Mulholland Drive

Rating:
Summary: Bemused, Baffled, and then...epiphany!
Review: I chuckled throughout this one - the use of typical Lynch motifs such as a midget, soothsayer, a human ashtray hiding behind a dumpster, insanely laughing tom thumb retirees - seemed lightly entertaining, a diverting thriller using the ultra-cliche amnesia plot device. I walked out feeling that this was a deconstruction of Hollywood, from the biz to the idea of plot itself. There was no "getting" it, I thought. Several days later, however, I had a conversation with a woman who had been obsessed with the film and came up with the unique interpretation. The second part of the film, she claimed, is the reality, and the first part the dream of the lost woman who put the hit on her ex-lover and betrayer. While I may have to see the film at least one more time to put it all together, I feel like this film can be enjoyed on many levels, but expecting it to behave itself like any standard Hollywood film is to pretend that the body of Lynch's work does not exist. This man is here, he's queer, and I, at least, am happy he keeps getting weirder!

Rating:
Summary: Style Triumphs over Substance
Review: David Lynch is a genius as a stylist. It's unfortunate that he uses that genius to no purpose. (A lot like 19th century American painter John Singer Sargent). "Mulholland Drive" looks good and has good artistic manners, but as anyone who has dated knows, that doesn't mean that there is anything upstairs. There is nothing to get. Like other Lynch movies, symbols (such as the cube & its odd key) are introduced and developed well - up to the point when the director is obliged to reveal and illuminate. Then, he drops the ball. Viewers who can get happily drunk on style will be satiated. Viewers who expect to learn something about moral imperative and the human condition (arguably the key function of art) will wonder why the bother.

Rating:
Summary: Visual and psychological magic from a master...
Review: _Mulholland Drive_ is not so much a movie as an experience. Based on a pilot for a television series that was never produced, the film is not only one of the finest yet from our loveable auteur-of-the-weird David Lynch, it is also one of the simulataneously strangest and haunting films ever made. Indeed, the film's stunning poetry of image and metaphor is so primal and uncanny it is quite unbelievable in ways that it was even made.

When asked what this movie is "about," anyone who has viewed it will be at a loss. This is a film that utterly resists any logical or formal interpretation. In this sense, it is both miraculous and postmodern, eloquent and forbidding. Lynch himself describes it as a "love story," and while this may be true, there is much more lurking beneath that seemingly placid description. Even contemporary audiences already made familiar with the skewed time frames, random events and emotional achromaticism of critically acclaimed pictures like Terry Gilliam's _12 Monkeys_ or Quentin Tarantino's _Pulp Fiction_ will have trouble digesting this one. While narrative structure is something we have been keen on since the days of D.W. Griffith, and compounded by every hour of television being broadcast all day every day, many moviegoing audiences have been spoiled by cute, light fare that really does all the storytelling work for them. All this is cast to the wind when you sit down to see _Mulholland Drive_. And yet, there *is* a narrative structure here-- albeit one that, like the extreme tenuousness of a leaf falling or a wave crashing, is so improbable to catch it borders on the absurd. Indeed, if the movie were as simple as a surreal dream regurgitated from a tortured consciousness, it would not have the strange compellingness and charismatic force that it does.

Lynch has created a godly, enigmatic structure, as living and breathing a powerful work of art as has ever graced a movie reel. This picture is one of those that refuses to go away after you leave the theater-- and you will talk to anyone who will listen to you about it. Indeed, if second viewings are any indication, there are multifarious layers here that repeated screenings will only reveal further to the expert eye. However, be prepared for a fractal labyrinth which is as eerie as it is effervescent.

I have come to the conclusion that the more you know about _Mulholland Drive_'s details and plot before seeing it, the more confused you will be. Whatever the case, any psychological or metaphoric trick a director can pull on you during a film will not only be used, it will be done with such deliberate quiescence you won't realize it till the end-- if then. The movie is recommended to anyone who willingly dares to experience pure cinematic brilliance while at the same time confounding and perplexing themselves over an illusionist's trick so beautiful it throbs.

Rating:
Summary: Mesmerizing
Review: Mulholland Drive was my introduction to the brilliant mind of David Lynch - the quintessence of everything I was searching for in art. His examination of what lies beneath the surface of the glitz and glamor of Hollywood, through his use of cycles and repeated imagery, dreamlike non-logic, a pastiche of Hollywood genres (think film noir and the Wizard of Oz), and an eerily perfect score from Badalamenti (sp?), kept me glued to the seat and searching for answers after the credits starting rolling and someone in the audience yelled, "Don't tell me it's over! What the (...)?!" But this isn't a film with answers: it's about an open-ended non-interpretable EXPERIENCE. For those of you who like sprawling omniscient Victorian novels and straightforward Cameron Crowe movies (his recent attempt at Lynchian surrealism with Vanilla Sky is ridiuclously horrible for him), Mulholland Drive is NOT for you! For those of you who believe that the more intriguing aspects of experience come from what's in your head (your thoughts, your perceptions, your dreams), then go see this film!

Rating:
Summary: Not one person in the theatre got it
Review: I am amazed that the first two reviews listed here, the "featured reviews", which were 5 stars were found to be helpful by a large number of readers, whereas the two additional reviews, which were 1 stars, were found generally not helpful by the few who commented.
The fact is I saw this movie with about fifty others and at the end one patron stood up and asked in a loud voice if anyone understood it. This started a general discussion lasting several minutes with almost the entire audience staying and not one person understood it, was happy to have seen it or would recommend it.
Truly deny this observation if you wish but this is a long, disjointed movie that has absolutely no plot, not even a shred of one and I challenge any reviewer to tell the rest of us what the plot or message is without sprouting nonsense.

Rating:
Summary: Terrible, disjointed film
Review: David Lynch apparently doesn't care how relevant one scene is to the next, and he spins lots of random, insignificant scenes into what could be a decent story. Some individual scenes could be quite amazing, but they made no sense whatsoever, in a story that was supposed to make sense. David Lynch doesn't explain anything, and I am guessing people see the film as profound and deep since know one can muster any understanding of it whatsoever. (I have talked to three other people about Mulholland, and none had any idea what the plot was...)

Rating:
Summary: Was I the only one paying attention?
Review: I do not understand the people who say this movie makes no sense. It makes PERFECT sense, especially to anyone who has pursued their dreams in Hollywood. Lynch serves up all the fantasies, disappointments and dashed hopes of Tinseltown, and warns anyone who ventures out here to think twice before trusting a soul. Hell, just don't even get on the bus.

This is a brilliant film. Naomi Watts deserves an Oscar nomination, and Lynch deserves the prize for creating a film that's frightnening, moving and painfully real, one that brings both our dreams and nightmares to life in the same damn movie.

Rating:
Summary: David Lynch after having done one too many lines of coke
Review: The first two thirds of the movie build a good foundation of what I thought was going to be a solid movie. It's all down hill after that -- well, frankly, there is no hill, it's more like a cliff. Things just start happening for no reason. Even after having read the pseudo-intellectual explanations for what this movie was about, the only thing I really have realized is that David Lynch can do as much drugs as he please, make a movie that is the film equivalent of throwing a bunch of paint cans at a canvas and calling it art, and there will still be people who consider it brilliant.

If you go outside on a partially cloudy day, and look up at the sky, and squint and blur your eyes hard enough, you can imagine that the clouds in the sky form any shape you desire. If you go see this movie, squint and blur your eyes hard enough, pseudo-intellectualize what it was about, you might actually enjoy this movie. But if you prefer good film making, spend your money on something other than Mulholland Drive.

Rating:
Summary: Hard to explain, so why try
Review: I'm not going to write much, because I really cannot explain this movie. It works so well as a dream, and as a dream, cannot be surmised in a sentence. Things happen, characters interact, and when it's all said and done, you'll sit and wonder, "What the heck was that..." Try it, you'll like it.

Rating:
Summary: Lynch is a film making master
Review: Mulholland Drive is by far the best film to hit indie picture houses this past year, and probably longer. Director David Lynch seduces us with the power, and intrigue of Hollywood only to rip us from the fantasy that, unknowingly to us at first, had been slowly decaying before our very eyes as we watch, unable to blink, unwilling to turn away. And then without warning, reality rears its hideous face from around the corner and unravels everything we thought to be true. The characters are very complicated, and the story pulls you in from the second it steps out of the car and walks aimlessly into the night. I would recommend this movie to anyone who has been left feeling empty and unsatisfied by the schlock that Hollywood has been producing this year. One of the best ad campaigns I can remember was for the Minus Man; its tag line was "Don't Bring A Dumb Date". That line fully extends to this film.