Mulholland Drive
An amnesiac woman and an aspiring actress investigate a mystery in Hollywood that doesn't resolve the way any film has ever resolved before.
Lynch's masterpiece. The film that made 'David Lynch' a verb. Its deliberate incoherence as meaning has never been replicated.
Originally a TV pilot ABC rejected. Lynch expanded and transformed it into a feature — the rejection itself becoming part of the Hollywood dream-machine critique.
The web prompted questions about identity, simulation, and control. The Matrix, Strange Days, eXistenZ, and Dark City all interrogated what's real in a mediated world.
Post-9/11 trauma shaped a decade of cinema. Superheroes became relevant (Spider-Man arrived seven months after). War films returned. Torture became contested on screen (Zero Dark Thirty). New Yorkers refused to be shown threatened cities for years.