Mulholland Drive 2001
Lynch wrote and directed it, and the hosts note it began life as a failed ABC pilot before he reshot and expanded it into a feature that premiered at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. One of only two Lynch films made this century (Inland Empire is the other), and the project they were never going to skip after his death earlier in the year. Cast and crew they return to: Naomi Watts, whom Lynch cast off a photograph and who plays Betty/Diane in a dual role built around the audition scene; Laura Harring as Rita; Justin Theroux; Ann Miller; and Robert Forster, who shot pilot footage as a cop and reportedly didn't know he was in the finished movie. Shot by Peter Deming, scored by Angelo Badalamenti (who also appears as a gangster), production design by Jack Fisk. Threads: the Patrick Fischler diner scene as the scariest moment in the film, the No hay banda / Silencio sequence with Rebekah Del Rio, the blue box nobody can explain, and the movie's resistance to the tidy Reddit puzzle-box reading. Won Best Director at Cannes but lost the Palme d'Or to The Son's Room; Lynch's lone Oscar nomination for the film lost Best Director to Ron Howard for A Beautiful Mind. Rose from No. 22 to No. 8 on the Sight and Sound poll between 2012 and 2022, and landed No. 2 on both the New York Times critics' and readers' century lists. Next up on the list: five more films, with a live secret screening of the No. 4 pick.