Hollywood: The 8th Deadly Sin

Rating: 8/10 (7 May 2005)

This amazing film manages to pay homage to many film classics (ie. "Touch of Evil," "Sunset Boulevard," "Vertigo," "Barton Fink," "The Player," "Perfect Blue") and still be a jaw-dropping piece of cinematic originality. "Mulholland Dr.," also inspired by pulp fiction (the genre, not the movie), turns the missing girl/ mistaken identity format around-about, in-and-out. Lynch's greatest strength has been his audacious style, a dazzling combination of Franz Kafka and Frank Capra, Dario Argento and "Happy Days." This film presents Hollywood as an obscene nightmare covered in a pink patina of promise. Lynch's trademark sub- bass groans loom beneath '50's bubblegum pop hits. Pretty girls in bouffants coo lipstick lullabies while doped-up divas hallucinate and harangue hipster gangsters. In Lynch's La La Land, names are incidental, faces are interchangeable, nothing is real. Only one character, Adam Kesher, even attempts to return to reality with his (ultimately) false promise: "I'm Going Home."