Sometimes a director’s best film and maybe even their most characteristic, if you really think about it, is the one you might least expect, as can be the surprising nature of auteurism.

| Apr 25, 2025

When the movie’s end arrives, it’s a scene of cosmic beauty, accompanied by Angelo Badalamenti’s ethereal score—pure cinematic liftoff, a triumph of writing, direction, acting, casting, all the things that make a movie take flight.

| Jan 21, 2025

... An elegiac portrait of a fading American heartland wrapped around a tear-jerking depiction of a man reflecting on his life losses with regret and resignation.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 24, 2023

It's intriguing to watch the Lynch of Blue Velvet and Lost Highway feel his way toward a less wounding surrealism -- into images that have power to hurt and will do none.

| Apr 14, 2020

It seems only fitting that Lynch's most unambiguous, sentimental film should concern a man named Straight and the title is entirely apposite.

| Mar 18, 2020

Instead, like Alvin, [Lynch's] film sets out on its mission in its own unassuming way and; inviting as those campfire flames around which so many stories have been told.

| Mar 18, 2020

David Lynch's movie - the finest he has made since "Blue Velvet" - is serenely bereft of postmodern cynicism.

| Mar 18, 2020

With his sweet, lyrical masterpiece... David Lynch frees himself from the heavy irony and noir affectations of his last few films, discovering the pure, mythical slice of Americana previously confined to Agent Cooper's coffee and donuts in Twin Peaks.

| Mar 18, 2020

As far as I can see, [David Lynch] simply spotted a great story and embraced it. So will you.

| Apr 4, 2018

On the whole, though, this is a film made by David Lynch the sometime Eagle Scout from Missoula, Montana, not David Lynch the inspired sicko behind Blue Velvet and Eraserhead.

| Jun 18, 2012

Great, but young kids may be bored and restless.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 29, 2010

Coming straight from his Eagle Scout's heart, "The Straight Story" is David Lynch's simplest, most straightforward and most mature film to date.

| Jun 18, 2008

Farnsworth's easy, twinkle eyed charm is a winner all the way, but it's finally the film's deceptive simplicity and unabashed warmth that make it one of Lynch's most artistically and emotionally satisfying movies.

| Jun 24, 2006

Lynch has no intention of trying to “explain” what makes Alvin tick or of understanding him in any reductionistic way; of reducing a man to a motivation.

| Original Score: A | May 8, 2002

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 22, 2002

Lynch has slowed the world down and gotten back in touch with it.

Full Review | Jan 15, 2002

Another pleasant surprise.

Full Review | May 11, 2001

The essential decency of all of the movie's characters is a good subject for family discussion.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 1, 2000

In short, Lynch as Republican.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

So settle back for one of the most unusual road trips ever committed to celluloid.

| Jan 1, 2000