Noah Millman:

That experience, of meeting the audience on the dreaming plane, is what Lynch excelled at above any other director I can name. More than Luis Buñuel, or Ken Russell, or David Cronenberg, or Hayao Miyazaki, when I watch Lynch, I feel like I have been invited into his private dreams. Sometimes, as with Eraserhead or Blue Velvet, the result is an extraordinary feeling of communion. Other times, as with Inland Empire, I feel unable to meet him there; the world is too hermetic, and these are not my dreams.