With a concept and execution as crude and garish as suggested by the project’s working title, Orgy of the Blood Parasites, the film presents Cronenberg’s artistic sensibilities in larval form.

Perhaps most fascinating in Crimes of the Future are the sexual and gender dynamics, prefiguring themes he would return to again and again.

At its worst, Stereo feels like the student film it technically is. Yet it’s also a rare example of a visionary director’s ethos captured in perfect gestational form.

Cronenberg’s trademark body horror literalizes the way devices and computer systems become man-made umbilical cords between us and our addictive digital worlds.

Technology in Cronenberg’s films is a grotesque, living thing.

[xrr rating=2.5/5]It shouldn’t come as a surprise that David Cronenberg has made a satire. On the outskirts of so many of his films, somewhere hidden behind the squeals his body horror incites in Rabid and The Fly and sidelined by the thought provoked by his depiction of various media in Videodrome and eXistenZ, it has always been clear that Cronenberg …

Five years is an eternity in the life of a film. When coming up with this feature, the question the Spectrum Culture staff pondered was this: “How well do these movies play NOW!” Not five years ago, but how have they aged in our memories. While some acclaimed films of ’07 remain strong on our list, some critically-lauded ones didn’t …

The Cabin in the Woods (Dir: Drew Goddard, Lionsgate Films) Alternately hilarious and cruel, Cabin in the Woods is the kid-tested, nihilist-approved antidote to every rotten, boring, soulless, by-the-numbers horror flick to clog up the genre over the past few decades. Taking obligatory classic horror flick references to an illogical extreme, Cabin in the Woods skewers the modern audience as …

[xrr rating=3.25/5]Over the course of Cosmopolis, the latest film from David Cronenberg, Robert Pattinson’s Eric Packer takes a ride in his plush limo across New York, has sex with two different women, kills a man, may or may not get killed himself, fights with his wife, has his prostate examined and gets a haircut. I can only imagine the Twihards …

Are remakes a sign of creative bankruptcy? Does the current glut of remakes, reboots, re-imaginings, re-toolings, nominal prequels and barely connected sequels in production indicate that Hollywood is out of ideas? And anyway, remakes are just cynical ways to cash in on the existing mental real estate of the movie-going public, right? Well, wrong. Remakes have been around nearly as …