With Lynch, Blue Velvet is top of the list for me. He has a ton of good stuff. I think it works better if you're not trying to figure it all out, it's really about scenes, feels, performances. And for that it was never better than Hopper and Stockwell in Blue Velvet.
Agreed. More than anything else, his work was about conveying pure emotion.
He had this way, to an extent I haven't seen from other film makers, of making the perspective of the outsider, the weirdo, the main perspective in his films. He'd shift things in his films this way so much that the "normals" became the absurd, and the bizarre became almost comfortable. He made the viewer acknowledge or feel the bizarre in themselves as reflected in the characters in his films and their actions. Yet throughout there was always a sense of discomfort, unease, even in what were marginally comical scenes or depictions.
I'm not describing it well, but it made Lynch unique IMO.