The (Now-Overrated) ILX Top 100 Films of the 2000s Poll Results

Yeah also that.

pretty integral to the plot though

her being African, I mean

It's a decent movie and maybe top 10-15 of 2006, but it just felt clunky to me, pummel the audience, hammer you over the head, but didn't worry about the flow or tempo of it.

xp except that wasn't the case in the original book so. . .

gotta be honest i wasn't insulted that she was african

I mean its ham-handed at best and insulting at worst.

lol yeah when they did the big reveal of her in the preview I rolled my eyes for precisely this reason

Human life is pretty cheap in this film. Maybe race would bother me if I watched it again.

we all come from africa, guys

Profound.

guess she could have been eastern european or something. but really, why is african so bad?

yeah, can you articulate why making the future of humanity african is offensive to u?

shakey mo rollier

film I'm most surprised did not make the list: American Splendor

film I'm most disappointed did not make the list: The Fog of War (#3 for me)

we've established that fictitious representations of people from outside the United State and Europe are inherently exploitative, get withit

pretty sure i voted for am splends

gotta see that movie again

ok film snob detrius mentalists

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/etienne_saint/mulholland.jpg

I loved Mulholland Drive to death - the audition scene is perhaps one of the greatest pieces of cinema evah.

― Tim Finney

Tim Finney otm 7 years ago.

Stunning. Should have won an Oscar on its own, maybe.

This movie broke my brain.

loved the stupid director in that audition scene btw. 'humanistic'! just as you'd imagine a stupid director to be.

― Electric Universe (wherever that is) (acoleuthic)

Which audition scene? The awkward script reading or the magic 50's studio set Camilla Rhodes lip sync (which I've told people before is probably my single favorite scene of any movie of all time)

― Without Curves, I would feel deflated. I like Curves. They are best. (Stevie D)

The first of those scenes is the transformative one -- I was utterly astonished by it -- cuz Watts shows something that has no way been shown in her character (or in her performance) til that point.― Rage, Resentment, Spleen (Dr Morbius)

(not to mention, she's doing a dry hump w/ CHAD EVERETT)

― Rage, Resentment, Spleen (Dr Morbius)

i don't know if lynch would use the word fractal, but yeah i think the answer is "to a large extent." i'd say something more vague and holistic like, it's about how movies work -- which encompasses everything from the technical to the diegetic. the way something "real" -- real enough to convey emotion and to affect the viewer -- is constructed out of raw materials all built on artifice and make believe. the two thesis statements are the watts audition scene and the nightclub scene, but a lot of the movie either explicitly or implicitly draws on those ideas.

― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra)

To me, Lost Highway wasn't a "dry run" for Mulholland Drive, MD was more like a rehash of of LH with more boobs. I guess you could argue that more boobs automatically makes a movie better, but I don't feel so. Don't get me wrong though, I think MD is quite good (the scene in the theatre where the woman is singing "Crying" in Spanish is one of the best things Lynch has ever done), but since LH already had the exact same plot, and since LH is aesthetically more pleasing and structurally tighter (there's some scenes in MD that would've made sense if the movie would've been a pilot for a TV series, as originally intended, but in self-contained film they feel extraneous), it's not hard to choose LH over MD.

― Tuomas

I thought it was fantastic, brilliant, easily Lynch's best movie since Blue Velvet, possibly even better. It was a completely crazed FEVER DREAM of a movie, and I walked out of the theatre totally spellbound and unsettled. Jesus, David Lynch makes me so happy/disturbed to be a human being.

― Martin Swope

The dream-half comments on the real-half until it sucks the real back
into itself, and you're left with what makes emotional if not literal
sense: a non-hooray for Hollywood that's also be about walking out of
the movies into the bright light.

- Pete Scholtes

Finally saw MD last night, I took the advice of many and decided not to try and too much make sense of it all, just strapped myself in and went along with the ride. My "date" took me by surprise afterwards by declaring that it had all made sense to her, tears still streaming down her face.

The whole thing still lodged deep in my psyche where I suspect it will remain for a while. The Spanish "Crying" (by no means a mere rehash of Blue Velvet's Orbison moment) had me gripping the sides of the seat with a lump in my throat and eyes damp, yet I couldn't really understand why. As someone who doesn't necessarily demand a plot, let alone a logical one, but would rather immerse himself in atmosphere and beautiful imagery, it was some kind of perfection. I haven't seen all the reference points that Edna talks about, but I was put in mind of Bunuel and Polanski's "The tenant". But no-one can create menace quite like David Lynch.

― Tag

Uneven pacing and incongruous prefatory thirty minutes aside, this is a master’s class in the analysis of performance. Everything about Naomi Watts — from her pink sweater to the sensible shoes her relatives in Canada no doubt thought were the best sort of thing to wear on a long plane ride — is perfect, especially when David Lynch shows how she isn’t. The last thirty minutes’ dark night of the soul looks and smells like Ann Miller’s perfume and the way her gnarled fingers curl around walnuts. Unrequited love sounds like Dolores Del Rio singing Roy Orbison’s “Crying.” Desire tastes like Laura Harring’s tentative mouth. If you hang around Hollywood too long, acting feels like Chad Everett’s leather armrest of a face. The Straight Story is more finished product, but Mulholland Drive has the defects of something you come to love.

- Alfred Soto

Mulholland Drive - theories please.
Sunset Boulevard vs Mulholland Drive

#1

Mulholland Drive
David Lynch
2001
United States
(2000 points, 63 votes, 17 first place)

o yeah the one with the tits that was ok because of all the tits

holy shit 17 1st place votes!

consensus? on ilx?

Seriously someone please explain why her being black was insulting.

lol 2000 points.. beautiful

guys did secret window place?

secretly

was so insulting that the troll behind the diner was black

xp the saviour of the human race can't come from africa, everyone knows this.

and with that, folks...

http://1000monkeys.com/img/imfinished.png

"yeah, can you articulate why making the future of humanity african is offensive to u?"

Again I haven't thought about this much in the last four years, but my feeling at the time was that setting up this African woman as shining beacon of fertily who needs to be protected by a white knight was pretty obvious and lame. And for those who haven't read the book, this was a conscious shift from it. In the novel the Julianna Moore character is the pregnant one and its a far cry from being all "oh I don't know who the father is and it doesn't matter anyway."

Omar Little deserved better than MD as his #1. trojan work.

I can understand being a bit squicky with the white protector part, but earlier you made it sound like just the fact that she was black was problematic. Are you saying only because of the shift from the book?

are you guys unfamiliar with stereotypes of black women as fertile beasts of burden wtf

In the novel the Julianna Moore character is the pregnant one

?!? really? I assume she doesn't get iced the way she does in the film then (which is pretty striking and def one of the best moments in the movie)

xp well it's obvious that if they were rewriting with a black female lead the protector should also have been colour co-ordinated. this stuff is important

I did the mirror thing but then I got another guy who was also doing the mirror thing and we sort of had a silent faceoff for about five minutes

also lolz they reveal her in a room full of COWS I mean oooh subtle symbolism there guys

uh, wrong thread

Love MD, it was my first place and I believe it is one of the finest films ever made.

My #1, no shame.

bravo omar! looking forward to seeing where my #1 (Head-On) landed.

"Are you saying only because of the shift from the book?"

In part, yes, but I think the choice to make her African (as opposed to just not Julianne Moore) plays into certain stereotypes as well.

Um I thought the "room full of COWS" was more a biblical reference than a play on the "beast of burden" thing, ffs.

I mean I read it as a manger substitute.

its a minor quibble... like I said, I'm glad it placed so highly, its a remarkable film

I'm trying to not ruin this movie, guys, cuz I don't think its bad by any stretch of the imagination, but seriously. . . there are some pretty suspect choices in it. That's all I'm saying.

can someone post the final list plz

Thanks for doing this omar! Um can we have 101-200 now?

she had to not be British, for plot purposes. I also think the fact that she's African helped the cause of the Fishes (also, Chiwitel's character being Black British gave him increased motivation for his politics, lending a lot of weight to his 'they take away your dignity' line).

k here i go, but.. i didn't see what MD had to say about performance that was so interesting? when i watched, seemed to me that from the moment naomi watts showed up onscreen, until she goes to that audition, the acting was so obviously, intentionally terrible that.. all i could think was, it must be a lot of work for all these professionals to deliberately look this bad. is that how you're supposed to see it?

um no