Order by:

Add your comment

Do you want to let us know what you think? Just login, after which you will be redirected back here and you can leave your comments.

Comments 1 - 9 of 9

PretentiousHip91's avatar

PretentiousHip91

Funny how the set design is technically super cheap in this, using only 3-4 locations. However, it's one of the few movies depicting a dystopian world that actually looks dystopian as hell.

One of his best.
1 year 10 months ago
Siskoid's avatar

Siskoid

David Cronenberg returns to squishy sci-fi horror with Crimes of the Future, but while there are a lot of interesting ideas, it also plays like a Greatest Hits album. Surgery as sex sits somewhere between Crash and Dead Ringers, the weird bio-tech comes from Naked Lunch, Existenz and Videodrome, and I know this is hardly fair, but it reminded me more of his son Brandon's films (Antiviral and Possessor) which were, on the whole, more intriguing. In a future where humanity starts to evolve, in particular losing its sense of pain and proclivity for infection, Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seyoux are performance artists, the former growing new organs inside him, the latter tattooing and cutting them out in public. They get embroiled in a conspiracy to force/repress evolution, and you can well imagine fascist politics trying to control people's bodies even when change is a natural occurrence. Evolution as crime. If you want to see this as a parable for trans and reproductive rights, you can, but I don't think Cronenberg really seals the deal. On anything. There are too many competing ideas, most of them never paying off, that in the end, it's an intellectual meditation on the core idea of human evolution that doesn't metastasize into a clear enough story.
1 year 10 months ago
Arkantos's avatar

Arkantos

Overall it’s a cromulent film, one that I’d rank squarely in the middle tier of his output. Thematically and stylistically this film harkens back to some of his earlier works, what immediately comes to mind are eXistenZ, Videodrome, and Crash. The body horror scenes did have me averting my eyes at some points, though it’s not as gory as you might first suspect. This film also smartly knew just how long it needed to be, didn’t feel like it dragged much at any point.
1 year 10 months ago
mcmakattack's avatar

mcmakattack

Decades Exploration - Hooptober X

2022

Sickly, surgical, and surprisingly funny. This feels almost a return to form for Cronenberg, exploring to a logical conclusion his oft touched motifs of the flesh, sex, regret, and physical and emotional pain. I quite enjoyed the worldbuilding, presented with a society devoid of infection and waking pain where the focus seems to be how art has changed. The importance rests on how we relate art to our pain, both as the release and the method.
6 months ago
linyok's avatar

linyok

The story of how Saul became Paul
1 year 7 months ago
armyofshadows's avatar

armyofshadows

I love both Cronenberg and Viggo, but this was too heavy, confusing, and ultimately boring for me.
1 year 2 months ago
dantheman89's avatar

dantheman89

It's a mixed bag alright. The overarching issue is that the movie feels very disconnected and doesn't come together at all. Multiple plotlines could have been removed without issue, like the "inner beauty pageant".

To be nit-picky, the negatives:
- The special effects were a weird mix of noticeable CGI and stuff that looked like it came from the "David-Cronenberg-Leftover-bin". (Especially the bone eating chair was pretty lackluster)
- The surgery/performance art stuff was a lot of build up for not a lot happening. Yes we have a cool machine with all these vaguely sexual looking things ... and it'll take 3 seconds to remove a potato from Aragorns chest.
- Viggo Mortensens Ninja costume
- I generally like Kirsten Stewart. She didn't work in this at all
- The world they lived in seemed completely empty, which can work in a movies favor ... not in this one.
- The whole "surgery is sex is art" is def from the Cronenberg greatest hits album but felt a little too tired this time around.
- The whole plastic-eating/plastic candybar stuff felt incredibly ham-fisted

The goods:
- The music and sound design were pretty good
- Viggo Mortensen and Don McKellar were decent
- The ear-guy dancing was fun for a minute

Overall I think this came about by Cronenberg having a few neat ideas but was struggling to string them together by an interesting plot.
1 year 10 months ago
FightaPilot's avatar

FightaPilot

Rather tiresome without any tension, dramatic or otherwise of any sort at any moment (after the shocking opening sequence)
6 months ago
On cinema at the cinema's avatar

On cinema at the cinema

I was just bored with this movie. It just felt like it dragged on went nowhere. Very underwhelming, just feels like nothing ever happens
1 year 5 months ago
View comments