Rating: 
Summary: Sick? Twisted? Perverse?
Review: I have to admit, I'm no fan of Cronenberg, and this movie hasn't improved my opinion of him. I think if you are a fan of his work, this movie may well be right up your street. For me it was a strange movie, some people have commented that it was too slow, and I was itching to press the fast forward button but resisted to give the movie a chance. It is bizarre, sick, twisted and quite the most perverse 'mainstream' movie I have seen. I can't say that there was a great deal more plot than an above average porn movie, lots of seemingly gratuitous shots of female anatomy both scarred and unscarred. Mediocre sound I thought, good picture quality, an interesting curiosity. I don't believe anyone should expect to be 'entertained' by this movie. I won't be keeping this movie.
Rating: 
Summary: not hard to see why it was banned in some theatres!
Review: this movie didn't physically disturb me as it did some peoplebecause i've seen sex on the big screen for ages, but i did find themovie lacking. what was lacking you ask? how about a real reason for all the sex and car crashes. i understand that people have fetishes but how many men are going to run their wives off the highway and then go down and have sex with her in the open where everyone can see? though i have to say, the acting was believable... i totally believed that James Spader was a sexually repressed man trying anything to get his rocks off after a terribly car accident! the only reason i gave this movie a 2 star rating instead of a 1 is because Holly Hunter was in it and i watched this shortly after seeing her give a dynamic performance in Copycat. but even her performance left me wanting to know what her character's angle is suppose to be... and i have to wonder if Holly Hunter even knew what the angle on her character was suppose to be. if you are a Holly Hunter fan, this is not her at her best.
Rating: 
Summary: Ride on the Wild Side
Review: This film is not for everyone, but it is an excellent adaptation of the controversial novel and is one of Cronenberg's best! If you are a fan of Cronenberg's work as I am, this is a must have. Spader and Hunter fans beware ---- this film is a real departure for both. The actors in this film, like its director, have guts to have tackled this one.
Rating:
Summary: Crash Landing
Review: In Crash, director David Cronenberg's idea of foreplay includes vicious car wrecks a la Jayne Mansfield. If this kind of highway carnage doesn't get your motor revving, don't worry: there are plenty of others in the cerebral filmmaker's latest descent into the maelstrom. There's something undeniably alluring about the automobile: the chrome, the sheen, the rich Corinthian leather. All Crash is missing is Ricardo Montalban. Actually, there's something a wee bit Freudian in the movie's come-on; but for all of its psychobabble and metaphor, its still about a bunch of sexed-up blank slates doing the nasty in the front seat, the back seat; in a car wash, in a parking garage; guy on girl, guy on guy, girl on girl. It's hard to like Crash. More dry dissertation than moving movie experience, it makes you numb. Maybe that's the point.
Rating: 
Summary: An anti-erotic exploration of the hollowness of modern life
Review: Crash is a very sexually explicit film, but if you buy or rent this movie expecting it to be an evening's erotic entertainment, you are going to be disappointed, because it is also an anti-erotic film. Even in the midst of frenzied lovemaking, the characters remain distant, their voices quiet and abstracted, their gazes directed inward. These are people who have been told all their lives by their culture, by TV and movies, that sex is, on the one hand, the most perfect form of communion and connection with another human being; and, on the other hand, that it is the ultimate in transcendent and transformative experiences. Instead, they discover to their horror that even during sex they still feel nothing. They crave connection, they are starved for a glimpse of transcendence, but no matter what they do, no matter who they do it with or how often, while their bodies may feel passion, their minds and hearts remain cold and empty. In the more recent movie Pleasantville, the Jennifer/Mary Sue character is unable to feel anything either, and remains stubbornly black and white no matter how much sex she has, until her brother suggests that "maybe it isn't the sex" that is the key to moving from black and white to color, from passionlessness to feeling. Unfortunately, in Crash, there is no one to suggest to David and Catherine Ballard that maybe it isn't through sex that they will find the transformation and connection they are craving. So they instead seek more and more extreme forms of sexual stimulation, only to be disappointed again and again. James is hurt in a car crash, and during his stay in the hospital he meets Helen (who was in the other car) and later Vaughan, a man who like James and Catherine is in desperate search of feeling, only he looks for it in the violence of car crashes. With Helen, at first James, then Catherine too is drawn into Vaughan's world, where sex and death (eros and thanatos for you Freudians) meet in the twisted metal of wrecked cars and the mutilated bodies of the victims of fatal car crashes and the survivors of near-fatal ones. They attend staged recreations of famous car crashes, like the one that killed James Dean. They have sex in crashed cars, and start touring crash sites on the freeway as a form of foreplay. They begin to watch films of crash tests and fatal race accidents like other people would watch erotic films, and to have sex with people whose bodies have been mutilated by car crashes. But not even the horror of mutilation or the adrenaline rush of near-death experience can lend James and Catherine's desperate coupling the depth of feeling that they so desperately crave. Like all the people who buy expensive automobiles to give them a feeling of power and independence, only to discover that no matter how snazzy their car is, they still feel powerless and unhappy, James and Catherine have bought into one of our culture's Big Lies, that sex is the answer. This film shows us that it is not.
Rating: 
Summary: Despicable, Disgusting and Disturbing
Review: I rented this movie because it had an all-star cast of actors that I had enjoyed seeing in other movies. In particular, I had just seen 'Broadcast News' again with Holly Hunter, and was anxious to see her performance here. But this movie is completely twisted--sick beyond belief. I am shocked that these stars would have ever agreed to be in the flick. What a 'downer' for their respective careers. If I was a Movie Cop, I would have all these people arrested and thrown in jail for putting out such indiscribable trash! Do yourself a favor, and don't waste your time on this one.
Rating:
Summary: Daring, sensual and disturbingly realistic.
Review: I've read the other reviews posted here and I must say that they didn't surprised me at all. Crash is clearly one of those movies that either you love or hate, though I must say that indeed this is a movie that breaks every barriers of regular filmmaking and that it's a bit shocking for some people (even in the 90's). For me, Crash is one of the best movies ever made in cinematic history, standing aside with Cronenberg's best creations like The Fly, Videodrome or Dead Ringers. Made with a very distinctive style, Crash is almost perfect: great performances by the actors, an alucinating cinematography, a perfect score by Howard Shore and, of course, a 5 star directing by Cronenberg. The creepiest aspect of this movie is clearly the realistic approach to a society that is only looking for some frantic moments of true pleasure, no matter what it costs, turning people into cold machines without feelings (just like the automobiles). And that is our world, a world ruled by pleasure, sex and the fear of death. And if we accomplish to overpass our instinctive fear of death, we can finally say that we lived and reached the final level of pleasure in living. In one sentence we can define this movie: Crash is disturbingly real.
Rating:
Summary: Astonishing entry into cinema future
Review: Look at Crash as a beautiful film but also as a set of instructions: cinema could go here, Crash is an opening, a blueprint, a direction for the future to take. Are you coming along for the ride?
Rating:
Summary: A DARING AND EDGY MASTERPIECE!!
Review: By turns funny, sad, horrifying, repellent and just plain weird, Cronenburg's Crash is one of the most original and daring films ever made. Cronenberg has created a very disturbing and sad look at people who are so emotionally cold and out of touch with each other that they need the stimulus of automobile accidents to feel anything. Crash is, I believe, the story of people who are in love with thier own deaths. The final image of this film is extremely unstettling. Cronenberg is one of the most underrated geniuses working in the film industry today and Crash is one of his very best. IT'S NOT FOR ALL TASTES! You either love it or hate it. You've been forwarned.
Rating:
Summary: .
Review: It *isn't* a very good movie, no argument there. A few interesting ideas stewed together with some pretty explicit and sometimes weird sex, pretty much sums it up. Not much else is here: story, believable, developed characters, a sensible premise, etc. But it's interesting as a curiousity... something to see if you think it sounds at all interesting. And hey-ho, that James Spader is still rockin' strong!
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