elwood

Mulholland Drive premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2001 to major critical acclaim. Lynch was awarded the Best Director prize at the festival (sharing it with co-winner Joel Coen for The Man Who Wasn't There). In the United States, the film was released in October 2001. It drew highly positive reviews by many critics and some of the strongest audience reactions of Lynch's career. It was named Best Picture by the New York Film Critics Circle and National Society of Film Critics. Even more notably, the film was given a four-star review by Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, who, in the past is known as one of Lynch's biggest detractors:
" David Lynch has been working toward Mulholland Drive all of his career, and now that he's arrived there I forgive him Wild at Heart (1990) and even Lost Highway (1997). At last his experiment doesn't shatter the test tubes. The movie is a surrealist dreamscape in the form of a Hollywood film noir, and the less sense it makes, the more we can't stop watching it.[6] "

Lynch was nominated for a Best Directing Oscar for the film. From the Hollywood Foreign Press, the film received four Golden Globe nominations, including Best Picture (Drama), Best Director, and Best Screenplay.[7][8]

Mulholland Dr. was ranked #38 on the Channel 4 program 50 Films to See Before You Die and was in The Guardian's 1000 films to see before you die where it is described as David Lynch's masterpiece, along with Blue Velvet.[9]