David Cronenberg
Noah’s Barks pages relating to film director David Cronenberg.
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Crash
Those who champion Crash as another David Cronenberg cult classic at least have an understandable reason: it’s arguably the last of his original format. Sexual psychology abounds, draped in darkness and colored with Cronenberg’s body horror tastes in a mangled orgasmic car Crash. What’s missing is his ability to contextualize this psychology through human beings… (read more)
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Spider
A technical masterwork that ranks among one of David Cronenberg’s most intricately plotted, with visual storytelling and essential symbolism. Spider‘s web falls apart when the technical side never gets to completely eclipse with the screenplay. Every scene is a slow dance to a point realized two steps in. The thriller format proves to be poor… (read more)
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The Dead Zone
The Dead Zone lacks David Cronenberg‘s daring creative spark, but its by-the-books competence also ensures it isn’t one of his worst. This is not a thriller, but instead a drama focused around Christopher Walken trying to find a way to cope with his lost time from a coma. The abridged screenplay shows itself as the… (read more)
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eXistenZ
David Cronenberg was about 56 years old at the time of writing eXistenZ and tackles the virtual reality craze as intelligently as you’d expect an old man to: embarrassingly. Technically and thematically, it’s just as instantly dated and worn out as other virtual reality stories around the same time, only it’s nihilistic so it persists,… (read more)
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Eastern Promises
Eastern Promises finds new water in the gangster movie well by focusing on a new corner. Italians are no longer the focus here but instead Russians, and Eastern Promises finds an incredibly engaging medium between their fascinating culture and a mystery. This immediate hook allows for the film to unfold at a natural pace where… (read more)
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A History of Violence
A sort of Blue Velvet contemporary, which is of the highest compliment. A History of Violence features similar themes of violence invading the idyllic American dream, only this time around it’s resurfacing instead of being dug up. The darkness spreads like the plague in this fantastic thriller, and David Cronenberg is at his most clever… (read more)
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A Dangerous Method
The subject of A Dangerous Method, the relationship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, is too great and too interesting to compress under two hours, and it especially doesn’t deserve to have the Sabina Spielrein romance as the center-weight. The need to squeeze in so much exposition and to doll it out in scientific jargon… (read more)
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Rabid
From a director known for his unrestrained writing and penchant for controversy comes an inconsequential zombie flick that a David Cronenberg fan may want to believe is a little more clever than it appears. It’s not, though. That was Shivers, which came out before this. Rabid lacks both Cronenberg’s intelligence (the science of the horror… (read more)
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Naked Lunch
The most shocking thing about Naked Lunch is how such an insanely weird movie ends up so incredibly boring. The 100% deadpan humor cannot survive for two hours, and the bizarre focus on constant exposition otherwise eventually makes this a life-sucking watch. A real shame, as the aesthetics are fantastic, and for the first 40… (read more)