Lost Highway

Rating:
Summary: Strangely mind-blowing and very, very confusing
Review: Of all David Lynch's movies I have seen yet (Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet and this one), this was actually the most I was eagerly to watch (although I'm quite interested in his new apparent masterpiece "Mulholland Drive"), since I am a huge Nine Inch Nails fans and always wanted to know why Trent Reznor produced the soundtrack. That was dued to the fact that he also produced Oliver Stone's 1994 underrated Natural Born Killers, which was a memorable soundtrack for a great movie. So I was in expectations this one could be a second part.

And it was.The movie is completely confusing, but doesn't lose its qualities then: it's strangely mind-blowing. Bill Pulman and Patricia Arquette do a good job here as a couple, but surely the oscar goes to Balthazar Getty, who plays Bill Pulman "alter-ego".
The movie's most intriguing hour, which Fred turns to Pete, is obviously a mention to psychogenic fugue, which is allowing yourself to changing identity to somebody else, believe you are somebody else. But the fuzz doesn't stop here: many things are complicated to understand, if possible to.

All in all, this movie deserves a 5 star in Spielberg's face, since it shows that it isn't necessary to have a high budget and good reviews to define a good movie.

Rating:
Summary: a little understood masterpiece
Review: No film has ever rewarded repeated viewings so thoroughly as Lost Highway. What upon first viewing appears to be a visually stunning surreal decent into impotent libidinous rage is ultimately revealed to be a linear examination of male sexual rage and damnation. Trust me, if you watch closely and often you will be rewarded with an integrated understanding of even the most seemingly disjointed plot elements. Watch it frame by frame. Watch it with subtitles. Watch it standing on your head! One of the greatest and least understood and appreciated films of all time.

Rating:
Summary: Makes no sense, but not bad.
Review: David Lynch's 'Lost Highway', overall, doesn't make any sense but still isn't bad. Be warned, this film does not have your standard kind of plot. It is about an musician, Bill Pullman, who is suspicious of her wife's behavior. He thinks she is sleeping with someone else. Both seem psychologically depressed because they talk very softly and rarely smile. Some strange incidents occurr and next thing you know, Bill Pullman is in jail for killing his wife. Another bizzare incident occurrs in jail and Bill is transformed in a younger man. What that you say? Yes, you read that correctly. The warden realizes Bill Pullman doesn't exist anymore so he releases the younger car machanic.
But, the warden has two guys spy on him after he is released. The young guy goes through a bizarre sexual journey involving his girlfriend and Bill Pullman's wife. Wait a minute, I thought she was killed? Well, she was and wasn't. His wife in the second half of the film has blond hair, but in the first half she had brown hair. So in some ways, she is still alive.. I think. Is is just me, or is 'Lost Highway' subliminally ripping off 'Vertigo'? Remember how Kim Novak had blond hair in the first half and brown in the second half. Who do you think you're fooling David Lynch?
Even though it doesn't make much sense, 'Lost Highway' has some really steamy sex scenes. The color and lighting is perfect, bringing and erotic feel. Lynch used two sexy ladies with nice breasts for our viewing pleasure. Some may think they are exploitative, but they were done so well, I enjoyed every second of it. Bill Pullman's wife deserves two stars alone, if you catch my drift. :)

Rating:
Summary: "Dick Laurant.....is dead......."
Review: This movie is one of Lynch's many mastermind masterpieces.
A must buy for anyone with an eye for "artsy" films.
Twisting, eerie, dark, and spell binding. A tale that will have you saying "what the......?" for days on end.

Rating:
Summary: Not Linear and Quite Reflective
Review: This movie has perplexed me for years, and I found that viewing Mulholland Drive about three times, and comparing elements of that film with those in Lost Highway helped me arrive at some conclusions about what is going on in Lost Highway. I viewed this film again after seeing Mulholland Drive and several events appeared to become definite, and it was easy to see how deliberately David Lynch placed clues through the film to help assemble a certain set of conclusions. The emotive environment he creates is so often accurate in their effect, for me anyway, so that certain scenes which seem hokey are meant to be that way, and certain characters overplay, as in a dream. It's interesting to read some of the newspaper reviews of this movie posted when the movie first came out. It surprises me that reviewers spent very little time in trying to assemble the event and point-of-view puzzles, and simply categorized this film in the "spooky incomprehensible emotive weird Lynch film" bin. Not that it isn't that at the beginning, but if you see it a few more times, it conveys a more profound and more terrifying realization that even though the anti-hero has enveloped himself in a nightmare, the motives which drive him to his actions exist in the commonplace world on a daily basis, and the results of such motives emerge when a more or less typical behaving person experiences things which cause him to exceed stable boundaries of psychological control, and from the clean, pristine contemporary surface emerges some visceral agent with obligate human modes of mindless savagery. Forgive the pun, but as I watched this movie the second time, and the pieces fell together, it made me think of the man who disemboweled his wife for preparing a poor dinner and then impaled her liver on a stake in the front yard of their suburban New Jersey home, and even of O.J. Simpson riding for hours on the California freeways while the LAPD remained in pursuit -- wonder if he's still on the Lost Highway. Turn on the closed captions if you have that when deranged David Bowie sings during the end theme where he talks about the "Age of Man" yet invites the listener to "Cruise me, Babe"; cruise beyond. Like the soundscape rendered by the director, the songs in the soundtrack all evoke with visceral ferocity something beyond limits of control; or obsessions which result in the unraveling of the obsessing personality ("Perfect Drug"). Even the unnerving character played to perfection by Robert Blake, which appears to manifest this mode of evil, which appeared originally to be somewhat farcical, becomes sensible, especially with regard to current events involving the actor. This is a profoundly scary film; you have to allow it to emerge. From you.

Rating:
Summary: Lynch Before He Went "Straight"
Review: When I saw LOST HIGHWAY in the theatre I was glad to have the Lynch I knew and loved back on track. Although not as crystaline as BLUE VELVET or ERASERHEAD, LOST HIGHWAY is Lynch at his best: a filmmaker not at all concerned about story-telling, but one wholly intent on making pretty pictures. Of course, what most of us consider a pretty picture and what Lynch does are two different things. Still, with LOST HIGHWAY, and now with MULHOLLAND DRIVE, mystery, images, identity, and dreams again take the forefront. Who is who, what is what, and when is when, are all questions one asks themselves upon viewing this film. Trying to "figure it out" is an absolute exercise in futility, just know going into it that you're not going to get it, that pieces of the puzzle are missing, and that you can spend many frustrating hours trying to piece it together without any luck. For my money MD is a much better film than LH, hence the 3 star rating here, mainly for the fact that as utterly confusing as MD is it is more cohesive and subtle than LH, with much finer acting as well. Loggia's character is overwrought, and Pryor is an unfortunate novelty-casting mistake. Lynch, like Tarantino, almost strives to revive Hollywood throwaways, but in this case it just seems sad. Balthazar Getty is a poor-poor-man's Charlie Sheen, and only Pullman and Arquette seem to really grasp the futility of their character's lives. I defnitely enjoyed this as Lynch's comeback film (before he got supernormal with THE STRAIGHT STORY), but wouldn't trade in my Widescreen VHS version for the DVD. MULHOLLAND is the better film of the two, and I'm anxious to see what pops out of his head next.

Rating:
Summary: Moebius strip
Review: This is a movie that exists on its own as a strange artifact from a parallel universe. It doesn't tell a linear story (and you'll go crazy trying to impose one on it), but it succeeds in its avowed function-- to create a mental atmosphere of guilt and paranoia that you can mull over in privacy and come to your own conclusions about. David Lynch seems to have foreseen all possible interpretations of this movie and added plot elements that would contradict each one. But he gave part of the game away in an interview, in which he said that the events in the film were only an episode in this guy's existence. So this isn't the whole story.

Some films succeed, not by telling a story, but by putting you through an experience-- in the same way that a roller-coaster ride makes you experience things that a verbal description of the ride could never do. It's like a cross-section of someone's psyche sliced through at a 64.773-degree angle; the story isn't told in chronological order but plopped down-- fact, fantasy and all-- into your lap. Don't try to interpret it-- just experience it. And thank God you don't live there; although you've probably run across the outskirts if you've driven on the highway at midnight while listening to country-western radio stations that don't quite come in clearly...

I understand the explanation, but if it could be expressed in a review there would be no need for the movie.

Rating:
Summary: Give me back my cell phone
Review: The best Bowie track off of "Outside" provides bookends for this story within a story within a story within...

Were you to really unravel the plot, you would arrive at an endlessly repeating maelstrom of a doppelganger porn gorefest with slight variations on character. The valium-fogged padding around in Lynch's hideous LA house sets a pace that is frustratingly engrossing. And Richard Pryor runs a garage.

After the fourth or fifth trip out to the cabin in the sand, one welcomes the death of most of the leads as a cathartic end to the increasingly inane intrigue. But how can you not love 2 Patricia Arquettes? AND Gary Busey as a tearful, Zen, motorcycling suburban dad?

Rating:
Summary: FIND IT AGAIN, WONT YOU?
Review: Now that it's "in" to like Lynch again, perhaps all those who originally missed the sheer genius of Mulholland's Lynch-noir predacessor, "Lost Highway", should take another trip down the wonderously seductive, breath-takingly eerie mid-life crisis of Fred Maddison (Bill Pullman) as he tries to control the insecurities and deconstruction of identity of the fading middle-aged artist. Yep, this is Lynch screaming through the celluloid once again. Why? Because he'll never have her. many have said (rightly so) that Mulholland is ultimately Lynch's most "feminine" film. Lost Highway perhaps is the male counterpart to Mulholland. Less stirring emotionally, yet twice as wild and three times as fun. Vroom, baby, vrooooom.....

Rating:
Summary: A warning if you see it twice
Review: It's difficult to review this film because of my opposing views about it. The first time I saw it, I absolutely loved it and thought it to be the best film I'd ever seen. The second time I watched it, it came across as a self-indulgent, average tale that had a few good moments but was overall a waste of time.

Taking on Freud's essay on the Uncanny, David Lynch concocts a bizarrely absorbing tale of doppelgangers, the unhomely home, and reversion to primitive fantasies. Indeed, it is so 'uncanny' that the first time you watch it, it is deeply unsettling, and everything contained in it has the power to be creepy (it is incredible how scary someone with no eyebrows can be). What keeps you watching is that you have absolutely no idea what is going on, and yet the creepy vibe holds it together and keeps you desperate to reach the ending. Knowing how the film resolves (or frankly doesn't), however, takes a hell of a lot of the fun out of watching it a second time. Without the desire to discover how it all fits together, there is little within the stories themselves to entertain and enthral. Balthusser Getty, whilst good to look at (as he is, perhaps, Pullman's fantasy of a virile, potent young man), can't act worth a dime, and Bill Pullman's low-key performance prevents us from feeling any empathy with him. With no one to identify with except Patricia Arquette's femme fatale, whose character is so non-existent you can't really identify with her anyway, it is a fine work of intellectualism and great to talk about afterwards, but in terms of movie-making, it is dull, lacking in spectacle and entertainment, and has few of the quirks of, say, 'Blue Velvet.'

I have given 'Lost Highway' four stars, because of how much I enjoyed it the first time around. However, I would recommend seeing it at least twice before buying it, because I was amazed at how poorly I received it on the second viewing. The fact that the chronology of the film is kind of circular, unless it is all Pullman's fantasy, whilst stunning when you discover it, is merely illogical when you apply it to stringent scrutiny. Leaving more questions than answers is no bad thing, provided it is possible for the audience to come up with their own answers - in this case, it is more than impossible to answer any of the questions, so it is a thoroughly unsatisfactory experience. However, if all you desire is to see Patricia Arquette strip for the camera every few minutes, Henry Rollins hamming it up (as usual), and Bill Pullman miming some truly terrible saxophone-playing, this is the film for you.