2005 - A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, good Cronenberg film

 The old story about the criminal trying to go straight and start a new life but is dragged back into crime by his old gang is given a fresh update from  director David Cronenberg and the screenwriter Josh Olson.  Cronenberg was usually known for what were called "body horror films, " such as The Fly, The Brood and Rabid to name a few.  

Considering the amount of violence in this film, Cronenberg doesn't really glamorize it.  When people get hit by bullets, the end result looks pretty darn gruesome.  

Cronenberg also put together an interesting cast starting with Viggo Mortenson and Maria Bello as the supposedly ordinary middle class couple.  Ed Harris and William Hurt are the very scary bad guys and everyone is working at a high level of performance.

 

The film makes some interesting points about the ability of human beings to inflict violence on each other and Cronenberg doesn't shy away from making the point that the Viggo Mortenson character actually kind of enjoys killing people.

The film runs 96 minutes.

2011 - A DANGEROUS METHOD - literate treatment about a crazy person and situation

Michael Fassbinder is analyst Carl Jung, Keira Knightley is his crazy patient who he treats with some unusual psychiatric methods which include sleeping with her and spanking her.  Into this mix is Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud.

For all the implied kink in this film, this is a very talky story.  There are lots of discussions about psychoanalysis.  This film is a real blab fest although the actors make the dialog sound pretty interesting

Keira Knighley gives either a brave larger than life performance as the crazy patient or she is so over top it's hard to know where the top exactly is.  Either way it's certainly interesting.

Christopher Hampton adapted the film from his play.  Hampton is known for his classy adaptions of his plays like Dangerous Liaisons and Atonement.  The director is extreme film maker David Cronenberg so it's easy to guess where the emphasis on sadomasochism came from.

99 minutes.

1999 - eXistenZ, David Cronenberg's follow up to Videodrome.

Very weird science fiction from David Cronenberg it picks up where he left off with his theme of technology literally merging with a human body.  A video game developed by Allegra Geller is the latest in gaming technology, it completely immerses the player into the gaming experience.  A group called the "Realists" are attempting to stop this emerging technology and kill her.

Cronenberg gets to pursue his usual fascination of having icky living things infecting the body and transforming it.   Cronenberg went down this road one before with James Woods and creepy blond Deborah Harry in Videodrome.  This time he has Jud Law and creepy blond Jennifer Jason Leigh going through the same motions.  Both of these films are very well acted.

Videodrome was a ground breaking science fiction film, eXistenZ is a little less this time but it's still very interesting.  Besides the weird body merge technology thing and the slimy creatures that are featured throughout this film.   Cronenberg also has the multiple realities inside realities thing going on that Inception got all of the credit for last year.  Thinking it over now, this was a very engrossing film.

"I'm feeling a little disconnected from my real life. I'm kinda losing touch with the texture of it. You know what I mean? I actually think there is an element of psychosis involved here"

97 minutes.