Batman Begins vs. Mulholland Drive may be the most difficult match in this tournament because both movies are so different and so good. I’m pulling for Batman Begins, which was probably my favorite movie of 2005, but I can’t deny the cinematic magic of Mulholland Drive.
Both movies were reborn from other projects. Everyone is familiar with the Batman movie franchise that got started with Tim Burton’s dark vision starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson which degenerated into Joel Schumacher’s vision of nipples on the Batsuit. The world needed some time and space to recover from that abomination before we were ready to accept Batman on screen again.
Christopher Nolan managed to make a comic book movie that felt like a regular movie. Gotham City looked like a real place. None of the characters were really over the top; even Batman himself, while being a costumed vigilante in an otherwise normal world, didn’t feel out of place.
Christian Bale was believable as both Bats and Bruce Wayne; the previous Batmen were able to pull off one side of the character, but never both. Every other actor in the role played it as if the costume and the crime fighting were something Bruce Wayne did simply because he had the means, whereas Bale played it as something Wayne needs to do. He captured the kind of seething, yet contained, rage that drives a guy to put on a costume and fight crime. The gravelly voice he took on while wearing the Batsuit was silly, but he was just starting out as Batman, so it’s forgivable.
Mulholland Drive was originally written and shot in 1999 as a pilot for an ABC television series, which was rejected by the network. Why David Lynch would want to get in bed with ABC again after Twin Peaks is beyond me. It’s non-linear and has weird and seemingly random scenes throughout. It’s the kind of movie that will make your brain work; every time I watch it, I find that it lingers in my head for a while afterward.
Oh, no. My fangirl is showing. . . and taking over. . .
Batman Begins wins this round, but only by the tiniest fraction of a nanopercent. Like a last second, lucky three point shot thrown by short freshman with no depth perception in a tied game. We’re talking one LUCKY shot.
But you should still watch Mulholland Drive.
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Lisa Fary's earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She's angry that it's 2011 and she still doesn't have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram. 
Have to agree with you on this one. Both films are great. Both films have flaws. In the case of “Batman Begins” the flaw is that it does just tip over into comic book silliness towards the end (the Batmobile chase and Jim Gordon taking to the controls of the Batmobile). In the case of “Mulholland Drive”, the flaw is that you never quite know what on Earth is going on … even at the end! Weighed in the balance, I’d say the flaw in “Batman Begins” is slightly less important so, yeah – Bats would get my vote!
*Possible Spoilers Ahead
I don’t know about Mulholland Drive being quite that difficult to decipher. Sure, on a first viewing, it might be a little bit confusing, especially when the movie switches into it’s final act. BUT, if you watch the movie again, you’ll see that David Lynch plays completely fair on this one…he even goes so far as to TELL the audience explicitly (from the very first lines) that “This is just like a dream,” and “I can’t believe this is happening.” Hell, the entire Club Silencio scene, besides being a brilliant exposure of how manipulated a movie audience is at the hands of the director, TELLS us that everything that we’re seeing is a construct, unreal. It’s not until the final act that reality takes over.
Of course, this is a Lynch movie, so reality has miniature old people that crawl under door cracks and make people kill themselves.
One round down, and my favorite movie is already out. *sob*
It’s like watching the Arizona Wildcats lose in the first round.
snarf, snarf.