User reviews

No seriously. WTF. Ignore my rating because a movie like this defies any kind of a linear rating scale. My real rating is: WTF stars. Everyone else can write their absurd words about the film but the only thing a normal honest person can say after watching this is... what the actual f**k did I just watch?

Seriously, watch the film then come back to this review and tell me it isn't the most accurate summation of the film on here.

Side note: Laura Dern seriously does give an incredible performance. No one quite captures the true essence of WTF like Laura. She really does elevate the film to higher levels of "WTF-ness" than it ever would achieve on it's own.

For real though. What the actual f**k?

Much can be said about David Lynch but I think the mistake most people make is to think that he is trying to create a coherent and straight forward narrative structure. He is working on a subconscious level in his mind. The idea comes before the reason behind the idea. In many ways this is how art should be created because any other way will feel forced and pretentious.

David Lynch is not just trying to f*k with you. Its not meaningless and its not pretentious. If you've ever seen his interviews he is one of the most humble and soft spoken directors I've ever seen. Justin Theroux did a Q & A after my screening of Inland Empire and he described working with lynch as light hearted and fun. The complete opposite of what its like to watch some of his films which are often dark, terrifying, and disturbing.

Inland Empire is a sister film to Mulholland Dr. As my wife put it, "Watching Mulholland Dr. helped me to understand Inland Empire." They are two sides of the same coin. Lynch still seems to want to take a stab at the evils of Hollywood. His concern for the well being of actors is strong but this time instead of a new comer (Naomi Watts) he deals with one older actresses come back role and like Mulholland Dr. their are the evil producers behind the scenes and even the added possibility of a cursed set.

I am a huge Lynch fan. I don't find his films hard to understand. I am not a very intellectual person but Lynch's themes are so simple. The visuals are to be enjoyed on their own terms especially when they seem not to fit with the rest of the film. A lot of lynch's trademarks return, the dual personalities, time folding in on itself, gratuitous nudity, and another tragic murder mystery.

While this film does feel like a retread of Mulholland Dr. it also stands on its own especially since it contains a much more upbeat ending and perhaps four layers of storytelling,good luck figuring out which is which. He also continues to experiment with sound and even sings the vocals to a song in the film.

I got exactly what I wanted from Inland Empire. The downside to this is that Lynch is sort of repeating himself and I hope that doesn't mean he's out of ideas or perhaps Mulholland Dr. did not yet exercise his disdain for the studio system. The film is part murder mystery and part lucid dream. It has dream logic and has a lot of fun with some of its bizarre dialog and incredible visuals. This film also has much in common with Eraserhead in that he's completely free to explore his ideas. No one is telling him to shorten the film, cut out scenes, or that it doesn't make sense. Its uncompromising and truly art without boundaries.

My only other criticism is that the digital video is just ugly at times. When the shot is static the amount of detail in the picture can be incredible but when its hand held and moving around its grainy and looks pretty terrible. I miss the polished look of his older films but I guess that is going to be another thing that sets this movie apart from the others. I highly recommend this film to the Lynch enthusiast and to no one else. If you aren't in on the joke then I cannot imagine you leaving the theater happy after three hours of pure, free from concentrate, unpasteurized lynch. I went to see this with my wife and my best friend needless to say only I loved it. Take that as you will.

4/5

I saw INLAND EMPIRE at the Venice Film Festival world premiere last month. I want to keep this review short due to the fact that writing in great detail about this film is useless. INLAND EMPIRE is an experience. An experience not to be written about but to be FELT. It is David Lynch's definitive work. It's everything he has ever wanted to put into a film and it's completely free from anyone else's taming influence. The film is suffocating, dark and endless yet paradoxically contains some of the director's funniest and lightest scenes. I was frightened, uneasy, overwhelmed and moved. My emotions were thrown into disarray several times during which I lost all sense of appropriate reaction. Do not expect the mystery of this film to be solved, but expect it to be finished. Do not expect your head to understand the resolution but expect that your heart and intuition will.

If you cannot decide whether to see this film or not, I implore you to get up and go. Whether or not you enjoy it, you will never see a film like this again. I also implore you to see it IN THE CINEMA. Do not wait to see it on DVD because the experience won't be half as extraordinary.

I just saw this film at the New York Film Festival followed by a Q & A session with David Lynch, Laura Dern, and Justin Theroux. I will try my best to recount my thoughts while they are fresh, and incorporate what the film maker and actors had to say.

"I can't tell if it's yesterday or tomorrow and it's a real mind f---"

This single quote from Laura Dern sums the movie up fairly well. It is also one of the self- referential moments of the film that explores the audiences very thoughts while providing some comic relief.

Lynch's new film, INLAND EMPIRE, is similar to his other work, but unlike anything he's ever done, or I've ever seen before. As one reviewer aptly put it, it is a double reference to Hollywood and the inner workings of the human brain. Before I discuss the substance of the film I will briefly review the technical aspects.

First of all, the movie is not unwatchable (because of clarity purposes) as some critics had said, although I did see it at the Lincoln Center which has a beautiful theater and top quality facilities. The digital camera works well for this film. It lose some of the cinematic flourish of film, but also brings a more realistic, gritty feel to it that is appropriate for the theme. The lighting and production were top quality as usual for a Lynch film and the score sets every scene brilliantly. Often times we can't tell if the sound is diegetic or non-diegetic, but it makes no difference.

Lynch said that he used the digital camera to give him freedom. You can see much more movement in this film than his others, giving an almost voyeuristic feel. He also uses many close shots, and as always, obscure framing allowing ambiguity and confusion. Lynch really explores the freedom of movement and editing that is available with digital, and you can feel his energy and zest in the new medium. The moments of suspense and terror are so well done - there are several scenes that will literally make you jump - that I found a Hitcockian brilliance of using subtlety, indirectness, and sound to convey emotion rather than expensive special effects. Of course, there are other scenes that would qualify as downright freaky.

The movie is completely carried by Laura Dern, and not because she is in 90-95% of the scenes. Her character(s) morph and change so often in identity and time that it is hard to believe it is her in every role. Her range and ability to work consistently over so many years and under the conditions of this film is mind blowing. It is one of the finest performances I've seen by an actress or actor.

The film itself is hard to summarize. Most of you know the basic plot, but this really means nothing about the film. It has no type of linear story line and the converging and diverging plot lines are connected by only the most simple threads, time, location, memory ("Do I look familiar? Have you seen me before?") identity, and people who are good with animals. It would be a disservice to this film to try to find meaning or symbolism as I see some people already are. It is not a mystery to be solved, as Mulholland Dr. was (though that film never will be solved either). It is a movie that plays off of ideas, color, mood, it presents intangible emotions that we feel and internalize rather than think about and solve. Film doesn't need a solution to make sense, but it is typical for us to want solve things, to have closure. This film is better if you just let it wash over you and surrender the urge to find meaning.

The three hour running time makes no difference because the movie moves in and out of itself with no regard for time. Using so many scenes allows time to effect the viewer much as the characters themselves. As the characters question time and reality, the audience does too. As the scenes slowly build up, giving us reference, we start to wonder where we saw that character, who said that line before, what location fits into what part of the sequence and how, leading up to the Laura Dern quote I used before. It doesn't ask us to think, but to feel, and it does this better than any film I've seen. It plays on our emotions with intense sound and cinematography, grasping fragments from dreams, sliding in and out of reality, exploring nightmares, and asking us what time and reality really are. The film is also very self-conscious as I said before, and also makes many subtle (and not so) pokes at the audience. It also has some truly surreal moments of Lynch humor.

Explaining all this doesn't really matter because you will have to see it and take your own idea from it. I would recommend that you see it in a theater though, as it could never have the same impact anywhere else. I was skeptical going into this movie after what I had read, thinking Lynch had gone off the deep end. However, I realized nothing you read about it will make a difference once you see it, and that Lynch is in better form than ever. Ebert said that Mulholland Dr. was the one experiment where Lynch didn't break the test-tube. With INLAND EMPIRE he throws the lab equipment out the window. His freedom in making this movie, both with medium and artistic control, is unparalleled in anything he's done. He finally made a movie for himself and his vision, without any kind of apology or pretense.

Whenever I saw Mullholland Drive I enjoyed it because it was such an experience but yet had much for me to try and figure out – as hard as it was to do so. Funny then to watch Inland Empire and think that in the future, if it continues this way, that we will look back on Lynch's earlier films as his pre-weird period, which is strange when you watch Wild at Heart, Blue Velvet etc. However this is the place we now find ourselves with Inland Empire, a film that not only shuns narrative tradition but behaves as if such a thing has never existed. And to watch the film, well, you just need to accept this and deal with the fact that if you have even a slight grasp on the story then you should consider yourself lucky.

If you can accept this then the film is flawed genius; however if you cannot accept this then the film is a shambles that will make you hate it almost as soon as you realise you will not be able to get to the bottom of it just by watching it tonight. The funny thing is that both camps are right in their comments on this film because it is at once brilliant and terrible – Jonathon Ross summed it up surprisingly well when he said it was a "work of genius – I think" because the impression left on me was just this.

On one hand the film is almost impossible to follow and it is not just a glib remark to say that this does make Mullholland Drive feel like an episode of Eastenders in regards accessibility. The plot starts out as a mystery but pretty much disappears into a series of semi-connected fantasy (?) sequences where characters complete switch worlds and identities, terrifying characters loom large but yet are invisible to the viewer and a sitcom featuring rabbits is watched by a girl crying in her room. There is little here to help the viewer and there is simply no foundation for you to put one foot one and say "right, no matter what happens I know I am on firm ground here"; the film doesn't pull the rug from under the viewer – there is simply never a rug to begin with. To many viewers this will be the end of discussion but for my money I already suspected this would be the case and what I actually came for was the experience.

In this area the film is both brilliant but yet flawed. It is brilliant because it literally does feel like you are falling through worlds of dreams. Lynch manages to shoot his scenes with the air of them being slightly (or totally) unreal. The effect is completely unnerving and an example of the power of cinema that he can move the viewer into such a place mentally that even a static shot of three people dressed as rabbits is quite terrifying. It is a skill he is famous for and he shows no sign of losing it. As an experience I found it engaging to a point and, unfortunately, that point was not 180 minutes. It is ironic to praise the film for its freewheeling experience but yet criticise it for being undisciplined but yet here we are because it does feel very much like a film where Lynch needed someone to say "look, you need to make it as tight as it is exhilarating".

Nobody said this I think and as a result it outstays its welcome at times and the dips are just that much more pronounced. Fortunately it is not consistent but it does come and the conclusion of the film is worth staying for. Not narratively you understand (even though the threads do come together) but some terrifying scenes give way to closing credits of beautiful women dancing to Nina Simone's Sinnerman; does it make sense? Well no, but again it is all about the experience and in this regard it is fairly consistent. Another reason for seeing it is a performance from Laura Dern that only begs the question why she didn't manage to get an Oscar nomination. OK it was a tough year for actresses with Cruz, Mirren, Dench and Streep filling out the list but for my money Dern is as good if not better than all of them. Lynch plays out so much confusion and emotion in her face, with this making some scenes a story without a single word being said. Given how hard it is to understand what is happening in the script, it makes Dern's convincing performance all the more impressive. Below her nobody is as good but everyone does suit the material and Lynch's approach.

Of course aside from Dern, the star is Lynch and his fans will come to this way the same Bruce Willis' fans come to a film because he is in it. His direction, editing and cinematography is masterful, which only really leaves his writing. Superficially he does fall down but yet he also produces a flow he understands as well as some brilliant specific moments – a line where a black homeless woman says "It's OK, you dying is all" is a wonderfully insightful remark that is all the more impacting for the throwaway delivery of it, a matter-of-fact summary of life on the streets in a tiny part of a bigger film.

Overall then this is an impressive film that is as brilliantly bewildering as it is frustrating. Some will find meaning but the vast majority will be best served to treat it as an experience rather than a "film" as one would expect from any other director. Even on this basis it is not perfect and is easily too long to sustain but in this regard it is still worth seeing. Not sure if it is entirely enjoyable but for sure it is an experience I'm glad I had.

I just saw the NY premier of Inland Empire, and it was so refreshing to once again be transported in a way only David Lynch can transport somebody. Inland Empire is Lynch at his best - funny, thoughtful, eerie, beautiful, dark, deeply disturbing, and terrifying in a way that few horror films have ever affected me. The film is a slow burn, taking its time (about 3 hours), leaping through realities and bizarre encounters, continually keeping the audience asking themselves what reality they are experiencing, and what that reality means.

Laura Dern gives an outstanding performance as the tagline's "girl in trouble." She goes to places I don't ever remember seeing her go, from the naive to the terrifying, truly exposed. I've heard Lynch is campaigning for an Oscar nod for Ms. Dern, so maybe this is the one. She really blew me away.

This film - like all of Lynch's endeavors - is certainly not for everyone. It's vague, bizarre, jumps all over the place, and at times is deeply frightening (one of the few films in a long time to actually give me nightmares), but in my opinion it's also truly beautiful, almost serene. If you like a linear, clear-cut story, then don't see this film. If you appreciate non-linear, surreal drama/horror, however, then by all means go see it. Lynch is independently producing this, so I know he's banking on a lot of word of mouth for Inland Empire to be successful. Help him out. It's a fantastic film.

For those who felt Lynch's last film, Mulholland Dr., was too easy, I present to you Inland Empire. The director takes the whole dream (or nightmare) narrative a step further and makes the narrative even more fragmented and impossible to follow. There might not really be much of a narrative at all. The recognizable plot begins with Laura Dern as an aging actress, having spent a while as a housewife, trying to re-enter the movie industry. She wins a role and, during filming, she starts to fall for her co-lead (Justin Theroux). Which is strange, given that the film is about a straying housewife. Soon, real life and screen life become completely blurred, until the actress only exists in her fictional life. Maybe. God knows at this point. The film becomes completely incomprehensible by any conventional standards. Which doesn't in any way mean that it's worthless. Like all Lynch films, Inland Empire is deeply hypnotic, often haunting and occasionally downright scary. I wish there were a little more sense to it so I could connect a bit more. And the fact that the film runs for nearly three hours; it's easy to get restless. I think a good number of people are going to find this to be Lynch's folly. It is disappointing, especially as we've waited five years since Mulholland Dr., probably his best film, but there are a few of Lynch's movies that I like less than this.

Inland Empire is the Man with a Movie Camera of the 21st Century. It is the most experimental, surreal, and technically brilliant film I may have ever seen. Lynch proves that all he needs is a simple DV camera to show the world the entire range of human emotions and the human experience from the happiest to the darkest moments we must go through to achieve salvation and cleansing of the soul. This film is not so much about a particular story or narrative as it is about analyzing, exploring, and creating a visual palette for ideas about traveling to and from the past, present, and future as it relates to our constant journey back and forth into our own psyches and our collective unconscious. Each of Lynch's films explores the mind in terms of Jungian philosophy, focusing particularly on The Shadow; however, Inland Empire goes further in this direction than any film previous to it. If Mulholland Drive was 25% a dark and surreal suspense thriller ghost story and journey into the nether regions of the mind and 75% classical, yet not necessarily structural or connected narrative, Inland Empire is 10% straight narrative and 90% raw psychological horror ghost story.

The journey is long and hard but at the end you will be rewarded with the kind of peace and serenity that can only come from a meditation this long, deep, and powerful. I was filled with only inner bliss as I left the theatre and slept like a baby, completely at peace. This is David Lynch's most powerful film and speaks volumes on the many unexplored topics of how this medium can communicate, terrify, and heal in ways we have not yet even begun to understand.

I first saw "Inland Empire" in early 2007 and opted not to write about it mainly because I really didn't know how I felt about the film (or video, if you're into semantics) after I saw it. I went to the late night show, was almost certainly inebriated, went with a group of friends (at this point I still had a social life), and remember little about the screening except that I enjoyed the film and appreciated it on some level or the other. Well, I'm glad I didn't attempt to write about "Inland Empire" based on that viewing because my feelings are drastically different this time around. What I found to be a fascinatingly incomprehensible nightmare-on-video the first time I saw it, what I found to be an extremely nonsensical film overall, I now feel is one of the most important and greatest artistic works of the decade, and nowhere near as flawed and incomprehensible as I initially thought. I'm not going to attempt an analysis of the film, greater minds have done that already, so I'll stick to a simple review of it.

Perhaps "Inland Empire" does recycle elements of Lynch's previous work. I find it a less powerful experience than his 2001 masterpiece "Mulholland Dr." which with every viewing comes closer to toppling "Vertigo", my favorite film since I first saw it at age 12 or 13. I do think the video is used badly at some points in the film. It's a testament to Lynch's skill as director and cinematographer (and camera operator) that he was able to achieve this sort of thing with a dated, mediocre digital camera, but on rare occasions in the film, particularly during outdoor daytime shots, the poor quality of the camera itself isn't conquered by Lynch's creativity and skill in using it as well as it can possibly be used. However, other than that very small problem I really struggle to find anything I would cut out of the film. Considering its length, that's really something. In fact, I'm dying to see "More Things that Happened", one of the DVD extras which features over seventy minutes of footage shot for the project and not included in the final cut of the film. The film is, surprisingly for something shot with such primitive digital technology, formally elegant and consistently well-shot. What would Van Gogh have done with a set of cheap crayons and color pencils? The film makes fascinating use of color and light, and boasts possibly the best use of close-ups since Leone. These are even uglier, in a good way.

The most common criticism of "Inland Empire" seems to be that it's a total mess, a bunch of nonsensical weird goings-on strung together and put out for pseudo-intellectuals to dissect in their setting of choice (the average pseudo-intellectual favors either the internet or the great coffee shop which isn't a chain... yet, the cool pseudo-intellectuals enjoy the sort of bar which frequently doubles as an art gallery, but that's besides the point). This is both true and untrue, and I suspect the more times I see the film the more I'll see it as untrue. Where the truth of these claims lies, mostly, is in the fact that, as a fellow IMDb user notes, the film doesn't just shun narrative tradition but acts as if such a thing never existed. However, to say there are no themes or emotions being expressed, to say there are no stories being told in the film, seems to me not a matter of opinion but simply incorrect, and indicates an extraordinarily narrow-minded and simplistic view of cinema as a form of linear storytelling and nothing else.

While it does not have a 'plot', "Inland Empire" has a story. In fact it has several stories to tell, including that of actress Nikki Grace (Laura Dern), that of a battered housewife (Laura Dern), and that of a hooker working Hollywood boulevard (Laura Dern). There's also a giant rabbit sitcom and a Polish prostitute. Most of these strands start out relatively linearly and the film is mostly overall quite easy to follow for more than an hour of its running time, standard Lynch surrealism excepted. The film grows gradually more bizarre as the stories interact and occasionally merge with each other, the themes they have in common becoming clearer in some instances and less clear in others. The narratives all have great payoff as the film draws to a close. I didn't understand everything in "Inland Empire" and I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to, but it's really not even close to being the sort of deliberately distancing, deliberately obscure sort of thing Godard sometimes does. It doesn't mistake obfuscation for art.

I can safely say I can't recall one dream I've had which didn't do exactly what "Inland Empire" did: start out as a linear narrative and then spiral out of control (my dream last night about Kirk and Spock's love lives in Starfleet turning into a spectacular time travel government conspiracy Tribble-centric crossover with "Star Wars" and "Lost" being just one example). The brilliance of Lynch's work here is that he was able to capture that and to control it, to explore themes with it, to express emotions with it. That's rare talent, that's rare skill at work. It doesn't hurt that his is a more interesting and freakish mind than most of ours. "Inland Empire" doesn't seek to tell a simple, straightforward story. Criticizing it for not doing so indicates either misunderstanding or a narrow-minded view of cinema. As a formal experiment and as an overall achievement "Inland Empire" is up there with Lynch's very best and as a result with the very best of cinema in general.

First off, this is easily the most confusing and bizarre of all of David Lynch's films, even more so than Lost Highway. I think it's also the most bizarre film I have ever seen. The film is harrowing and creepy and Laura Dern is incredible in her performance. I never thought she was capable it. Fans of Lynch will love it, especially those who think Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway were his best. Average filmgoers will most likely be bored (it's 3 hours long) or think it is Artsy crap. Lost Highway is probably his most comparable film based on structure, technique, and bizarre elements, although it would not be entirely fair to use Lost Highway as a basis for judgment. One of the only things that keeps me from giving it a higher rating is that there are a couple scenes which seemed to drag on a little longer than necessary. Inland Empire at first is reminiscent of some of Lynch's older short films because of the way it is filmed. It is gritty, shaky, and even gives a documentary feel at first. While it is still not his best, it's among them and it's what Lynch fans have come to expect and love.

An actress's perception of reality becomes increasingly distorted as she finds herself falling for her co-star in a remake of an unfinished Polish production that was supposedly cursed.

David Lynch is an inspiration for those who want to do their own thing. He started with some creepy, surreal short films, moved on to the bizarre "Eraserhead" and has made numerous strange films since, seemingly with little regard for what critics or box office receipts say. While he has done some stories that border on normal, there is always an element of the bizarre, and trying to make sense of a plot in a Lynch film is an intellectual landmine. I fell in love with Lynch after seeing "Lost Highway" and "Twin Peaks", but find it hard to justify my love.

"Inland Empire" continues the madness. Opening with a beautiful shot of a record player in black and white, then of a couple making love... we are soon greeted by a family of anthropomorphized rabbits, and two gentlemen having a discussion in some foreign language, apparently Polish. How any of these things are connected is unclear thus far, and that is only the first ten minutes of a three hour film. How well they make sense by the end is hard to say.

The film goes "normal" after that, through we enter a world with odd camera angles, mismatched close-ups, and conversations that do not flow... a murder accusation, an agent on the telephone... and all words spoken in an unusual manner. Almost in an amateur way, but clearly professionals trying to be amateur, with emotions not matching the events. And then there is William H. Macy as an announcer...

On top of already being a lengthy and interesting film, the DVD comes with a second disc with several hours of supplemental material. My only complaint is that, despite all this, the film only has subtitles available in French. I like subtitles. Maybe I am in the minority, but as a visual learner, I follow a story better when I can read along. And I cannot read French well.

Lynch veteran Laura Dern stars (and co-produces), which is beneficial to the film, because she knows exactly what sort of weirdness Lynch is looking for. I think the film fails, or at least falls short, though. The running time is a bit too long and it is hard to stay focused for this length. Also, the film just does not seem to have enough. While starting out strong, it gets slow and monotonously as it carries on, and any intelligent point hidden in there is missed by the audience's boredom. I appreciated the inclusion of the randomness, such as the "Locomotion", but of all the Lynch films I have seen (which is many) this is my least favorite.

If you must see every David Lynch film, see this film. If you can survive without that goal, do not see this film. I cannot recommend it to anyone except his biggest fans because everyone else will be lost, bored and leave with a lower opinion of the man than he deserves.

Taking the murderous jealous husband theme of "Lost Highway" and melding it into the dreams of a tortured actress theme of "Mulholland Drive," David Lynch fluidly immerses his recurring dark fantasies into a story revolving around a Polish-Gypsy legend and a cursed movie production and delivers his most experimental film since "Eraserhead" with his epic three-hour "Inland Empire."

The most experimental part of this is Lynch's use of a hand-held digital camera to shoot the entire film. While I personally prefer the deep texture of film over the superficial sharpness of digital, much of Lynch's trademarks translate surprisingly well to the new medium. Lynch's hyper manipulation of lighting, fading in and out of absolute darkness, super close-ups, transposing of images over one another, and making some scenes literally dissolve into the next frame, all come across sharp and artistically satisfying. There are points, however, where Lynch so repeatedly shows Laura Dern walking down dark hallways and dimly lit staircases into moody savagely lit rooms decked out with weird lamps that I half expect the director's next project to be a home decor line for the film-noir enthusiast.

There will be those who wish to discuss the plot of "Inland Empire" and insist on figuring it all out. Upon first viewing, I decided to simply enjoy the ride. At three hours, there's lots of filler involving chatty and dancing prostitutes (who play the role of a post-modern Greek chorus and at one point do a rendition of "The Locomotion" that is both horrifying and hilarious), a sitcom staring talking rabbits, and some sort of complex story involving a Polish carnival, while inter-spliced into the madness is a wicked little psychological thriller about an actress who literally gets lost in her new role. The best morsels are the interwoven scenes of Laura Dern (beat-up, harrowing, and with a cool Southern drawl) waxing poetically in monologue fashion about her tragic love life to a man (presumably a therapist) and some beautifully shot scenes that take place on a dark snow-covered street in 19th century Poland that seem to have been exorcised from a completely different and dreadfully thrilling film. Lynch, however, gives many clues for those wanting to dissect the piece: 9:45, room number 47, a magic watch (similar to the ring from "Twin Peaks: FWWM "), the "LB" tattooed on Dern's hand, the letters "AXXONN" appearing repeatedly on walls and doorways, Grace Zabriskie's bizarre telling of an "old tale" when we first meet Laura Dern's character, and perhaps secrets hidden in the dialogue of the prostitutes, the rabbits, and Harry Dean Stanton. The film is so long, and so jumbled, however, that I think it's better to digest it as is, unlike "Mulholland Drive" which was exhilarating to examine "between the scenes."

Lynch, forever in love with Hollywood as a city of dreams, is again master of the disembodied scene. Like Naomi Watt's mesmerizing audition scene in "Mulholland Drive" (which in no small non-ironic way launched Watt's career into the stratosphere) there's a killer line-reading about thirty minutes into the "Inland Empire" where you don't really care what Laura Dern is talking about or what film she is in, it's just you watching her playing an actress getting totally lost in her lines, and it's beautiful. Lynch's masterful juxtapositions of the profane with the profound, light with dark, beauty with pure terror, no matter what non-linear incomprehensible way they are presented, are true cinematic treats to experience for those willing to open their minds to the ocean of possibilities.

I just finished watching "Inland Empire", having long awaited a Lynch film since I was so completely awe-struck by "Mulholland Drive." Let's get one thing straight here. David Lynch is probably my favorite director. He is certainly one of the most innovative minds in film and deserves to be on the same plateaus as Kubrick and Scorcese. However, Inland Empire is not a film. It's a three-hour long digital journey, and I honestly think that if this movie had been on film it would have had more of an impact on me.

Making a three-hour digital film is a very daring thing to do and the movie is very impressive in that sense. But I never felt myself entirely engaged with the movie as I had with Lynch in the past. Whereas I usually am on the edge of my seat and overcome with feelings of dread that no horror movie can accomplish, I laid on my couch through most of "Inland Empire" and maybe sat up straight for two whole scenes.

I'm going to attribute this to the film being on digital. For one, the shots and footage are so dark at times that the film feels like you're looking at a black box on the screen for a lot of the movie. In a theatre that may be very different, but on a television set that grows very tiresome.

Secondly, "Inland Empire" is a very ugly film. It is very reminiscent of Lynch's earlier works like "The Alphabet" and "The Grandmother" where the films were very dark and made them even more frightening for those reasons. And yes, those films are very good films, but not pleasing to look at.

This is probably my biggest complaint about the film. Despite Lynch being such a dark and creepy character, his films were always contrasted by moments of serene beauty. The scene in "Mulholland Drive" where Naomi Watts and Laura Harring go to the Club Silencio is one of the most beautiful scenes in a movie I have ever seen. "Inland Empire" has no beauty in it at all, which makes it difficult to sympathize with anyone in it.

Lastly, this is still a problem with the digital nature of the film, but Lynch's style lacks a lot of edge when on digital. Part of what I think made Lynch so impressive is that the shots and takes he got on film most studio executives would have a fit over -- "Is this guy a bloody amateur?!", etc...

And yet that was what made Lynch so special as a director. He managed to capture the things that people were afraid to capture because film as a medium is so costly and most wouldn't waste it on eerie inserts of lamps, and lips, and eyes, etc. He managed to capture discomforting things and show audiences a side of the world they had never seen before. With "Inland Empire", I would argue that any film student or amateur could have done if not the same, the equivalent. The digital style is overall not very Lynchian.

The performances on Laura Dern, Justin Therous, and Jeremy Irons parts are wonderful. Dern is especially brilliant considering she's not playing much of a character but more of an abstraction and yet still is very convincing. The "Locomotion" dance number is worth seeing alone. In the end, I give this film a 7 out of 10 because I am a die-hard Lynch fan and know that those who are not as die-hard as myself will probably be less critical and enjoy this film -- I mean, movie, a lot.

Nobody puts dreams -- or should I say, nightmares -- on screen better than David Lynch, and "Inland Empire" is perhaps the most nightmarish film of his I've seen yet.

Laura Dern tears up the screen in a fierce performance as an actress who loses her identity during the making of a film and gets sucked into a vortex of terrifying imagery and labyrinthine parallels, otherwise known as Hollywood.

We've been here with Lynch before, as recently as his last movie, "Mulholland Drive," which "Inland Empire" is a kissing cousin of. But this film, much more so than "Mulholland," defies categorization or interpretation. It's a movie that forces you to feel its themes rather than process them through any of the normal faculties we use to understand movies. But for all that, and even though it clocks in at three hours, it didn't feel indulgent to me, or pretentious, or like a random series of images that any old hack could throw up on the screen. Even on a first viewing (and I could use many more), I could see how tightly constructed the whole thing was, catch recurring ideas and motifs, recurring patterns, colors and textures. The film looks amazing; Lynch does wonders with digital film. I'm surprised myself that I didn't become frustrated with the movie, but it's so alive, and so purely cinematic, that I instead was completely engrossed by the pictures it had to show me.

Though the movie belongs to Dern, a slew of recognizable actors appear in prominent roles or in cameos: Justin Theroux, Jeremy Irons, Diane Ladd, William H. Macy, Mary Steenburgen. Naomi Watts provides a voice.

This is sensational stuff, extremely well done. A trip into the mind of David Lynch, even if you don't enjoy it, is one trip you will not soon forget.

Grade: A

David Lynch once made Eraserhead as an experiment in what works when combining sound and image to create a certain atmosphere. Every other Lynch movie uses the unique tricks developed in that movie. But Eraserhead was relatively poor on structure, so ever since he developed not only a grammar, but also some interesting semantics.

Mulholland Drive for example was largely a dream, combining several worlds but still clearly distinct from each other. Now Lynch goes one step further and mixes all worlds in time and space to create possibly his most complex movie to date, comparable in structure only to Medem's Lucia y el Sexo.

Inland Empire is also his least accessible. It will take you at least the first hour (of three) to figure out the structure. And you have to work hard on that as a viewer, otherwise the rest makes no sense.

Basically, it tells the story of a troubled woman in a troubled part of Inland Empire. Her life is the lowest level in the movie, and all worlds are stacked upon this one. She dreams she is an actor acting in a movie. This movie is a remake of another movie, which is based upon a gypsy tale. But these 5 worlds also interact and interfere. And what happens in the movie is sometimes the reverse or the complement of the story of the original movie (stabbing of 2 actors vs. stabbing of Nikki). On top is the meta-world of the rabbits, commenting all other worlds (see for example how the canned laughter is used).

Lynch studied in a depressing area of Philadelphia and this must have influenced his life, contributing to the dark movies he usually makes. And Inland Empire (San Bernardino especially) is no happy place either. Despite the layered setup Inland Empire feels more realistic than other Lynch movies, so I also find it more depressing.

I saw this on one of the largest screens available and the DV showed its obvious technical limitations. For the worlds Lynch defines I do prefer 35mm.

Note: See the shot with the Lolita poster: It's the movie he recently mentioned on TV as one of his personal favorites.

At least it could have been worse ... but only if it had lasted even more than 3 hours ;-).

Let me get a few things out of the way first: I am a great admirer of David Lynch's early work, up to and including Lost Highway. I like movies that are not straightforward, that make you think and that leave space for your imagination and interpretation. And I consider myself to be open-minded and willing to wander off the beaten track ...

Having covered this, I must say that this was one of the rare occasions where I was dying for the movie to (finally) end - I left the theater thinking "what the f***?" and quite honestly if I had to put a headline to the whole thing I would call it intellectual masturbation.

Maybe Lynch is just having a laugh, viewing Inland Empire as an experiment to see how far he can go with audiences - or it is a revolutionary new concept in cinema where the director just supervises shooting and the audience explains what this is about in forums like this.

One of my spontaneous thoughts after watching this was: had this been the debut film of a rookie director fresh out of film school, my guess would be that he/she would be continuing his/her career making movies at children's birthday parties or silver wedding anniversaries.

Then on the other hand, maybe I belong to the minority of dim-wits who just don't get it - I can not rule this out. However, looking at the majority of raving reviews here, there is one thing that I would really like to find out: how many of those reviews are based on a genuine appreciation of the movie, and how many were written because it's just so en vogue to celebrate Lynch films and you better not admit that you came out of the theater thinking "geez - I didn't get it ..."

I would love to do an experiment: show 3 hours of CCTV or traffic cam material, taken randomly from a department store, office building or a traffic light on a deserted road, and add some opening titles stating "Directed by David Lynch" - my bet would be this film would earn an average vote of 7.8 here and lots of interpretations/explanations, all starting with the statement how great the lack of narrative helps the deeper meaning of the movie.

But maybe this finally is the ultimate Alan Smithee film - and I must admit that it left a deep impression in urging me to write this long comment ;-)

I saw INLAND EMPIRE at the Venice Film Festival and I think it's incredible... surely the most strange Lynch's film. A terrible nightmare of about 3 hours! I love Lynch's films and I think that INLAND EMPIRE resumes his whole filmography! And I want to underline also the interpretation of Laura Dern. She's absolutely fantastic! You can't pretend to understand completely the story (it's more confused than Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive...) but you'll be captured by the sounds, the lights, the changes of rhythm... David has written the screenplay day by day and also the actors couldn't understand what they were doing... I think you should see this wonderful film of one of the best contemporary director.

As someone who appreciates David Lynch and loves most of his stuff, Inland Empire both captivated and frustrated me. It is not his worst film, that will always belong to Dune, but it is his least accessible film in the way that Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man and The Straight Story are his most, along with Mulholland Drive they are to me far among his best. It is very easy to see why a lot of people would and do dislike Inland Empire. The film starts off very promisingly but really drags a little over 2/3s of the way through to the extent that you do feel like it's an hour too long. The story is very jumpy structurally and many, including myself around halfway through will be as lost as Nikki herself trying to completely understand what's going on. And some of the script is even more of a convoluted jumble than Wild at Heart's, even the actors on occasions look bemused by it. The use of digital is a mixed bag, sometimes it's effective and fits with the atmosphere of the scene but there are other times where it looks amateurish and overused, the least polished Lynch film perhaps technically.

That's not to say at all that the film looks bad because actually most of the visuals aside from the use of digital look great, especially in the bold colours and lighting that are both bewitching and creepy, while Lynch's direction is immediately recognisable and works particularly well in the most surreal moments. While Inland Empire is problematic for many narratively it actually works amazingly as a mood piece; there is some humour of the black humour kind-in distinctive Lynch style- and it does amuse at least and doesn't feel out of place, the surreal and even at times nightmarish atmosphere is often unflinchingly terrifying and in a way that is so captivating that you can't look away and there are some beautiful touches like with the lighter near the end. This atmosphere is enhanced by the soundtrack that is as positively entrancing as it is hauntingly beautiful, and Inland Empire has some great acting especially from Laura Dern whose astonishing lead performance marks as a career-best for her. Justin Theroux is very good and Jeremy Irons clearly looked as though he was having a ball. The support roles are acted more than dependably and nobody jars with the tone with the film. Overall, an intriguing that could have been great, it was easy to get drawn into the film but it was just as easy to get frustrated with it. Ranking it in his filmography, personally it'd be second weakest. 6/10 Bethany Cox

First of all I wanna make it clear that I've always liked Lynch's films, found them interesting, strange, beautiful, etc. BUT this is something so awful that it should only be used to torture people, to make them suffer and to brainwash them for more than 3 damn hours. I can't believe that from all the people who had helped in this "film" none of them had the guts to say to Lynch that 'I'm sorry, you know that I respect you, your work and your artistic freedom, but I personally think that maybe you should change a few things because this is TERRIBLE!' I don't know, perhaps Lynch wants to retire and maybe he thought 'why not make my last film the worst film of all time so that people would be shocked?' Please, don't get me wrong, I'm not shocked (not even close), I'm just deeply disappointed in David Lynch and I truly hope that after this nobody will ever want to work with him again. Keep the man away from the cameras!!!