What is Inland Empire -- which Lynch is understandably distributing himself -- about? What is it trying to say? If you figure that out, let me know.
Inland Empire (2006)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:98
Fresh:70
Rotten:28
Average Rating:7.1/10
Consensus: Typical David Lynch fare: fans of the director will find Inland Empire seductive and deep. All others will consider the heady surrealism impenetrable and pointless.
Rated: 15 [See Full Rating] for language, some violence and sexuality/nudity.
Runtime: 2 hrs 59 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:09-03-2007
Synopsis: With INLAND EMPIRE, David Lynch--creator of such mind-bending works as ERASERHEAD and LOST HIGHWAY--delivers his most avant-garde, abstract, and impenetrable vision yet. A three-hour fever... With INLAND EMPIRE, David Lynch--creator of such mind-bending works as ERASERHEAD and LOST HIGHWAY--delivers his most avant-garde, abstract, and impenetrable vision yet. A three-hour fever nightmare of a motion picture, INLAND EMPIRE takes the basic structure of Lynch's 2001 masterpiece, MULHOLLAND DRIVE, and spins it even further out of control. A blonde actress (Laura Dern) is preparing for her biggest role yet, but when she finds herself falling for her co-star (Justin Theroux), she realizes that her life is beginning to mimic the fictional film that they're shooting. Adding to her confusion is the revelation that the current film is a remake of a doomed Polish production, 47, which was never finished due to an unspeakable tragedy. And that's the only the beginning. Soon, a seemingly endless onslaught of indescribably bizarre situations flashes across the screen: a sitcom featuring humans in bunny suits, a parallel story set in a wintry Poland, a houseful of dancing streetwalkers, screwdrivers in stomachs, menacing Polish carnies, and much, much more. By the time the film's electrifying closing-credit sequence arrives, even diehard Lynch fans will be gasping for air. What most glaringly differentiates INLAND EMPIRE from Lynch's previous work is the format on which it was shot. This is the first time that he has chosen to shoot on digital video, as opposed to film, and while the decision is jarring at first, the grainy imagery nonetheless casts a creepy, haunting spell. Laura Dern's multi-fractured performance is downright heroic. She gives the film the human grounding that it so desperately needs. Not for the fragile or timid, INLAND EMPIRE is a full-blown assault to the senses. [More]
Starring: Jeremy Irons, Laura Dern, Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Stanton
Starring: Jeremy Irons, Laura Dern, Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Stanton, Scott Coffey, Ian Abercrombie, Terry Crews, Grace Zabriskie, Julia Ormond, William H. Macy, Naomi Watts, Nastassja Kinski, Diane Ladd, Mary Steenburgen
Director: David Lynch
Director: David Lynch
Screenwriter: David Lynch
Producer: David Lynch, Mary Sweeney
Studio: 518 Media Inc.
Reviews for Inland Empire
The film is a detailed analysis of Nikki's creative process, of her struggle towards that transcendent point where her art... only connects.
...I prefer my Lynch artistically shackled by the restraints of a film camera.
I can't totally recommend Inland Empire. But something tells me I'd be a fool to totally dismiss it.
David Lynch's extraordinary, savagely uncompromised new film is as cracked as Mad magazine, though generally more difficult to parse.
It's an experience. Either you give yourself over to it or you don't. And if you do, don't miss the end credits.
Lynch serves up enough irrationally disturbing images for 100 classic Asian horror films, and the bedraggled Dern is so overflowingly open that you can’t dismiss the movie as an arty exercise.
A great big puzzle movie that even Lynch appears not to have figured out.
Inland Empire is so locked up in David Lynch's brain that it never burrows its way into ours.
My advice, in the face of such hallucinatory brilliance, is that you hang on.
The intimacy and immediacy of digital video has allowed Lynch to make his most personal film yet, and the result is one of the richest and most rewarding moviegoing experiences of 2006.
Inland Empire may mesmerize those for whom the helmer can do no wrong, but the unconvinced and the occasional admirer will find it dull as dishwater and equally murky.
Lynch's epic about the movie biz and identity seems less a depiction of the dark recesses of the human mind than an actual product of it.
My favorite film of the [New York Film Festival] and the year... Lynch's most challenging work since Eraserhead is a viscerally unrivaled love letter to the transformative powers of cinema that can't be controlled nor comprehended.
David Lynch has been working on his latest film, Inland Empire for years, and it feels like he has included every minute of the footage he shot.
An invitation to give up all the stories you tell yourself about logic, time, and understandable characters and enter the Lynchian world of mysteries where the refreshing password is "don't know."
Despite its moments of inspired terror and mystery, this isn't a cult hit in the making like Mulholland Drive, or a contrarian critic's delight like Lost Highway. It's an opaque and baffling work, difficult to follow and difficult to like.
In Inland Empire, more than ever, Lynch wishes to establish a connection between a world that is astonishingly familiar and deceptively immediate and one that is utterly, horribly alien.
Latest News for Inland Empire
December 12, 2006:
2006 NYFCO Awards Announced!
It's that time of year again: Right before the fancy awards are doled out, all the different critics' groups chime in with their favorite flicks of the year. Here we have the... More...
December 09, 2006:
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December 07, 2006:
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November 14, 2006:
RTIndie: A News Wrap-Up, Plus David Lynch's Latest Antics
Faced with "Volver" performing well (again) and "Babel"'s expansion into wide release (big time), "The Queen" lost a bit of box office momentum... More...
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