I wholeheartedly and enthusiastically agree with the choice. It’s a movie I keep returning to, there’s almost a hypnotic quality to it. Naomi Watts is absolutely incredible, her performance cried out for an Oscar and did not Hollywood permanently have its head up its ass both she and Lynch would have received one.
There are so many great moments in the film: the audition scene where Watts practically scorches the screen; the bumbling hitman; the cowboy; “This is the girl!”; Club Silenzio; the dream recountal at Winkies; does it feel strange to be talking to yourself? Diane asks of Rita, but of course she’s asking the wrong person.
So many moments, such a great great film. Concur? Violently disagree? Bring it on, guys. What’s your candidate for the best movie of the first two decades of the 21st century?
MH is clearly a great movie if you’re the kind of person willing to watch a movie over and over to try to dig into its puzzles & depths. So you can see why critics would love it, and some people like us would love it, but it will be a mystifying choice to many.
It’s more impressive on subsequent viewings. It doesn’t make much sense until you watch it all the way through. And once you watch it with some understanding of what it is trying to do it becomes an even better film.
Was wowed the first time out and watched again as soon as I could. Got even more out of it the second time. Incredibly impressed with Laura Harring.
There’s a lot of people who aren’t really actors, aren’t very good or whose best acting days are long behind them who did a really good job in it. That’s a testament to Lynch’s skills as a director.
Mostly agree with your first premise; Mostly disagree with your second. Vertigo is a complex film about obsession made in a time where dsrk themes werent common. It was wonderfully directed. The plot is a bit silly but the characters are brilliant. Jimmy Stewart gets labeled with the Mr Main Street label but his performance in this film and Rear Window show he could play dark characters magnificently.
I saw it in the theatre, but I only remember the conversation in the diner and a sex scene so I’m not going to put it in my list of top movies, personally. At least it was less boring than Eraserhead. Blue Velvet is more my speed.
I’m not sure how many times I’ve seen it, but what I recall about this movie is that it left me totally mystified as to what I had actually watched. There’s clearly a lot going on in the movie, but it’s really unclear on first viewing how it all fits together. That makes it potentially interesting to go back and watch it again and try to catch how it all fits together a bit better, perhaps a little like The Usual Suspects, but I don’t recall having the same sense of understanding the basic plot arc when it finished as I did for the latter movie. I was left with a sense of scattered pieces of plot that I had no idea how to fit together unless I watched it again, and didn’t find what was happening in the movie all that compelling to begin with.
I’m sure how it all fits together is totally brilliant, but it’s just not compelling in the same way The Usual Suspects or even Inception is. The latter one has a significant amount of complicated ideas being worked into the plot for what’s at heart an action movie, and while it might not be as artistic of a film as something by Lynch, it was able to capture my emotions much more easily in one viewing. And similarly, as much as there were a ton of things that I really disliked about Interstellar, it did a tremendous job of pulling on the heart strings and making one feel for the situation that the characters were in. But obviously Nolan a completely different kind of director. Regardless, with Mulholland Drive, I was just left scratching my head and wasn’t particularly interested in figuring it out.
I thought it essentially unwatchable. Glad I watched it, simply because so many folk hold such strong opinions about it. But I’m not interested in movies that I need to study up on and rewatch repeatedly to figure out what the hell I just saw. Enough other media out there I haven’t viewed once, to waste another couple hours hoping something I disliked gets better on rewatching.
I’m no expert on film, or much of anything else. But MF struck me as tho Lynch was trying to be oh-so-clever and ambiguous, hoping folk would interpret it as “deep.” I guess I can imagine someone enjoying it as something to analyze and guess about, but that’s not the way I like to enjoy movies. Of course, I understand some folk claim to enjoy reading Ulysses…
Typical “critic” response. No one want to admit they don’t understand it, so they say “it is the best movie ever. If you don’t agree you have no taste. I dare you to say different!”
It’s a good movie, a clever movie, but far from the best ever. To be best ever, it actually has to work. It has to impart a coherent whole. Even with some guidance as to what is actually happening, there are still parts that don’t fit.
My justification - the movie as filmed was to be the pilot of a TV series. Answer were not meant to be forthcoming for the mysteries - the answers weren’t even likely finalized yet. And it definitely wasn’t the point about the duality of the lead character(s).
I think Lynch had a coherent (at least, in Lynchian terms) story in mind, but when the show didn’t sell, he put together what he had and left a partially incoherent mess and passed it off as clever. He called it genius, and, Jesus, people bought it.
