A tour into the heart of a Hollywood family chasing celebrity, one another and the relentless ghosts of their pasts.
What are we left with by the satire’s end? Nothing but a few good jokes.
The Canadian horror maestro scrapes away the surface of Hollywood to discover a magnificently Cronenbergian outbreak of tortured families, reprehensible behaviour and extreme violence.
David Cronenberg’s underwhelming, and eventually exasperating Hollywood satire.
The dialogue bites and scratches and there is the sting of something like the truth in certain situations, but as the clunky plot laboriously joins the dots towards a melodramatic finale it all feels desperately obvious and not a little silly.
Luridly enjoyable.
A script written in venom, Cronenberg on bullish form and a cast on full power; this is one of the best Hollywood take-downs ever mounted.
This ethereal Greek tragedy is the West Coast cousin of Cosmopolis.
Julianne Moore makes the most impression as a self-obsessed actress whose mother was a much more famous actress but the character’s tiresomely one-note (two if you include the noises she produces when on the toilet). Re-watch Robert Altman’s The Player instead.
It is a brilliant Jacobean nightmare; the kind of thing John Webster might write if he was living in the 21st century.
A towering performance by Julianne Moore drives the Canadian director’s study of the terrors of Tinseltown.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
Glasgow Film Theatre, Glasgow from Friday October 17, 2014, until Thursday October 23, 2014. More info: http://www.glasgowfilm.org/theatre/
RSS feed of Cinema reviews