Absolutely brilliant.

Rating: 10/10 (26 May 2001)

"Mulholland Drive" is Lynch's most powerful and stunning work since his 1986 masterpiece "Blue Velvet." The film combines the mysterious noir elements of "Blue Velvet," the dream-like horror of "Fire Walk With Me," and the bizarre structure of "Lost Highway." People going to see this film expecting everything to tie up in a nice little bow at the end will be severely disappointed. However, anyone who wants to take a strange and wonderful trip that sucks you in and keeps your mind churning for weeks afterward are going to love it.
Lynch has clearly proven himself as a narrative storyteller with such films as "The Elephant Man," and "The Straight Story," and now he is taking the art of filmmaking in a new direction. I believe some people will be frustrated with the movie because they simply have no point of reference to compare it with. Others, who are more open minded to entering a dream world where things are so real and yet so unreal at the same time, are going to watch this film over and over and over. The film at times is horrifying, at other times hilarious, and features one of the hottest sex scenes in motion picture history. The performances are brilliant. To describe the plot or give anything away would not do the film justice; it simply has to be experienced.
"Mulholland Drive" brings to mind Billy Wilder's classic "Sunset Boulevard," which also explored the darker side of both Hollywood and human nature in an unconventionally narrative way. Mulholland Drive, the road, parallels Sunset Boulevard the road in Los Angeles, yet it is much darker, with many hidden twists and turns. "Mulholland Drive" the film works the same way, except this time we are experiencing Hollywood and human nature from the point of view of David Lynch.
I think that with the right distributor, this film could do very well. This film should win Oscars. When "Fire Walk With Me" came out, it bombed critically as well as with audiences, yet it is now considered one of the best films of the 90's by many critics and fans. I think people are ready for a film like "Mulholland Drive," as an alternative to the God awful crap that the studios are feeding us on a weekly basis. If this film had been a television series, it would have been popular than "Twin Peaks" was at its height. As a feature film, "Mulholland Drive" will stand as an landmark for the next wave of filmmaking.