Lost Highway (5.5/10)

This is a 1997 horror/noir from David Lynch starring Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette, and has great reviews. For me, it didn’t live up to them. The style leans so heavily into the artistic side that the movie never feels fluid; it plays more like a string of moods and images than a story moving forward. The music and the long pauses mid-sentence for emphasis felt over the top, and instead of building tension, they mostly pulled me out of it. Pullman and Arquette fully commit to the material, but the heavy stylization keeps you at arm’s length from their characters. If you’re already a fan of Lynch’s other work, like Mulholland Drive or Twin Peaks, you’ll probably get a lot more out of this than I did. As you can tell, I wasn’t the biggest fan, and unless you’re on Lynch’s wavelength, this one’s a pass. "From this inventory of imagery, Lynch fashions two separate but intersecting stories, one about a jazz musician (Bill Pullman), tortured by the notion that his wife is having an affair, who suddenly finds himself accused of her murder. The other is a young mechanic (Balthazar Getty) drawn into a web of deceit by a temptress who is cheating on her gangster boyfriend. These two tales are linked by the fact that the women in both are played by the same actress (Patricia Arquette)."