Isabella Rossellini Archives

Blue Velvet (1986)

Rating: ★★★★

Dec 1, 2003Sadomasochism Thriller

One of the key David Lynch films in which cleancut college kid Kyle MacLachlan finds a severed human ear and is drawn into a dark underworld of S&M lorded over by a maniacally deranged Dennis Hopper

Director: David Lynch

Actors: Kyle MacLachlan, Dennis Hopper, Isabella Rossellini, Laura Dern, …

Category: Horror

1 December 20036 December 2025 by Roog

Siesta (1987)

Rating: ★

May 22, 2005Deathdream

This directorial debut for Mary Lambert is a stylish but empty-headed erotic mystery that eventually settles for a fantastical twist ending

Director: Mary Lambert

Actors: Ellen Barkin, Gabriel Byrne, Julian Sands, Jodie Foster, …

Category: Fantasy

22 May 200510 May 2025 by Roog

Red Riding Hood (1987)

Rating: ★★

Jul 17, 2009Fairy-Tale

One of the cheap fairytale adaptations that Cannon Films made during the 1980s

Director: Adam Brooks

Actors: Craig T. Nelson, Amelia Shankley, Isabella Rossellini, Rocco Sisto

Category: Fantasy

17 July 200920 November 2024 by Roog

Wild at Heart (1990)

Rating: ★★★★★

May 22, 2001Surreal Disturbed Road Movie

One of David Lynch's finest films, with lovers Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern on the run in a road movie that travels through deranged places of the mind and explodes with crazy energy

Director: David Lynch

Actors: Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe, Diane Ladd, …

Category: Fantasy

22 May 200126 January 2020 by Roog

Death Becomes Her (1992)

Rating: ★★★

Mar 9, 2001Youth Serum Black Comedy

Robert Zemeckis film about an immortality treatment that digs a knife into Hollywood beauty treatments with a blackly funny knife. Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn have huge fun playing to the gallery and upstaging one another

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Actors: Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Bruce Willis, Isabella Rossellini

Category: Fantasy

9 March 200123 June 2020 by Roog

The Saddest Music in the World (2003)

Rating: ★★★

Jul 25, 2004Kitsch Surrealism

The best budgeted of Guy Maddin's films, a renaissance of his familiar kitsch surrealism and silent movie homages

Director: Guy Maddin

Actors: Isabella Rossellini, Mark McKinney, Maria de Medeiros, David Fox

Category: Fantasy

25 July 200416 January 2024 by Roog

The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 2: From Vaux to the Sea (2004)

Rating: ★★

Apr 5, 2018Surreal Mock Biography

The second part of Peter Greenaway's massive multi-media installation, a surreal mock biography dominated by Greenaway's fascination with nonsense lists. Gorgeous to look it but does it make for a dramatically engaging a film?

Director: Peter Greenaway

Actors: J.J. Feild, Roger Rees, Isabella Rossellini, Steve Mackintosh, …

Category: Fantasy

5 April 20182 June 2026 by Roog

Earthsea (2004)

Rating: ★

Jun 21, 2006Epic Fantasy/Apprentice Wizard

This TV mini-series adaptation of the Ursula Le Guin books is an insult. This was quickly mounted on the back of the success of The Lord of the Rings films but feels like tv filler that has zero affinity for Le Guin's richly cultured world

Director: Robert Lieberman

Actors: Shawn Ashmore, Kristin Kreuk, Isabella Rossellini, Danny Glover, …

Category: Fantasy

21 June 200612 February 2026 by Roog

Brand Upon the Brain! (2006)

Rating: ★★★½

Aug 17, 2007Surreal Silent Movie Melodrama

Another of Guy Maddin's silent movie pastiches, all shot in a deadpan style throwing together a hilariously convoluted madcap plot involving child detectives, mad scientists and spy capers

Director: Guy Maddin

Actors: Isabella Rossellini

Category: Fantasy

17 August 200724 November 2025 by Roog

The Phantom (2009)

Rating: ★½

Jun 26, 2011Comic-Book Superhero

A mini-series based on the classic comic-book masked hero but the attempts to modernise The Phantom for the post-Dark Knight era seem bizarrely awkward

Director: Paolo Barzman

Actors: Ryan Carnes, Sandrine Holt, Isabella Rossellini, Jean Marchand, …

Category: Fantasy

26 June 201126 October 2022 by Roog

Keyhole (2011)

Rating: ★★

Feb 7, 2012Surrealist Haunted House Film

A disappointment from Guy Maddin where he abandons his trademark surrealism and makes what feels like cross between a haunted house film and a 1940s crime drama by way of the French New Wave

Director: Guy Maddin

Actors: Jason Patric, Isabella Rossellini, Udo Kier, Louis Negin, …

Category: Fantasy

7 February 20128 June 2026 by Roog

Enemy (2013)

Rating: ★★★½

Mar 14, 2014Mysterious Doppelganger

Denis Villeneuve slips into a very Cronenbergian vein to deliver a film about Jake Gyllenhaal and a mysterious doppelganger. A fascinatingly oblique and cryptic work, just as long as one does not require that it comes with any easy explanations

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Actors: Jake Gyllenhaal, Sarah Gadon, Melanie Laurent, Isabella Rossellini

Category: Fantasy

14 March 20146 October 2020 by Roog

Spaceman (2024)

Rating: ★★

Mar 16, 2024Astronaut Befriends an Alien

Adam Sandler plays a lone astronaut who befriends an alien. This falls somewhere between E.T. and Interstellar

Director: Johan Renck

Actors: Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan, Paul Dano, Kunal Nayyar, …

Category: Science Fiction

16 March 202414 November 2025 by Roog

Incredibles 2 (2018)

Rating: ★★

Feb 2, 2019Pixar Animation/Superhero Spoof

Pixar's venture into sequels has resulted in works playing off past successes that are lesser than their originals. This came with much anticipation but it too must be counted as another disappointment

Director: Brad Bird

Actors: Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sarah Vowell, Huckleberry Milner, …

Category: Science Fiction

2 February 201917 April 2026 by Roog

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On (2021)

Rating: ★★★★★

May 10, 2025Stop-Motion Animation/Talking Shell

This is the most charming animated (in this case stop-motion animated) film in years, a mockumentary about the life of a tiny talking shell that inhabits a human home. My best film of 2021

Director: Dean Fleischer Camp

Actors: Dean Fleischer Camp, Jenny Slate, Isabella Rossellini, Lesley Stahl

Category: Fantasy

10 May 202510 August 2026 by Roog