A List of My Favorite Lynch Films

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TwinPeaksFanatic
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A List of My Favorite Lynch Films

Post by TwinPeaksFanatic »

Just for fun I made a list of my favorite of David's films. What's your favorite Lynch movie?

http://twinpeaksfanatic.blogspot.com/20 ... films.html
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LostInTheMovies
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Re: A List of My Favorite Lynch Films

Post by LostInTheMovies »

TwinPeaksFanatic wrote:Just for fun I made a list of my favorite of David's films. What's your favorite Lynch movie?

http://twinpeaksfanatic.blogspot.com/20 ... films.html
Loved your Eraserhead stories (the odea of watching it from a rocking chair makes me queasy just to think of lol). When I first saw it, immediately afterward I thought "that was great but I will NEVER watch that again!"

Needless to say I have watched it several times since. ;)

Not sure if you included my 7 Facts video on purpose or if it was a randomly generated/associated YouTube video but it was nice to see it they either way.

My completely subjective Lynch list would be:

1. Fire Walk With Me
2. Mulholland Drive
3. The Straight Story
4. Inland Empire
5. Lost Highway
6. Eraserhead
7. The Elephant Man
8. Blue Velvet
9. Wild at Heart
10. Dune

#4 and #5 could be switched depending in my mood. But I like seeing Lynch's strangest (Inland) and most normal (Straight) films side by side...the two extremes. Eraserhead could be higher too. If I was doing "greatest"/"best" Blue Velvet would be much higher, but as with you it leaves me a little colder than his other films, much as I love certain scenes. Sometimes it seems the favorite Lynch film for people who don't otherwise like Lynch!
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TwinPeaksFanatic
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Re: A List of My Favorite Lynch Films

Post by TwinPeaksFanatic »

It was only random that I included that video. I found it online awhile back and I agreed with so much of it that I wanted to add it to my blog post.

Nice to meet you. Your video was great!

Thanks for sharing your favorite movie list too! I also agree Blue Velvet is a movie many non-lynch fans like. :D
Metamorphia
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Re: A List of My Favorite Lynch Films

Post by Metamorphia »

Thought I'd give this a go. Interesting lists from both of you.

1. Mulholland Drive
2. Eraserhead
3. Inland Empire
4. Lost Highway
5. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
6. The Straight Story
7. Blue Velvet
8. Wild at Heart
9. The Elephant Man
10. Dune
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David Locke
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Re: A List of My Favorite Lynch Films

Post by David Locke »

My list changes fairly often, as my opinions on Eraserhead, Inland Empire, Wild at Heart and Dune aren't as set in stone as the rest, but here's today's:

1. Fire Walk With Me
2. Blue Velvet
3. Lost Highway
4. Mulholland Dr.
5. The Straight Story
6. Eraserhead
7. Wild at Heart
8. Dune
9. Inland Empire
10. The Elephant Man

The first five are masterpieces (1-4 especially are almost complimentary equals in a way, as they all have a certain key strength that the other three lack -- though in the end, none of them can quite match FWWM's power); Eraserhead is masterful yet not as interesting or compulsively watchable to me; WAH and Dune are very flawed but fascinating and full of good things; Inland Empire is uneven and impossible to rate (I have a strangely hard time finishing it despite seeing it 3-4 times, but I have a feeling the next full viewing will be more fruitful); and The Elephant Man is the only one I don't care for much at all.

Lost, I'm surprised that you rank TSS so high! Not that it's undeserved, it's just rare to see Lynch fans put it above stuff like BV, LH, Eraserhead, etc. I recently rewatched it, though, and it truly is a beautiful film that really is Lynchian and off-kilter in more ways than one would assume. There's a purity to it, a beautiful cleanliness to the way it just moves from point A to point B and the way it dissolves so gracefully from scene to scene (if MD was never made, TSS would have been a fine farewell to celluloid for Lynch -- its painterly, patient style and heavy use of slow, stately dissolves and lack of special effects or anything really "modern" make it feel like a kind of love letter [no, not the Frank Booth kind] to the cinema of the 30s, 40s, 50s, even silent cinema as in fact the film seems to run on purely image and sound instead of words for so much of its running time).
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LostInTheMovies
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Re: A List of My Favorite Lynch Films

Post by LostInTheMovies »

You've done a great job of describing why I place it so high! It's such a perfectly realized little corner of the Lynchverse.
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John Justice Wheeler
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Re: A List of My Favorite Lynch Films

Post by John Justice Wheeler »

1. Dune
2. Blue Velvet
3. FWWM
4. Wild at Heart
5. Elephant Man
6. Lost Highway
7. Mulholland Drive
8. Straight Story
9. Eraserhead
10. Inland Empire

To be clear, I don't think that Dune is a better movie than Blue Velvet, I just happen to like it more. As this is a list of favorites, I can't help but arrange it in order of preference--in order ranging from the film of his I would be most inclined to sit down and watch at any time (indeed I have no doubt that I've seen Dune many more times than all the rest of these combined). And thematic and technical sophistication or refined perfection do not necessarily apply here. I have a friend, for instance, who is a huge Kubrick fan and has been for as long as I have known him, who acknowledged to me once that even though he considers 2001 to be the greatest film ever made he wouldn't be inclined to casually sit down and watch it.

Having said all that I don't want to overly qualify this because I genuinely do think that Dune is a great film, far more so than it is ever given credit for being. Too much is made of the compromises in the production process; how compromised was it, really? What studio exec forced Lynch to include a cat strapped to a rat or dictated the distinctive production design (including the characteristic use of background bit players or industrial sounds during scenes such as the entrance of the Guild navigator)? Who else should take credit for the overall distinction of its unique accomplishments? What is there is endlessly audacious and daring and brilliant, starting with the opening Irulan narration which Martha Nochimson accurately points out is a subtle critique of disproportionate human arrogance given her framing against the starfield backdrop. Nochimson's work on this film is deeply appreciated as even though she doesn't consider it fully successful she does take it seriously and mines out a great deal from what is there. I encourage anyone interested to have a look at her piece on it in The Passion of David Lynch.

As for me, I love all the dialogue (it's the most quotable Lynch film) and the way in which it's delivered; I love the mythic bravado and hyperbole dispensed with aplomb throughout and effective both as Lynchian critique of excess bravado and also as pure mythic representation; I love the symphony of voices doled out as voice-overs long before Malick did this; I love that it is often both funny and thrilling at the same time (e.g. the absurdity of the worm riding scene with the less than great effects trumped by the unapologetic Toto guitar twang); I love the score that works so well throughout, underlining the shifts in Lynch's tone and tenor; I love that Lynch manages here to make that most rare of films: a fantasy that is genuinely alien or foreign in conception and realization; and I love the way in which his sensitivity to even the smallest moments gives them weight and power (e.g. the brief moment in which the ship flies past the shield wall into the open desert and the screen is overwhelmed by the brightness of the sand, a propagator of its own sense of the visionary, and the Toto score again accents this shift beautifully). I even love the outright ineptness of his presentation of the battle scenes as that indicates where his interest is not.

I've always thought that Blue Velvet and Fire Walk with Me were pretty much tied at the top of a list of Lynch's best films (an easily indisputable one in which I wouldn't have to fight with people over the merits of Dune). For me they represent the more subtle and less subtle elements of Lynch's cinematic art which Joel has expanded upon so well before and elsewhere. As for the rest, well, I prefer Elephant Man to Straight Story in a contest of Lynch's more populist sentimental works simply because Elephant Man moves me tremendously and Straight Story really doesn't. I prefer Lost Highway to Mulholland Drive as I continue to have certain specific problems with MD that prevent me from being able to get behind it more enthusiastically. I admire Eraserhead, of course, as we all do, but I don't like it all that much and never did. As for Inland Empire, well, this seems to me to be the ultimate Lynchian litmus test and the most extreme work he's likely to present us with. Because of that, it's more reliant upon the super subjectivity of experiential response than probably any of the others and that goes back and forth with me. The last time I saw it, frankly, I hated the whole experience of it but that may well change whenever I see it again. For now though, I see it as indulgent without being all that interesting to me, too hermetically cryptic and broadly associative. Your mileage will obviously vary.
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LostInTheMovies
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Re: A List of My Favorite Lynch Films

Post by LostInTheMovies »

I enjoyed reading your description of Dune much more than I enjoyed watching it! :) Seriously though, beautiful advocacy of its qualities, which makes me eager to give it a third spin. Actually more than anything it makes me want to catch it on the big screen at some point as I think it's one of those movies whose strengths might become more apparent on a larger canvas, as a more overwhelming experience.

That also might be the best description I've read of how Inland Empire operates and why, as you say, YMMV.
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Re: A List of My Favorite Lynch Films

Post by EwanM »

1. Inland Empire
2. Lost Highway
3. FWWM
4. Mulholland Dr.
5. Blue Velvet
6. Eraserhead
7. Wild at Heart
8. The Elephant Man
9. The Straight Story
10. Dune

I love Inland Empire for many of the reasons that others seem to dislike it. It's pure, uncut Lynch. Every time I watch it I find something new in it. Lost Highway and FWWM are Lynch at his darkest and most demonic, which is the Lynch I like best. Mulholland Dr. is a film of two halves, but I love the second half, from the pivotal audition scene onwards. Blue Velvet is a film that combines the Lynch I don't like (the overly saccharine, sentimental Lynch) and the Lynch I love. I have mixed feelings about it, but Hopper's performance is stellar. Eraserhead is a film I admire more than enjoy. Wild at Heart is the kind of Lynch film Tarantino would probably like. The Elephant Man is a well-made film, but if it wasn't directed by Lynch, I doubt I'd watch it again. The Straight Story I've seen once, and never bothered to watch again. Along with Dune, it's the only Lynch film I don't own on DVD or Blu-ray. I've tried to watch Dune twice, but gave up both times, long before the end.
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Re: A List of My Favorite Lynch Films

Post by Metamorphia »

EwanM wrote:1. Inland Empire
2. Lost Highway
3. FWWM
4. Mulholland Dr.
5. Blue Velvet
6. Eraserhead
7. Wild at Heart
8. The Elephant Man
9. The Straight Story
10. Dune

I love Inland Empire for many of the reasons that others seem to dislike it. It's pure, uncut Lynch. Every time I watch it I find something new in it. Lost Highway and FWWM are Lynch at his darkest and most demonic, which is the Lynch I like best. Mulholland Dr. is a film of two halves, but I love the second half, from the pivotal audition scene onwards. Blue Velvet is a film that combines the Lynch I don't like (the overly saccharine, sentimental Lynch) and the Lynch I love. I have mixed feelings about it, but Hopper's performance is stellar. Eraserhead is a film I admire more than enjoy. Wild at Heart is the kind of Lynch film Tarantino would probably like. The Elephant Man is a well-made film, but if it wasn't directed by Lynch, I doubt I'd watch it again. The Straight Story I've seen once, and never bothered to watch again. Along with Dune, it's the only Lynch film I don't own on DVD or Blu-ray. I've tried to watch Dune twice, but gave up both times, long before the end.
Agreed. It's interesting because Tarantino mentioned he was a big fan of Lynch prior to FWMM. Blue Velvet, some of Twin Peaks on TV and WAH I'd imagine he loved, although I can't really see him digging Eraserhead.
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Re: A List of My Favorite Lynch Films

Post by moonmadness76 »

1. Mulholland Dr.
2. Blue Velvet
3. Inland Empire
4. Fire Walk With Me
5. Eraserhead
6. Wild at Heart
7. Lost Highway
8. The Elephant Man
9. The Straight Story
10. Dune
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