Inland Empire (film) it "A dazzling and exquisitely original riddle as told by an enigma" and Jim Emerson (editor of RogerEbert.com) gave it 4 stars and praised it: "When people say "Inland Empire" is Lynch's "Sunset Boulevard", Lynch's "Persona" or Lynch's "8½", they're quite right, but it also explicitly invokes connections to Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining", Jean-Luc Godard's "Pierrot le Fou", Buñuel and Dalí's "Un Chien Andalou", Maya Deren's LA-experimental "Meshes of the Afternoon" (a Lynch favorite) and others". However, Carina Chocano of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote that "the film, which begins promisingly, disappears down so many rabbit holes (one of them
Un Chien Andalou in narrative flow that can be described in terms of then-popular Freudian free association, presenting a series of tenuously related scenes. The film opens with a title card reading "Once upon a time". A middle-aged man (Luis Buñuel) sharpens his razor at his balcony door and tests the razor on his thumb. He then opens the door, and idly fingers the razor while gazing at the moon, about to be engulfed by a thin cloud, from his balcony. There is a cut to a close-up of a young woman (Simone Mareuil) being held by the man. She calmly stares straight