Trouble in Mind (1985)
The lives of an ex-con, a coffee-shop owner, and a young couple looking to make it rich intersect in the hypnotic Rain City.
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www.bkmag.com/2015/07/16/four-field-guides-to-bams-massive-indie-80s-series/5/

People can give the 80s as much shit as they want, but this particular combination of alcoholic rhythm, rain-soaked atmosphere and utter gorgeousness will never be found again. A decade torn asunder by a split in aesthetics (Reagan/Thatcher and their gray/brown offices and suits under harsh, buzzing lights, on the one, and punk/post-punk expanses cut up with claustophobic, suicidal interiors on the other - the divide most expertly illustrated in After Hours) often had the most luxurious sinking into the best parts of each. The pungent bureaucracy of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy versus those velvety dolly shots of Louisiana streets in Down By Law, or the silky sands of Border Radio. Beyond that lies the neon oil paint…

" Everybody wants to go to Heaven, nobody wants to die."

Along with Choose Me, the clear centerpiece of Rudolph's filmography. They are both lush high stylized romantic remembrances of not quite movie past. But Choose Me suggests Ophuls and this is more like what if Port of Shadows had the body of early 30s Warner programmer. Less movie romanticism per se as much as lonely broken people deeply longing for something, the absences made weightier than the fleet moments of connection. Trouble in Mind is at same essential and its many pieces so disconnected while making complete emotional sense. The setting is called Rain City and it is obvious Seattle imagined as half noir dreamscape, half police state which…

A strange little mid-80s slice of noir-influenced daydreaming, two hours of people making bad decisions in a thinly disguised version of Seattle with its own fashions (zebra stripes are in, apparently) where there's a war going on (Vietnam? WWII?) and the main criminal enterprises seem to be gambling and fencing stolen merchandise. The two main bad decision-makers in question are Kristofferson as a cop who just got out of jail for killing a man, and has nowhere to go except the diner owned by an old squeeze, and Keith Carradine (kind of hidden by Trouble on the poster there) as a young clueless dude with a trailer trying to provide for his girlfriend and child (Lori Singer, being a remarkable…