OK “The Sopranos” . . . cool, yipee, etc. BUT. I’m really enjoying “Big Love.” At first I had a hard time finding my way in (as if I want to watch a show about a man who worries about having too much sex), but this show has a strange Lynchian bite to it. In fact, it’s downright creepy in the way it makes normal and human a practice that couldn’t be any stranger and, maybe, attractive. Chloe Sevigny is, as always, remarkable. And Harry Dean Stanton, Bill Paxton, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Grace Zabriskie, Mary Kay Place–all turn in good work. But the writing . . . the storylines are just so damned weird and, at times, uncomfortably titilating and frightening. Is anyone else watching?

This is a pretty cool film–a too, too bright California noir set in a metropolitan SoCal high school. Imagine Dashiell Hammett writing a script for the UPN’s “Veronica Mars” with Fritz Lang directing and you get a pretty good idea of what writer/director Rian Johnson is up to. The language is dense, performatively so, and the storyline can be confusing (but no more confusing than the first time I watched The Maltese Falcon). What I liked was the audacity of the project, the verve in which the actors (particularly Joseph Gordon-Levitt–will no one on this blog watch Mysterious Skin!!!!–, Lukas Haas and Noah Fleiss) attack their roles, and the filmmakers’ keen visual sensibility. It’s not perfect (though it may be the best grad school film project ever to grace the big screen). In fact it is rough around the edges. Still, I recommend it!