SILVER

David Lynch's unsettling masterpiece blends disparate elements — a coming-of-age drama, a detective story, an ambiguous 1980s setting with 1950s trappings and midnight movie-style madness — into a uniquely Lynchian whole: equal parts seductive and nightmarish. After discovering a severed ear, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) begins an investigation, perhaps to impress his police detective neighbor's daughter (Laura Dern). Beaumont's amateur sleuthing plunges him into a dangerous underworld populated by sad-eyed nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) and her psychotic tormentor, Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), a lover of PBR, nitrous oxide, kinky sex and Roy Orbison. DIR/SCR David Lynch; PROD Fred C. Caruso. U.S., 1986, color, 120 min. RATED R

In Memoriam: David Lynch (1946–2025)