Mulholland Drive

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Lynch's Hollywood is a grand old girl, but she's one with some very treacherous curves. To trace the contours of her sensuality, you need a camera as sensitive as a set of fingertips. Lynch's is.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Like "Memento," Mulholland Drive is an amnesiac noir in the tradition that goes back to "Spellbound" and "Somewhere in the Night."

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

For film buffs and Lynch fans, this is a glorious high.

Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson

Amid the chaos of this marvelous, uncategorizable film squirms one of the year's best performances.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

Not just everything you want in a David Lynch movie, but damn near everything else you want in ANY movie.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Likely as not, these things mean nothing in a conventional plot sense, but as powerful images, as pictures from a dreamlike world, they are unforgettable. And that, David Lynch would probably say, is exactly the point.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Watts and Harring even turn out to be the hottest Hollywood couple of 2001. The plot slides along agreeably as a tantalizing mystery before becoming almost completely inexplicable, though no less thrilling, in the closing stretches--but that's what Lynch is famous for. It looks great too.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

This is a movie to surrender yourself to. If you require logic, see something else. Mulholland Drive works directly on the emotions, like music.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

By surrendering any semblance of rationality to create a post-Freudian, pulp-fiction fever dream of a movie, Mr. Lynch ends up shooting the moon with Mulholland Drive.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's surreal, erotic, creepy, frustrating, absorbing, transporting and torturous in the way only a Lynch film can be.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Thrilling and ludicrous. The movie feels entirely instinctual. The rest is silencio.

New Times (L.A.) Gregory Weinkauf

While this road may contain too many potholes -- and plotholes -- to sustain an even ride, there are moments of greatness scattered throughout to remind us why Lynch is vital and why the French think he's so nifty.

Time Richard Corliss

Viewers will feel as though they've just finished a great meal but aren't sure what they've been served. Behind them, the chef smiles wickedly.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The challenge is exhilarating. You can discover a lot about yourself by getting lost in Mulholland Drive. It grips you like a dream that won't let go.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

It just requires an open mind, a love of film and a willingness to dream.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

A dizzying - sometimes frustrating - marvel of moviemaking instinct and ingenuity.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Rapt and beautiful and absorbing.

Slate David Edelstein

Mulholland Drive isn't a "puzzle" like "Memento," in which the pieces (sort of) fit together. There are some pieces here that will never fit -- except maybe in Lynch's unconscious. And yet -- and yet -- this distinctly Hollywood nightmare makes a deeper kind of sense.

Variety Todd McCarthy

A genuinely ominous and suspenseful thriller.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Lynch's new movie, Mulholland Drive, is a trip and a half: It's like playing Twister and Scrabble simultaneously while high on LSD. Oh, and it's dark out.

TV Guide Ken Fox

An intriguingly mysterious, self-reflexive ode to the dream factory, it's one of Lynch's most satisfying films.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

It's a lush, lovely dreamscape of a movie, steeped in familiar vernacular (film noir), yet capable of shooting off in totally unfamiliar, surreal directions.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Lynch does "explain" what's happening via a plot twist two-thirds of the way through "Drive," which will satisfy you (as it did me) or leave you asking, "Is that all there is?"

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

Exhilarating not only for its dreamlike images and fierce, frequently reckless imagination but also for the fact that it got made (and released) at all.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

It will frustrate viewers who like stories to make instant sense, but fans of provocative puzzles will have mind-teasing fun.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

No classic like "The Big Sleep," another famously impossible-to-follow Los Angeles thriller. But for those willing to hang on for dear life, Lynch makes it worth their while.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

It's flawed, but it's also rich. And how many films make you feel that you and the filmmaker are following the course of a dream?

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

The movie, at two and a half hours, retains much of the unhurried suspense -- the careful cultivating of our patience, of our narrative loyalty -- that is bred by the best TV.

Film Threat Chris Gore

There’s a lot to enjoy, and plenty of potential, but none of it pays off. So we’re left with what amounts to some very clever experimental cinema in the Lynch vein. Which, if you think about it, isn’t all that bad.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

As riveting as it may be, his film is a total shaggy-dog story.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Watching this surrealist silliness, I would have welcomed the sight of a geezer on a riding mower.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Relax, sit tight, and enjoy the ride.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Lynch needs to renew himself with an influx of the deep feeling he has for people, for outcasts, and lay off the cretins and hobgoblins and zombies for a while. Mulholland Drive is the product of David Lynch, Inc.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Mulholland Drive is an extended mood opera, if you want to put an arty label on incoherence.