In Cosmopolis, David Cronenberg delivers the cinematic equivalent of being stuck in an UberPool with a billionaire who won’t stop quoting obscure economic theory while staring out the window, wondering why the world smells like failure. Based on Don DeLillo’s novel—a book that read like performance art even before someone decided it should be a … Read More “Cosmopolis (2012) – Cronenberg’s Long, Stretch Limo Ride to Nowhere” »
David Cronenberg, the auteur of pulsating flesh and surreal psychological decay, took a sharp left turn with A Dangerous Method, his 2011 drama about Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and their shared patient/protégé/possible therapy couch enthusiast, Sabina Spielrein. On paper, it sounds like a goldmine of Cronenbergian themes—madness, obsession, boundary-breaking intellects playing God with the human … Read More “A Dangerous Method (2011) – Freud, Jung, and the Horny Case of the Missing Cronenberg” »
By 2007, David Cronenberg had completed his transition from the sultan of slime (The Fly, Videodrome, Dead Ringers) to a respectable director of prestige dramas with knifepoint tension and enough grim stares to stock a Tarkovsky convention. Eastern Promises continues that trajectory, offering a slick, moody, and occasionally vicious dive into the murky waters of … Read More “Eastern Promises (2007) – Tattoos, Throats, and Borscht-Flavored Brooding” »
David Cronenberg built his legacy on wet nightmares, mutated flesh, and body horror so profound it made your spleen nervous. So when A History of Violence rolled into theaters in 2005—a lean, brutal, hyper-controlled drama about identity and revenge—you could practically hear the collective gasp from fans expecting at least one organic gun or a … Read More “A History of Violence (2005) – Cronenberg’s Blood-Stained American Dream, with a Side of Seduction and Maria Bello’s Perfect Hair” »
David Cronenberg is a filmmaker known for gooey psychosexual nightmares, pulsing body horror, and visual metaphors that punch you in the face with a bloody latex fist. But in Spider (2002), he trades in his surgical tools for a sad little notebook and a supply of brown sweaters. The result is a film so bleak, … Read More “Spider (2002) – A Cobwebbed Slow-Burn That Forgot the Flame” »
By 1999, the world was gearing up for Y2K and The Matrix was blowing teenage minds across the globe. Somewhere in that gelatinous digital soup came eXistenZ, David Cronenberg’s wet and squishy answer to simulated reality. It has everything you’d expect from a Cronenberg film—bioports, fleshy guns, mucus-covered video game controllers that look like rejected … Read More “eXistenZ (1999) – Insert Port A Into Slot B and Pray for Coherence” »
There are bad movies. There are weird movies. And then there’s Crash—David Cronenberg’s 1996 attempt to make auto collisions sexy, meaningful, and full of existential dread, but mostly just ending up with a pileup of confused stares, twisted metal, and enough leather seats to make a fetishist weep. Based on J.G. Ballard’s novel of the … Read More “Crash (1996) – Cronenberg’s Car Wreck of a Film That Somehow Misses All the Red Lights” »
David Cronenberg is a director who built his name on grotesque metamorphoses—men turning into flies, stomachs becoming VHS players, twin gynecologists unraveling like a bad dream inside a uterus-shaped snow globe. So when he got the keys to M. Butterfly—a tale of forbidden love, Cold War espionage, and the grand illusion of gender—you’d expect something … Read More “M. Butterfly (1993) – The Art of Deception, Delivered in a Coma” »
There’s a very specific kind of film that makes you feel like you’re having a stroke in a library full of bugs. That’s Naked Lunch. David Cronenberg’s 1991 adaptation—well, hallucination—of William S. Burroughs’ infamous novel is not so much a movie as it is a fever-drenched dare. It dares you to sit through two hours … Read More “Naked Lunch (1991) – Cronenberg’s Kafkaesque Puke Dream of Typewriters, Talking Bugs, and Creative Self-Destruction” »
There are some movies that leave you shaken. Others that leave you inspired. And then there’s Dead Ringers, a film that leaves you vaguely uncomfortable and wondering if your couch just performed a pelvic exam on your soul. Directed by David Cronenberg in 1988—right after the grotesque triumph of The Fly—Dead Ringers is what happens … Read More “Dead Ringers (1988) – Identical Twin Gynecologists and a Red Robe Full of Pretension” »
