10 Movies That Thought They Were Smart (But Really Weren't)

10. Mulholland Drive

David Lynch is without question a master filmmaker, and arguably his best film is 2001's surreal masterpiece Mulholland Drive. That said, as has been a consistent problem with the director's entire filmography, some are eager to mistake his oft-impenetrable, enigmatic storytelling style for intellectual high-art. Does Lynch make entertaining movies? Absolutely, but how often do they really make any sort of sense? Mulholland Drive is as difficult to decipher as anything the director has made, at least without doing some background reading or have someone explain it to you. Mulholland Drive is a movie of two halves: the first appears (at least at first) to be a relatively straight-forward if rather strange tale about an amnesiac woman (Laura Harring) and the aspiring actress (Naomi Watts) she falls in love with. The discovery of a mysterious blue box, however, kick-starts the second part of the movie, where Watts now plays a woman called Diane Selwyn (referenced earlier in the movie), a failed actress, while Harring now plays Camilla Rhodes, the actress played earlier in the movie by Melissa George. More weirdness surrounding the blue key and box arises, and Diane begins to suffer horrific hallucinations, before she ultimately shoots herself at the very end of the movie. The most widely-accepted interpretation of the movie is that the first half is Diane Selwyn's dream of an idealised life in Hollywood, and the second half is the dark reality, where she has failed and commits suicide. The point here is that for all but the most hardened Lynch aficionados, Mulholland Drive feels like a semi-random collection of scenes smashed together, and though it's certainly a fascinating and brilliantly-acted film, this doesn't necessarily mean that it's as smart as its mysterious narrative might suggest. If viewers do not have access to this interpretation or can't figure it out for themselves, it makes for an experience as frustrating as it is compelling.