This Is the One

Rating: 10/10 (2 October 2001)

(I'm re-sending this because the first time, my computer crashed.)
Rapturously beautiful, hilariously funny, thematically multi-layered (among other things, it's about Hollywood: once upon a time & right now, for better & for worse, ridiculous & sublime), Mulholland Drive is like the eponymous road it begins and ends on. It lifts you, drops you, blesses you with its vistas & fills you with apprehension. Despite the many things that could be said about David Lynch's excursion into a new region of Dreamland, one I hope to re-visit often, you keep hearing the tired kvetch: "It was terrific, but the last 20 minutes were too weird." Even if that were true, and I don't think it is, what a pathetic response to one of the few early 21st century movies that loves and respects its audience, assuming it wants to be astonished and provoked, rather that jerked off by cheap thrills and re-assured by boring platitudes.