Word: derning
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Well, satire was never meant to ingratiate, and The 'Burbs is unsparing in its cauterizing of provincialism. One neighbor (played by Bruce Dern with wonderfully psychotic poise and a barbed-wire halo of gray hair) responds to every real or imagined threat to his property values as if he were commanding a platoon in Nam -- with trusty telescope, walkie-talkie and a K ration of animal crackers. Another friend (Rick Ducommun) is your basic bully-wimp who goads Ray into all manner of illicit snooping. And Ray is the mild soul caught in the middle; with no special convictions...
...movie pits the passions of the '60s love and drug culture against the conventions of small-town America, the obligatory collegiate life of demonstration against the rigid demands of a fearful but patriotic older generation. Within the families, though, Scott must deal with a stern, unfeeling father (Bruce Dern) and a disenchanted, prayerful mother (Mariette Hartley), while Ralph must deal with his own widowed mother (Joanna Cassidy...
...Wahter ya'll lookin' at, boys? She ain't mah neighbor's wife or nothin'... where's that dern stage...
Switch to the hero, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), who has just found a human ear in a field. He takes it to the Lumberton police and carries out a personal investigation that leads him to Sandy Williams, the chief's daughter (Laura Dern), Dorothy Vallens, a masochistic torch singer (Isabella Rossellini) and Frank Booth, a perverted drug dealer (Dennis Hopper). Jeffrey discovers that Vallens' son and husband have been kidnapped by Booth, and his effort to intervene opens realms of violence and sexuality he never knew possible...
Kyle MacLachlan is outstanding as Jeffrey. With his paperboy face and barely noticeable earring, he meets and hurdles each awful rite of passage with marked confidence. Laura Dern makes for terrific chemistry with MacLachlan; she slow dances and sips Heineken like a runner-up Homecoming Queen and proclaims with detached conviction, "It's a strange world." Isabella Rossellini is all lips and eyes as the tortured chanteuse. "Hit me, hit me," that S&M cliche, has resonance and poignancy in the context of her performance. Dennis Hopper is to-the-core nasty as the vile drug-killer; he was better...