Mulholland Dr.

Released: 2001
Drama, Mystery (yeah, it's a mystery all right!)
Starring: Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux
Director: David Lynch (I use the term director loosely here)
Running Time: a very long and confusing 147 minutes
Rated R for sex, violence, and language

The breakdown:
Where do I start with this one?
A woman who was nearly murdered, is now suffering from amnesia and is trying to figure out what happened to her and who's trying to kill her.


Overall, this movie is a piece of crap...well, maybe I shouldn't say that all of it is a piece of crap.  The first hour is ok.  You can follow it and it all makes sense, it's after this little blue box is opened that everything goes to hell and you get mad and confused like me.  Now, I just finished reviewing a movie (Donnie Darko) that could be confusing to some in the main meaning and details, BUT I think the story is incredible and it's worth it to try and figure out the meaning and discuss it with your friends.  THIS movie after the first hour, completely goes haywire.  And by haywire I mean, characters start acting completely different than they did a few minutes earlier and they are calling each other by strange names and things just go in ways that I totally did not understand.  I really had no idea what was going on, not the slightest inkling.  I indeed was so confused and mad that I had to go to the internet to be told what it was all about after it was over.
The things that I did like?  The acting was fine, and I cared enough about the main female characters to actually enjoy the sex scenes between them (a first since I'm straight.)  The first hour of the film was fine, but once you hit that mark I really changed my opinion of this movie.
I don't even know how to tell you about the movie it's that weird.
I'll try anyway:
A dark haired woman at the beginning of the film is thrown out of a limo in the hills of the street Mulholland Drive.  The driver is about to shoot her when the limo is hit by some teenagers that are racing on the road side by side.  She escapes but she can't remember who she is.  She ends up sneaking into an open door of an apartment down in Los Angeles that belongs to a woman who is leaving town for a while.  It turns out Naomi Watts is the apartment owners niece and she's coming there to try to be a movie star and watch over the apartment.  The amnesiac tells Watts that she's a friend of the woman who left and Watts believes her until she talks with her aunt over the phone the next day.  Even after Watts tells the amnesiac my aunt doesn't know you, the amnesiac tells her the truth and Watts feels bad for her and lets her stay anyway.  Together they start working out what could've happened to her and who she really is.  The amnesiac does have a purse with her and in it is a strange blue key and a large amount of cash.  Watts goes for an audition for a movie and nails the part.  She couldn't be more excited and happy.  The amnesiac makes a few strides in her search of who she is and the two get very close.  Strangely (for me), there is a tenderness between them during the love scene that I think a lot of people will react positively to. 
Anyway, the two end up at a mysterious night club called Silencio.  There a little blue box changes everything.  Watts just finds it in her purse all of a sudden and it's a match for the amnesiac's blue key.  They take it home and open the blue box and then they both disappear.
The next morning, Watts is not the same character and neither is the woman who was playing the amnesiac.  In this this world, the amnesiac has never forgotten who she was.  They are now former lovers who broke up as a couple, and Watts wants to get back together, but the amnesiac is about to get married to a man and she hates Watts.  Watts is now a struggling actress, but she's really terrible.  The amnesiac was helping Watts to get bit parts in her movies.  In this world, the amnesiac is a big star.  And that's just the story of two characters.  There are a lot of others in this movie that don't seem to fit in anywhere and their mere existence in this film baffles me.  They have no point and they don't add anything so why are they there?  I guess David Lynch likes to try to have a great meaning beyond what mere human beings can understand or maybe he just likes to confuse people and tells them it means something, but they have to figure it out for themselves.  You honestly would not BELIEVE how many characters I am not telling you about!  Strange cowboys, producers, men in a restaurant just talking about dreams, etc.
I would liken it to Lynch giving you a 1,000 piece puzzle to put together without showing you the picture of what it's supposed to be and withholding about 100 pieces from you in the first place.  The only thing of his I ever liked was the show "Twin Peaks" and that was bizarre as well.
Any way you look at this film I can tell you for sure it's not a linear story, it's not an easy story to understand, and I think the director is being cryptic for the sake of being cryptic, not because it makes for a fantastic story, which it does not.  I don't care that he was nominated for an Oscar for directing this film, I don't care that some critics LOVE this film.  I hated it.  My ultimate recommendation is to only see this movie if you love to be confused.
My main problem with this movie is that the director has a reputation for making bizarre movies and that seems to be all he can make.  I think in this movie, he's trying to be confusing just because.  I don't think that's an effective way to tell a story.  I don't mind stories where you don't have everything spoon fed to the audience, but I do like enough clues to figure out the story on my own. 

I give it 2 out of 5 ticket stubs ONLY because of the first hour that made sense and the love scenes.