1004. Dead Ringers (1988)

Running Time: 116 minutes
Directed By: David Cronenberg
Written By: David Cronenberg, Norman Snider, from the novel Twins by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland
Main Cast: Jeremy Irons, Genevieve Bujold, Heidi von Palleske, Barbara Gordon, Shirley Douglas
Click here to view the trailer

SUDDENLY, I'VE GOT A HANKERIN' FOR SOME DOUBLE MINT GUM!

If you're reading this, it means that it's Thanksgiving morning in the U.S. - so happy Thanksgiving to you Americans. If you're elsewhere in the world - happy Thursday! In reality, it's Sunday evening, as I've taken a liking to post dating my reviews to spread them out throughout the week and so as not to bury anything that has just been posted - namely, my MY WEEK IN FILM post. Anyway, Dead Ringers...

Man, just imagine if surgeons actually did wear red? How much more scary would surgery be!?

For Jeremy Irons, the film meant double duty - as he played twin gynecologists, Beverly and Elliot Mantle - two totally different personalities, who are both a lot loony in their own way. Elliot is the dominant twin - cocky and confident, ready to take on the world, one vagina at a time! Meanwhile, Beverly is his opposite - a shy, submissive sibling who has zero luck with the ladies, yet excels in his field, alongside his twin. While not Siamese twins, the two are basically inseparable, sharing an apartment & a medical practice together, not to mention pretty much everything else - including women. In fact, when actress Claire Niveau (Bujold) comes to their office for an appointment one day, it is Elliot whose eye she catches first, as he seduces her, all the while examining the the cause of her infertility. After getting her heated up, however, Elliot passes her off to Beverly, who sleeps with her and as a result, becomes emotionally attached to her. Basically, the rest of the film is just about Beverly's downfall as he becomes dependent on Claire;s affection and the drugs she introduces him to. He becomes a full blow, prescription drug addict and spirals completely out of control when he becomes convinced that Claire is cheating on him. Meanwhile, Elliot begins to worry about Beverly, as he becomes so dependent on the prescription pain pills that he can no longer function, eventually getting the brothers banned from the hospital where they practice, ruining their medical aspirations.

As much as I hate to, I wanted to start out the review portion of my Dead Ringers article by stating how boring it was. It's a word I don't like to use when describing films I dislike, but on rare occasions I make exceptions. However, I then realized that I didn't need to even consider using that word, because even though I highly disliked Dead Ringers, it was as far from boring as it could get. Allow me to throw some phrases & sentences at you and show you what I mean: "gynecological instruments for operating on mutant women", Genevieve Bujold gnawing at a fatty mass conjoining the Mantle twins, Jeremy Irons playing two completely different characters and nailing both roles while differentiating two separate personalities. These do not sound like the buzz words of a boring movie to me. Confusing movie? Sure. Weird movie? Definitely. But I certainly can't say it was boring. I watched this movie with a sometimes disgusted, sometimes befuddled look on my face and really wanted to be able to make more out of it, but alas, I couldn't.

What was Dead Ringers, but a movie about a socially awkward man falling in love for the first time? I kept waiting for the film to stray away from the love story, of Beverly's infatuation with Claire Niveau and turn into something more, but really it never did and besides the drug addiction angle, the film felt undeveloped, relying on the odd nature of it's director to get it through to the end credits. As if to say, "let's throw some 'mutant gynecological intruments' at them and that'll take their minds off the fact that we really have no story". I mean, sure, I guess you could cry "character development" and argue that the Mantle twins are ripe for dissection, but I never felt like a bond between us and those characters was ever strong enough to merit hinging the whole film upon.

I won't argue the talent of Jeremy Irons, someone who I'm, for the most part, completely unfamiliar with as an actor. A quick peek at his filmography and sure enough, I've only ever seen one other Jeremy Irons picture - the forgettable Reversal of Fortune. This performance made me want to pick out five more Irons' movies from Netflix and dig a little deeper into his body of work. To perfect not one character, but two, is a feat that deserves applauding However, that is kind of his job isn't it - to turn in a good performance? And while I applaud Irons, I wouldn't call his performances so good that I'd want to rearrange my favorite actors list or anything. Call it "really good", but not "blow away good". On the other hand, you've got Genevieve Bujold, who has since fallen off the face of the Earth and for good reason. She was both unpretty and untalented and whomever convinced her to pursue a career as an actress, deceived her.

Dig that tourniquet & surgical clamps sex scene!

Dead Ringers is going to be a "love it or hate it" movie. Fans of Cronenberg and his off the beaten path style will laud the film for it's uniqueness and ideas that challenge the ordinary. However, fans of a more conventional style of filmmaking will probably hate "Ringers" and for good reason. While Irons is good, maybe even great, as the Mantle twins, his performance isn't great enough to make you stop in your tracks and go back to make sure he wasn't robbed of an Oscar. Bujold is as plain as you can be and still be given work in Hollywood and honestly, giving her any work was probably a mistake. The film was too confusing for yours truly, which may be a fault of my own. I was constantly leaning over to ask my wife, "is that Beverly? I thought this was supposed to be Elliot? Who's the one in the red track suit?" While I wanted to like Dead Ringers, I simply didn't and give it my lowest of recommendations.

RATING: 3.5/10  It certainly will make you take notice, but in the end, you'll notice that the notice you took wasn't anything worth noticing. Nuff said.

November 22, 2015  9:24pm

831. Naked Lunch (1991)

Running Time: 115 minutes
Directed By: David Cronenberg
Written By: David Cronenberg, from novel by William S. Burroughs
Main Cast: Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Julian Sands, Roy Scheider

CRONENBERG HAT TRICK: PART THREE

Finishing up my three movie salute to David Cronenberg, I come to "Naked Lunch". It's going to be hard to explain "Naked Lunch", but I'll give it the old college try.

Bill Lee (Weller) is an exterminator. One day, while out on a roach job, Bill runs out of bug powder. After he is embarrassed back at the office for screwing up on the job, he goes home to find that it's his wife, Joan (Davis), who has been taking his powder and injecting it, like heroin. It doesn't take her long to get Bill hooked on the stuff and soon we're off on a trip down the rabbit hole. Bill becomes addicted to the bug powder and begins to hallucinate. He is later picked up by police and during the interrogation, Bill sees a giant cockroach, who tells him that he is a secret agent and that his newest assignment is to kill his wife. When Bill returns home, he inadvertently shoots his wife in the head, while performing a William Tell routine. After the death of Joan, Bill escapes to the Interzone, where he begins writing reports, now fully believing that he is an agent. Bill remains hooked on the bug powder and sometimes his typewriter turns into a giant bug. There's more to the plot and we really never know if anything is real or if it's a hallucination of Bill's bug powder induced mind. I'll stop there, because honestly, I'm just confusing myself even more than I already was.

This film really lost me once we got into the thick of things and it's probably going to take repeated viewing before I can start to put together a reasonable thought process on what actually happened in this film. However, I'm not sure I'll ever watch "Naked Lunch" again, because this was honestly one of the most taxing chores I've had to sit through, since I started the "1001" book. At this point, I'm just glad that the damn thing is finished, so that I can write it up for the blog and put it behind me. It had some enticing elements, to be quite honest with myself. I liked the whole modern noir they had going on there and throwing an exterminator into the noir world was kind of cool. Peter Weller was pretty good too and during the second half of the film he tells the best "talking asshole" story I've ever heard. But honestly, to try and talk myself out of hating this film, by reminding myself of the few good things, is a lost cause. I didn't like "Naked Lunch" AT ALL and despite the few good parts, it was all lost in a confusing film where typewriters turned into giant insects and there was plenty of Cronenberg's signature semen-esque liquids flowing around.

Like "Videodrome", "Naked Lunch" just wasn't up my alley and in the end, after finishing the three Cronenberg films in the book, I'd say that Cronenberg just isn't my kind of director. Sure "The Fly" was a good piece of movie making, but the other two were such complete disasters, that I can't, in good conscience, give Cronenberg a pass. If I ever get up the gumption to check it out again, then I will and maybe I'll be able to make heads or tails out of "Naked Lunch", but for now call it one of the worst films I've seen from the book thus far.

RATING: 1/10 Possibly...POSSIBLY the worst film I've watched for the book thus far. But if it's not it's certainly down there with company like "Cat People" and "The Black Cat".

MOVIES WATCHED: 276
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 725

July 3, 2011 4:32pm

743. THE FLY (1986)

Running Time: 95 minutes
Directed By: David Cronenberg
Written By: David Cronenberg, George Langelaan, Charles Edward Pogue
Main Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz

CRONENBERG HAT TRICK: PART TWO

Continuing on with our cinematic hat trick/tribute to David Cronenberg, we come to "The Fly", a film that, surprisingly, I had never seen until last night. I say "surprisingly" because I have always been a big fan of Jeff Goldblum and he didn't disappoint here.

Seth Brundle (Goldblum) is a scientist working on an extra special project. While schmoozing at a meet-the-press event, Brundle encounters Veronica (Davis). They converse for a minute or two and then head back to Brundle's apartment, where he promises her something BIG in the world of science. Once back at his apartment, Brundle unveils a teleportation machine, capable of deconstructing an object in one "telepod" and reconstructing it in another. Veronica is amazed and soon her real intentions are revealed - she is indeed a member of the press and she is determined to make Brundle and his invention her next big story. Brundle wants no part of the press and even when Veronica tells her editor of the story, he shrugs it off by calling Brundle nothing more than a magician. The teleportation device does still have a few kinks though, which are made evident when Brundle attempts to teleport a baboon and it comes out on the other side, turned inside out. The computer still can't comprehend how to deconstruct a living thing and then reconstruct it the right way. With a little more thought and some inspiration from his new girlfriend, Veronica, whom he hits it off with following their little tiff, Brundle figures it out, successfully teleporting a baboon. Now Brundle wants to step it up a bit and when he and Verinica get into an argument, Brundle drunkenly convinces himself to put himself through the teleporter. The only problem is...Brundle wasn't the only living creature inside of it.

SPOILER ALERT!

Coming off the heels of a less than stellar showing of "Videodrome", I wasn't really expecting much out of "The Fly". My wife had informed me, prior to my watching it, that it was indeed grotesque, so I just assumed we were in for another "Videodrome", with a solid plot and a lot of special effects to jumble everything up. I was wrong. In the case of "Videodrome" Cronenberg took a pretty interesting sounding plot and by adding his special effects to it, he severed my interest in the film. With "The Fly" the special effects work to drive the story and without them, we're really left with what could be labeled a kids film (minus the scenes of sex and some minor language issues). That might sound strange to link the phrase "kids movie" and "The Fly", but it's kind of true. Scientist invents machine and ends up turning himself into a fly - it sounds pretty cut and dry and just by the sounds of it, it SOUNDS like a kids flick. But it's NOT. It's quite grotesque and like I said, that only helps to drive home the story and give it a personality of it's own. Without Cronenberg's spin on things, this just becomes another meaningless sci-fi film, but as soon as I saw the inside out baboon, I knew I was in for a ride.

Goldblum is great and in fact, he's so great as Seth Brundle, that when he becomes "Brundle-fly", you only feel for him that much more. It's sad in that you really feel for the guy. I mean he's just perfected his invention and is on the cusp of stardom and he just met this great girl and I'll be damned if a housefly didn't fuck all that up. Geena Davis wasn't half bad either and I forgot what a fairly decent actress she was. This film really reminds me of "District 9", in that we're given a character and we're forced to watch him go through changes that even they don't understand. Both films have elements of a love story and both films don't end on a happy note. In "The Fly", the ending is heartbreaking as Brundle, fully transformed into a fly and unable to speak, comes face to face with Veronica, who is holding a shotgun that she wrestled away from the villain of the movie. Brundle reaches up and moves the barrel to his head. It's all truly heartbreaking and the end result, when factoring in all the different emotions that this film sends you through, it escapes with nothing less than a high recommendation.

RATING: 8/10 Cronenberg is 1-1 and "Naked Lunch" will be the rubber film, so to speak.

MOVIES WATCHED: 273
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 728

June 30, 2011 2:30pm

695. Videodrome (1983)

Running Time: 87 minutes
Directed By: David Cronenberg
Written By: David Cronenberg
Main Cast: James Woods, Deborah Harry, Sonja Smits, Peter Dvorsky, Leslie Carlson

CRONENBERG HAT TRICK: PART ONE

With "Naked Lunch" and "The Fly" currently streaming on Netflix, I went ahead and moved "Videodrome" to the top of my "At Home" queue, so that I could perform a "Cronenberg Hat Trick". The only two David Cronenberg films I have ever seen (prior to today) are "The Dead Zone" and "History of Violence", with the first being pretty good and the second being not so pretty good. So how did "Videodrome" compare?

Max Renn (Woods) is the president of CIVIC TV, a raunchy television station that has a knack for airing softcore pornography and violent content. One day Renn's right hand man Harlan (Dvorsky) picks up a floating signal via a pirate satellite dish. When reviewing the content, Renn is surprised to see the images of a woman being tortured. While the picture of the signal is fuzzy, Renn is consumed by the feed, which is titled VIDEODROME. Harlan continues to track down the feed and eventually tracks it to Pittsburgh. Becoming more and more consumed with Videodrome, Max contacts his friend in the television business, Masha, and asks her about the source of Videodrome. Masha confesses that not only is Videodrome real footage of people being tortured, but that notable philosopher Brian O'Blivion is somehow in on it. Renn chases continues to chase the rabbit down the hole and as he gets deeper and deeper into the tangled web that Videodrome has weaved around his life, the lines between fantasy and reality begin to become faded.

POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT!

So how does "Videodrome" compare to those films that I mentioned earlier? Well, it's really nothing like them and that's neither a good or bad remark. "Videodrome" is a very strange film and even after finishing it today, I was still left flummoxed by the plot and couldn't quite grasp a handle on my own opinion. As I write this, I've yet to do any extra-curricular research on the film and have decided to swing into the review with only the thoughts that are in my head presently. I understood the film, for the most part, but it definitely left me with some questions. There were obviously some undertones in there and Cronenberg was definitely trying to make a statement about how the public (generally Americans, I assumed) take their television a bit too seriously. We're faced with an extremely violent show, a show more violent than any other show and then later on in the film, we're told that the show is actually the cause of brain tumors in anyone who views that show. Now, we're also told that the images that appear on Videodrome are simply hallucinations and that none of it is actually real. Is Videodrome merely a receptacle for the fantasies and illusions that man gets from watching too much television? Let's say a man watches a violent show, then will Videodrome ultimately become the outlet for that man's murderous fantasies? I don't really know and maybe I'm just babbling, trying to get my ideas to this screen. There's definitely an underlying message in there, which I believe to be a bit of a satirizing of the American public and how seriously some of us take out T.V.

In the end, however, I just didn't care too much for the film. It stimulated my brain and for that I am always grateful, but all in all it was a film that just wasn't my cup of tea. The cast was fine, the atmosphere was fine, but ultimately I think Cronenberg was going out of his way to make a bold statement, instead of a bold film. I'll give credit where it's due, however, as the visual effects were startling, James Woods was really good and there was definitely more than a dash of originality. I'll stay positive on the works of Cronenberg and here's hoping that "The Fly" leaves a better taste in my mouth. If you haven't seen "Videodrome", it does still come with a mild recommendation, because I think there is definitely going to be people out there who really like this a lot. Listen to me, I'm acting as if the film opened in theatres today. What I mean is, if you haven't seen it, you might just love it, but me...I didn't.

RATING: 4.5/10 Couldn't even give this one a boost to the average marker in good conscience. I do, however, look forward to "The Fly".

MOVIES WATCHED: 272
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 729

June 28, 2011 10:08pm