Cosmopolis (2012) - Cronenberg does DeLillo starring Robert Pattinson

(admittedly a good minor work, a step down from A Dangerous Method)

Pattinson seemed to me a combo of Walken -- maybe it was the Queens accent -- and Shatner. On Novocaine.

I thought it was very funny.

For some reason it seems like it would play well on tv, something you can dip in and out of.

that is how savages watch films on TV

Oliver Stone's Savages, maybe

I didn't miss that it was funny.

there's a difference between missing it was funny and not finding it funny. This thing was about as funny as a prostate exam

cronenberg is at his best when he's completely humourless

You're nuts; all his films are funny, cept some of the early horror garbage.

I've had some pretty funny prostate exams.

All of the dialogue in this film feels like it's delivered by human computers, computational machines of human nature and geography. I'm not sure if the humor is in the disconnect, the stoic dialogue, or the strict continuance of plot.

There's something here, and maybe a different "here" than the novelette by its very difference.

Eh, I got that it was supposed to be funny. Problem was that it wasn't funny enough. And that many of the performances were horribly dull - odd and disconnected in a bad way.

"How come we never spent this kind of time together?"

*lascivious -- or is it threatened? -- eye contact *

* doctor fiddles around with gloves *

"Your prostate is asymmetrical."

It's really a movie where everyone speaks in their logical imperatives and not actual dialogue

refreshing

(it's breakdown language, somewhat akin to Beckett p'raps)

concede that the prostate exam was hilarious, easily my favorite scene

i really loved the language, even (especially?) when i could barely make out what it was supposed to mean. i liked the ominous foreboding entailed in everyone's manner but minus the emergence of, you know, an actual object of that dread.

hadn't thought of a beckett comparison, probably because I'm underversed in beckett. good avenue to explore, thanks.

along those same lines i think Delillo's own "The Names" explicitly engages a lot of these themes re: language and in really stupendous fashion. my fav novel of his that i've read.

(admittedly a good minor work, a step down from A Dangerous Method)

― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, January 2, 2013 11:20 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

allow me to just bristle at the implication that ADM was a major work

bristle, the universe will endure

Bristle4Ass

ADM underrated I think, but don't think this was minor in comparison.

Prostate scene was great, but it was Samantha Morton's scene that really worked on all sorts of levels.

She brought some welcome Laurie Anderson into the proceedings.

Cosmopolis is at least a step up from the awful ADM, which seems to me much more of a Christopher Hampton film than a David Cronenberg film

Look more carefully, Ward.

when I read the Morton scene in the novel, I actually visualized Pauline Kael.

Doesn't Packer get tased by the female bodyguard in the book?

i feel like i liked ADM to such a greater extent than everyone else here i missed something essentially embarrassing about it. possibly i just geeked out at a movie about 20th century intellectuals.

I need to rewatch it, but I just thought it was boring

Thought it was his best in years (tho I never saw Eastern Promises)

see i did find ADM funny. The Freud/Jung scenes anyway

maybe it was because of almost zero expectations, but i thought this pretty much ruled. maybe my favorite Cronenberg since the 80s. i don't know who played the main bodyguard, but i could watch him all day long. reminded me of Bill Callahan.

It's whatshisface from Lost.

i gave up on that shit early on. was he towards the beginning?

Somewhere in the middle iirc.

Kevin Durand is his name.

He was in the last third of Lost. As a corporate-seeming mercenary type!

Pattinson turning into what Depp used to be, only moreso?

Over the last year, he has been diligently making movie after independent movie, in what has been his first stretch of work post-Twilight. And so far, his direction seems clear – he’s working exclusively with auteurs, on films that are not obviously commercial, and in roles that are uniquely challenging and wildly different, one to the next.

Last summer, he finished The Rover in Australia, a dystopian western from David Michôd, who made 2010’s brilliant Animal Kingdom. Pattinson’s performance is already receiving rave reviews. He then spent 10 days on Maps to the Stars, David Cronenberg’s merciless satire about Hollywood, followed by Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert in which he plays Lawrence of Arabia. This spring, he made Anton Corbijn’s Life, in which he plays the photographer Dennis Stock, who took iconic photos of celebrities in the Fifties. And later, there’s a crime drama by the French director Olivier Assayas, co-starring Robert De Niro.

These are just the confirmed productions. There’s a long list of other compelling indie projects in the pipeline. A film with James Gray based on David Grann’s book The Lost City of Z, and a couple of films that are actually being written for him – Harmony Korine is writing him a gangster movie, set in Miami, and Brady Corbet, one of the killers in Michael Haneke’s blood-chilling Funny Games, is developing a script called Childhood of a Leader. “It’s about the youth of a future dictator in the Thirties,” he says....

http://www.esquire.co.uk/culture/film-tv/6735/robert-pattinson-interview-esquire-cover-star/

lol @ Korine bit

And later, there’s a crime drama by the French director Olivier Assayas, co-starring Robert De Niro.

oh lord no

hey morbius just outta curiosity which arc of depp's career would you match that to? asking out of ignorance & skepticism of jay-dee, i don't remember a hugely fruitful affiliation w/auteurs beyond jarmusch & i guess like ... schnabel

Well, Depp did Waters, Jarmusch, Lasse Hallstrom, Kusturica, John Badham, Gilliam, Polanski, Sally Potter, etc., all while juggling Burton and the occasional romcom.

that's about what i was thinkin... tho Hallstrom went to the dark side early

dude's certainly been putting in the indie cred-work (and will get to as long as his name helps with foreign pre-sales) but dude's actually yet to have one of his art-house efforts really be acclaimed

i'm sure one of them will ding bells on Metacritic eventually

unanimous acclaim frequently betrays some pandering

have you liked him in anything? can't say i've spotted a ton of potential

haha whoops, forgot what thread we're on

quickly checking Letterboxd, guess what single film i've seen him in

ty josh/morbs, xxxxp

i really liked the Depp-Kusturica film, but it essentially went unreleased in the US

wonder if Assayas can trick De Niro into making an effort