Prepare to go off the deep end...and love every second of the trip.

Rating: 9/10 (30 July 2010)

"Silencio".
An aspiring actress from out of town (Naomi Watts), a film director suffering from a series of bad luck (Justin Theroux), and a mysterious woman with a purse full of money, amnesia from an accident, and people searching for her (Laura Elena Harring), all intersect in Los Angeles. But something seem odd. Off. Strange. What's going on, and how are these people connected?
Naomi Watts is my favorite actress, so there's absolutely no excuse for it to have taken so long for me to see this movie. Especially considering how fantastic Mulholland Drive is, and how great she is in it. From the very beginning, you have no idea what's going on. Strange things occur, and you're left wondering what in the heck is happening and who these people are. But the ambiguity never becomes frustrating. It only serves to make you more and more eager to continue on and see what everything is leading to. I literally said out loud at least three times, "I have no idea what's going on, but this is awesome." It's been a while since a movie has caught my attention so strongly from the very beginning and held it to the very end.
Despite my adoration for Mulholland Drive, I'm vaguely aware of the fact that some people might find this movie "too weird". As I mentioned before, you're given a lot of scenes without the initial context to make sense of them, and I know that can annoy some people. The film is also quite surreal, at times, and while I may have found that scenes like those at the corral and Club Silencio (and really the entire last half-hour) to be incredible, I can (sort of) understand that they may be just flat out odd to some folks. So be warned, this movie is DIFFERENT. And yes, the all-caps really is necessary. If you only like your movies literal and straight-forward, do yourself a favor and choose a different movie.
I don't hand out ratings this high very often, but Mulholland Drive leaves me no choice. It's was so unexpectedly and unconventionally amazing (especially if it's your first David Lynch film, as it was for me), that I have no doubts that it's one of the best movies I've ever seen. It's startling, mesmerizing, and it'll bend your mind so far that it may never snap back to its original shape. I've seen nothing else like it. I'll admit that I can't help but wonder what the story would have been like without the hard left turn 2/3's of the way through (otherwise you'd be looking at a perfect rating), but this movie is a gem.