Post by jeffan on Feb 14, 2009 8:15:07 GMT -5
The New York Times
TERRENCE RAFFERTY
February 13, 2009
IF there’s such a thing as an ideal time of day to expose yourself to the deranging, hallucinatory visions of the Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg, midnight might well be it. That at least seems to be the hypothesis of the IFC Center in Manhattan, which, starting this week, will be screening a Cronenberg movie at that hour for the next seven Friday and Saturday nights — Saturday and Sunday mornings, technically, but somehow “Sunday morning” sounds completely wrong as a time.
The five films that fall between “Crash” and “Naked Lunch” in IFC’s midnight series — “Spider” (2002), “The Fly” (1986), “eXistenZ” (1999), “The Dead Zone” (1983) and “Videodrome” (1983) — show Mr. Cronenberg at or near his best, as a creator of ingenious, mind-bending, sometimes mordantly funny horror.e to watch, say, “Naked Lunch” (1991).
“The Fly” is more recognizably the work of the man who, when he’s at home, cooks up stories like “Videodrome.” As the movie’s hero, an amiably unworldly scientist named Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum), undergoes his agonizing transformation from human being to bulging-eyed flying insect, Mr. Cronenberg provides plenty of special-effects goo, a good number of unpleasant growths and the odd handful of necrotic flesh, dropping like leaves in autumn. Most of the repulsive imagery, however, is concentrated in the last half-hour or so of the film, which until then has played as a surprisingly sweet-natured, eccentric romantic comedy. (Geena Davis is the female lead.) And that early sweetness gives the later horror its awful emotional kick. You don’t want to look at what’s happening to Brundle, but you like him too much to turn away.
www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/movies/15raff.html
TERRENCE RAFFERTY
February 13, 2009
IF there’s such a thing as an ideal time of day to expose yourself to the deranging, hallucinatory visions of the Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg, midnight might well be it. That at least seems to be the hypothesis of the IFC Center in Manhattan, which, starting this week, will be screening a Cronenberg movie at that hour for the next seven Friday and Saturday nights — Saturday and Sunday mornings, technically, but somehow “Sunday morning” sounds completely wrong as a time.
The five films that fall between “Crash” and “Naked Lunch” in IFC’s midnight series — “Spider” (2002), “The Fly” (1986), “eXistenZ” (1999), “The Dead Zone” (1983) and “Videodrome” (1983) — show Mr. Cronenberg at or near his best, as a creator of ingenious, mind-bending, sometimes mordantly funny horror.e to watch, say, “Naked Lunch” (1991).
“The Fly” is more recognizably the work of the man who, when he’s at home, cooks up stories like “Videodrome.” As the movie’s hero, an amiably unworldly scientist named Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum), undergoes his agonizing transformation from human being to bulging-eyed flying insect, Mr. Cronenberg provides plenty of special-effects goo, a good number of unpleasant growths and the odd handful of necrotic flesh, dropping like leaves in autumn. Most of the repulsive imagery, however, is concentrated in the last half-hour or so of the film, which until then has played as a surprisingly sweet-natured, eccentric romantic comedy. (Geena Davis is the female lead.) And that early sweetness gives the later horror its awful emotional kick. You don’t want to look at what’s happening to Brundle, but you like him too much to turn away.
www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/movies/15raff.html