The Cronenberg Thread

It looks like one of his more extreme gothic retro-future body horror films. I know I will have to watch it but this stuff makes me feel bad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veBhrS9Dkmk

so great

It looks like one of his more extreme gothic retro-future body horror films. I know I will have to watch it but this stuff makes me feel bad

― Dan S, Thursday, April 14, 2022 8:20 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

I know just while watching it I was worried whether my tetanus booster was up to date.

So wait, Lamarck was right?

tomorrow!

Second-tier Cronenberg, but what a treat to watch a film interrogating what constitutes sexual pleasure and why we would want to munch on plastic.

this made me lol

This guy is up to NO GOOD pic.twitter.com/taAe0SNhSq

— Patrick Fisackerly (@fisackerly) June 5, 2022

Hey that's me! (Not really, but I shouldn't be surprised I couldn't meet a single guy even if I offered a finder's fee.)

just rewatched the trailer and that's probably enough for me

I'm glad he's revisiting the early material, but...

this is top tier croneyboney for me, though admittedly i have seen only the wrong cronenberg films. haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since i got out of the theater last night. transhumanism through art surgery and consuming microplastics. my favorite movie of the year so far

the scenes where you get a glimpse of the whole
microcosm of surgical artists (a surgical arts scene lol) were so funny. the whole movie was so funny

Second-tier for me -- the movie sorta just stops -- but like you I haven't stopped thinking about it, maybe his best recent techno-queer film.

lol sorry -- I forgot I responded on Monday.

wasn't the Ear Guy dance sequence hot as fuck?

So is Cronenberg the first director to use the same title twice for a film that is neither a sequel nor a remake?

I'd say Mati Diop's Atlantiques (documentary short) and Atlantics (fiction feature) have the same name but ymmv.

oh also this movie confirmed for me that kristen stewart as an actor is chaotic good jared leto and personally i'm a fan, glad she got to be a strange little weirdo in this film

She's hilarious.

Viggo 4ever. So happy he's part of Cronenberg's world.

oh also this movie confirmed for me that kristen stewart as an actor is chaotic good jared leto and personally i'm a fan, glad she got to be a strange little weirdo in this film

Have you seen Underwater? It rules (think Hellboy crossed with The Abyss) and she's great in it.

I really get irrationally angry anytime people make Twilight jokes about her or Patterson as both have emerged as solid actors.

I need to see this. Underwater is good fun. Stewart is incredible in Personal Shopper.

She's been good to excellent for a decade.

Have you seen Underwater? It rules (think Hellboy crossed with The Abyss) and she's great in it.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Wednesday, June 8, 2022 12:30 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i have not watched this movie bc tj miller is in it and no movie no matter how great it is otherwise can survive the presence of tj miller

this movie is like what if the art crime cyberpunk thing happening in the background of bowie's outside were actually cool and worth thinking about

i can't tell if my takes on this movie are bad or not but it had a profound effect on me

ha -- I wrote down "Damien Hirst" but couldn't figure out how he fit.

even tho k stew gives the best performance my favorite minor characters were the lesbian drill assassins who had a sensual lust for/were operating on behalf of(?) the tech modulating viggo's body

I like the idea of the Bowie character in the album playing Detective Cope...and Stewart as Algeria Touchshriek.

I am Ramona A. Stone.

i finally got my butt to the theater tonight, and then read this afterward:

https://www.artforum.com/print/202206/amy-taubin-talks-with-david-cronenberg-about-crimes-of-the-future-88615

this pull quote from that interview is a good one: “At what point can you no longer claim to be a person or a human? This question is certainly in the film.” —David Cronenberg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIIfKwL43Cg

^Gets a little graphic in places.

Opens here in a few days...Not hopeful after seeing the trailer last night. The body-horror stuff--precisely what most people love about Cronenberg--is my least favourite part of his films, why The Dead Zone remains my favourite. Maybe even more ominous, though, for me, is something I use as a running joke for directors whose every pronouncement is treated like the word of god: "From the mind of David Lynch," "From the mind of Stanley Kubrick," etc. Sure enough, "From the mind of David Cronenberg" in the trailer and on the poster.

i think it's about the funniest and most idea-rich movie you'd get from the mind of any of those dudes

but yes it's also got a makeout scene with an incision

also the direct-to-video industrial sci-fi look of it is like the wallpaper/screensaver of my mind lol

anyway i finally saw crash this week and it was instantly my favorite movie

I had to avert my eyes a few times during the trailer, not a good sign. (Unaware that the film I was there to see, Men, would have its own share of body-horror towards the end.)

but yes it's also got a makeout scene with an incision

I have a friend who fainted during the similar scene in Crash.

licking a fresh tattoo way worse than french kissing internal organs for me, for whatever reason

Rewatched Crash again and it really is up there with my favorites of his or anyone's.

is it weird that i found crash pretty hot? or did i just reveal something about my psychosexual profile

i mean like a lot of his work it's hot and repellant at the same time

i was also delighted to see elias koteas, my favorite canadian character actor, giving the best performance i've ever seen

It is definitely weird that you found Crash hot.

Kidding (kinda), of course. What do you think of Ebert's take on it as a pornographic film about behaviour that no one could possibly find erotic? I always liked that read--or at the very least, it was the only substantial take I had read when I saw the film way back when, and it did help me get into what the film was doing.

xpost he's never topping Casey Jones in TMNT for me

That was a crime, you purse-grabbing pukes! and here is the penalty!

Arquette with the crutches is the most obvious thing I can remember but I still haven't seen any groups into car crashes and things like that. I thought the finger in the back of the head in Existenz was a great weird fetishy image.

Really looking forward to this film, I didn't think he'd ever return to this kind of imagery/subject. I wonder if younger directors (including his son) and artists inspired by him made him want to do it again?

was also delighted to see elias koteas, my favorite canadian character actor, giving the best performance i've ever seen

My feelings about the film aside, I'm hoping you meant the best Elias Koteas performance you've ever seen here.

I think Ballard's droll line that he 'didn't get an erection once while writing Crash' and 'would have considered it a failure' if he had is pretty definitive about the erotic nature of both the novel and the film.

i think i disagree that that suggests anything definitive about the film

haven't read the book tho

What do you think of Ebert's take on it as a pornographic film about behaviour that no one could possibly find erotic?

i honestly love this take, it's very thoughtful

Yeah, definitive was a daft way of putting it - read like I was trying to shut down the conversation. I think Ballard is being playful as ever. He was mapping the erotic onto something that could and should never be framed as erotic - in that transfer an echo or residue (eck) is bound to carry across. Which is to say the whole project is weirdly charged with misplaced affect.