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-   -   Your Top 5 Favourite David Cronenberg Films (http://www.sonicyouth.com/gossip/showthread.php?t=30093)

Derek 04.06.2009 02:58 PM

Your Top 5 Favourite David Cronenberg Films
 
Hey, let's jump more on the bandwagon.

1. Videodrome
2. Crash
3. Dead Ringers
4. Naked Lunch
5. The Fly

Dr. Eugene Felikson 04.06.2009 03:04 PM

Damn, every single one of these lists have been so difficult to make.

1. The Fly
2. Videodrome
3. Shivers
4. Naked Lunch
5. Crash

demonrail666 04.06.2009 03:05 PM

1. Shivers
2. Rabid
3. Videodrome
4. The Brood
5. The Dead Zone

noisereductions 04.06.2009 03:05 PM

1. Videodrome
2. Rabid
3. The Fly
4. Shivers
5. Dead Ringers

Derek 04.06.2009 03:15 PM

demonrail your list is strange... but I like it.

Rabid is my least favourite Cronenberg movie though.

demonrail666 04.06.2009 03:21 PM

I tend not to like Cronenberg after Videodrome. I put Crash in more because I think it's the best of his worst from that period than because I really like it. I'm surprised you find Rabid his worst film. Although I put it just behind Shivers I consider them about equal in their greatness. My view is that Cronenberg is a great ideas man but a bad filmmaker and that after Videodrome he began to think more in terms of his films as art rather than as a vehicle for brilliant concepts. I always think he would've made a better screenwriter than a director. Actually, I've just edited my list to replace Crash with The Dead Zone. I'm putting on my flameproof suit in readiness.

Derek 04.06.2009 03:32 PM

Yeah you do have a point but I still find his later movies to be awfully entertaining and thought-provoking. Rabid doesn't really... entertain me much. I like the atmosphere of it but I just can't enjoy it for some reason. Whereas no matter how alienating his other films can get, I still really enjoy them.

atsonicpark 04.06.2009 10:36 PM

1. Videodrome
2. Dead Zone
3. Dead Ringers
4. Crash
5. Shivers
6. Naked Lunch
7. History of Violence
8. The Brood
9. Scanners
10. The Fly
11. Crimes of the Future
12. Spider
13. From the Drain
14. Eastern Promises
15. Stereo
16. Existenz
17. M. Butterfly
18. Rabid
19. Transfer
20. Fast Company

atsonicpark 04.06.2009 10:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by demonrail666
My view is that Cronenberg is a great ideas man but a bad filmmaker.


I sort of... well, maybe not "agree" but see what you're sying. He's not so much a bad filmmaker as a very.. complacent.. one. There is really no style in his directing. No artfulness. Very mundane and flat. Rarely has any shots that wow me. It serves its purpose, but I can see it not impressing people. Good thing his films are so interesting and the music is always so great!!! I gotta say, though, Cronenberg creates an amazing atmosphere in most of his (extremely Canadian!) films. The Dead Zone, for example, would have likely turned out incredibly cheesy in a lot of people's hands. And okay, there are some cheesy parts in it, but it's also incredibly powerful at times.

Also, yeah, I loved "Rabid" when I saw it years ago but I recently rewatched it with a friend who hadn't seen it and it's not as good as I remember, though it certainly has its charms.

All in all, he's an incredibly consistent director, very complex at times, and he's rarely let me down in any way, even with having made 20 or so movies and shorts.

terminal pharmacy 04.06.2009 11:47 PM

in no particular order:


naked lunch
existenz
scanners
crash
the fly

demonrail666 04.06.2009 11:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by atsonicpark
I sort of... well, maybe not "agree" but see what you're sying. He's not so much a bad filmmaker as a very.. complacent.. one. There is really no style in his directing. No artfulness. Very mundane and flat. Rarely has any shots that wow me. It serves its purpose, but I can see it not impressing people.


I think when he was doing stuff like Shivers or Rabid, his rather blank style worked perfectly. It was later on, when he seemed to be trying to develop into some kind of arthouse director, that he started to really show his limitations. For me, Spider was like listening to Sham 69 trying to play Erik Satie.

atsonicpark 04.07.2009 12:01 AM

Yeah, all around, Spider just seemed like a Clean, Shaven wannabe... still like it though obviously.

demonrail666 04.07.2009 12:15 AM

The one thing I love about his stuff, especially early on, is just how fucking depressing the endings of his films are. The bit at the end of Rabid, where they just stick Marilyn Chambers' body in the rubbish truck, is one of my favourite endings to any film, ever. Seriously cold.

atsonicpark 04.07.2009 12:18 AM

Yeah, definitely. I've noticed also that a lot of his endings, strangely, involve guns. Even when the rest of the film usually has no guns in them.

demonrail666 04.07.2009 12:21 AM

Hmm. I've not noticed that. I know Videodrome ends like that. (Another one of my all-time favourite endings) I'll look out for it in his other stuff.

Lamont Cranston 04.07.2009 12:27 AM

The Fly ends with the Brundleflypod being shot, Naked Lunch ends with Bill Lee shooting his wife again, eXistenZ ends with the couple shooting the game designers.
Others?
So how come you people don't like his stuff since he moved on from making films about the New Flesh?

demonrail666 04.07.2009 12:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lamont Cranston
So how come you people don't like his stuff since he moved on from making films about the New Flesh?


Slugs coming out of plug holes and climbing up Barbara Steele's vagina? Cronenberg's your man. But when he decided he was a French existentialist it all went a bit pear shaped for me.

atsonicpark 04.07.2009 12:36 AM

Dead Zone ends with a shooting, as does History of Violence (though that one has a lot of gunplay/action in it). I know a couple others do as well but my mind is blank at the moment.

demonrail666 04.07.2009 12:39 AM

Dead Zone is such an underrated film I think. Aside from Carrie it might be my favourite Stephen King adaptation.

max 04.07.2009 12:47 AM

no particular order here too (and kudos for this top 5 thing, you're all over my fave directors!):

the dead zone
scanners
videodrome
shivers
naked lunch


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