Hi Blu,

I guess you want me to specify these properties?
(D) Dreamlike; (H) Hollywood/destructive; (I) Tangled identities; (S) Self-destructive; (T) Time/space shifts.

Here I go ...

Scarlet Street (D?/H/I/S)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038057/synopsis

Woman in the Window (D/I/T)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037469/plotsummary

L' Appartement (D/I/T)
According my view this is a modern version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream; the quintessential moment is when Max [spoiler]swallows a sleeping pill ... and the stage-play, of course[/spoiler]


Single White Female (D/H/I/T)
This is the one and only movie (besides INLAND EMPIRE) with a [spoiler]screwdriver murder[/spoiler], as far as I know, that is.
BTW You know what the opposite of "singel white female" sounds like, don't you?

Ghost World (D/H/T/S)
This movie has this surreal atmosphere which makes it very dreamlike and many events get a symbolic meaning. The ambiguity of the bus-ride at the end is very MD-like, to me.

Ne Te Retourne Pas (D/I/T)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1075113/plotsummary

cheers,

Xav

What about Melancholia?
- blonde/brunette in the lead
- the movie divided into two parts with [spoiler]i[/spoiler]

imtheswanqueen wrote:I definitely recommend that the anime cult film Perfect Blue (1998) be added. A lot of people consider Mulholland Dr. and Black Swan a hybrid of "Perfect Blue" in some ways, specifically:

both films contain tangled identities
Perfect Blue is very dream like, similar to MD.
both films deal with a character / personality switch (PB less so than MD, but still towards the end)
both PB and MD deal with a woman struggling to find success and recognition in acting which leads to her own mental unraveling / psychosis

Just watched Perfect Blue. Can't agree more - a must see for MDers. Lots of similar plot elements such as film-within-film, identity disorder, paranoia, and mental anguish caused by striving for success and stardom. Great blending between reality and fiction.
And yes, Black Swan is borrowing heavily from this. No wonder Aronofsky owns the American filming rights to this movie.
Gonna add it to the recommended movie list.

Just finished watching Possession (1981). Boy, what a ride. It's about a couple who's marriage is falling apart and then things are spinning out of control. Similar elements to MD: a love triangle with raging jealousy, doppelganger, a mysterious figure manifesting the dark site of the female protagonist (compare MD's bum). And it's getting freaking surreal and gory - European cinema's answer to Eraserhead.
Though the film has its flaws, it comes highly recommended to fans of MD and everybody else who's into tentacle alien sex.

INCEPTION. Movie about a dream within a dream, oh and the protagonist arrives at LAX with all his problems solved. So maybe it's still a dream.

Inception was supposed to be on there already, added it now. I didn't notice it was LAX at the end.

Yeah, the plane they're on is going from Sydney to LAX.

Ok so I wasn't going to mention this, well, it's not a movie it's a tv show. LOST, even if you just look at season 6, they land at LAX and by the end of season 6 we learn that what LOST fans call the sideways world was, for all intents and purposes, a dream.

Also, whenever someone dies in MD there's black smoke, and in LOST there's the smoke monster.

LOST is just highly derivative of David Lynch in general.

It might make sense not to include TV shows cause then you open up a whole different can of worms. Its impossible to recommend an entire 120 hours of a tv show. But still, Just wanted to toss this out there in case it wasn't obvious.

Good to hear someone praising Lost. I didn't watch it at the time and the overall impression I got from frineds was one of disappointment:

- The mystery never resolved
- The writers started with no intention of resolving things
- It got very very silly

these all seemed like reasonable criticisms. But, watching Twin peaks recently (1st time! :-)) I found that ALL of these points were GOOD things.

Maybe it's time to embark on Lost....

BTW, talking of time travel...

Has anyone seen Los Chronos Criminos.. Time Crimes?

A truly brilliant low budget Spanish offering. Thematically it's worlds away from MD: A middle aged man sees a pretty girl in the woods by his house and goes to investigate...

What it does share with MD is reveals that recontextualise everything seen so far. First time I saw it we were all so freaked out it kinda dominated the evening and cause trouble! Lol! Watch with caution!

I haven't seen Los Chronos, but something just popped into my head.

MIDNIGHT COWBOY.

it's not just cause there's a cowboy in MULHOLLAND DRIVE. It's the darn plot and I'm a little creeped out about this.

[spoiler]t[/spoiler]

I loved MELANCHOLIA, btw. Just saw it last week. Not a pick me up feel good movie, but then neither is MIDNIGHT COWBOY or MD for that matter.

Just wanted to share with you my latest find - La belle captive (1983)

A rather obscure Art House flick from French director Alain Robbe-Grillet (best known for his script work on Alain Resnais' "Last Year in Marienbad"). La belle captive is a very surreal and mysterious movie, with not much regard to plot structure or logic (well, some call it a incoherent mess). If you liked Buñuel' The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, this is for you. (7/10)

Why do I recommend this movie here? It's because of the many thematic and visual connections to MD: blond/brunette femme fatals, layers of dreams/purgatory nightmares, dualities/repeating situations, noir-like detectives, etc.
An inspiration for Lynch? Who knows ...

Black Lodge

La belle captive

kmkmiller wrote:I haven't seen Los Chronos, but something just popped into my head.

MIDNIGHT COWBOY.

it's not just cause there's a cowboy in MULHOLLAND DRIVE. It's the darn plot and I'm a little creeped out about this.

[spoiler]t[/spoiler]

[spoiler]h[/spoiler]

ct, re: Midnight Cowboy

[spoiler]h[/spoiler]

the midnight cowboy connection was a half joke. i just thought it was funnyish.

those two images from the black lodge and la belle captive are incredible, btw!

Something very unusual happened to me on Saturday. I saw a film that I knew NOTHING about.

Melancholia.

[spoiler]e[/spoiler]

Was unlike most things I've seen, I do recommend.