Alex reviews David Cronenberg’s twisted new body horror thriller “Crimes of the Future,” before taking a look at Cronenberg’s 50-year career and all of the glorious mayhem found in it.
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Watch Alex's films at http://alexwithrow.com/
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Alex reviews David Cronenberg’s twisted new body horror thriller “Crimes of the Future,” before taking a look at Cronenberg’s 50-year career and all of the glorious mayhem found in it.
Follow @WAYW_Podcast on Twitter and Instagram.
Watch Alex's films at http://alexwithrow.com/
Watch Nick's films at https://www.nicholasdostal.com/
Send us mailbag questions at whatareyouwatchingpodcast@gmail.com
Hey, everyone. Welcome to. What are you watching? I'm Alex Withrow, and I'm flying solo today because I have a few things to say about David Cronenberg's new body horror thriller Crimes of the Future. I love David Cronenberg. I always have. And I have had a fun relationship with this movie over the past few weeks, so it's going to be fun to talk about that. Talk about crimes of the future and use that as a launching point to talk about all of other Cronenberg's work, some more than other. I'm not going to do deep dives on like every single movie here, but let's start with Crimes of the Future. I'm going to do a quick spoiler free review here. Talk a little bit about what it's about, some of the stuff it contains and why I think it's important to put the rest of his work into context with this movie. So Crimes of the Future is set in the anonymous future in which well Well, here's what's different in this Cronenberg world. The majority of people cannot feel pain and they cannot get infectious diseases. So these radical conscious surgeries, often done by people with no medical experience on people who are just awake and fully watching it. These are now very commonplace. And because pollution and climate change are so bad in this very near future, there's something happening to a select group of people called Accelerated Evolution Syndrome, in which they are able to grow new organs in their bodies. Viggo Mortensen character Saul is one such person, and because Saul cannot feel pain, he and his partner, Caprice Lisa, do perform live surgeries on Saul in front of people, and they call it art. So in this world of crimes of the future in which really bizarre surgeries are performed in the open, that is labeled as performance art. So that's what these two characters are performance artists basically living this life in which surgery is the new sex. That's a direct quote from the film. And that's about as basic of a plot summary as you're going to get because this is a brand new world that Cronenberg creates in just 107 minutes. And it's best discovered by him, I promise. I left a whole lot out of what this movie is. I mean, words I used earlier, like pollution, climate change. These sentiments aren't expressed directly because this is a very surreal showcase of this world. I haven't even gotten into plastics and microplastics. And the key role that that all plays and if it sounds, it would honestly sound too damn weird to describe. So you just got to go see this shit. Most movies of this kind have that hacking new character who's always asking questions, and then the expert in the movie is explaining everything to them, so thereby explaining it to us. Crimes of the future does not have any of that. It drops you right into this new world, shows you something really horrific and confusing right away. I mean, the first scene is really something, and you have to put the pieces together along with it. And I'm barely scratching the surface about what this movie is all about. I haven't even mentioned who Kristen Stewart plays, but she is really something This movie is definitely the Viggo Lisa do show. Kristen Stewart is like the fourth lead. It's not a huge part, but she absolutely seizes it with this. It's such a unique take on an odd character. Cronenberg doesn't really direct actors much in terms of how to play a character, how to say, Give me something different, try something and that's what she does here. I mean, each line, each word, each syllable. I'm not kidding. It's just it's incredible. You can really tell she had a blast with this. She really wanted to work with Cronenberg and it paid off. But here's why. I've had an interesting relationship with this movie so far because when I first saw it. This is like two weeks ago. I was not that big of a fan, and I was not planning to do a podcast like this. And I promise you, all of that is 100% because of my own bullshit expectations that I carried into the movie. I wanted it to be like the Cronenberg films that I love. I wanted it to be more like X, and I wanted it to explain things more, and I wanted it to make fucking sense. It's like I wanted David Cronenberg to use kid gloves on me and gently carry me through his narrative, which he has never, ever done. So I saw the movie that Thursday. It came out in theaters and thought, you know, Yeah, okay, I get it. I get what I was doing moving on. And then like seven days go by, and this movie never leaves my head. I wake up, I'm thinking about it. I'm working out. I'm dissecting it. Wait were there really no phones in that movie or animals? Okay, that's interesting. Curiosity begins to grow. I start my research. I did the interviews, podcast, deep dives, explanations, and I fell into that trap. I'm like, OK, I can't get this movie out of my head. So I want to go see it again before it leaves theaters. But why not? Been in as many Cronenberg movies as I can before then, so. So I watched most all of them before my second viewing of crimes in the future. And, you know, that's what I did. I'm nuts. And I had seen every Cronenberg movie before I wrote about him, like, ten years ago on my blog. And a lot of those movies I had only seen once for that article. So I had pretty strong opinions on most all of them, and it was really good for me to go and have refreshers on a lot of them. And that's really what unlocked Crimes of the future for me. His previous work, if you have seen all of Cronenberg's films, Aspects of Crimes of the Future will seem very familiar to you in a good way. These are things because I hadn't seen some of these movies in so long. I'd forgotten a lot of these crazy ass themes that Cronenberg goes back to over and over, or even crazy ass props that he will use throughout movies that all kind of look in a similar vibe. There's a lot of familiar territory in Crimes of the future, and that's not a thing at all. It's just like living, and you're back in great, wonderful Cronenberg land. Viggo and Leia are nice people, but there are factions of people in this world who are not down with Accelerated Evolution Syndrome, and they're trying to stop it. And then there are people fighting those people. It's very similar to scanners Videodrome exist, and the character's relationship to sex and crimes of the future is wholly unique, not unlike I mean, this is like every Cronenberg movie, but especially things like Dead Ringers, Crash, A Dangerous Method, Maps of the Stars. And then like I mentioned, there are these weird, squishy animal like devices that people use in place of phones, in place of beds, in place of various technology that's very similar to exit sense. So that's what I've learned in these past two weeks that Cronenberg absolutely has themes that he likes to revisit often in his work. But almost all of these movies have gotten better as I've gotten older, all of them I mean, I couldn't believe it. And I love David Cronenberg. I've always said that, but I've never said that. I universally love all of his movies, and that's cool. That's I mean, for the most part, kind of changed the biggest change I've had is Cosmopolis because that was made in 2012, starring Robert Pattinson based on the Don DeLillo book. Those are never easy to adapt to screen that's you know point A and 2012 Cronenberg's Coming Off of a History of Violence and Eastern Promises. Two of my favorite movies that decade honestly. Again, this is an expectation issue. I guess I wanted something like that and Cosmopolis is not that it's it's a very odd very intentionally indulgent movie about a young emotionless billionaire. And I did not understand a second of this movie I wrote a I mean I just trashed it. I wasn't I don't know. I looking back I was definitely definitely a little too harsh on it. But I didn't understand it. I didn't know what he was going for. I didn't get the intention of it. And I wasn't trying to hate but that the movie lost me immediately. I saw it in the theater. I stayed for the whole time, but it never won me back ever. In the credits. Roll and I'm like, what? OK, that that was not a good way to spend my 2 hours. But I was actually the first one I put on in this rewatch because it's the one I disliked the most. And it's better. It's not a perfect movie, but it definitely got better, I guess because I got more mature. I still don't think it's one of Cronenberg's strongest films, but I'm so happy that he did not retire after making it, which he publicly said he was going to do. And I certainly wouldn't give it as low of a grade. Now, but that's kind of what started this binge. I'm like, Hmm, I wonder, before I see crimes in the future, I should dip my toe back into Cronenberg and I'll see how that goes. Let me start with the one I like the least. And when that one worked for me again, not fully, but significantly better went all right. There are a number of movies that are I don't know that I'd been lukewarm on for years. Let me go back to all of those. And then as I found out, I was liking all of them more and more and more. It was great. All right. I'm going to dove into Cronenberg here because I really have had some pretty significant about faces on many of his films, and I'm going to talk about some of his themes. You know, the way he depicts sex technology, politics and psychology. Sometimes with all of them combined, it's always wholly original. No one has done it this way. Before or since. People still try, like Cronenberg's own son who made the awesome movie possessor and movie rocks. But there's only one David Cronenberg and Crimes of the Future is a great reminder of that. So in going all in on Cronenberg these past few weeks, I found some fun facts that I want to share before I get into the bulk of his work. For starters, the man is 79 years old. He's been making movies for nearly 50 years. He's made more than 20 feature films, all told, many of which have been huge. Highly influential on a number of genres, and they've inspired so many different generations of filmmakers, which is still happening even by his son making a movie like Possessor. In nearly 50 years of filmmaking, David Cronenberg has exclusively made R-rated movies. That's awesome. Even David Lynch made a rated G movie. The Oscars do not like David Cronenberg films. The Cannes Film Festival does, but only three of his movies have been nominated for Oscars. That's nuts. I'm talking. Just nominated. The Fly won best makeup, as it should have. That's the only Cronenberg movie to ever win an Oscar. That's nuts. A History of Violence. Got a supporting actor nom and adapted screenplay nom, and Viggo was nominated for best actor for Eastern Promises. That's it. He's had six movies at the Cannes Film Festival. But sadly never won their coveted Palme d'Or. Our Honor, he's always there in really good years. David Cronenberg, a lot of people know this, but he is Canadian, born in Toronto, and that feels especially important to mention because this guy's movies have never had an American sentiment to me. Not really. And I mean, that is a huge compliment. Trust me, beginning with the stories he tells and how he tells them is a very healthy curiosity and sexuality, obviously, far more than just about any other living mainstream American director I can think of. And even the way Cronenberg's movies look, the majority of them are filmed by British born cinematographer Peter Suzette Ski, and they all have this European look to them. If you've seen a David Cronenberg close up, you'll know what I mean. They're just there's like this signature flatness, but it's also cool as shit because, you know, you're watching a Cronenberg movie. It's hard to explain in words, but very easy to communicate visually. I mean, easy for these masters. Cronenberg sister Denise was the costume designer on most of his movies, from the Fly to a History of Violence. But in researching this post, I found out that she passed away in 20, 20. And that's so sad. I just and of course, to listen to a Cronenberg film is to hear a score by the great Howard Shaw. He's done pretty much all of his movies since The Brood. I was actually listening to his score to Crimes of the Future as I was researching this post a little bit, and it's a real banger. I love that guy. Go listen to the track called Clinic Clinic k l i nick on this soundtrack on the Crimes of the Future soundtrack. This has to be one of the single greatest songs ever featured on a Howard Shaw score or just any original score. This guy may have won two Oscars for Lord of the Rings, Return of the King, but this track right here is the real winner. K l i nick. It's great. The main thing that helped me unlock crimes of the future was that I realized that there really are two kinds of David Cronenberg films. There's The Body Horror Films and what I will call the hyper real films. The Body Horror films are what he is best known for rabid the Brood Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, kind of, I don't know, an existence if you have not seen those movies. Crimes of the Future will be very, very shocking to you. If you have seen those movies and did not like them. It's straight up. It's difficult for me to imagine that you will like crimes of the future. If you have seen those movies and you like them, crimes in the future will be a glorious return to David Cronenberg body horror form, I promise. Or maybe you're like me and you've entered some Cronenberg movies expecting them to be in his sort of hyper real style, such as Crash Spider, A History of Violence, Eastern Promises A Dangerous Method, Maps to the stars, everything in those movies could happen in real life. There is definitely some shocking violence, some gratuitous sex, but everything in it could happen not like the body horror films. I don't watch trailers, so I genuinely had no idea what Crimes of the Future was about, and I was a bit let down that it wasn't one of those hyper real films I thought that it might be. But that, of course, is my fault. I stupidly took that expectation into it. But when I met the movie on its level, as a body horror Cronenberg film, I found it to be honestly quite exquisite in its own macabre way. But OK, enough preamble. Let's get to work. I'm not going to hit them all significantly. I'm mostly using his filmography here to put Crimes of the Future into context and I want to have a little fun talking about these crazy about faces I've had on his work lately. I'm actually going to go through the first five pretty quickly. First up is stereo in 1969 and interestingly crimes of the future in 1970. These are two experimental, about 60 minute long films obviously that title is important to Cronenberg, even though the movies really don't have much in common. This 1971 is not a remake of this new one shivers in 1975 low budget body horror film about oh my god parasites that infect people and turn them into sex maniacs. David Cronenberg everyone rabid stars Marilyn Chambers as a woman who has surgery and discovers an orifice on her body that feeds on people's blood. These first four like they definitely have an early Cronenberg vibe. Like he's finding his tone, his central themes along with his style and then his next film in 1979 Fast Company. That's a complete departure. It's just an old school drag racing movie. Nothing whatsoever to do with horror always funny to me that he made it. I don't mean to just breeze by those. None of those five have ever been in my conversation of my favorite Cronenberg people may disagree with me. Some people really like Rabbit and Shivers. I get it, but I just wanted to breeze by them because to me, the signature David Cronenberg, nice really starts with the brood in 1979. I actually blind bought this DVD in college. I watched it and I did not like it and this is again going to be a theme of a few movies I'm talking about here. I, you know, I got everything that it was doing and I thought it was, I don't know, looked a little cheap. Maybe it was a bit boring. I watched this thing last week for the first time in years in this movie is crazy in a really good way. I actually really enjoyed myself. I mean, Oliver Reed just totally going for it as a psychotherapist. Samantha Edgar, so good as a mentally disturbed woman. Art Hindle Great as a husband, trying to figure it all out. One of the keys to a really good Cronenberg film of whether it's a body horror film or one of these Hyperreal films this is a director who really knows how to stick his endings. And if you have seen the brood, you will remember how it ends. Even when I didn't like it, way back when, I was always impressed, I'll say, by that ending and definitely a little shocked. But I like the movie so much more now, and I have so much better appreciation for it. That's why I'm so glad I rewatched a lot of these. Next up, 1981 scanners. I first heard about scanners in Wayne's World. Ever see that scene in Scanners where the dude's head blew up? I always love this movie. I had not seen it since I was young though, and it really holds up. And one of the key reasons for that is that its most famous scene, which I just referenced there from Wayne's World, happens like 10 minutes into the movie. So it hooks you right away and sets this tone of, I don't know, unpredictable carnage, which is always good for a horror film. And the politics of this movie very important in scanners and very important. And a lot of David Cronenberg's movies, The Way and Scanners, they're they're these good scanners. There are also bad scanners. And then there's an organization trying to hunt the bad ones. That's all very central to Cronenberg's body horror films, including Crimes of the Future. He loves to throw that odd, intentionally flat corporation aspect into it. It's like I love the way he shoots all those corporate boardrooms they just look so flat and boring. Michael Ironside, as the lead heavy in scanners, absolutely rocks. This is another movie with a killer ending really like the first 15 minutes in the last 15 minutes are the best part of this movie, and everything else in between holds up really well. I was surprised, even more surprised by Videodrome Christ, what? This is a weird ass movie, but one that did improve greatly on a rewatch. As much as a movie like this. Ken James Woods plays a TV channel CEO who comes across this odd like TV signal called Videodrome, in which people appear to be being tortured and killed on TV and you know, because, of course, it's a David Cronenberg movie, Dick James Woods character is like obsessed with this and thinks it'll be a game changer to TV, which is kind of Cronenberg, you know, not so gently critiquing our fascination with violence on screen. He's doing this a lot in these in these not so subtle political ways. Videodrome it's about way more than just hunting snuff films, though. It's there's mind control hallucinations of insane body horror makeup that rivals anything you'll see today. Crazy ass killings. It is wild. There are a few of his movies. I did not rewatch for this episode because I didn't think they necessarily had a lot to do with contextualizing crimes of the future and because I've always really liked them. Case in point, the dead Zone. Based on a Stephen King novel produced by Deborah Hill, who produced Halloween and a lot of other John Carpenter movies starring Christopher Walken as a guy with psychic powers. I've always really liked this one and contains a really good walk performance, despite the fact that it's, you know, like a sci fi horror movie. It's a really good movie, always Asman. Next up, we have arguably the masterpiece Cronenberg film his magnum opus The Fly. 1986. I did rewatch this because there's just never a bad time to watch The Fly. I've always loved this film. Probably the first Cronenberg I saw this movie holds up incredibly well, thanks largely to the practical makeup effects that I cannot believe how they did it and how they pulled it off. If you want to see Jeff Goldblum spend about 90 minutes turning into a human fly, here you go. This movie rocks. The practical makeup effects in this flick are rival. Anything you're going to see today? Truly dead ringers. Wow. This is a supremely twisted movie about two identical twin gynecologists Jeremy Irons in a masterful dual role. And they are geniuses of their craft, but varying degrees of evil and deceptive and gross in real life. You know, one twin is suave. He's confident and the other is kinder, bit more sensitive. A woman comes into the fold and seriously disrupts their dynamic. In interviews for crimes of the future, Cronenberg's been referencing dead ringers a lot as a way to, you know, gain some context for his new film, because early in Dead Ringers, like genuinely in the first scene, one of the twins, as a boy, says that if people didn't have to have sex to have children, they would find different ways to have sex that would involve not touching each other. And that is directly realized in crimes of the future. It's just it's so cool to me that he's making a movie in 1988 that has a sentence in there and other various themes throughout it that he's still using in 2022 but he's not reusing them in a way that feels hokey or like, oh God, I've seen that before. It's like he's just testing out ideas and then hey, why not 40 years later, whatever put them on screen. That's awesome. And not a lot of directors have the ability to do that. I've always like dead ringers. It is a wicked movie to be sure, but it's also the rare Cronenberg film that tows the line of being body horror and hyper real. Next up is Naked Lunch. This is based on what was called an on adaptable William S Burroughs novel. Somehow, Cronenberg found a way to do it. This is I mean, come on. I mean, this thing is stranger than all hell. I'd argue this may be the most cult classic movie of Cronenberg's career, because the people who love this thing really go all in for it. I think it's his most intentionally absurd and surreal it's a bat shit movie. I've always had that relationship with it, and butterflies are really a little seen. Cronenberg film about a same sex love story starring Jeremy Irons it doesn't have much in common thematically with Cronenberg's other work. That's one of the things that makes it so interesting. I like when directors choose those outside ventures to go on. I don't know. It can be interesting sometimes. Next up is Crash 1996. Wow. What is to say here are easily the most controversial film of Cronenberg's career. And that's certainly saying something on I guess on the surface, it's so easy to dismiss this movie as the movie where people have sex with cars and that's fair, you know, it's not really what happens. I mean, not, not exactly. But, you know, there is a lot more to this. There are very, very few directors who are as fearless about exploring subcultures with such a lack of judgment. Cronenberg simply wants us to observe these people and form our own opinions. And is what they're doing wrong or shameful or gross? I don't necessarily think so to Cronenberg, but I also don't think he expects everyone else to have that same reaction. It's OK to be, you know, a little turned off or repulsed by some of this stuff. The movie is about a married couple in an open relationship who literally crash into a world of people whose how do I say, whose sexual identities are tied to car crashes and other mayhem of the sort. This movie is just pure Cronenberg. It's pure nineties. There's no restraint. James Spader, Deborah Keira Unger, Holly Hunter, Rosanna Arquette, and especially Elias Cortez. They're so game here. So if nothing else, you're definitely going to see some damn committed performances in this movie. And honestly, I did rewatch this for this episode and I hadn't seen it in quite some time because it's kind of just like, you know, that movie we went through this a little bit on the Gas Bar podcast, like how do we talk about some of these movies and how do we express the value that we find in them? And there is value to find in this it's funny because a movie that's this controversial as Crash, I often find that a lot has been built up about it, that that when you actually sit down for 100 minutes and watch it, it may not be as bad as the hype surrounding it. And I mean, don't get me wrong, it's definitely a crazy fucking movie, but I can't believe he was able to make it. I can't believe it premiered at Cannes. It's still one of the most controversial movies to have ever screened there. I actually just finished the book that it's based on, which is good for sure. But what Cronenberg did with the material is so much better. Even the author, J.G. Ballard, admitted that the book takes place decades ago, and characters are obsessed with crashing into Elizabeth Taylor's car and killing her. Cronenberg very wisely ditches all that, and instead he has characters recreating that James Dean fatal car crash, which is really something to watch. I don't know. There's an intentional flatness to crash that is so easy to write off, but to me, it's all part of the film's allure. I mean, this was one of Martin Scorsese's Top Ten films of the nineties that's saying something the way the shots are staged, the very slow patience and cadence of all the actors. It's just a really fascinating film experiment. You know, I mean, this isn't as controversial as like irreversible, for God sakes. It's just, I mean, it isn't Titan. There's nothing in Cronenberg's Crash that's crazier than what's in Titan. And that movie won the fucking Palme d'Or last year. That's a movie that actually shows people having sex with cars fully going for it. So I guess Crash coasted so Titan could speed. It's a whacked out insight into a very unique subculture. And check it out if you've heard a lot about it and heard I don't know if you've just heard about it and never wanted to go there, maybe try to give it a shot because I don't know. You know, we said this on the gas bar pod. If you're in the mood for a fucked up movie, it might be good for you every once in a while. Here's a perfect example. Crash 1996 existence 1999. Go see this movie. It's going to be tough to track down but try to find it. This could be the biggest unsung gem of David Cronenberg's career. It's such a shame it got buried because, I mean, honestly, we have two really superb movies in a row here that got completely lost in the, I don't know, the shuffle over least the shuffle of other movies. I don't know. I don't want to describe existence too much because this is a 95 minute long ride it's about a game developer in the near future who is being hunted by assassins. And she's on the run. It's it's definitely much smarter than just that and so much craftier Jennifer Jason Lee plays the developer. She's so good. And a young Jude Law like a young Jude Law is a nerdy corporate guy who falls into protecting her as she's on the run before Crimes of the Future Existence was Cronenberg's Last Body Horror Film. And there are so many things in existence that will seem familiar in crimes of the future, especially the way all these devices look with these the bio technical aspect to all of them. This this is a really really good movie. And and it did get buried in part because it came out in April in the States in 1999 and there another movie in the theater at that time. And if people are going to see one futuristic sci fi movie that month it was probably going to be the Matrix not existence. So it's a shame that that happened to it but please go try to find this. My final selling point existence is a huge influence on inception and the concept of its layers of dreams dream within a dream. There aren't dreams in existence, but you'll see it just it has to be an influence. Part of the reason we even wanted to start this entire podcast was to help shed light on movies that don't get enough attention. And hopefully by talking about them, maybe that'll influence a few people to see it. A really good example of this is Cronenberg's film from 2002 called Spider, and this begins a long stretch of films from Cronenberg that he did not write, which is really interesting because we're going to have several these hyperreal movies in a row. Up until this point, he wrote every script of his except the ones for the Dead Zone and and Butterfly. So Spider, another movie that's criminally under scene. I frankly had not heard about this movie until years after it came out. I don't ever remember it being in theaters. I don't ever remember seeing it on DVD anywhere. I just found it researching Cronenberg one day and was like, OK, how do I track this down? This is one of the most accurate movies I've ever seen about paranoid schizophrenia. It is a fantastic minimalist film about the mind of a broken man played perfectly by Ray Fines. This is, you know, my top three. Ray finds performances would be Schindler's List Grand Budapest Hotel and Spider. It's such a shame that this movie isn't easier to find, and therefore people have not seen it because you are really going to get the full scope of his range if you watch this performance in context with the rest of his work. I don't want to ascribe too much about what this movie is about, but it begins with a guy Spider being released from an insane asylum and we see flashes of his life through his distorted memory. So for instance, and this is achieved like it's really cool how they do this. He will just be wandering around the city and he'll look into a window and he'll see a boy talking with his mother and then, you know, they don't see him in the window and you're like, OK, what the hell? And then we realize that's the young spider talking with his mom, which is it's just really cool. They do it. They keep doing that over and over. But if an adult man is certifiably insane, how reliable is his memory? Right. It's very obscure, very abstract. Movie. But again, it's another Cronenberg movie that nails its ending and wraps everything up perfectly. I highly recommend Spider if you can track it down. Miranda Richardson plays three different roles in it. She's great. Gabriel Byrne said this was the hardest role he ever had to play. He plays Spider's father. Really? Go check this out. Now we have two movies in a row in which Cronenberg achieved real mainstream success and notoriety. These are the two that have definitely gotten the widest releases and the most publicity, like when they actually came out and that's for good reason because first up, aside from Brokeback Mountain, A History of Violence is my favorite movie of 2005, and it's always been that way. It's a good movie year, and I love every single thing about this movie and 96 minutes long. I think it is tightly and ingeniously constructed. It's a straight story about a man with a possible history of violence and the real life scenarios that it puts the characters in have such like a What would you do frenzied they're so realistic and so well staged and acting. Everyone's perfect here. It's the first time Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen work together. They're never better My favorite Maria Bello performance is here, a grisly and ruffled Ed Harris. God, I love him. Then you have William Hurt. May he rest in peace. Coming in for 10 minutes and completely stealing the movie I love. This is one of my top William Hurt performances, and I really, really miss that guy. I've always loved his work. All of Cronenberg's best films have great endings. This is certainly no exception. I love how this movie ties itself up. I need to get Nick to rewatch this one, actually, so we can do a deep dove part about it. I love a history of violence. Eastern Promises is next. Cronenberg and Viggo teaming back up and maintaining that same hyper real energy it's a great double feature with a history of violence. Honestly, this is another really tight thriller that is impeccably well-made and impeccably well-acted. It just moves so damn well. And it's funny, the Alamo Drafthouse near me has played this like two times in the past year. I've gone both times, you know, because why not I always really enjoy Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts, their chemistry in this really believable and convincing. I also like where it goes. I don't want to say too much, but, you know, if you've seen it, I like the restraint that Cronenberg has on it. That's not a word applied much to David Cronenberg films Restraint Eastern Promises probably best. Still known for its incredible naked fight sequence in a Russian bathhouse, I remember people gasping and screaming in the theater in 2007 when I saw it, and they were still doing that a few months ago when I saw it in the theater. And that's the sign of a damn good movie right there. A Dangerous Method. 2011. I don't know what happened here to me in 2011. I was not a fan of this when I saw it. Maybe like gave it a C minus in my written review, which is just not fair. That's not I hadn't seen it since then. Rewatched it for this. And like all Cronenberg films, this can't be for everyone. But you know, Michael Fassbender is Carl Young, Viggo Mortensen is Sigmund Freud. That's enough right there. A lot of this movie is just the two of them sitting in a room arguing about their different perspectives on psychoanalysis and they really make it work Keira Knightley. I did not give her enough credit the first time I saw this. Her arc is a lot more nuanced than I remembered. And I'll just say, if your first experience with this movie was like mine, go back and give it another shot, because this one really did get better to me with age. That's all. I already touched on Cosmopolis a bit in the intro a few things I want to say here is that this was marketed in part as potentially Cronenberg's last film. And I remember going in with that energy, and that's I don't know. I think that's a really dangerous thing to do, to call it early like that. Kutty is stuck in that. I mean, he's been stuck in that is said for his entire career that he's ten and done so we're going to see how that goes. But Cosmopolis. Yeah, still can't give it my strongest recommendation for Cronenberg, but absolutely like it more than I did when I saw it ten years ago. Don DeLillo is a great author who's really difficult to adapt, and Noah Baumbach next movie is based on Don DeLillo's White Noise. Netflix has given Baumbach a shitload of money to make that, so that's going to be interesting to see how that turns out later this year. I it'll be interesting. Keep your eye on that one. Thankfully, Cronenberg did not retire and he returned two years later with maps to the stars. This is an incredibly macabre satire of Hollywood that I cannot recommend highly. No, it's just it's pure Cronenberg, Cronenberg mayhem, Cronenberg humans at their worst. Welcome to Hollywood. You know, you will see Julianne Moore and John Cusack do things in this movie that they haven't done before or since. And I think this is just so funny. Julianne Moore, actually won best actress at Cannes for this movie. And although she won an Oscar the same year for Still Alice, I think she's so much better in maps to the Stars, which probably says a lot about me. But you know, Julianne Moore playing a vengeful, psychotic, once famous actress and David Cronenberg's Hollywood It's just it's way more my speed. This movie, shockingly, was on Netflix for a long time. I was sad to see it's been taken off the air, but if it ever pops back up there anywhere, just, you know, if you want to check out a fucked up movie, here you go. And that brings us right to the present. That was a long gap for films. 20, 14 to 20, 22. But we have crimes of the future. I know this is likely going to be leaving theater soon, but I'm hoping it finds a healthy life on streaming. I hope it just fine. I hope it's in one solid place. Like, yes, crimes of the future go on Netflix and watch that. You know, I hope it's just easy for people to find because Cronenberg always releases his films in Canada and because his subject material can be so intense, they often struggle to find distribution in America, whether in theaters or on DVD or online. And that sucks. I can't really explain why it's a little bit over my head. I don't I don't know why releasing something in Canada may interfere with releasing it in America as well, but something like that seems to be the case several times in his career. I don't know. That's just that happened with God, existential spider Cosmopolis, Maps of the Stars. Those are all really hard for me to find in theaters. But, you know, hopefully crimes in the future will be easy. For everyone to track down if you dare, when it is available to you. I'm going to end how I always do with a nice, arbitrary list. This time I'm going to rattle off my favorite David Cronenberg films. This list is going to be ten films strong because there really are two different Cronenberg's There's The Body Hard Work and the hyper real films. And again, like I'm using hyper real in quotes because nothing ever feels really real real in a Cronenberg movie. That's part of the allure of them, certainly. But here are my top ten David Cronenberg films in order. Number ten Dead Ringers, number nine scanners. Number eight Maps to the Stars. Number seven Crimes of the Future. Number six Existence. Number five Spider. Number four, Eastern Promises. Number three the fly. Number two Crash Sorry. The Number one A History of Violence. I don't know. History of violence always been top tier. As far as David Cronenberg films go. That's it for me. I love David Cronenberg I think he is a difficult director to fully appreciate, but I think there's a lot more to his movies than just IMDB log lines or just what you know you've read about. So if you are a fan of his already, or if you're going back and rewatching some of these movies like I have, let us know what you're thinking of them at WFYI w underscore podcast. But as always, thanks for listening and happy watching Hey everyone. Thanks again for listening. You can watch my films and read my movie blog at Alex Withrow dot com. Nicholas Stoessel dot com is where you can find all of Nick's film work. Send us mailbag questions at What are you watching podcast at gmail.com or find us on Twitter at W wide w underscore podcast. Next time is the second. What are you watching? Podcast commentary. It's a film we've talked about a lot on the podcast. It was made after the year 2000. It was not nominated for any Oscars, but it should have been and it is not Zodiac. Stay tuned.