David Cronenberg Looks Back, Ahead, Inward, and Outward with These Here ‘Crimes of the Future’

June 1, 2022

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Crimes of the Future (CREDIT: NEON)

Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux, Kristen Stewart, Don McKellar, Scott Speedman

Director: David Cronenberg

Running Time: 107 Minutes

Rating: R for Body Horror at Its Finest

Release Date: June 3, 2022 (Theaters)

Who’s ready to party like it’s 1983 and strap in for some vintage David Cronenberg? Of course, the answer to that question is: Everybody! Alas, though, maybe not. We Cronenberg-heads are in fact a select breed. But there are enough of us that the arrival of Crimes of the Future in 2022 is cause for celebration as we harken back to the director’s 70s/80s bodily manipulation heyday. It even has the same name as one of Cronenberg’s earliest features! Despite that shared moniker, be forewarned that this isn’t a remake. I haven’t seen the previous Crimes, but based on the synopsis, it seems pretty clear that they don’t really have anything to do with each other, beyond the fact that Cronenberg envisions multiple ways to run afoul of the law in the coming dystopias.

The premise is both straightforward, and completely bizarre. Performance artist couple Saul and Caprice (Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux) have a regular live stage show in which they grow and remove new organs in Saul’s body. Meanwhile, a subculture has developed around evolving the human body to be able to eat plastic (with delicious-looking purple candy bars aplenty). Okay, maybe that premise is straightforward only if you’re already a permanent resident of Cronenberg World. But the filmmaking coaxes you into thinking that all this is normal, starting with the opening scene of Saul hanging out at home in a newfangled hammock to recover from all that organ removal. Watch out, though, because here comes Kristen Stewart and Don McKellar on hand as a couple of “National Organ Registry” investigators to indicate that maybe this isn’t the most advisable practice around. But pretty much anyone who’s skeptical ends up getting seduced at some point in a sleekly sexy sort of way.

This is exactly the sort of vision that Cronenberg originally established his reputation on. It’s been a while, though, since he’s made something within this classic vein, even as he’s been steadily working every decade for the last 50-plus years. It’s a joy just to be immersed in something this trippy and transportative, even if the central mystery plot is a little hard to parse.  But I can forgive that thanks to the strength of the world building.

The major, somewhat disturbing, difference this time around compared to Cronenberg’s breakthrough classics is the cinematography. The bumpy film stocks of yore imbued the likes of Rabid and The Brood with a vibe that they’d been illicitly smuggled into cinemas, whereas the digital cleanness of Crimes gives off a sense that we’re home and safe among friends. But we’re not home, unless your last name is Frankenstein. Just as Videodrome cried out “Long live the new flesh,” Crimes of the Future declares “Surgery is the new sex,” and we’re all going to have to deal with that as best as we see fit.

Crimes of the Future (2022) is Recommended If You Like: Classic David Cronenberg (He’s back, baby!)

Grade: 4 out of 5 Organs

Viggo Mortensen Confronts Abusive Parenting in His Directorial Debut ‘Falling’

February 3, 2021

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Falling (CREDIT: Brendan Adam-Zwelling/Quiver Distribution)

Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Lance Henriksen, Sverrir Gudnason, Laura Linney, Terry Chen, Hannah Gross, Gabby Velis

Director: Viggo Mortensen

Running Time: 112 Minutes

Rating: R for Just About Every Ethnic and Gendered Slur You Can Think Of (and Brief Nudity)

Release Date: February 5, 2021 (Theaters and On Demand)

I’m generally not terribly excited to watch movies about emotionally abusive parents, whereas I am generally excited to watch the directorial debuts of actors whose work I consistently enjoy. So I find myself internally conflicted at the prospect of Falling, in which Viggo Mortensen directs himself as John Peterson, a family man attempting to deal with his profoundly irascible father Willis (Lance Henriksen). Surprisingly enough, while watching I didn’t find myself entirely anxiety-ridden by all the familial strife on display. Perhaps my mood just happened to be in enough of a state of equilibrium to handle it, and quite possibly I wouldn’t have reacted as keenly on a more stressful day. Or maybe it had something to do with the variety of ways (frustration, gritted teeth, amusement, insults, etc.) that Willis’ kids and grandkids employ to respond to his provocations and declining mental health.

If there is one major takeaway above all others to Falling, it is the Power of Patience. John appears to be genuinely happy that his dad is spending the weekend at his house with his husband Eric (Terry Chen) and daughter Monica (Gabby Velis), but we know that his feelings can’t possibly be all (or even mostly) positive, as childhood flashbacks present a father-son relationship in which Willis browbeats his son over every single major or minor decision that he makes. And yet for all the decades of turmoil he’s endured, John is still conscientious enough to honor his own internal sense of familial loyalty. I wouldn’t judge him if he were to instead decide that the healthiest choice would be to cut his father off, but I’m glad that he tries to keep the peace with him long enough so that we have a family dinner scene in which John’s sister (Laura Linney) and her kids show up so that everyone can have a chance to declare what they really think about Grandpa.

The final act of Falling is a little more slow going, as it departs from John’s place on the West Coast back to Willis’ farm in Upstate New York. John is helping to put the property on the market, but Willis is deeply connected to his horses and intent on spending more time with them. At least that’s what I think is going on. Frankly, the story becomes significantly less dynamic when John and Willis are away from the rest of the extended Peterson clan, and I must admit that my sense of connection to what I was watching started to drift during the farm scenes. But overall, this is still a fairly compelling piece about how intergenerational trauma has a long tail but also about how it can be digested and rejected for a different approach.

Falling is Recommended If You Like: Angsty family dinner scenes, White horses

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Pathological Insults

This Is a Movie Review: In ‘Green Book,’ Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali Forge Friendship Amidst Ignorance and Segregation

November 15, 2018

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CREDIT: Patti Perret/Universal Studios

This review was originally published on News Cult in November 2018.

Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, Linda Cardellini

Director: Peter Farrelly

Running Time: 130 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Racist Encounters, But Not So Intense That They Require an R Rating

Release Date: November 16, 2018 (Limited)/Expands Nationwide November 21, 2018

Is there any real living person with an appetite like that of Frank Vallelonga, aka “Tony Lip”? This is a character who has taken to heart the advice to always do everything 100%, which when it comes to food, means to devour whatever he’s eating like it’s his last meal. Tony Lip was a real person who worked at the Copacabana in his early days and went on to be an actor in the likes of Goodfellas, Donnie Brasco, and The Sopranos. When we meet a fictionalized version of Tony in the 1960s in Peter Farrelly’s Green Book, he’s eating 26 hot dogs in one sitting to win a $50 bet and getting ready to be the personal driver to a black jazz musician who is going on a tour that will take him through the Deep South. I don’t know if the real Tony ate everything in sight the way that Viggo Mortensen-as-Tony does, but if this characteristic were not based at least somewhat in reality, it would be plainly outrageous. But for as over-the-top as Mortensen plays Tony, I can recognize something familiar in his joie de vivre, as I, for one, am pretty shameless. But even for me, folding an entire pizza pie in half to eat the whole thing at once is a bridge too far. (Although now that I think about it, I might do that if someone dared me.)

Much more universally relatable, despite being a much more idiosyncratic character, is Tony’s passenger, Doctor Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali). He is stuck between so many worlds, uncertain of where he really fits in, but he does his best to project a true version of himself. In other words, he is like all of us. A classically trained pianist who would much rather be playing Bach and Beethoven, he accepts that he must rely on jazz to find himself an audience. But he is hardly a part of the mainstream, as he is barely aware of the work of contemporary black pop musicians like Little Richard, Sam Cooke, and Aretha Franklin. Having been born in Jamaica and spent a good portion of his childhood training in Russia, he can barely relate to his fellow black Americans. And as much as he shares cultural tastes with his high society white audiences, they do not exactly consider him a peer, considering that institutionalized segregation means that he cannot eat alongside them even when he is their guest of honor. On top of all that, he is estranged from his family, leaving him precious little in the way of emotional stability.

The story of Green Book is how these two men find something fulfilling in each other over the course of miles on the road. But as heartwarming as it is, theirs is only one small tale in the face of the massive hatred that they lived through and that continues to exist today. Farrelly and his actors do not ignore this context (this context being “life on Earth”). That means that Tony and Don must contend with institutionalized racism and racist thoughtlessness and general thoughtlessness on their way to genuine friendship. Will telling their story make a difference in this misbegotten world? Who’s to say, but what is more certain is that it resonates in the moment, and honest companionship and open-heartedness is valuable wherever you can find it.

Green Book is Recommended If You Like: The friendships of Men in Black, Shrek, Lethal Weapon, etc.

Grade: 4 out of 5 KFC Buckets