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Mulholland Drive

Mulholland Drive

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Generous Dose Of Lynchdom
Review: A beginning is a very difficult time for a new star to shine brightly in the sometimes brutal heaven know as Hollywood.
This is a journey of a comatose story with all the elements of a Lynch kingdom beautifully rendered. Thank god the ABC network turned down the pilot for this rather steamy and sensuous premise so that it may find it's true home on the silver screen. Lynch has appoarched an adult relationship with a tearful of honesty and true bounding of hearts left unguarded in the city of broken dreams. A film thoroughly in rapture that my heart is still pounding. And my senses ablaze.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: thank god i didn't pay for my ticket
Review: i'm a big movie fan, and i like almost anything. but this was the worst movie i've ever seen. i've never heard a whole movie theater laughing in unison at how bad a movie was before. we got a free sneak preveiw and all left saying "thank god i didn't pay to see this." the movie is beyond strange, and beyong borning. for those who saw it their are 2 maybe three scenes i enjoyed and u know which ones those were.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It's all about the journey
Review: Ah...David Lynch movies. You're on board...you're getting it...everything seems pretty easy to follow....and then whammo, he flips you on your head. You're left with the lights coming up, mumbling, "But..but...then..how come...er?" And you can't even come up with a question. But the best advice I can offer with Lynch's movies is just to sit back and enjoy the ride. It's not really about tidy little packages with Lynch, and therein lies the charm.
And for those of us who are left decidedly UNcharmed by Nora Ephron movies, this movie swept me right off my feet. I'm going to have to see it again and again. I'm reminded of the first time I saw "Blue Velvet," an old favorite. I was left not exactly getting what I'd seen, but being darned sure that I had liked it.
Performances from both the unknowns and the veteran character actors were super as usual.
Incidentally, a piece of trivia: it's my understanding that Lynch originally wanted to use "Crying" in the scene in Ben's apartment, but went for "In Dreams" instead because "Crying" seemed too on the nose. I wonder what made him go with "Crying" this time?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: brilliant
Review: I walked out of the theater with no idea what I had just seen, but loving it. Ten minutes later, when I'd figured it out, I loved it all the more.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Master is Back
Review: David Lynch has been making challenging, brilliant movies for decades, and Mulholland Drive is no exception. In fact this may be his best. He is a true, uncompromising artist.

It's best not to read about the plot--just see the movie. It will have you dreaming for days on end. It's densly layered and demands multiple viewings. Don't be dismayed by the fact it was a rejected tv pilot; it works perfectly as a feature film and all the plot points, even those that seem arbitrary, fit in the end.

Much has been said of Naomi Watt's acting, and for good reason--her performance is amazing. The audition scene alone broke my heart.

Another actor who deserves mentioning (who seems to be neglected in reviews) is Justin Theroux. He's hillarious as the aggravated director. Watch his reaction shots as his life spirals downhill--priceless. His meating with the "Cowboy" will surely be a fan favorite.

Go ahead and rent Joe Dirt or Independance Day. If you have a brain, Mulholland Drive is for you.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: L.A. Neo-Noir at Its Finest
Review: David Lynch's Mulholland Drive takes its place on the roadmap of L.A. noirs, right next to Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard and Roman Polanski's Chinatown. Starting with the opening shot of a sleek black limo snaking its way uphill on Mulholland Drive, I found myself riveted to the edge of my seat by this superb film. Mulholland Drive is self-consciously a David Lynch film - he seems to parody himself here as auteur along with other auteurs, notably Fellini, Bergman, and Hitchcock. There were several scenes that had the audience snickering and laughing out loud - in those scenes (my favorite involved a Hoover), Lynch seemed to be aping the Coen Brothers.

There are two femmes fatales, Betty/Diane (Naomi Watts) and Rita/Camilla (Laura Elena Harring). Betty begins her role as a perky starry-eyed blonde - she has an uncanny resemblance to Tippi Hedren in The Birds - and unravels into a scary psychopath. Sexy brunette Rita wanders in with amnesia and winds up with a blonde wig. There's a movie within the movie, directed by Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux). Characters and caricatures, plots and sub-plots abound, but there's no book here. It's like opening a set of blue lacquered Chinese boxes, each with its own mystery inside.

What I enjoyed most about Mulholland Drive was the sound design by David Lynch. The sound editing was flawless, too. The low-key lighting added a creepy suspenseful touch. The odd camera angles that I expected from Lynch were there, along with icons of the Southland - palm trees, Hollywood sign, dark over-furnished apartments facing in on overgrown courtyards, old over-tanned actors and garishly made-up actresses, house in the hills with pool and view. I got lost on Mulholland Drive, but the sights and sounds were spectacular!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: I WANTED TO SEE LA LLORONA & COWBOY GET TOGETHER
Review: I'll be brief. I'm another fan of Lynch's unparralleled vision & talent...yet this film would hooked me in, only to let go most of the time. It's got great touches and trademark scenes and dialogue, but I was left wanting. Just being honest.

I'm more of a Lost Highway/Fire Walk With Me aficionado. So what will the man do next? I sure hope it's something for next summer. We sure waited a long time for this one.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Wild Ride Through The Bowels of LA
Review: I am so pleased that David Lynch is out there making films. His unique deconstructive approach to storytelling takes an ordinary tale of pristine innocence gone bad and turns into to a multi-layered social commentary of the dark side of society and humanity.

"Mulholland Drive" at first seems like a very straight forward story that flows like a LA soap opera or a Sirk film. Characters are introduced and appear to be going in very unrelated directions. Some develop and some vanish only to return later on. The two female leads are on an apparent search for the missing identity of 'Rita,' while a young, hot shot director is being manipulated by the LA underground to cast a no-talent in his latest film against his wishes, etc. When all of a sudden (almost 3/4's in), everything changes. Pandora's Box literally opens and all the ills of mankind spill out for the audience to see. What was stable and familiar to the audience for the last hour and a half is nothing more than a fantasy world projected by a young, wannabe starlet trying to make sense of her life before completely going over the edge. Another victim consumed by the City of Angeles.

"Mulholland Drive" is yet another powerful tale of the dark and seedy realm that lies underneath the superficial world of innocence and hope. Instead of Lumbertown or Twin Peaks, it takes place in the very 'real' world of LA. Like most of Lynch's films "Mulholland Drive" is very a complex, multi-layered psychological mind trip dripping with rich symbolic elements that demands multiple viewings to fully understand what is going on. But once it sinks in, you will be amazed on how comprehensive it is.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Surrealistic to the point of non-sensical
Review: What is the point? Well, no one is really sure (maybe Lynch knows)... but the film seems to be about Hollywood's corruption of innocence and artistic integrity.

Ok, if you'd like to make such a point, why do it in such a convoluted way? Well, apparently David Lynch thinks it's great art to leave the audience confused. That is, to to make a film so surrealistic that there is really no logic, and therefor it leaves critics unable to attack the lack of structure in the story.

It's really a worthless experimental piece. Much like the exploration of jazz music in the 60's that slowly peeled away the structure of music, to the point that one is left with incomprehensible and chaotic noise. Guess what? Random noise is not music ... and incoherent structure is not great art!

Lynch spends a great deal of time developing interesting characters in the first half of the film. A comedic bent is shown with the hit man who has everything go wrong, and with the sinister cowboy Bob. But do these sub-plots go anywhere? No, they don't really... after Rita wakes up muttering "silencio", everything in the movie turns into a dream sequence. And all the sub-plots are tied together in a cursory and non-sensical way, as is often the case in a dream.

Does non-sensical dreams make great art? I don't think so ... and neither is this movie.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: the road less travelled
Review: If you are looking for a coherent plot or story, this is not a movie for you. However, if you are willing to take the road that's less taken and, therefore, less paved by the filmmakers of Hollywood factory, or your taste for movie is ruined by tasteless Hollywood movies, you are in for a treat.

Lynch finishes in "Mulholland Drive" what he started in "the lost highway." His unique film language is near perfection in this movie. Some viewer will say this movie is very experimental, while others will say just weird. His use of film techniq does lend to that impression, however, to me, his previous films are more exprerimental in anticipation of this movie.

Just go watch this movie if you are looking for something original and different.


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