INLAND EMPIRE

"Billy!"

As Nikki Grace (Dern) prepares for her biggest role of her career, she starts to fall for her co-star Devon Berk (Theroux). When director Kingsley Stewart (Irons) reveals that the film they are working on, a remake of a Polish movie called 47, was never completed because the two leads were murdered, Nikki starts to realise that is her life is starting to mimic the script and her character and that the film might actually be cursed.

When David Lynch makes a movie the whole of the cinematic artistic community takes notice but can his latest experimental nightmarish opus hold your attention for three hours?

Surreal, unpleasant, awe-inspiring and genius are words that critics, scholars and awards panels have used to describe David Lynch's work throughout his career. With the exception of his adaptation of Dune, his movies like 'Eraserhead', 'Blue Velvet', 'Wild at Heart', 'The Straight Story' and 'Mulholland Dr.' have met with universal praise and numerous awards but they have never really appealed to a general audience. David Lynch's movie are an acquired taste were you can be completely drawn into his surreal world or totally confused and even repulsed by it.

Renown for pushing the boundaries of modern cinema, David Lynch's new surreal epic pushes them even further. After experimenting with digital cameras on his website, creating numerous short films that led him to conclude that his was a viable medium for a feature. Collaborating with friend and actress Laura Dern, he brings us 'Inland Empire', a complicated and surreal look at the pressures of Hollywood and the nightmares of your own inner consciousness. With a run time of three hours, the film explores an actress's journey into a character and then into her own mind, as she becomes consumed by her character and believes that the script from the movie is actually playing out in her own life. This approach and storyline forms the basis of movie that interweaves the actress's story with the original movie that she is remaking, her love for her co-star and believe it or not, a rabbit sitcom. There is even a dance number thrown in their for good measure. This is as confusing as it sounds, feeling more like experimental art than a motion picture but there is something about any David Lynch film that you cannot help but be totally mesmerised by.

After collaborating so successfully in 'Blue Velvet' and 'Wild at Heart', Laura Dern returns to work with David Lynch for the first time since 1990. As the main character of the piece, she drives the film as actress Nikki Grace and her character alter ego Susan Blue, travelling through a nightmarish vision of Hollywood. This is a role that gives Laura Dern the change to show every emotion possible in a film and she grabs the character with both hands. Her support is also good. Justin Theroux returns the Lynch fold as Devon Berk, Nikki's co-star. Jeremy Irons plays director Kingsley Stewart and Julia Ormond is good as Doris Side. Harry Dean Stanton is funny as Freddie Howard and there are plenty of cameos from Lynch favourites and a few star names.

Probably one of Lynch's least accessible film's, 'Inland Empire' is as confusing as it is brilliant. You have to applaud a filmmaker of pushing the boundaries of cinema and embracing new technologies but with a story that is almost impossible to comprehend and some totally surreal touches, like the rabbit sitcom, general audiences will get absolutely nothing from this film. Lynch fans however will revel in entering the mind of David Lynch for three hours.