The Cronenberg Thread

he got the only diverting performance out of both JIs that i've ever seen, plus genevieve b is always watchable -- but DR's arc "story arc" is just \

i kinda felt like the camera regarded the baby at the end of EP like some kind of special effects monster too

actually the fly and DR have the same story: "the flies"

yeah I can kinda see that

re: The Dead Zone, am yearning for a blu-ray release of this. Totally agree with clemenza and others who are repping for it, prob my favourite Walken performance too. At least its relative lack of cred means I was able to pick up a lovely 1-sheet of the original poster for about £10, although to get it framed (in the UK) will cost 10x that.

And yeah, re: EP baby etc, no matter how much his style matures there's that very distinct looming-dread feeling in everything he does. Which is obviously a very good thing.

btw i dunno if this has been posted itt or not, but it's a pretty entertaining (and sometimes lolz-y) four-part tv doc from around the fly era (i'd guess). kind of a snapshot given how differently he's positioned (himself) for the last twenty years or so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zCZMjWuNY0

another one from around the same time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2wk8ZI_8Co

^^ that one's definitely more interesting. though lol @ the squeamishness of almost everyone interviewed.

Dead Ringers is my favorite but I don't rewatch it often.

I like most of his work through 1991 in varying degrees, even Naked Lunch.

every time i am reminded that this freud trailer exists its like being given a candy bar

still too traumatized by Dead Ringers to ever revisit it.

Naked Lunch doesn't totally work but I enjoy it, it nails a unique smacked-out sci-fi noir vibe. which is Burroughs in a nutshell really

xp

even Eastern Promises, which was just okay, had such a lived-in texture: the smell of the upholstery in the restaurant, Armin Mueller-Stahl's face, the borscht, the hospital.

Viggo's Oscar nod was one of the few genuinely surprising moments the Academy's given us in recent years.

Quite by accident, I found out a few days ago that a friend of mine worked on The Dead Zone. From a Facebook post: "Next time you see Christopher Walken's Volkswagen crash into that truck, think of me holding off traffic." Naked Lunch was where he started to lose me; never saw M. Butterfly or Eastern Promises (yes, I know, I should see the latter--that's how much I disliked A History of Violence).

I'm laughing looking at my last post--okay, "worked on" is a stretch.

Eastern Promises is better than a History of Violence imho

never liked M Butterfly. or Crash for that matter.

Those two are awful. Crash generated more walkouts than any movie I've attended.

Any movie named "Crash" is doomed to ignominy.

gtfo

Cronenberg's awful Crash better then Haggis' even more awful Crash.

I've lived my whole live waiting for a sex scene between Holly Hunter and an Oldsmobile.

I hated Crash too; at the time, I tried envisioning an SCTV parody with Edith Prickley in the Holly Hunter role..

Anyway I like most of Cronenberg's films and his recent track record is fine by me as both HoV and EP are well worth watching (as is Spider.)

i seriously loved ahov, and liked ep a good deal - i think with the latter it was a much livelier movie than maybe it had any right to be. kinda like inside man, which was undoubtedly garbage on the page but had all these spike lee moments stuffed into the margins that kept you watching.

i dont love crash, but i appreciate some scenes in it. i dont really 'get' whatever he was doing with that movie, but i dig how detached and minimalist it is. but it makes for a pretty dry viewing experience

I liked Inside Man too.

Inside Man is like the best movie Spike Lee has made in 20 years or so

its not better than malcom x mate...

somehow I watched HOV without realising it was Cronenberg. I liked it but then when the penny dropped I felt a little disappointed. Think I should probably see it again to make an informed decision but I feel like it can be grouped in with EP in the films Cronenberg has made that don't drill his hallmarks home quite so aggressively. Apologies if this has been said elsewhere as I think it's a pretty obvious point.

Crash > Crash

have you seen Malcolm X lately? doesn't hold up imho

Yeah, Malcolm X is tepid. Summer of Sam is the last good non-for-hire Spike joint.

25th Hour

Summer of Sam over Malcolm X? That's quite a leap for me.

Summer of Sam is quite good except for the punk club scenes which are just silly.

Guess I'm in the minority there--it was the first Spike Lee film I really hated. I even liked some things about Girl 6 and Crooklyn.

Clockers is better than 25th Hour.

I don't remember anything about Girl 6. Crooklyn is good though.

It's been a while, but Girl 6 had "Erotic City," Spike brandishing a Ken Griffey rookie card, and Theresa Randle. Good enough for me.

clockers is a p rad movie imo and i liked crooklyn too

eastern promises was just enjoyable to watch, i think, if not a 'great' movie. its also the sort of movie where i could get engrossed w/o really caring about action on screen or anticipating the action, like it was pleasurable just to watch the screen as it happened

Clockers is better than 25th Hour.

It is but there's some strong emotional undercurrents in the latter. I watched it again with a friend a couple years ago who was far less forgiving of its absurdities (I couldn't bear to watch the Anna Paquin-Hoffman scenes again, or endure Edward Norton's besty's obsession with being prison bait).

i'd be curious to know what clemenza hated about ahov - it really feels to me like something by the same guy who did the Dead Zone, really confident and scary and funny. makes for an interesting comparison w/road to perdition, the other paradox press funnybook turned 'serious' movie. neither flick cares much about the comics they're based on, but cronenberg is much more comfortable working with the pulpiness of the material. mendes clearly looks down on it, and he has a very primitive point of view and a very ponderous and self-serious way of expressing it. the result is one of the crappier movies ive seen in the last decade.

have you seen Malcolm X lately? doesn't hold up imho

― I can feel it in my spiritual hat (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, August 31, 2011 7:02 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, i actually havent seen it in quite a while. still feel like i'd take most of the 90s stuff over inside man though (which i think is good, dont get me wrong!). inside man's story is such gimmicky bullshit, but the movie comes to life whenever spike finds time for his little asides - clive owen sitting down with the kid playin a video game, denzel's interactions with white cops, the sikh in the restaurant. but i wouldn't take it over clockers or crooklyn. those movies didnt have to smuggle in those cool little moments.

okay so maybe I should have said in 15 years. now are you happy

One specific thing I hated about History was something many people liked: William Hurt. I do understand that he gave the kind of florid performance that divides reaction--there are similar performances in other movies I like a lot. Speaking just generally--I haven't given the film a second thought since it was released, and I don't remember a lot--I found it very dull. All through the '80s, Cronenberg's films were really interesting to me, like nobody else's. I felt at the time that History was drained of all that, and could have been made by any skilled technician.

The Bello-Viggo scenes are as good as Irons-Bujold's.

William Hurt only has a few minutes at the end, so you're lucky.

I've got it on the shelf, so I'm going to take another look. I often set myself up for disappointment with favourite (or at least one-time favourite) directors.

Disappointment is more edifying than fandom, thankfully.

the bello-viggo stuff IS great, and led to me being disappointed that bello hasnt appeared in anything substantial since then...

william hurt's one of those guys who i think is a considerable actor within a certain range, but if you get him in the wrong role it's usually a disaster. i would've expected this to be one of those wrong roles, but i loved him in it

He's unusual, isn't he? When cast to project plodding WASP intelligence, he can be affecting.

Crash was funny, you dingalings

like jizz on vinyl