employees willingly have their memories split between work and home. When they’re at work, they don’t remember their personal lives, and vice versa. As the official synopsis puts it, “This daring experiment in ‘work-life balance’ is called into question as Mark finds himself a...