Rating: 
Summary: A great film censored
Review: My rating for the DVD of "Mulholland Drive," is no reflection of how I feel about the film itself, for it is certainly one of the best works in the Lynchian canon. I gave this DVD a poor rating, because a rather disturbing, not so subtle alteration has been made for the DVD transfer. I was shocked to discover when I watched the copy that I purchased at Best Buy that a scene had been digitally censored, and what appeared on my screen was markedly different from what I saw in the cinema. When the character we come to know as Rita disrobes before climbing into bed with Betty, a distracting flesh-colored scramble of pixels has been substituted for an area where one would normally expect to see pubic hair. Since this scrambling was not evident in the version of "Mulholland Drive" that I saw in theatres (twice), I can only expect that this is another example of squeamish puritanical tampering for an American audience that can consume any amount of violence, but should be protected from the fright of a sexual organ (see "Eyes Wide Shut"). I was informed that a copy of this DVD purchased at JandR in Manhattan was similarly "blurred" for the protection of the viewer. I know we live in the era of wardrobe malfunction hysteria, but the marring of a magnificent film like this for its DVD release is unacceptable.
Rating:
Summary: DULLHOLLAND DRIVEL: A DREAM-ON TALE OF NIGHTMARISH FANTASY.
Review: So, according to a horde of reviewers, Lynch has "cleverly" created a film where the plot, characters, and setting are completely re-jumbled every fifteen minutes for no purpose at all. In all its intriguing glory, it's supposed to make you think and piece together the underlying jigsaw. Baloney. The first two-thirds of Lynch's film is borderline normal and seems to make some sense -- it even puts you in an anticipatory mode as you wish you understand what happened. But the final third of the film seems to provide contradictory evidence which throws earlier perceptions into question. In a rather bizarre fashion. Apparently, the reason for this break in the film is that the first part of the film was intended to be part of a television series that did not sell. Lynch then filmed the additional footage which formed part of the conclusion, and spliced it all together as a complete film. This explains why the lesbian and masturbation sex scenes are near the end of the film, that wouldn't have been allowed on network television. From the perspective of a viewer (such as myself) who doesn't know this background, it doesn't really matter that the film started out as a television series pilot and ended up as a movie. It is not a cobbled-together mess as it seems to be, so claim other reviewers, but a masterpiece, and it makes perfect sense to them. The implication is that if it doesn't make sense to you, then you must be an idiot. These sorts of arguments are pretty common in film criticisms. The scattershot narrative offers evidence supporting several possible interpretations for the plot, including nightmares, delusions, drug-induced hallucinations, near-death hallucinations (as in "Jacob's Ladder"), some sort of shared delusion, a film within a film, or a play within a film, among others. Since this all takes place in Hollywood, it makes the story even more surrealistic. It is very telling that the most realistic scene in the entire film is a film audition featuring two actors in front of a small audience of movie executives in a conference room. Some viewers may find all these goings-on intriguing. I found the film to stutter under the weight of its utterly non-believable dialogue, an exasperated lack of pace (please, don't tell me it was on purpose), gratuitious and rather long softcore Lesbian sex scenes which amount to very little at the end really, awful high-school drama type acting, laughable characters, and a never-ending cavalcade of confusion, confusion, confusion (get sober, Lynch!). What lends this emotionless deluge of unrelated scenes some level of bearability is the stunning Naomi Watts, and an occasional dose of good music. Which is not really saying all that much.
Rating: 
Summary: Probably the best film ever
Review: I share the opinion of those who think Mulholland DR is probably the best film ever in the history of cinema. I havent seen all films, but I have seen a lot and none is as good as Mulholland Dr. Everything is perfect in that movie, every shot, every angle, every sound, every actor, there are not life time performances by the actors, but they all match together so fine. it is a very well done movie, and it's full of ideas. Of course, if you are a pop-culture movie fan, this one is not for you. Stay away. if you want to see how the french new wave, or the best of Felini can be surpassed by Lynch, well you got a chance with Mulholland Dr. Do I dare advize those of you who are likely to love this movie ( I think you dont need this advice really), but dont see it as a movie to explain, dont look for the clue, of course you can find it a clue, as many clues as you want. But see it rather as a metaphoric display of the artist psyche, oh boy, it gets so much tastier this way. I 've seen it five times, i can see it some 50 other more. I'm just curious if there is a better movie than this one, or is probably Dogville better? I dont think so.
Rating: 
Summary: Suspend your way of thinking
Review: Apart from the fact that the film is a great stylistic achievement its great merit is it's openness to varied interpretations. In the first part of the film things happen according to a conventional narrative, but in the second the logic of events breaks down. If one tries to decipher what's going on I think he is apt to miss the enjoyment of the dream-like visual sequences. Yet this does not imply that there's nothing to understand. Dreams do have meanings. It's just that they defy the kind of eplanation which we apply to events in awake life. When I saw the film I was following this principle, I didn't let my self feel perplexed, I tried to attune with the images and let my intition do the work of the understanding. I left the cinema mesmerized, I felt that my experience was as close as you could get being sober to a hallucinogenic exprerience and that was fantastic!
For my part I felt that the film was preoccupied with the concept of personal identity. And if there was a message to it, for me it was this: free yourself from the illusion of the cartesian concept of the self as unitary substance and enjoy what happens. The Scotish philosopher David Hume argued that the self is nothing but a bundle of perceptions, no thing such as the self exists for whenever he entered most deeply into what he calls himself he never encountered anything but a perception and never a constant and invariable self. Now, the scene at the theatre where the band was performing a moving song reminded me of Hume's theory. There was no-one playing the song, yet it was moving. Ok, the connection is loose but this is what came to my mind. And then the girl's lapse of memory and in the end the changing of identities, reminded me of Locke's theory of personal identity...
Just the fact that after leaving the cinema I was excited thinking all these things would be enough for me to give 5 stars to the film, and it was captivating in many more ways...
Rating: 
Summary: A mystery, wrapped in a riddle, wrapped in an enigma
Review: Betty, a young, aspiring actress, comes to Hollywood where she plans to stay at her aunt's apartment. When Betty arrives there she discovers a beautiful woman in the shower; Betty immediately assumes that this woman is a house guest of her aunt's. It seems that this enigmatic woman suffered a head injury in a terrible car collision and cannot recall her identity. Betty eagerly assists the woman in her efforts to rediscover herself. The film also contains a subplot concerning a film director who is strong-armed into hiring a certain actress for a role for which he is currently casting. The real mystery is how a film as continuously mesmerizing and spooky as this one is, with marvelous set pieces (especially Betty's audition, the aforementioned shower sequence, etc.), extraordinarily fluid direction and camera work, and containing a sensitive and canny performance by Naomi Watts as the aspiring actress could so completely be derailed in its last 20 minutes or so. David Lynch, for reasons I cannot fathom, decides to play fast and loose with the plot and his characters' identities. The result is unbelievable chaos and confusion. Film critic Roger Ebert attempts to explain away the film's coda as something that could only have occurred in a dream. I call it the worst cop out since Pam dreamed Bobby Ewing's death for an entire season in tv's "Dallas." And yet, despite my disappointment, "Mulholland Drive" is in many ways, and for the reasons I stated, a great piece of film making that, I am sure, will long linger in my memory.
Rating:
Summary: disturbing, enduring images
Review: David Lynch has parked his vividly weird imagination in the foothills of Los Angeles. "Mulholland Drive," as the eerily lit street sign in the movie tells us, is a place where dreams turn into nightmares - or is it the other way around? You never know with Lynch, but half the fun is trying to figure it out. The other half of that equation is enjoying the superbly acted roles - even the small ones. Ominously lit red curtains (another Lynch trademark), a bizarre lounge act, unsentimental crying, sudden violence, and other-worldly agents abound in this "noir" film that follows (if that is the right word) the life of a hopeful Hollywood actress, and the mysterious housemate whose identity is lost and then recovered - or so we think, until Lynch throws it all into overdrive. In the end, you have the feeling of loss and discovery, and a nagging sense of doom, because none of the characters escapes from the nightmare... something to ponder as you walk out into the reality of your own existence. You may hate Lynch movies, but he doesn't cut corners when it comes to the darkest realms of the human mind.
Rating:
Summary: Surreal
Review: This movie was very good. I really enjoyed that the plot made you think but was not too hard to understand after watching it a couple of times. If you are still stumped, the DVD has 10 hints to solving the movie which really help a lot! The music was cool too, and added to the surreal feel of the movie (especially Llorando at Club Silencio). If for no other reason, the guys who usually wouldn't watch this kind of movie would appreciate the lesbian sex scenes. Naomi Watts did a good job of playing a bad actress. Only reason it didnt get five stars was that I thought the man behind the diner was a little bit cheesy. I recommend the movie to anyone with a compotent brain under the condition that lesbian sex isnt a huge issue with them, because I know that's the sole reason my mom didn't like the movie.
Rating:
Summary: No hay banda
Review: If you haven't seen this movie yet, you won't be the same until you do. I'm not the biggest fan David Lynch has ever had on this planet. But this movie is _so_ good that I'm finally willing to forgive him for his treatment of _Dune_ (1984). _Mulholland Dr._ is mesmerizing. It will suck you in, chew you up, and never let you out. You will rewatch it many times, and every time you do, you will notice (or think of) something you haven't noticed (or thought of) before. As you probably know from the other reviews, there is a division point about four-fifths of the way through the movie. You may find it confusing -- and you _will_ find it disorienting -- the first time you see it. But bear with it and let the movie soak into your subconscious for a couple of days, and then watch it again. It does make sense, I promise. (And this isn't just a cinematic Rorschach test; there really is an intelligible plot here. Pay close attention to the details Lynch points out in his 'ten clues', included with the DVD.) I won't give anything else away. Just be warned: if you're the sort of person who obsesses over movies, this one will give you plenty to obsess about. Not only is it gorgeously filmed and tantalyzingly paced, its rich symbolic texture and all-around oneiric quality will involve parts of you that you may not have known existed. You will wake up in the middle of the night thinking, 'Aha! So _that's_ what that meant.' The two leads (Laura Elena Harring and Naomi Watts) are spot-on in these very demanding roles -- especially Watts, about whose performance I can't say anything concrete without including major spoilers, but _boy_, is she good. And for whatever it's worth, be aware that there are a couple of really steamy lesbian sex scenes. Some viewers (which kind am I? you guess) will regard this as a huge plus; others maybe not so much. But either way, these scenes are not gratuitous. Lynch gives a number of cinematic nods to lots of predecessors that can broadly be classified as films noirs (notably, and pretty obviously, Billy Wilder's _Sunset Blvd._). But this is not your standard film noir; it's a David Lynch movie, with everything that entails. Don't be quick to classify it. It will haunt you. I strongly recommend that you let it. (_A note on the DVD_: One thing you probably won't like about it is that the usual divisions aren't there; the _entire_ movie is just one long 'scene' or 'chapter'. That makes it a real pain in the posterior to flip back and forth while you're trying to remember where you spotted someone or something before. Lynch says it's because movies, unlike books, don't divide into 'chapters'. Fair enough -- but they _do_ divide into 'scenes'. And at any rate, there's such a thing as the viewers' convenience. So feh to that.)
Rating:
Summary: Dazzling, dizzying.everything great about avant garde cinema
Review: Aside from its often discussed mystery, Mulholland Drive presents one of the most exciting, shocking, addictive 2 and a half hours of pure cinema of the 90's. One might ask how a dream movie about a lesbian amnesiac can be this entertaining. The answer is simple: David Lynch knows what he's doing. I usually get bored by directors who play tricks with their audiences, like David Lynch has been known to do. But this flm shows his true storytelling skill as well as his excellent craft with actors. The film works as a serious of related and unrelated vignettes. The grand summation of these events surely confuses viewers, even provoking anger on those searching for semblances of traditionality or immediate logic, yet the vignettes themselves are so offbeat that a viewer-friendly ending would have disrupted any artistic cohesion. Though this movie does have meaning as a cautionary tale about Hollywood and the dreams it shatters, its main purpose in the panorama of modern film is how far and innovative Lynch stretches the medium to tell a seemingly simple story: (about an innocent girl who goes to Hollywood). Naomi Watts (in a dual role) stars as the sunny idealistic Betty in the first two thirds of the movie and then as the cynical, embittered Diane in the last one third. Naomi Watts gives a star-making performance. She lights up every scene with a charming, old-fashioned perkiness as Betty and portrays Diane with alluringly dark emotional shadows. As Rita/Camilla (her love interest) Laura Elena Harring is a perfect object of seduction. Their scene of sex is a heartbreaking, poignant display of erotic love. One friend believed it to be "exploitive" but considering that the entire relationship between the two lovers is the drive that fuels the dream/movie, I would say that the sexual passion of these two characters was absolutely necessary to display in a fleshed out sense (no pun intended). Also in the mix of characters is the too-hip-for-words director, Adam Kesher (Justin Thereux) a director who, while looking to hire Betty, is seemingly caught up in a whole Hollywood scheme with bizarre midgets, Italian mobs, an adulterous Billy Ray Cyrus, and a very sinister cowboy. Something must be said for the music in this film by Angleo Badalamenti (who also plays one of the Italian mobsters). The music is haunting, evocative, and sometimes comic, underlying the emotions of each scene brilliantly. Cinematography is excellent, as to be expected from a Lynch movie. Lynch has made bizarre independent (Eraserhead) Oscar winning linear stories (Straight Story, The Elephant Man) and critically panned (Wild At Heart). With Mulholland Drive he returns to Blue Velvet's cross over avant garde appeal. A masterpiece of art cinema.
Rating:
Summary: BRILLIANT FILM WITH OSCAR CALIBUR PERFORMANCES
Review: Mulholland Drive is a trip into the bizarre, or a trip into a bizarre mind. A perfect example of what movies can do, and how they can challenge us. Brilliantly written and relayed to film with the same expertise. The first amazing point to make is that this movie started out as a television show! Canceled by ABC before it even aired once.... dummies (no wonder they have the lowest rated big network: no guts) And then brilliantly reshot in places and made into one of the most brilliant and challenging films in recent days by DAVID LYNCH (Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, The Straight Story). It's a complex movie. Every single shot. Every single setting piece has complexity and deeper meaning. Each scene, camera shot, character and line of dialogue has a deeper and darker meaning then what is on the surface. Take some time. Really pay attention. The brilliance of the movie is that, through all the double-meanings, twists, turns and confusion. It all works, and it all comes full circle and explains itself. The main selling point for this movie, in my opinion, is the brilliance of the actors involved. LAURA HARRING and more specifically NAOMI WATTS were phenominal. Both deserved oscar nominations (which Harring did get one), and WATTS deserved to win. Not only did they play complex characters, but they fleshed out numerous personalities from one extreme to the other. This movie was nominated for numerous oscars and deserved to win! It deserved far more recognition than A BEAUTIFUL MIND.
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