Between The Rainmaker
(1997) and Youth Without Youth (2007)
director Francis Ford Coppola has mostly stayed to producing films. Since Youth
Without Youth he has been directing a new film every two years including Tetro (2009) and Twixt (2011). Each new film
that he does is Coppola finding new ways to tell different types of stories
that are not typical. Twixt is Coppola’s way of trying to tell
an old story in new way.
Hall Baltimore (Val Kilmer) is an aging writer of
supernatural novels who is on a book store.
He finds his way into a small town that’s a stop on his tour that also
happens to be the location of a notorious murder. Just as Baltimore is leaving town Sheriff
Bobby LaGrange (Bruce Dern) comes up to him wanting to know if he would like to
collaborate with him on a new novel that involves the town’s latest murder
victim. It seems that the body of an
unknown girl has been found with a wooden stake in her chest. Needing something new to write about Baltimore
agrees to the collaboration but soon discovers that the only way to find the “real”
story is to go into a deep dreamlike state where he meets odd characters of the
town including a goth-like young girl by the name of V (Elle Fanning) and Edgar
Allen Poe (Ben Chaplin) who will help him find his new novel that will put him
back on the map.
Twixt is Coppola
trying to channel his inner David Lynch by way of Twin Peaks but the film is not filled with any interesting
characters nor does Kilmer’s Baltimore make for as interesting a main focus as
Kyle MacLauchlan’s Special Agent Dale Cooper.
The overuse of CGI in the dream sequences leaves a lot to be
desired. This is a lesser film from the
director whose glory days such as The
Godfather (1972) and Apocalypse Now
(1979) seem far in the distant past.
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