David Cronenberg

Map to the Stars

TIFF 2014: ‘Maps to the Stars’ is a huge disappointment

There’s something theatrical about this new version of Cronenberg. Not in the way we think of Stratford or Shaw. More like pseudo-artistic interpretive theatre that happens during one’s experimental phase in University. Maps to the Stars is a colossal disappointment, offering stilted performances, a disjointed and predominantly ineffectual script, and bewilderingly bad sound design. What appears on the surface to be an interesting dialogue on child stars, the vapid, all-consuming and destructive nature of celebrity, and the superficial nature of Los Angeles very quickly reveals itself to be something else altogether – the tired, lazy half-measures of an auteur riding on his own coattails.

TIFF 2014: ‘Maps to the Stars’ never quite comes together

Hollywood could easily be the perfect fantasy world of Cronenberg’s obsessions. The themes associated with body horror, from the fascination with decay to the battle between body and mind, are staples of the torrid extremes of Tinsel Town. In 2012, David Cronenberg’s son, Brandon, tackled these ideas with his feature debut Antiviral. That film explores a dystopian future in which the obsession with celebrity is taken to extremes of consumption. In Antiviral, the masses purchase meat grown from their favourite celebrity’s cells and head to a special clinic in order to be infected with the same venereal strain as their Hollywood Idol. The film externalizes the growing cultural obsession with fame, and concentrates that obsession through corporeality and sex.

‘The Fly’: Man, Monster, Madness

The Fly (from 1986) embodies the ultimate profile of a distinctive sci-fi movie monster bursting out at the raging seams through accidental experimentation.

Maps to the Stars - Mia Wasikowska

Cannes 2014: ‘Maps to the Stars’ the darkest comedy of Hollywood aspiration

Los Angeles, the city that homes the superstars and studios responsible for mainstream cinema culture, has consistently received its due criticism from those who either reject it or work within it. Look no further than Thom Andersen’s nearly comprehensive Los Angeles Plays Itself to see the town utilized as an easy space for shooting, a battleground for the melodrama of the privileged, and home field for telling stories about the storytellers. The business-driven artistic culture that pervades the town has been satirized in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Player, and Barton Fink to the point that a simple update of finger-pointing to the 21st century may be seen as a rehashing. Bruce Wagner’s crazy script for David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars instead paints the town as a machine capable of rehashing through its own ghostly presence of the-machine-that-once-was: a cycle so foreboding that it must be spoken of through horror tropes.

Friday (neo)Noir: ‘A History of Violence’ marks Cronenberg’s stunning venture into high minded drama

2005, judging by the theatrical releases, was an exceptional year for the neonoir sub-genre. Last summer, for the special Friday (neo)Noir series, reviews for Rian Johnson’s breakout independent hit Brick and Robert Rodriguez’s cinematic visualization of Sin City, both from 2005, were written. A couple of weeks ago another neonoir from the same year was put under the microscope, Shane Black’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. This week features, yes, still another entry from that illustrious year, one from the most lauded director of the bunch, David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence.

‘Antiviral’ an icky if slightly too unbelievable new body-horror film

There is, one imagines, a breaking point with exactly how infatuated any of us will be with the modern celebrity. We fawn over them in tabloid magazines, keep tabs on their romantic lives, and get angry when they make choices we disagree with, but how far are we willing to go? Would any of us actually want to be infected with a virus or disease simply because a celebrity got it first?

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