Screening Log

This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.

March 2006 activity

Total Log Entries: 87

Total Comments: 44

Full Archive

Advertisements

A History Of Violence / USA / 2005

I’m a lifetime Cronenberg devotee, and I find this film utterly perplexing. I see very little inherent in the material that would be out of place in one hundred other DTV crime capers, albeit executed with that edge of crisp flair we’ve come to associate with the man’s work. There are scenes here that just confound me- the apple- cheeked brat with ‘monsters in the closet’, the sub- Dawson’s Creek high school sequences, the entire last act- if these are meant to be ironic, they display a cold contempt for the characters (and genre cinema in general) previously absent in Cronenberg’s work. If not, it’s just unprecedentedly bad writing. I don’t know which is more worrying.

by Tom Huddleston | Source: DVD
15 Mar 2006 8:36 AM | Comments (5)

Comments / 5 total / Submit Comment

  1. leo / 15 March 2006 / 6:28 AM / URL

    You and Ian are really having fun with this one. For my part, and as I’ve said before, I don’t think this film is so much a treatise on violence as a character study — and a 90-minute one at that. The strength of the film to me is Cronenberg and Mortensen’s construction of a double-consciousness, a fascinating variation on the Out of the Past scenario that is all the more intriguing for Mortensen’s deadpan reading. This is the type of thing from which Lynch wrings operas, but Cronenberg is satisfied with something oddly more naturalistic (if one can say that of a Cronenberg film) that has more to do with the film’s romance than with the metaphysical. The concern for family here is the core, and to this end, the now-famed 69 scene is both hot as blazes and bloody clever, being both an expression of love and of their mutual duplicity. This is quite similar to the denouement of Eyes Wide Shut, though it is far more encouraging.

  2. leo / 15 March 2006 / 8:13 AM / URL

    And lest I forget, happy 63rd birthday, Mr. Cronenberg.

  3. tom / 15 March 2006 / 9:37 AM / URL

    I’m sorry, Leo, but I just don’t see it. Cronenberg can be a master of natural character creation- look at The Dead Zone, Dead Ringers or especially The Fly- there’s none of that here, every frame feels fake, every character a cliche- the tow headed moppet, the brooding adolescent, the grimacing disfigured mobster. We’ve seen all this before, and better. Perhaps Cronenberg is playing with the form, but why would I want to see that, when I could spend my time on a film with genuine suspense, real characters, not sneering empty caricatures?

    And even now… I’m just not sure if we haven’t all been duped, that this isn’t just a weak thriller given unusual critical study solely because of the name above the title. I’m sorry to keep on, but I feel like the guy at the party who doesn’t get the joke… I guess that means it’s probably on me.

  4. leo / 15 March 2006 / 10:41 AM / URL

    As far as being duped by a weak thriller goes, I simply don’t see that. The elements of the thriller here strike me as very suspenseful, and while I think there is much (deliberate) caricature and knowing genre-play, I think the husband/wife protagonists are rendered earnestly.

    I have had similar problems with recent films of Eastwood and Scorsese, and I wonder if the problem is an overemphasis on auteurism. I have relatively little investment in Cronenberg as a director — I’ve seen a number of his films and liked many but am by no means an enthusiast — but I enjoy this film, while recognizing it as something fairly uncharacteristic of its director. You may be trying too hard to seek out the Cronenberg here, just as I try too hard to seek out the Eastwood in Million Dollar Baby or the Scorsese in the last half-dozen films he’s made. Then again, maybe Gangs of New York is just a bad movie.

  5. tom / 15 March 2006 / 11:48 AM / URL

    Gangs Of New York is definitely a bad movie. But not as bad as Casino. Or A History Of Violence, come to think of it. Hell, at least it was fun.

    And I think you’re right in your assessment about auteurism, I just have issues with caricature and ‘genre play’, however knowing. I go to a film, especially a Cronenberg film, to be wowed, not playfully nudged and winked at for 90 minutes.

Submit Comment

Please note that your email address will never be displayed on this page.

HTML is enabled; line breaks (<br />) and paragraphs (<p>) are automatically converted. Apostrophes, ellipses, em- and en-dashes, and quotes are also automatically formatted.

Recent Updates