Too many people think that David Lynch is a genius because he makes films that are difficult to follow. This is not the case. It isn't that his films are difficult to follow, they just aren't finished products. They start out as something, but never bring any sort of closure to what they've started. This compels people to try and figure out what happened. The movie isn't finished, that's what happened!! Making a film that isn't finished doesn't make you a genius, it makes you lazy. It'd be the equivalent of going into a restaurant and having the chef dump the ingredients on your plate without cooking them or preparing them in any sort of way. It would be twice as stupid if the customer then said the chef's entree was genius. David Lynch's new film, "Inland Empire," is just this. It's as if Lynch took three different feature length films, hacked off the endings, then sliced them, diced them, and edited them together haphazardly and then took a piss on the whole thing. It wasn't that they 'were' bad ideas, but Lynch doesn't give them a chance to go anywhere before he cuts from one to the next. This leaves the audience hanging as if they had been, well, lynched.

Meet Hollywood star Nikki Grace (Laura Dern.) Nikki has just accepted a role in a new film that's being directed by famous filmmaker Kingsley Stewart (Jeremy Irons.) The movie will co-star actor/playboy Devon Berk (Justin Theroux.) Devon seems to have a habit of bedding the actresses he works with. However, in this film, he is warned by friends that Nikki's husband is involved in organized crime, and that this time he should probably keep Mr. Happy in his pants. Nevertheless, we later learn that he does not. We also learn that the film the two will star in is a remake of an unfinished film that was based on a polish gypsy tale. Filming had been cut short for the production when the two lead actors were brutally murdered. Can you guess what the unfinished original movie before the unfinished remake movie inside David Lynch's unfinished movie is about? It's about two people having an affair. That is about all that is coherent in the movie, if you can even call it a movie. At this point Lynch departs from this premise and has Laura Dern running, like a chicken on crack, through a bunch of different abstract scenes featuring the following themes:

-Naked hookers
-A sitcom with bunny rabbits and incoherent dialog
-A woman talking to a psychiatrist about her fucked up life
-Polish hookers
-A stabbed woman in a police station complaining about being hypnotised to carry out a crime she hasn't commited yet
-Time travel
-Neighborhoods

The tagline for this movie is, "A woman in trouble," and this is true. Laura Dern is definitely in trouble because the film is not backed by corporate $$$ Hollywood, but is a product of Lynch's new company known as Absurda. Lynch was recently seen on a street corner in L.A. raising money for Laura with a large picture of her, and a live cow standing next to it (seriously.)

Did I mention this was David's first experience shooting on digital film?

Lynch admits to never having shot on digital film before. That's funny considering the DVD comes with a special feature to help calibrate the display on your TV properly. The feature says something about most TV's being calibrated incorrectly because they are set to work as floor models in brightly lit electronics stores. This is the epitome of arrogance. It's like a car salesman selling you a car he tells you isn't safe, and then telling you to make sure not to drive drunk in it because that's not safe. I watched the film on my computer's flatscreen instead. Lynch has no idea what he's doing and it shows. You can almost here the word, "Cut!" being yelled between shots as Laura sits with her mouth hung wide open waiting for someone to tell everyone that the scene is over.

When I said the film wasn't finished, I didn't mean that it was too short. The movie is three hours long. I watched it for two hours and then shut it off. The way I see it, an unfinished film doesn't deserve to be watched all the way through.

--Tmundo