Spider

COBRARocky2.0

One of the saddest Mr Bean episodes ever made.

Josh Lewis3.0

One of the often unloved and forgotten David Cronenberg passion projects in part I think because Patrick McGrath's adaptation of his own novel about a tormented Freudian schizophrenic subjectively piecing together his own violently traumatic childhood (like say... an intricate web where he attempt to cope with the fact that he may or may not have had an abusive alcoholic father Gabriel Byrne and/or killed his own mother; a very good Madonna-whore complex dusk performance by Miranda Richardson) is a bit dull and literal-minded considering the possibilities of the subject matter, and who's giving him an assist in bringing it to the screen. In less sophisticated hands this is likely little more than a dreary, miserable psychological puzzle box with one of those trendy bleak "twist" endings you can probably pick up on from a mile away. (Lost Highway did it better, sorry!!)Thankfully, as far as these types of mental illness exploitation performances go Ralph Fiennes tortured, sheepish, nearly wordless approach feels like one of the more lived-in and tasteful and Cronenberg having a genuine intellectual interest in illness and psychoanalysis manages to extract a lot of sad, paranoid and gothic mood out the subjective POV of this shattered drifter for Fiennes to emotionally play off of. You get the feeling through all the patient build-up that Cronenberg sympathizes with the idea of a lonely outsider who constructs their own reality in their mind. And his usual collaborators (like cinematographer Peter Suschitzky, editor Ronald Sanders, and composer Howard Shore) make pretty effective use of the dingy, stained, derelict look that is so hauntingly austere in its British kitchen sink nightmare-isms it's like an evil Mike Leigh movie, as well as the rigorously controlled minimalist camera work and fragmented structure that seamlessly blends present, memory and fantasy (sometimes in a single frame) that contributes a lot to the dreamy and repressed/depressed atmosphere.Full discussion on ep 367 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS.

matt lynch2.0

i could admire Cronenberg's formal rigor in immersing an audience in mental illness if it weren't so banally reductive, pessimistic and bleak. certainly the point is that there is no room for change or hope of an inner life for this man that is not a baffling hell of his own mind, constantly recycling a dramatically pat trauma that conveniently catalyzed his insanity. but that's a shitty point.