The Cronenberg Thread

Whatever gains Cronenberg has made w. the 'classical precision' of his recent(ish) films - and I'm w/ Eric, give me the rough edges of his first and best movies over the Merchant Ivory mise-en-scene of Dangerous Method - its been accompanied by a fatal loss of that energy given off by the wild ideas zinging round Shivers, Brood etc

the Merchant Ivory mise-en-scene of Dangerous Method

gahhh, this is such a misunderstanding of ADM. 19th-c furniture does not equal stodgy. also Merchant-Ivory made *some* pretty good films.

I haven't watched Cosmopolis (or Maps to the Stars yet), I'm a bit wary with all the bad reviews

xxp

i think we shd do a podcast/commentary where Eric and I watch Crash and Cosmopolis with you and point out the funny parts.

One thing's for sure, we'd never be talking at the same time.

xp my take on latter-day Cronenberg seems to be very much inverse to the general levels of critical enthusiasm

So I don't really know if it's a "recommendation" to say I loved Cosmopolis and really liked Maps.

well it's not like those two received the critical enthusiasm of the previous three

Cosmopolis is pretty bad.

I agree with Morbs about A Dangerous Method--it's excellent and not at all "stodgy". Aside from the setting it's very much of a piece with the rest of his ourvre. Also Viggo Mortenson is a lot of fun as Freud.

Cronenberg features ranked:

Videodrome
Dead Ringers
The Brood
eXistenZ
The Fly
They Came From Within
A History of Violence
Naked Lunch
Scanners
Rabid
The Dead Zone
A Dangerous Method
Maps to the Stars
Spider
Eastern Promises
Crash
Cosmopolis

Have yet to see M. Butterfly.

the blurb in Morbz link about M. Butterfly is v otm - it's totally inert

The Brood
The Fly
Videodrome
Crash
The Dead Zone
Cosmopolis
Dead Ringers
Maps to the Stars
Scanners
They Came From Within
Spider
A History of Violence
Rabid

Haven't seen or haven't seen recently enough to accurately judge: Stereo, Crimes of the Future, Fast Company, Naked Lunch, eXistenZ, Eastern Promises, A Dangerous Method

it's strange that after a century+ of film and Freud, the two best portrayals are probably Viggo and Alan Arkin.

Shakes, don't call me physician, i'm a philologist as my movie clearly states.

Eric, always exaggerating our differences, u tease

eg Crash car salesman: "This is very bad."

Can you locate any common ground between us in this thread?

My ranking:

The Brood
Videodrome
The Fly
Naked Lunch
Eastern Promises
A History of Violence
Dead Ringers
Scanners
The Dead Zone
eXistenZ
Rabid
They Came From Within

The bottom 5 are all kind of tied:

A Dangerous Method
M. Butterfly
Spider (hated this)
Crash (walked out of the theater, but finished it years later)
eXistenZ (one of the worst movies I've ever seen by anybody)

Haven't seen Stereo, Crimes of the Future, Fast Company or Cosmopolis.

Morbs/Eric/Shakey rifftrax-style comment podcast would be hysterical, at least for an episode or two.

Can you locate any common ground between us in this thread?

top 5 on Slant list, i think. (haven't seen The Brood in long time)

I mean aside from that!

take what you can get, Brundlefly.

誤訳侮辱 - how did eXistenZ end up in the first list too if it's one of the worst films by anybody?

You guys! Merchant-Ivory don't have "mise en scene": they have a camera, in front of which actors walk or get posed. No way on hell did Cronenberg aspire to their level of third-rate craft.

Some other funny bits that stick out.

Eastern Promises, "he looks like a fucking icecream".

I enjoyed Maps To The Stars but it didn't linger enough in my head, though the one thing I thought was really funny was how the boy was so threatened by the younger boy and said he was "chewing up scenery".

Dead Ringers
The Fly
Naked Lunch
Videodrome
The Brood
AHOF
Eastern Promises
The Dead Zone

I enjoyed A History Of Violence more after reading J.G Ballard's review of it : http://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/sep/23/jgballard

The 1983-1991 run is unfuckwithable.

you could stretch that back to '79 imo altho Scanners would be the weakest of the lot

Naked Lunch, the first I saw in the theater, is my favorite cinematic gloss on a novel. He wrote good dry-as-sand dialogue that I can imagine Benway and Joan saying, Peter Weller and Roy Scheider are quite well cast, etc.

I keep coming back to Scanners remembering that cold, beige, terminally '70s look it has, but then getting disappointed it doesn't do as much with the material as the two films on either side of it.

v true

it includes these rote action movie gestures (a car chase!) that just seem awkward

Howard Shore saves large chunks of it by really clearing his throat.

NL also my intro to Ornette Coleman.

the brood does so much more with "cold, beige, terminally 70s".

I'm gonna have to re-watch the Brood when the wife is out of town or something, cuz last time she made me turn it off cuz the murderous kids were "too disturbing"

the brood does so much more with "cold, beige, terminally 70s".

so do pics of Jimmy Carter

I agree and disagree with that list in about equal measure. And I hated their #1 (found it the wrong kind of campy) at the time, although I've never taken a second look.

1. The Dead Zone
2. The Fly
3. Dead Ringers
4. Videodrome
5. The Brood

Haven't seen Fast Company, M. Butterfly, Eastern Promises, or the new one. I've seen at least one of Rabid and/or Shivers, possibly both--if only one, I'm not 100% sure which.

you guys mean the films of the era when u say "70s," right, cuz i was dere, Cholly.

did you get a senior citizen discount when watching Hopscotch?

cold, beige, terminally '70s look it has

Yes! Especially love the shopping mall at the start of Scanners - a Canadian cousin to the mall in Dawn of the Dead.

I think my overwhelming preference for the early, gory ones - and my disappointment with pretty much everything after Dead Ringers - is tied up with seeing them for the first time as VHS 'video nasties' in the early 1980s, at just the right teenaged frame of mind. The visual dirt of degraded VHS rental tapes gave those films an ugly energy and illicit attraction; so something like Dangerous Method can't help but seem pallid in comparison.

optometrists' convention in videodrome nails that same, dreary vibe

one of my first solo R-rateds was a doublebill of Animal House/Putney Swope in my hometown, and i was even younger than some of your recent tricks! xxp

one of the many things i like about the brood is how effectively it situates a cluster of dated-seeming 70s design artifacts (ferns, white wrought iron furniture, wood paneling, turtlenecks, geometrical desk accents, deep pile) as forward-thinking chic

nothing dates like the future

all serious films set in the future are about the present.

well yeah

all serious films set in the past are about vietnam

誤訳侮辱 - how did eXistenZ end up in the first list too if it's one of the worst films by anybody?

Cut 'n' pasted the list from an earlier poster, then reshuffled - forgot to delete eXistenZ after moving it.

all serious films set in the present are about the internet

All serious films set in the internet are about me.

eXistenZ Is great and not just because it's about Eric