Mulholland Drive Reviews

I found Mulholldand Drive to be a fantastic film, having loved all of David Lynch's films seen personally so far (personal favourite being The Elephant Man, one of the most emotionally affecting films ever made) with the exception of Dune. For this viewer, Mulholland Drive is one of Lynch's best films and among the best films of the 2000s, but it is also one of Lynch's most love-it-or-hate-it films- from a love/hate him director- as seen in the reviews here. And it is very understandable why people would dislike it, it is weird (not unusual for Lynch), it is slow, the story mayn't be clear to some, the symbolism may go over people's heads and it does get confusing especially towards the end. And it has nothing to do with not getting it, it is just not for everybody's tastes and not everybody is going to connect with it. For those who love it neither of these are problems, admittedly it is a good idea to be acquainted with Lynch's style beforehand so that it doesn't come across as too much of a shock and also to watch it more than once. Justifying what was so great about Mulholland Drive, a good place to start would be the visuals, which are never less than scintillating with bold colours, symbolic imagery and some of the most striking cinematography of any film from this decade. The Silencio Club scene is so beautifully shot. The haunting retro score, thought-provoking dialogue and that it contains some of Lynch's finest direction and the best directing of all the films from 2001 are further things to like. The story is where those who dislike it are perplexed, granted there may be too many plot strands crammed in towards the end and not everybody's going to like how the ending is open to interpretation, but with me the thriller-drama story was gripping and I was captivated so much by the surrealist atmosphere, offbeat emotional intensity and sizzling suspense that the slow pacing didn't feel slow at all. It wisely focused on the relationship between Watts and Harring, and while bizarre it was very well handled. The cast carry the film brilliantly, especially with the sensational lead performance of Naomi Watts who has never been better than here. Laura Harring is enchanting and Justin Theroux is very good. In conclusion, while not for everybody's tastes for understandable (and quite obvious) reasons Mulholland Drive was fantastic in all areas. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Ah Mulholland Drive. This is one of those movies you hear about all the time and you get more and more curious. You always hear about the Hobo or see pictures and such. This is honestly only my second venture into the film world of David Lynch. I hear it's one heck of a weird one too. At least it has some great cast choices. So let's see what all the fuss is about.

Holy hell that really was a trip. You have to really focus and pay attention to the details. It's not really explained as much as it is implied what is going on. How is everything connected and why? What is really going on? What happened with these people? Some things go unanswered or simply drift out of the story. It's a highly psychological and strange film. You really have to think outside of the box here. The acting is excellent and I loved the chemistry between Naomi Watts and Laura Harring. Plus come on those moments between them are definitely worth admiring. I didn't realize the hobo was supposed to be a man until I actually watched this! Honestly though I didn't think this was greatness. I thought there were a few plotholes that kind of sunk it down for me. I mean I'm sure it doesn't all need to make sense. It's definitely a very interesting film and I see why it's always talked about.

This is a movie for the thinking person and not simply for just entertainment. In that sense it was good, but it really isn't my cup of tea. There are thinking movies I love, but this just wasn't one of them. I did find it to be an interesting watch though. I just wanted something that was a bit different. If you are curious about checking this one out only do so if you have time to really focus. Otherwise you will not be satisfied with this film.

I might be the only person who will start by saying that this movie was terrible.

The movie starts OK, with some great acting and good amount of tension,sometimes slow,sometimes boring and that's about 120 minutes of the movie.

if i haven't seen the last 20 minutes i will give this movie a 6 out of 10 because it was slow and there wasn't any score at all, the high point of the movie was the silent theater with Rebekah Del Rio singing 'Crying' which was beautiful, i first heard that exact same song at the last episode of Prison break -season 3- and without any doubt this is the best scene of the movie.

***The Last 20 Minutes***

The reason for this to be a disturbing movie is because of the bizarre shift in tone that happened, the first 120 minutes was very normal and to see that last 20 minutes was like "did i accidentally switched to another movie", you get some weird short scenes that you'd think you will get an explanation for at the end but it never happen, so much confusing things happened at the last 20 minutes that you have no idea what the fuck is going on.

So you realize that you have to watch it again to understand everything, but i didn't want to put myself in the same boring and bizarre spot again so i read a blog about what happening and that pissed me off more when i understood everything.

Here it goes ***(Spoiler)***

the first 120 minutes never happened, it was just a dream to confuse you that you are watching the movie and following the plot

but you can actually (technically) remove the entire 2 hours and you get the same result, Naomi Watts name was Betty Elms not Diane Selwyn, and shes in-love with Rita (played by Laura Harring) and Rita tried to break-up with Betty so after that love scene on the couch, she told betty that we shouldn't do that again, but betty refused so rita invited her to a party when the director was there and her mother was there and she was kissing the director in-front of betty just to piss her off, so betty decide to hire a man who will kill rita and he told her that once the operation is done, you will see a key on the table (that's when a girl knock out the door and came to pick her box of stuff).

so to sum it up, the entire movie was 20 minutes long and you don't even get to understand that the first time due to the amount of bizarreness and the irrelevant structure of the movie which confuse you because you will try to connect things but it doesn't work.

and even when you understand the movie, it still confusing because the cowboy guy was pointless and irrelevant and same-thing goes for the two guys at the restaurant in the beginning of the movie which is why pissed me off because David Lynch tried to confuse people into thinking that this movie is mind-bowing but it certainly wasn't, I've seen mind-blowing movies like Donnie Darko were even at the end of the movie nothing was explained but you can still explain it if you just think about it and everything was there for a reason (which means that everything you see benefits to the plot), but here if you think about this movie you'll get angry because everything was random and pointless and the story was too fucking short for 140 minutes movie.

That's it i'm done this movie was TERRIBLE.

I already saw this movie, in fact, I even saw it in the movie theater when it was released but since it was a while back, I thought I might as well check it out again. For many viewers, this is David Lynch's best movie, his ultimate masterpiece, his magnum opus. Well, I'm glad I gave it another shot because, except for a few key scenes, I was surprised that I didn't remember much about it and I think I was more able to enjoy it this time around. Indeed, the directing was really awesome, it was Lynch's final movie before switching to digital and the acting was just so good as well with a breakthrough performance by Naomi Watts (Laura Harring did a great job as well though). Beside the mesmerizing mood, the thing I enjoyed the most was that Watts and Harring made for one of the most sensuous and intriguing couples I have ever seen. I still think that the whole set-up feels like some pervert wet dream but I can't deny that they were fascinating to behold as they had such a great chemistry together. Eventually, the first time around, just like with 'Lost Highway', I was really frustrated by the huge twist happening towards the end. Basically, they followed the same standard structure, a structure that you can spot in many other Lynch features such as 'Lost Highway' or 'Blue Velvet'. This pattern basically consits in building up a fascinating thriller during the 1st half and in the 2nd half, the plot is basically thrown away and what's left is a succession of some rather random and weird scenes. Well, I'm still not huge a fan of this approach, especially because David Lynch pulled this trick too many times in my opinion, but, after all these years, at least, I didn't bother me much with this movie. Eventually, I really wonder how this TV show would have turned out to be. Anyway, to conclude, I guess it is eventually a matter of taste, but there is no doubt that this movie is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre or if you are interested in David Lynch's work.

Mulholland Dr.

// Those who previously feared that Lynch's oeuvre had dwindled since Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me should rejoice, for Mulholland Dr. marks the surrealist filmmaker's return to greatness. No more moribund dalliances with heavy metal or tractors; Lynchian trademarks are back with a vengeance, fusing mystery, magic realism, dwarves (this time only the head is small on The Man From Another Place, who is now a Hollywood kingpin) with atypical weirdness, exploring a society swirling in its own darkness and secrets with an array of characters armed with darkly comic, oddball dialogue. Linear narrative is very much absent, replaced with an entirely confusing, twisting, turning Mobius strip variation of the non-linear model. Lynch orchestrates an utterly beautiful, dreamy vision of the undulating city of dreams itself, Hollywood, Los Angeles. Focusing on perky, idealistic Ontario jitterbug champion Betty Elms and her arrival into such a realm, Lynch crafts his daring execution at first as a mystery/romance similar to Hollywood and pulp fiction, albeit with two female leads. Naomi Watts is the revelation of the two, displaying an intrepid duality in her extraordinary, multi-layered performance; we fall in love with the radiant, sweet and talented Betty only to discover that she is not real, simply the dreamt ideal of depressed, tragic Hollywood casualty Diane Selwyn (the nightmarish reality) martyred example of unrequited love, the personification (i.e. the bum outside Winkie's) of guilt, regret and hopelessness. With glamorous, particularly crystalline visuals almost too perfect for Lynch's usual style, Mulholland Dr. often enters the realm of devastatingly raw, dark human recesses and a tapestry of unease and foreboding which unfolds into an unaccountable menace. Even the most portentous of scenes are disturbing, frequently and unbearably so in the last chapter of the film; alternatively, in the first chapters, it sometimes descends into bizarre farce and Nancy Drew mystique. Lynch's contradictions are evident, leaving the audience clamouring for answers they will never find; artistry and clues already plant the idea, but Lynch's genius is allowing the viewer to come to their own conclusion.
After all, at the crucial point where the plot seems poised on the brink of resolution, the film disappears into a black hole from which it reappears more contrary than ever. That this is, in fact, the twist that binds the threads together probably won't occur until long after the credits roll. But then, this isn't a film to be followed in the traditional sense; it's one to let wash over you, one to wallow in.
If you need to understand rather than feel, then you can call it comprehensible in some ways, its fractured, sensual lyricism explores a tragic love whereby identity, rivalry, power and jealousy foray into an everlasting, beautiful romance, with the formerly troublesome roles reversed and happiness envisioned as the closing image of Diane's fever dream (and the film itself). As with most of Lynch's films, it has many interpretations and allusions, but in a film half set in a woman's subconscious version of Hollywood and the stark, decaying reality, you can view it any way you want to and still be rewarded with new details each time, that to me is the definition of a masterpiece. Silencio.

I need to watch this one again, I was a little confused throughout the movie. Hopefully it was because I watched it when I was so tried and maybe I wasn't paying as much attention as I should have. But I thought it was okay, and confusing, I'll watch it tomorrow and see.

I'm so upset with this movie. The background and hype this film had made me super stoked to see it. Unfortunately I was pretty disappointed.

I guess to start off I'm not a huge fan of David Lynch. Don't kill me please.

I enjoyed Eraserhead, that's about it. I respect him as a director, hes original and calmly horrifying. He has his own style that no one else can match.

Anyway about this movie (it's going to be a short review)

It had way too many unanswered questions leaving me confused for the most part. I feel like Naomi Watts and Laura Harring make a wonderful pair of actresses but I knew the minute I saw them together on screen in this film that they would end up falling in love and fool around.

I feel like a lot of the hype from this film comes from being able to see Naomi Watts's tits and lesbian action. (which I'm not complaining, it was hot.)

I did like the entire scene of them going to the late night show at the creepy theater. That was well done and very surreal. Wait scratch that the ENTIRE film was surreal. (duh, it's a David Lynch film, Ashley.)

Moving on, I understand the story line, I didn't like the way the plot went along with the story. After watching it I felt like I wasted a good hour and a half. While watching the film some of the scenes, there is no explanation on why they were happening, you just kind of had to accept them. Lastly the film felt forced to have you take this mound of twisted surrealism and try to make sense of it which kind of hurt my brain cells.

Mulholland Drive is a very bizarre film from David Lynch. I find it a very hard film to describe because if is very unusual. I don't think that Mulholland Drive is hard to understand at all because it just got on with the story. It didn't go really slow, it just did its normal and original thing by doing so. It is one of those few films that is very bizarre and is a very emotional story too. It is a real psychological story. It is slightly similar to Requiem For A Dream as far as visions are concerned but Rita suffers from amnesia just like Jason Bourne did too. The psychological side to it is what can be inside a person's mind in both a scary and beautiful way. The beautiful side is because she is suffering from this, it feels like she starts to reveal her true colours and what sort of person she really is.


Naomi Watts's performance was fairly decent. She had the looks for the character but didn't fit well enough to portray a bizarre character like Betty. There could have been a better actress to portray Betty I think. There could have been not so much better actress than Naomi Watts but an actress who can portray those sorts of characters. In the lesbian love-making scenes, Naomi seemed very weak with those scenes because it isn't just a powerful film anyway but that is a powerful scene where desperate measures are taken one step closer. I obviously understand why people must be quite nervous about it but they should at least have the confidence to do those things whether you are gay or not. Heath Ledger was apparantly nervous with the love-making with Jake Gyllenhaal but he made a good impression of not being that way. At the end of the day, it is only acting. I found Laura Harring's performance to be more of a confident and more powerful performance not only because Rita is a more powerful character than Betty but because of how Laura portrayed her character. She was more confidence with the love-making scenes like Jake Gyllenhaal was in Brokeback Mountain.


David Lynch's direction was superb. It was how he made the audience feel which is one of the reasons why Lynch's direction was a success. His direction revealed different varieties of camera angles which is what other famous directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg and David Lean could do. David Lynch brings his typical bizarre psychological side which is different to my favourite Lynch film The Elephant Man because it was very emotional and heartbreaking which isn't what Lynch is really like but he did a good job of that. The screenplay in Mulholland Drive is unusual and is once again still outstanding which makes this film very typical Lynch. Despite of how much I loved this film, The Elephant Man is still my favourite from David Lynch.


Naomi Watts's performance was rather disappointing which makes it my least favourite from her after seeing Eastern Promises, King Kong and especially 21 Grams. To me, this is a modern masterpiece from David Lynch. I find Mulholland Drive quite an underrated David Lynch film that should have earned more credit than it got.