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Mulholland Drive

Mulholland Drive

List Price: $14.98
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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Strange, gripping, confusing thriller
Review: David Lynch has crafted a very clever thriller that's so unusually sequenced that you are thoroughly confused at the end of watching the film. The DVD has minimal bonus material and no commentary. It does provide some clues in the DVD liner to help you figure out what the meaning of everything in the movie is and the sequence of what actually happened. This is a truly challenging thriller that has a lot of darkness and foreboding. There are some lesbian sex scenes and a very impressive performance by Naomi Watts (not just in the erotic scenes), with some interesting appearances by some veteran performers and even the musical composer who has collaborated with Lynch for many years. One key to the film has to do with the club silencio scene, which brings the dream/fantasy of the preceding portion of the movie to a close. This is a movie that is frustrating until you figure out the story. It would have been better if the DVD had contained a director explanation of the story.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This film left me going, what the heII? then I thought....
Review: This film is a definate thinker, and you really have to concentrate on everything that's going on. You also have to keep telling yourself that it's David Lynch and the storyline is more messed up than the one in Memento. Don't watch this one while your sleepy.
It starts out with Rita being held at gunpoint in her car just in time for car full of screaming and most likely drunk teenagers to come round the corner and crash into her. She escapes unscathed and sleeps on someones lawn until morning, at which point she sneaks into their house because they are going away for vacation. We are then introduced to the too-chipper Betty making her way into Hollywood to accomplish her dream of becoming an actress. Betty is staying in her aunt's apartment while she is away, which is, of course, the very same apartment that Rita has run into in her attempt to find sleep. Betty discovers Rita in the shower and is shocked but decides to help her out, as Rita has no clue who she is. In fact, the name Rita may not even be hers--its just one she picked up from a movie poster in Betty's aunt's bathroom. The movie then takes you a whirlwind of a storyline. After I finished watching it, I had to think for some time and finally came up with what the heck was going on. But it was intriuging, and being a huge fan of surrealist art, I enjoyed it very much. It was different and very creative. Naomi Watts and Laura Henning both deliver powerful performances.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: It is relativism to the extreme.
Review: Yes, I know this movie is not supposed to be interpreted with the same lens in which we would view another movie. However, any story should make a reasonable effort to move from scene A to scene B and still make some sense. One can actually watch this entire movie and not come up with a single answer as to why things happen. Why the lesbian scenes? There was no point to it. And was the acting bad on purpose? Almost nothing was believable.

Consider the first scene -- where the girl is found in the bathroom, almost taking a shower, but not really. What was the point of that? And wouldn't the woman take the effort to call the police or at least listen to her aunt who says that she should get rid of this stranger in the room? For some reason I think this movie was written at a coffee shop and the script writer must have thought this is the most creative artpiece that has been known to man, not knowing that almost no one will understand the flick. I am all for making a movie rather creative and using nifty tricks to elevate your ideas, but this movie falls far short of that goal.

Perhaps this movie ought to be marketed as a film version of abstract art -- it is up to the audience, not the screen writer, to state what the film means. It is relativism to the extreme.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Nancy Noir
Review: The view of reality given through the prism of the US movie machine has always horrified me to some degree.
Lynch has worked with that resonance to deliver a good looking noir-ish tale.

The world of noir is shadowy, crime-ridden, immoral and illogical.
The world of Nancy Drew/Hollywood is just the opposite and its most fundamental promises - of optimism, wealth, success and freedom from fear - are threatened in 'film noir'.
The femme fatale, who leads men to their ruin and sometimes death, reached its apotheosis in noir.

Lynch plays with all of this by making his ruined man a woman, which allows him some terrific double-takes and red herrings.

Recommended for its alluring good looks no less than for the noir atmosphere. That is, as long as you are not repelled by the mysogyny of noir which is doubly dished here.
Mulholland Drive is a good antidote to the impossibly Hollywood ending to that other recent noir homage LA Confidential.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: "No hay banda! There is no band. It is all an illusion."
Review: David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" is a whole lot of nothing. People have attached various meanings to the images, dialogue, and events in it, but this has been a waste of a tremendous amount of time. "Mulholland Drive" is nothing more than a failed-television pilot that was edited together with some newly-shot material so that all the previously-shot footage would not go to waste. To think that some people believe that the end product is a momentous creative accomplishment is mind-boggling because "Mulholland Drive" is all smoke and absolutely no fire.

Wide-eyed Betty Elms (Naomi Watts) arrives in Los Angeles hoping to become a major star in the entertainment industry. Rita (Laura Elena Harring) has been targeted for death but has her life spared when an accident enables her to escape her fate. The lives of the two women become strangely intertwined when Betty finds the amnesiac Rita taking a shower in her aunt's apartment. In the course of trying to find out who Rita really is, the two women come across a movie director named Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux) who might hold some of the answers the women are seeking. Before all is said and done, a decomposing body is discovered which proves to be the key to unraveling the mystery behind Rita's identity and the strange relationship she has with Betty.

So what did Lynch intend to accomplish with "Mulholland Drive"? Did he want to create a surrealist work that would redefine the film narrative? Did he want to create a post-modern film noir that was so stylish and complex that it would belong to a category all its own? Did he want to prove that a film could effectively tell a story using only symbols and metaphors? Did he want to create the cinematic version of the cosmic joke? The more you think about it, it seems the "cosmic joke" choice might be the correct answer - and boy, did Lynch pull a fast one by tricking Universal into releasing this film and tricking us into watching it. Truth be told, "Mulholland Drive" is not the crowning achievement of his career - it is instead incontrovertible proof that Lynch has crossed over from being a director who makes "unique" films to being a director who makes "incomprehensible" films. The fine performances by Watts, Harring, and Theroux are wasted here as is the beautiful production design and cinematography. It is too bad that all of these separate elements did not find a home in a better production. "Mulholland Drive" is simply the equivalent of an abstract painting in which people see whatever they believe they see when looking at it. If you believe that pointless ambiguity is a desired goal of the creative process then this film is for you. Look elsewhere if you're not entertained by staring at nothingness.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Mystical,magical,puzzling,dazzling,beautiful
Review: It's easy to get wrapped up in Mulholland Drive's gorgeous imagery, and delightfully entertaining dream like sequences, but if you take the time, and give it your attention, you will see that there's more to Mulholland Dr. than the sensous delights it provides throughout. Yes, you won't be able to pinpoint each and every single event even through multiple,detailed viewings, and don't listen to the pseudo-intellectual reviewers who believe they can give you a spot on analysis of ever single thing that happened. Mulholland Drive works more like music for the eyes. You may not hear it, or "get it", but you'll feel it.Eventually.

Naomi Watts is wonderful in all her dynamic glory.The gorgeous Laura Elena Harring gives a pitch perfect performance as the sullen femme fatale "Rita".

I won't give anything away, all I'll say is that, if you don't mind something way out there, and you're a real film buff, throw in this mind bender and be delighted. I'm not one of those David Lynch fanatics(I hated Blue Velvet).But after seeing this film, I think of him as genius. It's not a movie I can guarantee everyone will love;but if you get lucky and fall in love with it, you will see Mulholland Drive the way I see it. A mindbending,seductive,multi-faceted film that comes off as dark,witty,sensual,heartfelt,and,ultimately moving,

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Why crazy people should never direct films
Review: I was like a lot of people, I thought David Lynch was a great director based on the Twin Peaks TV show. But after watching a few of his feature films, I realized something: David Lynch is crazy and his movies rarely make any sense that all.

Take Mulholland Drive for example, this is really a movie about what? Is it a murder mystery? Isn't a romantic drama? Is it some surrealistic drug trip put on film? It's hard to tell. But I do know that it is two hours of boredom with some girl on girl action scenes and some violence thrown in for good measure. This film does make more sense than Lost Highway, but that is like saying one nut in the nut house is not as crazy as the another nut in the same nut house.

I think David Lynch's films are like the Emperor's new clothing. As long as everybody says that he's a great director, then he is a great director. I disagree; his films are mess. Mulholland Drive is probably the least messy of his films but that is really not saying very much.

Do yourself a favor, skip it.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: The Box Doesn't Cut It
Review: There are tons of reviews already posted for this movie, and most people take an extreme -- love it or hate it; think it's artsy or think it's boring. Well, it doesn't matter which side I fall on for this review, but I wanted to add something new to the discussion:

The verbiage on the box is misleading. When I rented this movie from the video store, I thought I knew what it was about. I did not know it would be so artsy that I would need to get a translater. I was not prepared to watch a movie that involved so much symbolism that hours of online hunting and pecking gave me only the smallest clue as to what I had actually seen.

I picked this movie off the shelf because, from the words on the box, I thought it was the sort of murder mystery I could sit back, pop some popcorn, and fall right into. This is not that kind of movie. So, reader beware, if you are looking for a film that you can easily watch -- one that does not take your full concentration and then extensive research thereafter -- this is not the movie for you.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Thanks
Review: I just wanted to say thanks to Blossom Burkitt and the wonderful review she (I assume "she") wrote for Mulholland Drive. Because of you I understand the movie MUCH better than before. The most I would have been willing to give this movie before reading your review was maybe three or three and half stars out of five but now that it's all in perspective I can very comfortably award it five stars. I think it's Lynch's best film period, superior to Blue Velvet. But hey, that's just me. Again, thanks.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: You've got to be kidding me!
Review: After watching Mulhulland Drive, I feel like I just completely wasted over two hours of my life. There is absolutely no plot, characters are introduced, never to be heard from again, while others change identities at the end of the movie. I felt like I was watching "Bewitched" when they switched Darren's and didn't tell anyone.
I know everyone says it's an extremely intelligent movie, one you have to think about. If you're looking for an intelligent movie, watch "Momento". That movie had an extremely complicated storyline that jumped back and forth at a moments notice, but it at least made sense once the credits rolled.
I will admit that "Mullholland Drive" is a beautifully shot movie, and well acted. Naomi Watts gives us a glimpse of her talent that will bless us for years to come. Unfortunately, the cinematographer & actors where given a horrendous script. I can see how this would work as a TV series, it's intended destination. It is very "Twin Peaks", with possibilities in every direction. Just don't try to take what was supposed to be an introduction to a 13 episode series & make a 2 hour movie out of it. One of the worst movies I've ever seen.


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