Crash

Rating:
Summary: Some stories don't adapt well to film
Review: I am not turned off by the premise of this film. Nor am I turned off by the vividly grotesque immagery of the film. Its just that it doesn't work like it should. Like its supposed to. Rather than revealing this world of kinky sex to us in a cohearant manner, we are forced to watch strange immages of celebrities doing bizzare things to eachother with very little explination of what is going on inside them, in their lives, that has driven them to these extremes. The story itself (taken from the novel of the same name) is intrugueing to say the least but we are only given video clips pieced together to try and shock us. In this area the film succeeds. Certainly the vast majority of viewers are going to be shocked. However shock is only an accomplishment when it is balanced by reason. After watching the film several times it is apparent that deep within the film somewhere there is some kind of motive given to these characters, but a film like this is rarely going to be viewed more than once.
As a Cronenberg fan I must say visually the film is stunning, and the actors, while not neccicarily at their best, certainly put it all on the line to make this film happen. The standout is Elias Koteas who puts in the performance of his career as the insane car crash reinactment driver.
I reccomend this film to anyone with an open mind, strong stomach, and a sense of sexual curiosity.

Rating:
Summary: This May Be Art, But It's Bad Art
Review: This movie is just bad. Rarely have I watched a movie and just wanted it to be over. I can appreciate its artistic merit, but this movie had no point. Why somebody actually bankrolled this movie, I'll never know. There was plenty of sex, but the most boring sex scenes imaginable. Maybe it's just not my cup of tea, but I would only recommend this if you want to see just how bad and a waste of time a movie can be.

Rating:
Summary: Not my kind of movie, but a triumph none the less.
Review: I'll start off by saying that those who are offended easily will probably not enjoy this movie. I'll warn you now that there is some VERY graphic material here (after all, it did get an NC17 rating). There's one scene in particular (if you've seen the film, you know exactly which one I'm talking about) that is perhaps the most shocking act that's ever been captured by a camera. I'm not one to be stunned easily by a movie, but even my jaw dropped during that scene. If there's one thing I can say about "Crash", it's that this is one very extreme movie.

The film itself is mostly focused on, you guessed it, car crashes. The cover of the movie tells you right up front it's about "sex and car crashes". The film examines the strange connection between the two by following a group of people who all share this unique fetish. James Spader and Holly Hunter play an estranged married couple dealing with sexual frustration who find a release of repression through car crashes. They eventual meet other people who share their interest and join their little band of car crash fanatics. These people all gather together to watch videos of car crashes and on occasion, even recreate more famous ones.

While we're on the topic of the characters, I'll say that other than their obsession with car crashes, these are perhaps the most boring individuals ever conceived by human thought. Never in my life have I come across someone even half as boring as Spader or Hunter's character. They, much like their fellow crash obsessers, seem to have no personality what so ever. The only interaction any of these people have with eachother, or anoyone for that matter, is through their devotion to car crashes. The only thing they're capable of sharing with someone else is a common obsession. The dialog in this movie is practically none existant. But to the credit of the actors, they do manage to show that the characters have a strange understanding of eachother, which is especially impressive being that the absence of dialog combined with the general weirdness of these people makes it next to impossible for the audience to connect with them. This is why I personally didn't like this movie much. I like being able to understand the people, and that's something that I had a lot of trouble doing here, but even though I didn't care much for the film, I still enjoyed it just for it's originality and appreciate the amount of work that must've gone into it. Considering the extraordinarily difficult task the actors are given, they all do a pretty good job. Having to make such outlandish characters understandable to an audience of realtively normal people was probably not an easy thing to do, and taking that into consideration, I think that all the actors deserve credit for at least attempting such a difficult task.

The leader of the car crash fan club, Vaughan, seems to be the most normal but also strangest of all the characters. I can't really explain why I feel this way, but I just found him easier to understand than the others. I think he was just a generally simpler person. He seemed to be more self aware than the other characters. He knew what he wanted more than the others did. He also had the most dialogue out of all the characters (at least it seemed that way). I suppose this also helped in making him easier to connect with.

The direction here from Cronenberg is also something not to be missed. He captures the obsession of his characters very effectively. He does a remarkable job at taking the viewer and plunging them into this sort of underworld. He really takes you right into the heart of this little society. He portrays the characters fairly well and from what I understand, he stays true to the book (I've not actually read it myself though, so don't take my word for it if you've heard otherwise).

All in all, this film really is a triumph. Solid acting and directing, and a very, very different kind of story. This is the type of film that you don't get a chance to see too often. Movies like this only come along every few years. Don't miss this one.

Rating:
Summary: If it were possible, it would have negative stars
Review: I have seen a whole lot of movies. I have seen a whole lot of intellectual movies, read a whole lot of intellectual books, done a whole lot of studies, and I consider myself to have, at the very least, reasonably good taste. Having said that, this is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Worse than "Starship Troopers" (allegorical-shmalligorical: the acting was miserable), worse than "Interview with the Vampire" (Anne Rice: please write only books), worse than "Morvern Callar" and worse than "The Majestic." I'm sure that the book is wonderful--it may well be. But this is an awful film. It treads the line between pornography and drama, and takes the worst aspects from each. From pornography, there's actors who don't understand dialogue and sex for NO reason, and there's the pretentious aspect of the worst dramas. Not a good combination. And, if there's going to be copious sex, I would hope that the man involved would have both his nipples instead of bad scar makeup, that the woman didn't look so much like a man, and that she would know how to use pronouns ... You would be better off with anything but this.

Rating:
Summary: the Spiral Downward
Review: As another reveiwer mentioned, the movie seemed to be about an attraction to death, more than about sex (although there is a sex scene between every combination of characters every five minutes or so) I watched the movie, thinking as I watched -- that I didn't like it much -- primarily because I couldn't FEEL much of anything from the characters. Stylized, empty, emotionally void -- and lured like moths to flame -- but I didn't Feel the compulsion. Maybe this is because every film is not for everybody ... and this spiral downward only left me feeling depressed and void as well. Thinking about the film afterwards, and it is the kind of film to keep coming back to you -- I thought that its value is truly in that it caused me to keep thinking about its meaning, and the haunting emptiness. I usually like a film for its emotional connection, however the people in this film seemed emotionally disconnected. One brief moment -- when James Ballard asks Holly Hunter's character -- "Are you upset?" She says "No." in that one question there was a glimmer of human interaction. What killed the human in these people? The acting was excellent. Ask yourself why you watch films in order to determine whether you want to see this one. If it is to think things over afterwards...or if it is also only for the vicarious thrill of seeing unusual acts...then you might like Crash. If it is for hope or seeing human connections -- and the satisfaction of seeing characters Learn something -- have an epiphany -- then Crash is not the film for you. These people are lost and they know it, and one more crash is never enough.

Rating:
Summary: STRANGE MOVIE
Review: Let's see - we'll this movie is very weird, sick and twisted.The story and plot was bizarre and i wouldnt recomend this film to you cause it wasnt that good.The only thing good about this movie that saved it was the actors. James Spader and Holly Hunter were good. James Spader was especially convincing in his character.Like it says on the front cover- all it is is (( sex and car crashes).oh yea and also the ( eroticism of cars) whatever that is suppoused to mean. Everyone who has seen this movie that i know or whom i have shown it to and watched it with was like ( this is the freakiest movie)- not cause its especially disturbing but because the concept is so strange and out there. Though i have to warn you there are some disturbing parts. I give it 3 stars for the concept even though i dont like it certainly was brave of them to make a movie about somthin so crazy as this and the acting was ok but i would not recomend this. It's more like 2 and half stars-3.

Rating:
Summary: Well I don't know what to think about this film
Review: On one hand I feel repelled by this film and it's sick nature but then it's a film that reels me in no matter what. It must have done something considering I've bought the soundtrack and the book after I watched this film. So there must be some attraction to it but I just don't know how I can get sucked into this. No matter though it's definitely Cronenberg territory. The actors have an air of dehumanization about them. They feel quite numb which is how Ballard portrayed them in the novel so in that sense it's a success. Really the film is just sketches of the novel but you still get that same feeling from the film as you do in the novel. The soundtrack is creepy no matter what way you look at it and well....it's just a hard film to say you love

Incidentally Vaughan ( Elias Koteas ) is the major star in this. His bizarre fetish is what draws these people together. His mystical allure is what draws these people in and perhaps draws some of the audience in without them fully realizing it. No doubt Vaughan is a psycho but the characters are drawn nonetheless. However it is fun hearing him inform his crowd one time when he reinacts the James Dean crash ( " Don't worry that guy's gotta see us " ) and how he finds out Seagrave had caused a big car pile up on the roads ( " You done the Jayne Mansfield crash without me...and the dog....the dog is beautiful " )

However there is one thing I'm glad Cronenberg didn't go too much into how Ballard first met his wife. If you read the book you're getting too much information when you read that

Note to all: Buy this film and your friends will think you are some psychotic who likes messed up porn. I thought I'd just like to remind you of that because I now unfortunately have that burden to live with

Rating:
Summary: comparing this movie....
Review: I find that what the editorial wrote about the review of this story sounds like sex n car crash to me accept that this movie "sex n car crash" contains multiple sex scene. The movie will somehow affects a person psycologically or at least/most have some brain washing effects which I think is the reason why the movie was no longer available locally

Rating:
Summary: car mold
Review: Although a febrile adolescence hovers bleakly near to Cronenberg's intellectual strivings, his amoral visions (here asexual and attached to heated metal), often intense, often dull, go by like the blue whine of traffic.

Rating:
Summary: Bang-- Zoom
Review: The characters in the film are a lot like many of the characters in Ballard's novels; in Freudian terms they're half superego and half id, with no ego to mediate between them. This explains the fact that they talk like college professors and gravitate toward violence; it also explains the fact that the only characters who have any personality to speak of are the crazy ones. In Ballard's world a warped personality is better than none at all, possibly an interpretation of the Christian belief that great sinners at least have the wherewithal to become great saints if they can do a 180 and send their energy in the other direction. But Ballard's characters have their energy safely tucked away in strange hiding places...

I think CRASH is more of a Cronenberg film than a Ballard film, but I think the two work very well together because they share similar interests:

One of Ballard's pressing concerns is the adaptation (or lack of same) of human beiings to non-human environments-- not just on the physical level, but also on the psychological level. What does the human brain come up with when it's fed, not just sensory data , but technological data (Einstein's EEG, photos from the Hubble Space Telescope, car-crash films in slow motion)? How does it assimilate and interpret information that it could never have acquired through the senses, and what are the human consequences? There once was a time when people used to fantasize about each other; now they fantasize about man-made objects.

One of Cronenberg's pressing concerns is transformation-- how much can a human being change before he becomes non-human? Since the one undeniable transformation we all face on the physical level is death, many of Cronenberg's films concern people who are on the threshold of it one way or another. In "Crash", Ballard, Remington, Vaughan and their cohorts are people who have survived at least one brush with death and keep coming back to it like moths to a flame. They justify it by interpreting their experiences as steps in the direction of some sort of superhuman transformation, but they still end up dead or injured.

In any case, both Ballard and Cronenberg deal with the idea of people changing into something they're not; both are ambiguous about whether or not this is a good thing, but the fact that they depict these events in a creepy, horrific fashion ought to be a good tip-off.

Cronenberg tries to convey Ballard's approach of ironic, semi-humorous detachment through the use of cold colors, dispassionate acting, and low-key music, but I think he could have done it equally well by filming it in a late-'60s/early-'70s style. I don't know that a cool postmodern, high-tech style is appropriate here, since so many of Ballard's characters live in a state of overstimulation (or hypersensitivity). Apart from that, the adaptation is very good; Howard Shore's score is superb as usual, the cast does a great job conveying Ballard's characters in a way that interests us (even if we're not really sure what makes them tick), and the photography is beautiful. And Cronenberg plays a cameo role!

On the scariness level, I would rate this about halfway between "Videodrome" and "Scanners", "Videodrome" being scarier...