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Mulholland Drive

Mulholland Drive

List Price: $14.98
Your Price: $11.24
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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Insane drug vision
Review: This movie was terribly long, interesting at times, but overall very ridiculous. I watched this with a few highly educated friends. We watched this movie, discussed it and dismissed as a pile of incoherent drivel! The acting was extremely well done, unfortunately there was really nothing to do. Save the 2 ½ hours of your life and do something constructive.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A Clever Mess
Review: David Lynch is one of the most imaginative directors around today; he's also one of the most self-indulgent. Both of these traits -- imaginativeness and a lack of commensurate discipline -- work at cross purposes to the point where they tend to cancel each other out in MULHOLLAND DRIVE, resulting in a film which is compelling up to a point, only to turn, eventually, into a willfully incoherent, highly disappointing mess.

Surrealism -- which, above all, is what Lynch's picture is all about -- is an ideology that has been most successfully employed in painting and lyric poetry. One of the major reasons for this is because the restricted area of the canvas -- and the brevity of the poem -- help to contain the inevitable disjointedness of the surrealist vision. Unfortunately, Lynch's cross-navigations between reality and dream in MULLHOLLAND DRIVE cry out for a much stronger sense of narrative consistency (however ironically employed) than he seems willing or able to provide it with. Ironically, Lynch's film becomes most artistically unsatisfying just as he's providing you with the keys for decoding its secrets.

Though the viewer is kept tantalized and mesmerized deep into the film by Lynch's precarious tottering on the edge of coherency (in other words, by Lynch forcing the viewer to decide, however tentatively, whether each scene as it is presented is fantasy, dream, psychotic delusion or "objective reality", and how, where and why it fits into the overall picture; and, most importantly, REWARDING -- or seeming to reward -- him for his efforts), towards the end of the film Lynch jumps over the edge and drops this tactic, in an apparent effort to "transcend meaning." Unfortunately, it doesn't really work. The idea that the movie has been a succession of arcanely connected tableaus, transmogrified by the dreams and delusions of a disturbed young lady, while it helps to retroactively explain its disjunctions, still doesn't alleviate the viewer's overall disappointment that it could have been MUCH better presented. And it's not just a matter of an artist, for the sake of ART, subverting the viewer's expectations. Rather, the effect produced is more like the gratuitous cleverness of a director who's too dazzled by his own genius to care about the needs of the audience.

In many ways the artistic sins of MULHOLLAND DRIVE are highly forgivable, because a poverty of imagination is the one sin that this director can never be accused of having, and the film does contain an undeniable degree of sublime playfulness. But then again Lynch's film, in the final analysis, unfortunately also lends support to the idea that an unbridled imagination, without formal control commensurate to its subversiveness, usually does not lead to the production of very satisfying art.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: I don't walk out of many movies, but.....
Review: Now it's true I never got into Twin Peaks when it was on TV but a bad movie is still a bad movie. I've heard from friends who were familar with Twin Peaks that this Mullholland Dr had similar tones. If that's true I'm glad I never watched Twin Peaks.

Hey I can deal with artsy-fartsy movies and the avant guard and even B movies, but there are 2 sins in movie making I can't forgive: the acting and the dialogue. Both are terrible in this move. After 2 scenes I looked at my wife and said, "People just don't talk like this. This is the type of dialogue a 5th grader writing his first story would churn out."

The acting was equally horrible, unless of course these were great actors actually trying to come off like bad actors; in that case I scream 'Bravo'. But that is highly unlikely. I saw better acting in my 4th grader's Christmas pageant last year. The little kid playing the stable manager was more believable.

If you're a big David Lynch fan buy this movie!! If you have any doubts, and I mean ANY, wait until you've rented 10 movies at your video store and get the 11th movie free and then use it on this film. That way you won't feel so bad when you rip this thing out of the DVD player.

Cheers.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Mulholland Drive for dummies
Review: OK, here's a CliffsNotes explantion for the crybabies that didn't understand the movie:

1. The movie begins with a shot of someone falling asleep on a red pillow. This is Diane Selwyn. This leads to...
2. The first half of the movie, which is Diane's dream. In her dream, she is Betty, a perky, aspiring actress with everything going for her (Betty is everything that Diane is not in real life). In the dream, the amnesiac Rita is based on the real Camilla Rhodes whom Diane had an affair with (likewise, Rita is everything that Camilla is not in real life).
3. The second half of the movie is Diane awake. We learn that her life stinks in a series of flashbacks which also explain the dream she had the previous night.

All of the recent events and characters in Diane's real life (the cowboy, the Espresso guy, the waitress, Bob Brooker, Coco, the scared guy at Winkie's, etc.) show up in some form or another within the dream. Look closely... you'll see them all. (Sidenote: I don't know if any of you have had a dream recently, but you probably dreamt about $hit that concerned you in real life too. Not to hard to understand that, right?)

For those of you that appreciated figuring out this movie (as I did), I applaud you. The only reason why I didn't give the DVD five stars, is because the chapter selection would have been truly useful (although seeing the movie as a whole is a the real experience).

Is Mulholland Drive a frustrating movie? It sure is. Is it hard to watch? It sure is. Is it worth watching? ABSOLUTELY! It's one of the few movies of last year that demanded that you use intelligence to unravel its rewards.

For those reviewers who still don't get it, never fear... I heard Carrot Top is making a direct-to-video release real soon.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Drive Away!
Review: This is the worst movie I've ever seen. Worst acting, worst casting, worst editing, worst writing, etc. I would say worst story but there wasn't one. I can't believe someone read this script and said, "We have to make this into a movie." I can't believe anyone would give Lynch the money to make it. I can't believe it was voted one of the year's best. This movie is a joke. All I can figure is that it has some kind of hypnotic, subliminal message hidden in it saying, "Love this movie. Love this movie." Thank goodness I was immune. There's nothing to love.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Don't waste 2 and a half hours.
Review: It's movies like these that ruin it for the rest. David Lynch brings us another story that should make sense but screws you over for the 45 minutes. The movie was good for the first 90 minutes(believe it or not), but it seems as if this wierdo director tries to confuse his audiences so that they'll end up thinking that it is good and then they'll buy it. Not only that but this is an absolutely horrible DVD release. Only a trailer and Cast & Crew info! This also has to be a first for a DVD that doesn't have any chapter stops. I heard Lynch purposely did that and will be doing it for all of his other movies. The 3-second car crash is all that I enjoyed. If you liked this hunk-o-junk then see Lost Highway, it's basically the same Lynch [stuff].

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Winkle in time
Review: This fantastic picture has played on my DVD player nearly every day since its release. Mulholland drive is by no means a film for the lazy of thought or close minded of souls. Lynch is not a director, he is a great artist who is able to tap into the abstact and realistic realms of life and give us a glimpse of how they are so mistaken for one another. He is perhaps the only known abstact expressionist filmmaker in the world, and Mulholland Drive is a canvas of swirling brush strokes and Jackson pollack-like drips of truth and feelings. What is real, and what is a dream? These questions are not answered, they can not be. That would be a personal opinion by the Lynch. What Lynch does, is put the perception totally in our (the viewer's) heads. The DvD comes with this great feature of a inside sleeve "10 clues to unlock the mystery", which could or could not help you. The great thing about this film is you might have a different pertcepti0on of what it is about everytime you see it. So PLEASE see this movie, it is ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT FILMS made in the last twenty years. Yourt perception is needed, your opinion is valuable. The story that revolves around this film is a dreamscape, I won't even begin to explain. But..
-There is a accident.
-There is a actress, an amnesiac, a dead woman, a wannabe
actress, a lover, some one or everyone is from Deep River,
Onterio, and they might all be the same person, or two people,
or three or at least someone is seeing an abstact mirror image
of what was, or is, or might become.
-Paying attension to names(don't worry about faces), and little
details are what makes this an sensational
nightmare/dream/life/winkle in time.
See this film, see this film,
-Time is a meaningless thing and not everything happens they way
you rememeber it.
Join us in celebrating film and art and thought, silencio!!!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Brilliant
Review: I only saw this once in the theater and, to be honest, I'm not sure it would have the same impact on a little TV. Nonetheless, I'll probably rent it and see if my initial understanding of the film is correct. This is a stunning artistic expression David Lynch and friends have created. It's telling that he believes there's this "something" in the air that compels him or lets him feel what sort of projects he'll fall in love with. Memento, which is also an extremely non-linear film, came out at about the same time. Certainly there's a kind of zeitgeist (or something) that inspires these types of parallel projects. I'm thankful for it.

Lynch is a master at eliciting the strangest emotions you've never experienced, except for maybe when you dream. And even then, I think he's playing with some that even our subconscious minds haven't touched before. That said, I'll make some comments on what my favorite scenes were and what I think they meant. The scene in the diner about the dream, which foreshadows the entire plot of Mulholland Drive: someone has a dream, they wake up, and the dream happens for real. The old couple in the car giggling at each other, which is symbolic and literal of the giddy excitement one feels when first arriving in Hollywood. The old couple and what they represent later return to haunt her (and us) in one of the most absurd yet frightening scenes I've ever watched. The dwarf from Twin Peaks in the wheelchair: certainly if this actress isn't getting the part it's because of scary, shadowy figures at the top trying to force the director to cast someone else...wouldn't that be nice. The Roy Orbison song in Spanish right after the beautiful love scene was extremely intense. Their attempts to unlock the mysterious box (her potential talent) only to have the dream degenerate and then end. Where does her potential, and indeed her very psyche (brains), end up? In a back ally behind that diner, in the possession of a monstrous bum figure. That's about as keen an insight on what Hollywood can do to a poor girl as any I've ever seen.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: head shaker
Review: This film did have all of your Lynch-isms, and I am a fan of Lynch, but it did not hit home for me. One of the funnest things about Lynch is watching the movies again and figuring them out. I got it for the most part, but honestly I didn't care to give it another veiw even for the sake of proving I could understand everything. I really had high hopes for this movie, but I'm not gonna like it just because its Lynch. If he does another movie with the double-life/doppelganger/dream-realtiy theme its gonna really start to wear thin.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Take another look...and another... and another...
Review: Mulholland Drive is a dark treatise on Hollywood. David Lynch's renown as an unorthodox artist and the pressure he has felt to make conventional films is vividly at play here in the subtext to the film's twisting narrative. He deliciously explores this theme through the film's characters, one of whom is a film director who is forced to relinquish control of casting his female lead.

The two female characters are designed as metaphors for the loss of one's identity in tinsel town. Betty, a newly arrived, wide-eyed innocent girl from Canada comes to LA to seek her destiny in motion pictures. Her career plans are put on hold when she meets a woman who calls herself Rita and shows up in Betty's shower. But Rita is unsure of exactly who she is as she has just been involved in a car accident, and is suffering from amnesia. Betty undergoes an amazing, but brief transformation, in a sexy audition piece and Rita finds out the grisly fate of a friend of hers named Diane. These episodes are but a foreshadowing of the twists yet to come as Betty and Rita's lives become increasingly intertwined. The final mystery is unveiled in a cacophony of bizarre dreamlike imagery that includes a trip to a nightclub where reality is just an illusion, a homeless man with a blue box and little people inside it, and two lesbian love scenes.

Undoubtedly, there will be many people who dislike this film. It's non-linear, dreamlike narrative is just too difficult for most mainstream audiences. But that is precisely why David Lynch fans and non-fans alike should give Mulholland Drive another look. How many DVDs have you bought, thinking you would watch them dozens of times, only to have them collect dust on the shelf? Mulholland Drive is one of those haunting, eerie, masterpieces that demand multiple viewing. Even when you've unraveled the obscure plot, you will watch this film again and again as Lynch's mystery of mixed identities envelops you in a myriad of sensations. Mulholland Drive is all at once, foreboding, mysterious, frightening and beautiful.

The one and only reason I gave this four stars instead of five has to do with the DVD itself, not the movie. There are practically no extras on this disc, not even chapter stops. And if ever a movie demanded audio commentary from its director, it's this one. My suspicion is that Universal is planning a "special" edition of Mulholland Drive with these bonuses. Quite frankly, I'm sick of these marketing tactics to get us poor suckers to buy multiple copies of the same film. But the movie itself is the best frill on this no-frills package. Buy it, and rent the special edition when it comes out.


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