Garden State
Garden State exceeded my relatively lofty expectations. It was a pretty awesome concept, especially since it managed to feature some Lynch/Tarantino characteristics while maintaining a fairly mainstream bent throughout.
I got a kick out of having a Nick Drake song on the soundtrack, as I recall saying to myself early in the movie, “This movie needs a Nick Drake song.”
The “medicated” front portion of the movie, strangely enough, had a Dumbland characteristic. This begs clarification, as EZ-E (most likely the only other person in the world to have seen that weird little nugget of Lynch) has probably jettisoned coffee all over his monitor at the thought that something could bear resemblance to Dumbland. But, it had a forced quality (by design, of course) to the dialog that really felt like Dumbland, or perhaps the dinner scene in Eraserhead.
I would liken the thematic (English III/IV GT: thumbatic, as I recall) curve to that of an alternative Requiem for a Dream that ended a good bit better, with people having learned from their mistakes instead of being utterly destroyed by them.
The camera work on faces, especially the grave digger friend, had a definite Tarantino style to it that I love, sort of too-low-to-the-ground and askew.