Mulholland Drive (2001)

Country: USA
Director: David Lynch
Screenwriter: David Lynch
Stars: Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux, Ann Miller, Robert Forster

Director David Lynch's most important film since Blue Velvet, this 2001 gem launched the career of Naomi Watts and featured some of the most inspired cinematography put out from the director's weird brain. Originally conceived as a television pilot, the film shares common ground with Twin Peaks, fixed around an attractive female lead surrounded by a cast of obtuse and original characters.

While Twin Peaks flirted with and subverted the plot of a soap, Mulholland Drive threw narrative convention to the wind for a weird portrait of Los Angeles and Hollywood as nightmare. It nabbed Lynch Best Director at Cannes and reinvigorated the career of the longstanding director, receiving both a critical and popular response that's rare for the master of the cult classic. —GT