Maps to the Stars
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“As Spare and Sparse as Possible”: Peter Suschitzky on Maps to the Stars
Before David Cronenberg evolved – or rather, in keeping with Cronenberg’s preoccupations, mutated – into a respected auteur, he rose to prominence as the purveyor of a distinct subset of genre films labeled as “body horror.” At the heart of his early tales of transmogrification, decay and disease lay an innately human fear of mortality. In Cronenberg’s latest, Maps to the Stars, the director explores a uniquely post-millennial form of mortality he has christened “pre-death.” In a culture obsessed with recording and sharing, to not be photographed is in some sense to cease to exist. That existential crisis runs through […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Mar 10, 2015 -
NYFF ’14: David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars and Consumed
There’s something about anti-Hollywood satire that brings out the worst/most facile in otherwise great filmmakers. The prime example is probably Robert Altman’s The Player, which pretends to be aghast that studio executives have never heard of The Bicycle Thief and concludes that’s why everything sucks. Oddly, Scream 3 may be the only satire in this vein with real teeth, since its murderous mayhem is instigated by a need to avenge a decades-old casting couch act of sexual aggression, something of more consequence than the usual “those philistines rewrote my script by committee” japery. David Cronenberg is decidedly not calling from […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 6, 2014 -
Cannes 2014: Maps to the Stars, Clouds of Sils Maria, The Tribe, Adieu Au Langage
That’s Cannes, man. The red carpet’s rolled and stashed; you don’t have to go home but you can’t afford to stay here. Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s three-hour-plus, mixed-reviewed Winter Sleep pocketed the Palme d’Or. Sorry, Naomi Kawase with your so-called “masterpiece” and Xavier Dolan, who said he “deserved” to win top honors, juries are subjective. The more burning issue is when undistributed landmarks like Adieu Au Langage and The Tribe will find their way to your eyes and ears. Until my final take on the 2014 edition of Cannes appears in the next issue of Filmmaker, here are my […]
by Aaron Hillis on May 29, 2014
