Saw limos smashed up today and just thought of Cosmopolis
― Gukbe, Saturday, 21 January 2017 04:59 (seven years ago) link
My dozen favorites.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 13 August 2017 04:55 (six years ago) link
Was traumatized by Dead Ringers as a teenager. Haven't seen it since.
― Gukbe, Sunday, 13 August 2017 06:50 (six years ago) link
I'm a huge Cronenberg fan, and yet: 1) I've yet to see his last three (the Freud movie, Cosmopolis or Maps to the Stars) and, more egregiously 2) until last night I had never seen Scanners! Which is very ironic, given it is literally his most iconic movie. I mean, I've seen the explosion scene dozens of times! Anyway, it was good. Haven't seen Dead Ringers or Crash in ages, should watch them again one of these days.
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 13 August 2017 15:04 (six years ago) link
Freud movie is good, maps of the stars is laughable and seems to have been made for the sole purpose of a single iconic shot
― Οὖτις, Sunday, 13 August 2017 15:22 (six years ago) link
Which shot?
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, 13 August 2017 15:23 (six years ago) link
"the end"
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 13 August 2017 15:28 (six years ago) link
Don't remember that.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, 13 August 2017 15:31 (six years ago) link
It comes at the end.
Just goofing. I've never seen it, remember?
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 13 August 2017 15:36 (six years ago) link
First thing that springs to mind is Julliane Moore shitting but I don't think it became iconic.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, 13 August 2017 15:43 (six years ago) link
I wonder if he's still planning on making his Lethem adaptation.
― the general theme of STUFF (cryptosicko), Sunday, 13 August 2017 15:47 (six years ago) link
*SPOILIDAD*
murder-of-viewer-by-Oscar
― Οὖτις, Sunday, 13 August 2017 15:51 (six years ago) link
The Freud/Jung movie is one of his best.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 13 August 2017 16:49 (six years ago) link
No Existenz no credibility.
― Fetchboy, Sunday, 13 August 2017 17:10 (six years ago) link
No Crash no credibility
― Well bissogled trotters (Michael B), Sunday, 13 August 2017 17:13 (six years ago) link
"A very protestant remark"
― Οὖτις, Sunday, 13 August 2017 17:36 (six years ago) link
Existenz is sort of an apotheosis of his body horror stuff, redone as sorta farce. One of my favorite twists in any movie came from watching that. All sorts of bad accents bouncing around, and then you realize it's been on purpose ...
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 13 August 2017 18:39 (six years ago) link
Speaking of Scanners, I didn't think it was particularly good, to be honest. Bad acting, dumb plot, but not very deep (unlike the similarly shaky Rabid/Shivers) when it comes to theme/metaphoric worth, etc. In Alfred's list I would at least swap its place with Dead Zone.
Also, McGoohan - there should be a thread for pipe-smoking portentous/pretentious psychiatrists in horror movies.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 15 August 2017 13:51 (six years ago) link
I've always thought it was pretty weird that Shivers and Ballard's High-Rise came out in the same year. Must have been something in the air
― Number None, Tuesday, 15 August 2017 21:37 (six years ago) link
Scanners is def lower-tier Cronenberg. Outside of the iconic scene and some of McGoohan's scenery chewing it's really pretty slow and stupid.
I love Existenz, a much better film in every way.
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 15 August 2017 22:16 (six years ago) link
I found eXistenZ rather slow, almost leaden at time. I'm rewatching this weekend.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 15 August 2017 22:22 (six years ago) link
idk maybe I'm just overly fond of the game framework ("GAS" etc.)
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 15 August 2017 22:23 (six years ago) link
it also plays like a loose sequel to videodrome.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 15 August 2017 22:24 (six years ago) link
I need to buy the Criterion Blu-Ray of The Brood. Love that movie. I suspect any child of divorce whose custodial parent relentlessly shit-talked the non-custodial parent for years would probably feel the same. Scanners is a lot of fun, Videodrome is a masterpiece, and eXistenZ is a bad Videodrome knockoff.
― grawlix (unperson), Tuesday, 15 August 2017 22:29 (six years ago) link
eXistenZ is a good Videodrome tribute!
The Brood is my favorite.
― dan selzer, Wednesday, 16 August 2017 00:58 (six years ago) link
i haven't seen the freud movie or maps to the stars either! cosmopolis was really dull, mostly, except for binoche
prob saw existenz ten years ago but i liked it & thought it was hilarious at the time
― comey did deflategate (daria-g), Wednesday, 16 August 2017 01:29 (six years ago) link
Didn't think it possible, but I went to a rep screening of Crash tonight and hated it even more than I did when it came out. Its lumbering eagerness to shock is embarrassing. This is not a comment on the novel, which I haven't read.
― clemenza, Sunday, 20 August 2017 04:07 (six years ago) link
the only thing i remember about crash is when deborah kara unger says "anus"
for me that is enough
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Sunday, 20 August 2017 12:01 (six years ago) link
Unger and Elias Koteas speak every line in this breathy, ominous whisper that's as wearing as it is self-parodying.
I should say that I was semi-diverted throughout by trying to name specific roads. I took one of them home after the film, although I was going in the opposite direction--just me i the car, both hands on the wheel, trying not to crash.
― clemenza, Sunday, 20 August 2017 13:47 (six years ago) link
Haven't seen Crash since it came out, but my memory of it is as a deliberately 'cool' version of the Ballard book.
The desire to shock seems to me a noble aim for any filmmaker (as a cinemagoer, I would rather be shocked than comforted) - god forbid we have a cinema deprived of the vulgar and voyeuristic. The erosion of the strong shock impulse in Cronenberg's work has made him a lesser, duller filmmaker imho (eg the bland heritage nothingness of that wretched Freud movie). Besides, Ballard's linking of vehicles with the death impulse, and with orgasmic oblivion, seems very prescient right now - shockingly so.
― Gulley Jimson (Ward Fowler), Monday, 21 August 2017 08:41 (six years ago) link
I'm at the opposite end with Cronenberg, which I know is unusual--the more he erodes his strong shock impulse, the more I like him. His Dead Zone/The Fly/Dead Ringers run is far and away his peak for me. Not that the shock impulse is absent in those films--obviously it isn't, especially in The Fly--but I find his focus is almost entirely on the sadness of the stories there. Maybe the sadness is just a more conventional kind that I can relate to; you could say that Crash is very sad, too, I guess. I wouldn't.
― clemenza, Monday, 21 August 2017 14:07 (six years ago) link
I don't remember anything really being 'cool' about the film adaptation of Crash? If anything, it's a little too literal. Ballard's expository prose is really hard to convey on screen, so a lot of the subtext is lost. So the film gives you the narrative of one man's journey through these sex/car/death fetishists, but doesn't quite drive home the point that it's about society's near-erotic fixation with these machines that regularly kill people.
― mh, Monday, 21 August 2017 14:15 (six years ago) link
the bland heritage nothingness of that wretched Freud movie
The staging, lighting, and script ideas were as clammy as ever. I suggest another look.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 21 August 2017 14:18 (six years ago) link
I need to rewatch it, but I had to admit it's the most disinterested I've been in a Cronenberg film! Sounds great on paper, though
― mh, Monday, 21 August 2017 14:21 (six years ago) link
and I've even seen that racing movie he directed when he was starting out
― mh, Monday, 21 August 2017 14:22 (six years ago) link
FWIW, Kim Newman also claimed that the Freud flick was DC's worst (and I'm guessing he's seen M. Butterfly, whereas I haven't) - so perhaps it's especially disliked by long-term genre dudes who miss the vulgar brilliance of Shivers?
― Gulley Jimson (Ward Fowler), Monday, 21 August 2017 14:33 (six years ago) link
I wouldn't expect genre dude to make allowances for experiments outside genre though.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 21 August 2017 14:41 (six years ago) link
*dudes
I haven't seen it since it came out, but I remember Crash as being sort of abstractly sad. Like, these people only want this one dangerous thing, like addicts, and it ends more or less as it begins, iirc, in a state of semi-desperation.
I think Crash might have been better (again, from faded memory) if it was *more* shocking. It was sort of lopped in with mainstream NC-17/pseudo-X movies like Showgirls, but that kind of stuff, with explicit sex/nudity, has come a long way in relatively mainstream cinema. Naked Lunch, too, was sort of limited by the times, both n terms of what could be depicted but especially with FX. Crash was hampered less by practical stuff, iirc, but still felt a bit like a challenge (as in dare) to pull off, as when anyone films a transgressive "unfilmable" book, which Cronenberg clearly had on the mind with the streak of Dead Ringers/Naked Lunch/Crash.
I'll have to watch it again, but I recall Crash as sort of perversely, intentionally boring/cold. Like he tried to make a movie that is literally about sex and crash crashes as unsexy and unexciting as possible.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 21 August 2017 14:45 (six years ago) link
Like, I hate Lars Von Trier, but he might have made a good Crash.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 21 August 2017 14:46 (six years ago) link
I think Cronenberg and his 70s horror contemporaries - Craven, Romero, Carpenter - were all desperate not to be pigeonholed as genre directors, and Cronenberg definitely had the most success with escaping the genre. But horror was what all these guys were best at, imho - or at least, it was the form that best accommodated their imaginations. (I mean, there's a good case to be made for DC being the best horror film maker of all time, whereas you wouldn't never say he was the best dramatic film maker of all time).
― Gulley Jimson (Ward Fowler), Monday, 21 August 2017 14:52 (six years ago) link
you WOULD never say...
― Gulley Jimson (Ward Fowler), Monday, 21 August 2017 14:53 (six years ago) link
Hmm, it's a good question, I think Cronenberg transcends horror so much that I'm not sure he even counts as horror. Is Videodrome horror? Is Crash? Dead Ringers? He's as much a sci-fi-fi director as horror director.
Ironically, he does have a habit of popping up in acting roles in shitty horror movies, like Nightbreed and Jason X.
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 21 August 2017 14:58 (six years ago) link
I remember Crash as being sort of abstractly sad.
Yes. Even though I don't experience it myself (the performances are just too wooden), I can see feeling sad for the characters in Crash--sadness at a remove. With The Dead Zone and The Fly, for sure--Dead Ringers is trickier--I feel an empathetic sadness with Walken and Goldblum and Geena Davis.
― clemenza, Monday, 21 August 2017 15:22 (six years ago) link
imo his work is more science fiction/body horror and not the violent or menacing horror you get from a lot of films in the horror genre
it's seldom some external force menacing the characters in Cronenberg's films, it's usually a man-versus-self thing
I mean, in Videodrome there's technically a group that has been specifically targeting the protagonist, but he's only the perfect target because he's been seeking out the type of material already
― mh, Monday, 21 August 2017 15:22 (six years ago) link
Cronenberg has a lot (loosely) in common with Egoyan. Two Canadian directors working consistently within a certain theme, briefly flirting with the mainstream, then for some reason just sort of ... fizzling out. I could imagine Cronenberg making "Where the Truth Lies" or even "Chloe."
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 21 August 2017 16:38 (six years ago) link
idk what Cronenberg's problem is these days re: features. The more recent shorts I've seen of his were great.
― Οὖτις, Monday, 21 August 2017 16:38 (six years ago) link
It's weird, Spider (arguably the first of his films met with indifference) was followed by A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, maybe not the most Cronenberg-y of his films but really great nonetheless. But then it's a return to meh or disappointing (reportedly).
― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 21 August 2017 16:44 (six years ago) link
Cronenberg has made som meh movies recently, but nothing as awful as late period Egoyan.
― Frederik B, Monday, 21 August 2017 17:55 (six years ago) link
I finally figured out the problem with Crash: it's a movie made by someone who loves J.G. Ballard, but hates both sex and cars.
― grawlix (unperson), Tuesday, 22 August 2017 00:59 (six years ago) link