Gosford Park, dir Robert Altman, 2002 and Mulholland Dr., dir David Lynch, 2002

Apart from the fact that directors Robert Altman and David Lynch both lost out on the 2001 Oscar for Best Director to Ron Howard and his forgettably routine biopic A Beautiful Mind, Gosford Park and Mulholland Dr. seem to have little in common: Gosford Park is an in-the-library murder mystery set in a meticulous recreation of a 1930s English country house; Mulholland Dr. is a convoluted noir that twists and turns through Hollywood's underbelly. Yet these two very different movies both pay loving homage to particular mystery genres, lay bare their particular social milieus, and have at their centres strong female leads who become by accident amateur sleuths.

The straightforward narrative of Robert Altman's Gosford Park (USA 22281) spans a single weekend in the eponymous country house in November 1932, disrupted when the host of a shooting party, Sir William McCardle (Michael Gambon) is discovered in his study not only poisoned, but stabbed through the heart. Sir William is a crude, manipulative, bullying monster whose wife, as given as he is to flings with the servants, married him for his money, and almost every one of the guests seems to have a motive for his murder. So far, so Agatha Christie; but Gosford Park neatly flips the usual perspective of country house murder mysteries by showing us the story from the servants' point of view. We first enter the house by following the servants of arriving guests through the kitchens; there's a servant present or hovering just outside the door in every scene; and although they're mostly invisible or inconsequential to the guests, the all-seeing, all-hearing servants know everything about the foibles and fears of their masters and mistresses, and neatly fill in back stories through gossip and banter. And it's the youngest and most inexperienced servant, Mary Maceachran (Kelly McDonald, in a vivid performance that does much with very few lines), rather than the bumbling Detective Inspector (Stephen Fry, in full-on Blackadder mode), who is determined to clear the name of Sir William's housemaid and lover, Elsie (Emily Watson), and discovers not only who killed Sir William, but why.

As stuffed with British thespians as a Christmas pudding is with plums, Gosford Park is a fine if cosy example of Altman's ensemble method of direction, all the better for being largely confined to one setting, with fluid, restless camera work prowling after characters through the drawing, dining rooms and bedrooms, bustling kitchens and servants' attic quarters. While the solution to the mystery is not unexpected (although there's a fine and moving twist at the end), and its target of social snobbery and class privilege is as easy to hit as birds flushed from cover in front of a dozen shotguns, the movie is informed by a wry, dark intelligence, and spryly dances the viewer through its tangle of storylines. There's comic relief from an American film producer trying to organise by long-distance telephone his next Charlie Chan picture, oblivious to the real murder; a heartbreakingly brittle performance by Helen Mirren as Mrs Wilson, the inhumanly efficient housekeeper; and an affecting sequence in which servants huddle outside doors and on stairwells to hear the impromptu performance of one of the guests, Ivor Novello (Jeremy Northam).

Saturated in period detail, from the jaunty, jazz-laden soundtrack to the meticulous table-settings, with overlapping conversations and snatched glimpses of above- and below-stairs trysts, rivalries, and relationships, it's a movie that demands to be watched more than once. The Region 1 disc reviewed here is a pinsharp 2.35:1 anamorphic presentation with a crisp soundtrack (essential to untangle Altman's trademark overlapping conversations). Oscar-winning script-writer Julian Ffellowes, who grew up in upper-class circles similar to those the movie depicts, provides an astute and detailed commentary in a bravura solo performance, and there's also a more meandering commentary by Robert Altman, producer David Levy, and production designer Stephen Altman, deleted scenes with optional commentary, two short features on the making of the movie, and a Q&A session featuring Altman, Ffellowes, and some of the stars. It's a fine package complementing one of the best films of last year.

With Mulholland Dr. (Universal 9028839), David Lynch returns to the spooky, dream-like territory of Lost Highway and Fire Walk With Me after the brief diversion of The Straight Story. The story begins in proper film noir style: menacing thugs; a car crash; a beautiful woman wandering into Los Angeles's sea of lights with a wad of cash in her purse but no memory of how she got it or who she is. She takes refuge in the apartment of a woman about to leave on a trip, and is befriended by the woman's niece, Betty Elms (Naomi Watts, in a terrifically warm, radiant performance), who has just arrived in Los Angeles to seek her fortune after winning a jitterbug competition.

The mystery woman (Laura Elena Harring), borrowing the name and sultry attitude of Rita Hayworth from a poster for Gilda, is dark to Betty's light, decadently sexual, but confused and deeply afraid of the consequences of discovering who she is and what happened to her. While Betty, who in a brilliantly staged audition shows that she's much more than the innocent ingenue, takes it upon herself to discover the secrets of Rita's lost life, a parallel plot follows the fortunes of film director Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux), forced to compromise on the casting of his 50's style movie after trying and failing to face down the henchmen of the mysterious and powerful Mr Roque. Betty and Rita get as far as discovering a dead girl in what they believe to be Rita's apartment, and falling for each other in true detective/beautiful client fashion, but after a trip to the mysterious Club Silencio, the plot suddenly turns inside out, with doppelgangers and doubles uniting the characters from the two parallel plots and providing an alternate reading of everything that's gone before.

One popular explication of the movie is that what seems to be the main story is in fact an hallucination or post-mortem dream which redeems a suicide motivated by jealousy and despair: the camera sinks into a pillow before the story begins; there are references to dreams scattered through the plot; in an interview, Lynch refers to Mulholland Drive as a dream road, snaking through darkness above Los Angeles. But what, then, of Mr Roque, the incredible shrinking godparents, or the mysterious, menacing homeless person who lives behind a diner on Sunset Strip and appears to inhabit the dreams of others? At bottom, Mulholland Dr.'s unresolved mysteries are due to the fact that it began life as a pilot for a cancelled TV series, and was completed only after Canal Plus came up with the necessary funding; it's a measure of Lynch's ingenuity that his script manages to weave the plethora of red herrings and non-sequiturs, dead-eyed cowboys and spectacularly inept hitmen, into a dream logic that's always on the verge of making sense, but never quite does.

The 1.85:1 anamorphic presentation fully reproduces the luminous colours and deep shadows of the movie, which with its slow pans, characters emerging from and fading into darkness, and atmospheric sound design, brilliantly conjures a noir milieu. It comes, as Lynch prefers, with no chapter stops, and the extras are sparse: a leaflet with ten tongue-in-cheek ‘clues to unlocking this thriller'; a trailer; brief cast and crew biographies; and scrappily edited on-the-set interviews with Lynch and some of the principal actors. But never mind the extras; Mulholland Dr., featuring some of Lynch's best work, is essential.

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