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I can watch this one again and again. In additon to being a brilliant film, I love the way they've made use of San Francisco locations (I live in SF). Particular favorites are when the four friends leave Sutherland's house on Montgomery St and race down Telegraph Hill on the Filbert Street steps, also the Civic Center Plaza at the film's end.

I just don't get it ... I adored PTA's first three films. Adam Sandler was just fine, as were Emily Watson and the supporting characters. Fantastic music (as in Magnolia, composer Jon Brion works miracles here) and sound design, lovely cinematography. And yet ... it's as if someone went to an upmarket grocery store, selected all the finest ingredients, and boiled them into something bland and unremarkable. By the end, as Roger Ebert might say, my hand closed on air.

There were several brilliant moments in this film. It looked and sounded amazing (I'm repeating myself). But by the end I just felt unsatisfied, which is disappointing because up til now, a new PTA film has never been less than a fully enriching experience.

I think I can put my finger on it ... the problem may have been with the writing. 1) The story is, well, kinda stupid. 2) The way people talk (the way their speech is written in the script), that hyper-realistic stuttering sputtering go-go-go blah-blah-blah that worked so well in Magnolia and Boogie Nights just seemed glaringly out of place here. 3) It seems that PTA was trying such brutal and expressionistic ways for the Sandler character to show his DEPTHS that he ended up not having much.

I think PTA is in danger of allowing his (formerly considerable)substance to be consumed by his (always amazing) style.

Really a let down. But I'm definitely gonna buy the soundtrack CD!

I see Mulholland Dr. as being Lynch's third film in the last decade to explore purely mental states, thrown up expressionistically on celluloid. We're trained to see the elements in movies literally, where Lynch often shows mental metaphors in addition to more literal elements. It can be confusing to decipher, but it's not impossible.

The first in the series of "mind movies" was "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me." Considered dark and depressing by Twin Peaks fans on its release, the central theme is incest/sexual abuse, and how a victim of this can "split off" into different personalities, be in denial about the true nature of their abuse and their abuser, and repress their emotions. Much of what seems "supernatural" or other-worldly in this film is in fact an expressionist representation of Laura Palmer's repressed emotions and thought processes. The "mind" element in this movie is the subconcscious.

The second in the series is "Lost Highway," about a man who cannot deal with the guilt of murdering his wife except to go into a state of mental imbalance known as a psychogenic fugue, where he believes he is a completely different person in a different environment. The "mind" element here is insanity.

This brings us to Mulholland, the third in the series. I won't reiterate the "dream/reality" analysis of the plotline, which has already been done brilliantly in some of these user reviews as well as on the Salon Web site, but I will point out that, clearly, the "mind" element in this film is the dream state.

The subconscious, insanity, and dreaming. Who else but David Lynch could create such poetry about the wrinkles of the mind? Thank goodness we have him.

This remains my favorite of Lynch's "difficult" films of the last decade, which include "Lost Highway" and "Mulholland Dr." Absolutely no one can establish a mood of dread like Lynch, and this film is superlative in this respect. Images, sound design, and Sheryl Lee's near-miraculous performance all contribute to something much closer to a Horror Film than the genre with the actual namesake.

It seems that many fans of the Twin Peaks TV series were very disappointed with this film. I read over and over how "peakies" feel the movie lacks the "quirky, off-beat, kinda funny" tone of the TV series. Well, step back and consider something: the central themes of the movie AND the TV show are 1.) father-daughter incest, 2.) drug addiction, and 3.) murder. I guess we're all pretty desensitized, what with TV shows like "Law and Order" and Jerry Bruckheimer movies all purporting to give us action and thrills that are gritty and hard-bitten.

Lemme tell ya, that stuff ain't gritty and hard-bitten. Rape victims on TV shows are paper-thin stereotypes compared to the Laura Palmer of "Fire Walk With Me." Why? Because Lynch shows us the HORROR, the inescapable, fenced-into-a-corner hysterical inevitableness of a young girl who can't cope with her father's abuse of her, who then turns to drugs and increasingly can't cope with those either, and who finally sees the true tragedy of her life before it's even finished playing out. The wings disappear from the picture.

What "Fire Walk" offers in its portrait of evil and abuse is the full gamut of emotions, not just fear and anger (though there is plenty of that), but also aching, aching sadness, loneliness, abandonment. Lynch did a fairly good job of conveying this within the confines of a TV show with commercials (remember how the first half hour of the pilot was just people crying?), but in the movie he really gets to go town.

Incest and drug abuse are absolutely devastating. This movie is absolutely devastating, and so touches the truth.

How marvelous that this has just come out on DVD! This movie has been a fave since I was but a lad. It predates "Airplane" by about 4 years, and is about 4 times funnier, but inexplicably bombed at the box office. Guess it was ahead of its time.

The funniest bit is the lounge piano player with his "Six months to live" and "Doggy doctor" improvisations, and how he welcomes new patrons into the bar with "Hey, welcome to the Oriental Lounge!" accompanied by a little piano twinkle.

So it isn't "Citizen Kane" ... but the laughs are bigger!

Y'know how sometimes a movie gets absorbed into your life? You quote from it, you think about it, you occasionally have real-life experiences that jog your memory of a particular scene. For a lot of people, this movie is "Casablanca," or perhaps "When Harry Met Sally." For me it's "Serial."

In 1980 I was 15 years old and going to High School in Marin County, California, the same time and place as "Serial." My formative-to-rebellious years were spent at ground zero of the birth of the new age and PC movements (some might argue that this was actually Boulder, Colorado or Sedona, Arizona, but let's not split hairs).

Natch, I grew up hating these attitudes. Like the protagonist Harvey Holroyd, I would listen to the pablum puke coming out of peoples' mouths and (figuratively) weep for the future.

It's only gotten worse.

"Serial" is a hilarious and sharply observed comedy which can easily strike the casual viewer as dated and arcane, but listen, really *listen* to the minor characters in this movie: - The bearded hippie who wants to help Kate carry things up the stairs but demurs because, "like, that would be sexist." In 2002, is not chivalry truly dead? - The flighty and annoying trend-hopper Carol, who by the end of the film has decided she's gay, even though according to Kate she's "still a c***." Ever know a LUG (Lesbian Until Graduation)? - The young checkout girl with whom Harvey has a fling, who from the get-go stands Nazi-like over Harvey's eating habits, rigidly attempting to control what Harvey puts in his "one and only body." Ever know someone who deals with the chaos and vagaries of life through their eating disorder?

So, is "Serial" merely a dated light comedy? To me, it's much more: it's an open-handed slap to the face of the now-prevalent ideas that started in this time and place. Two years after this film came out, I became an angry young punk rocker, and left this film for a few years, but it never left me.

P.S.: My laserdisc copy looks and sounds terrible. I want a DVD!!