Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
I still need to watch videodrome, but so far the one Cronenberg which didn't really click with me was Maps to the Stars, even though I like Mia Wasikowska and Robert Pattinson and John Cusack.
Cronenberg
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maxi
Well-known member
eastern promises is wicked. russian gangsters, grey london setting, an unfolding mystery, a guy getting his throat slit with a razor by a barber, naked fight scene in the bathhouse, vincent cassel, naomi watts, viggo mortensen's haircut, armin muehller stahl, twist ending, the bit where he stubs the cig out on his tongue. and some cronenberg conceptual identity stuff if you're into that. what's not to like? one of the best cronenbergs
maxi
Well-known member
I watched videodrome the other night having only seen it once when I was about 16. expected to love it fully this time but found it quite boring aside from a handful of incredible visual moments. felt the same about Crash tbh. the concepts are more interesting than the experience of watching the actual films with those ones.
videodrome is quite plotty and it gets into all that stuff with the businesspeople and Dr O'blivion and I get confused and lose interest. also I forgot how little james spader is actually in Crash compared to the elias koteas character. that long drawn out james dean stuff is dull. the rosanna arquette bits are the best
then again I might have just been in the wrong mood when watching them though, i hope that's the case actually cos I thought I loved cronenberg
videodrome is quite plotty and it gets into all that stuff with the businesspeople and Dr O'blivion and I get confused and lose interest. also I forgot how little james spader is actually in Crash compared to the elias koteas character. that long drawn out james dean stuff is dull. the rosanna arquette bits are the best
then again I might have just been in the wrong mood when watching them though, i hope that's the case actually cos I thought I loved cronenberg
craner
Beast of Burden
I have never said “look at the tits on that” in my life.
version
Well-known member
Crash, Videodrome, eXistenZ and Naked lunch are probably my favourites. The only one I've seen and really wasn't into was Maps to the Stars. That one's like some messy TV movie in a bad way. Seen people try to argue it's deliberately cheap and tacky as it's a send up of Hollywood, but I'm not convinced.
The big one I haven't seen's Dead Ringers, which is supposed to be one of his best. Only ever seen bits of History of Violence too.
The big one I haven't seen's Dead Ringers, which is supposed to be one of his best. Only ever seen bits of History of Violence too.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
Agree re: Maps, and I liked Dead Ringers. They just remade it into a miniseries with Rachel Weisz as the twin gynos, very interesting premise but I thought it petered out after a couple episodes.
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
crimes of the future is his worst one. a concept stretched paper thin.
videodrome is still one of the all time best films.
alot/all his films teeter on that line of almost being hilarious but never quite crossing over it.
videodrome though is still quite sinister.
i watched it with a friend in their 20s last year and she found it weird so i am taking this as a sign that it still has something going for it.
videodrome is still one of the all time best films.
alot/all his films teeter on that line of almost being hilarious but never quite crossing over it.
videodrome though is still quite sinister.
i watched it with a friend in their 20s last year and she found it weird so i am taking this as a sign that it still has something going for it.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Is that last one actually one of his rules? Perhaps it's simply contingent on the fact that cold, intellectual women simply don't have big bangers... huge knockers tend to lead one on a different, more hilarious and cheeky path through life.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Not now mate
IdleRich
IdleRich
I remember watching it hoping for an extra dimension or at least an extra element to appear. Something that would change it from being a run of the mill gangster film to being a Cronenberg. Perhaps that's unfair cos viewed purely on its own terms it's a solid enough gangster film I guess.
In one of the first scenes there is a guy who gets his throat cut in a barbers on Broadway Market. For some time afterwards even as the street became more and more gentrified I could still pick out that spot. But in August when I was in London the shop itself had gone too, I think it's part of a posh restaurant.
To me this was a very concrete example of something that I knew being erased as though it were never there. I'm sure that of course there are loads of things disappearing all the time, if it's our favourite pub or something then no doubt we notice and remember, but lots of other things just disappear without us ever noticing cos we didn't use them. This hairdresser is one such (for me anyhow) in that, if it wasn't for the film I wouldn't have ever noticed it vanishing cos I would have never registered it being there to start with. Maybe subconsciously I would have known something had changed but had no idea what. I suppose that's how the world changes, bit by bit around the edges and then suddenly we look around and the whole place is totally different.
I've got a friend in Lisbon who used to live in that area, for some reason we were discussing that film and I told him it was shot there... but he disagreed, so vehemently in fact that I began to doubt myself. And there is nothing there I can point to as proof... the memory is as deleted as the place itself.
version
Well-known member
It feels like a high quality TV drama, but with a harshness to it that comes from Cronenberg. There's something static and unflinching about it, particularly the fight scene in the bathhouse. It's much more uncomfortable to watch than a similar scene would be under a lot of other directors.
I'd say it's to the gangster film what Polanski's The Ghost Writer is to the airport thriller: standard material given a slight edge by an auteur.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Yeah that's not a bad comparison. I saw Ghost Writer quite randomly and it did stand out from the millions of similar films. I guess the SPOILER ending is quite bleak... I think. In fact I can't really remember but I think it wasn't a "get the girl, kill the baddies, now everything is fixed" kinda deal which instantly sets it apart from Bond, Bourne etc etc
That might actually be a thing worth talking about in its own right - genre film directed by art house auteurs.
Ghost Writer, Eastern Promises, The Shining... er there is a film called Brat (Brother) directed by Balabanov which is a simplistic and arguably jingoistic tale of revenge and which is a hundred times more famous than the rest of his whole career of idiosyncratic and occasionally genius art house madness... what else?
And have genre movies always been so generic? Is it like literature where if your novel is a detective one or sci-fi etc then that's seen as somehow being beneath general "literary fiction"?
But I digress. While I think you're right about EP, I would have preferred Cronenberg to make another semi-schlocky body-horror exploration of a near future concept. I guess I was hoping all the time it would turn into that - oh no the Russians have been importing cocaine but a rival mob has fucked with their supply and added in an agent which means that anyone who takes it will grow a huge pair of testicles on their neck.
version
Well-known member
Ferrara's appeal lies partly in that. You know if he gets his hands on some genre script, it's gonna end up somewhat unusual.