Every David Lynch Film RANKED From Worst To Best

Lynch salvaged what was to be a new TV pilot and managed to pull together his outstanding feature film achievement; a moody, melancholy Hollywood nightmare.

Telling a nonlinear narrative of L.A., film directors, mysterious studio heads, wannabe actresses, gangsters, lowlifes, and all sorts, the film's initial premise follows Betty (Naomi Watts) and Rita (Laura Harring), the latter an amnesiac, as they try to uncover Rita's identity. Originally, the film was to be a pilot for a new TV series, but when that project fell through, Lynch rewrote and reworked his material, restarted filming, and produced Mulholland Drive.

Though Blue Velvet is the Lynch film for some, Mulholland Drive has the feeling of a culmination, bringing together all those characteristic elements evident in even Lynch's earlier work, his developments in writing Twin Peaks, as well as the nonlinearity he played with in Lost Highway. The result is a breathtaking piece of cinema, rightly considered one of the 21st century's finest. In the end, though it is close, Mulholland Drive has to take the top spot; it has more heart than Blue Velvet, even if it sets out to break it.