Rating: 
Summary: BED ON WHEELS
Review: Canadian author-director David Cronenberg does have one of the most coherent filmographies of today cinematographical landscape. A one and only motto : The Marriage of Flesh and Metal and its derivations. Well, it's not the philosophical subject by essence but David Cronenberg also is not a common director. From his medical past, he has kept a taste for anatomical descriptions and the vast halls of morbid giant hospitals. And all his movies will leave you a lightly bitter something in your throat.Sex and cars, the main subject of CRASH, is one of these multiple derivations of " the flesh and metal " obsession of David Cronenberg. The ultimate desire of the CRASH's characters is to die in a car accident in a last bloody orgasm. What a program ! How hypnotic is also the musical score, signed by Howard Shore, filled with metallic sounds. After a few minutes, you'll be ready to witness the improbable union between men and cars which, after all, is nothing else than the (un-)natural sequel of THE FLY idea. A DVD for your library.
Rating: 
Summary: Painfully, ponderously bad.
Review: The problem I have with this movie is that it is so painfully self-aware. Every scene seems to cry out, "Look! Look how shocking and erotic and artistic this is! Wow! Aren't you shocked! Look - weird sex! How erotic and shocking! See, it's a big comment on modern life! It's art! ". The whole movie is like something out of a "Sprockets" sketch on Saturday Night Live. I'm somewhat surprised it wasn't filmed in black and white, dubbed into French, and shown with subtitles to make it more pretentious. However, like most things that go out of their way to be shocking and artistic, this movie falls flat on its face, failing to either shock or stimulate. Had the movie backed off a bit, it would still be bad, but I might have been able to enjoy a laugh or two at the filmmaker's expense - instead, I found myself rolling my eyes and wishing the movie would just get over itself already.
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Summary: Cronenberg at his peak
Review: David Cronenberg fuses his world with the work of J.G. Ballard and creates one of the most satisfying commentaries of modern life ever made! Previous reviewers say that the sex is "boring" but seem to miss that THIS IS THE WHOLE POINT OF THE FILM! Sex in our society has so many layers (S&M, voyeurism, cybersex, etc., etc.) that "normal" sex (husband and wife) is no longer satisfying. What this film does is develop a fetish that doesn't exist (being turned on by car crashes) to comment on all the sexual fetishes that do exist. When you look at the film in this way, it is downright conventional (husband bored with wife, meets woman, has affair, wife meets doctor, has affair, etc., etc.)! A great film if one watches it with open eyes and a functioning brain.
Rating: 
Summary: By the way
Review: Just wanted to let you know, my original review was edited. Don't hold this one against me. Also, I agree, if you get the chance, by all means see Dead Ringers and Videodrome. It's weird but cool stuff. You can expect that from Cronenberg.
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Summary: Read the Review Before you buy.
Review: You really ought to read the non-cusomer reviews before you buy this, if you still want it you deserve what you get. It is sick and wrong. You will only enjoy this film if you have some really sick fetishes.
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Summary: A rare portrayal of the author's real idea, a great film.
Review: David Cronenberg is good at what he does. In this case, wehave a film so solemn and intoxicating, it's hardly a cult classic ora guilty pleasure: It's like a case study from Sigmund Freud. Note that as graphic as "Crash" might be, it is hardly a pornographic film, in fact improves the image of sex. It's characterized here as truthfully as chemical dependency is depicted in "The Basketball Diaries". It's a sophisticated film to say the least. A mature film, for mature people. And I don't mean people who are seventeen and older - I was fourteen when first I saw this film - I mean people who are willing to see everyhting in relationship to serious human behavior. END
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Summary: Perfectly stated...Agree w/ Glaurung from Toronto...
Review: ...you have to also check out Cronenberg's "Dead Ringers" and Almodovar's "(El) Matador". Hold on to your seats for these two.
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Summary: this movie IS for everyone
Review: Often people say that a movie or a book is "not for everyone." I disagree. That is a statement that is in effect saying that this is a work of art that either is too difficult to comprehend, ot it may make you uncomfortable. Either way, it is an insulting thing to say. "Crash" is a rough movie. It made me unconfortable. A lot of movies try to do that and fail. Is it so impotant for me to be uncomfortable? Yes. I am too complacent in my thinking. "Crash" shook that up for awhile. Good. A lot of people do not care for this film, and others may have liked it more if it had some obvious comedy ala "Pulp Fiction", but I think it may be the funniest movie I have seen in some time. Funny in the sense that laughter is a natural reaction to horror. You may not like this movie. That is fine, but I bet it will effect you in some way, which is a hell of a lot more than I can say for most movies being made today.
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Summary: A cool, detached, alienating film--not for everyone.
Review: What a brave, exciting, difficult, maddening, stimulating movie 'Crash' is. For a little while I became obsessed with this film (and its attendant novel)--not with its subject matter, but with is style. Canadian auteur David Cronenberg has perfectly captured author J.G. Ballard's prose style; no mean feat. Cronenberg tells the story here with the camera, and you have to pay attention to that rather than the dialogue or characterization. Pay close attention to the sex scenes--how the characters are positioned, who they are having sex with, how the camera is depicting it, what happens before and after the scene. Really--once I did that, the movie cracked right open. The story *is* the sex. It is distant, it is alien, it seemingly has no referent to real life whatsoever. But like Spader's character says, "It's all so satisfing... I'm not sure I understand why." You *can* understand why, if you watch closely. I think one of the keys to understanding this film is something the author J.G. Ballard said: that the characters here (in the book and the film) have a "future psychology," transferred back in time to the present. In other words it's not the society or technology that is "science fiction," but the characters' minds, their obsessions and fetishes, their perversities, their desires, and the outcomes of such motivations. Perhaps the crux of this film occurs when the characters chance upon a major road accident while driving home late one night. While some critics have complained this scene lacks realism, I offer that the scene is *surrealism*: more real than real. When one character tries, in vain, to touch the overturned wreck of a car, I could feel his ache, his yearning, his hunger. We are not seeing reality, we are seeing the psychopathologies of various characters played out on-screen. Imagine them as exotic, dangerous marine life in a fish tank; we are, of course, only the observers. The acting is superb, reduced to the bare minimum. The score is wonderfully macabre and melancholic; Howard Shore has scored most of Cronenberg's films, and is a genius himself. The bruised colors of the cinematography and the cool, detached style add up to Cronenberg's most realized film, hinted at in 'Dead Ringers' and 'Naked Lunch' but here reaching their apotheosis. David Cronenberg could have exploited the novel but instead has made a movie about ideas. Heresy! 'Crash,' (novel & film) ask disturbing questions: How have our sexualities been deformed in the modernized world? How have we adapted our erotic selves to this passionless landscape of automobiles on endless freeways (that resemble blood cells moving through the bloodstream as shown in the film) and anonymous high rises? What happens when the most transcendent of human activities becomes mediated by technology? What happens when wounds become new sexual orifices? While many people *hate* this movie, I find it truly liberating--like the way the characters see car crashes. I especially like the climax (no pun intended... well, perhaps), where a traumatic experience proves to be a positive one. I'll not spoil it for you. Make up your own mind. This is truly an "independent" film because you will find nothing else like it; it is fiercely cerebral at the same time it seems to be about nothing more than the flesh. Yet as one of Cronenberg's other bizarre masterpieces has it, "Long live the new flesh."
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Summary: Stop or my Mom will Shoot was better than this...
Review: This movie isn't bad because of the explicit sex scenes, it's bad because it thinks it is good...when in reality it is dull, pretentious and ridiculous...it's laugh out loud dumb... It is officially the worst movie I have ever seen...and the only reason I am writing this review, is to dispell all rumors that this is a "Chilling take on the hollowness of the modern world"... it's not... it's not chlling it doesn't have a take on anything except bad sex (funniest scene: Holly hUnter has just seen her husband fly out her windshield and die, and she sees across the way that the guy who hit her car (killing her husband) is cute...so she proceeds to take off her seatbelt and rip her shirt off...casually massaging herself...) anyways...if that sounds interesting to you...go for it...but it is not intellectual or interesting... it just tried to gather attention with it's NC17 rating... like i said, I saw this years ago...and it is still the WORST movie of all time....
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