Crash

Rating:
Summary: explore your world indeed.
Review: well. surely, it's content is somewhat difficult for most to swallow. not for all tastes but certainly for some tastes, this will push the right buttons. cronenberg's interpretation of ballard's sado-futuristic novel exploring sexuality in its most "savage" form is one of the most fascinating things i have ever seen. it moves very slow and it has a dark mood. this toned-down approach to interpreting the novel makes everything that the characters do seem like it's something that can't be expressed in words and something is being hidden. whenever one of the characters (especially vaughan) tries to explain the nature of their obsession, it comes off as somewhat awkward. delving into psychology and human emotion, the movie leaves you wondering just what the hell is it all about? but then again, most of cronenberg's films leave you with the same feeling, next to uneasiness. you'll feel uneasy for days afterward. it's certainly not easy to watch or to understand but who said it was supposed to be? the movie remains true to the novel and cuts few corners but the end result is nothing short of mind-boggling. a very meticulous and involved film. recommended. even if you don't get turned on by the word "bumper." recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Car crash victims, sexual dysfunction and human evolution
Review: This could be David Cronenbergs best film, but it is certainly not mainstream viewing and is slow at times. This is a film adaptation of J.G. Ballards novel of the same title, about a band of car crash victims who play various vehicle related games with each other to satisfy some new sexual urge that they have developed as a result of their motor accidents.

Ballard (James Spader), a film executive, is the victim of a car crash after he has a head-on collision with Remington (Holly Hunter). What follows is a series of auto-erotica (literally) that delves into some of the most indescribable sexual scenes ever committed to celluloid. This film is extremely adult and does border on the pornographic at times, so be warned there is lots simulated sex, naked flesh and body scars.

Things take a turn when the leader of the crew, Vaughan (amazingly haunting performance by Elias Koteas), decides to push the limits of his own sexual misconduct by staging real accidents. Vaughan has a strong connection with Ballard, and it does get strong!, as he attempts to unravel the mystery of man and his evolution with modern technology. Essentially this is what the film is about and is the reason why it still appeals today. Its underlying anecdote is the contact between machinery and man and how it effects our progress as a species.

It is an art film that is both mystical and spiritual in nature, with heavy doses of fetishism. It takes the meaning of car sex to new heights. You will either love it for its inventiveness and originality or you will see it as just an excuse for a porno with big star names.

Rating:
Summary: Meh...
Review: I found this movie to be boring. After watching the "ultra-hip" trailer on the dvd, I was pretty excited to see what all the controversy was about.

I ended up watching the movie with a friend who had "read" the book. When I asked her if the book was following the movie pretty well, she said that she didn't get through it because she was tired of reading graphic descriptions of sex with no actual plot; and that's exactly how the movie is. The trailer and the box perfectly describe the "plot" : sex and car crashes. There may be a connection between the two... I don't know... but there was a lot of nakedness.

Not to say that the movie doesn't have any redeeming points. The music by Howard Shore is pretty sleazy, and with the dark cinemetography, it makes for a very noirish flick. Spader and Hunter do a fine job, but Hunter has a suprisingly small role for someone who is second-billed on the marquee.

So, I'd recommend this movie just to see it. I mean, Cronenberg is highly underrated enough, and even though this isn't his best work, at least he's trying. Plus, when are you gonna see a soft-core with this much production value?

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully disturbing
Review: It seems like you either love this movie or hate it. I found it very disturbing when I saw it during its short theatrical run and couldn't wait for it to come out on home video (laser disc at the time). What disturbed me most wasn't the graphic unusual sex, but the fact that the characters couldn't connect in an intimate way unless automobiles/technology were involved. When I see people on their cell phones and with their instant messaging, it reminds me of the Crash folks. Can they/we even relate face-to-face with each other anymore? (He asks while typing to the unseen masses on a computer... :)..)

It's not just a movie about "kinky" sex, but one that makes me rethink our modern society, while Howard Shore's haunting score plays in my mind.

Experience "Crash". You won't forget it!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent mainstream smut
Review: "Censors tend to do what only psychotics do... they confuse reality with illusion...I don't have a moral plan. I'm a Canadian." These are the words of visionary film maker, David Cronenberg, director of Videodrome, The Fly, Naked Lunch, Rabid and Dead Ringers. Here we're going to examine his film 'Crash', from the 1973 novel from J.G. Ballard. Crash debuted at Cannes in 1996, and won many awards over the next year or so.

Although not XXX smut, this film is one of the most eerily erotic movies of the past decade. The eroticism starts from the very first scene, Deborah Kara Unger standing in front of a small airplane in a hanger. The way she purposefully takes her breast out of her bra, leans over and allows the nipple to kiss the cool metal of the plane, and then receives a man, identity unseen, entering her from the rear bent over the machine... in many ways the subtle sensualities set the viewer's mind set to observe the rest of the movie.

Cut to a scene of James Spader, shagging the camera girl in the back room of a studio set. On arrival home, Unger and Spader casually and respectfully debrief each other - more worshipful listening than interrogation. Shortly, however, the violence central to the film arrives, with Spader driving alone, distracted, and swerving off the road and head on into a car. He is injured and thrown into shock - the other driver is ejected and shot like a rocket headfirst through Spader's windshield, dead. Looking up, Spader notices the passenger of the other car, Holly Hunter, inadvertently revealing a breast as she tries to free herself from her seat belt. The juxtapositions continue.

Thrown together by the accident of machine and fate, Hunter and Spader meet again in the hospital, and yet again - more fatefully - at the impound yard. Both arriving as if compelled, they find themselves driving together in a car identical to the one Spader crashed, they nearly crash again, and go immediately by almost unspoken simultaneous agreement to a public garage where they make love within the car.

An odd man who investigates and recreates famous automobile crashes, played by Elias Koteas, introduces Spader & Hunter to an esoteric private club. They recreate the death crash of James Dean's Porche ... same car, same lack of seat belt, all the details, regardless of the risk to the recreators. We also meet Rosanna Arquette, large metallic braces covering her black lace outfits, crippled and yet embracing her own sexuality fully. And we move on, slipping down a slope, into every combination of sexual encounter between the girls, the boys, the girls and boys, all intertwined with the violence of the ultimate urban technology. Gender soon means less than the context of the paraphilia. And curiously, most of the sex is rear entry, not facing each other, distanced as it is coupled.

In your heart of hearts, you'll realize at some point in this film that there is something about your own sexuality, something whether deeply hidden or not, that is every bit as potentially pathological as these folks. The difference in many cases is simply whether or not it interferes with your life or if you can incorporate it into your accepted fetishes and continue on with job, family, and all.

``It's a dangerous film in many ways,'' Cronenberg said. ``Everyone in the film is both afraid of and excited by the challenge of exploring society's fascination and our personal fascination with technology and sexuality.'' Critics split widely on the film internationally, with Roger Ebert stating "It left me wishing somebody would take this much effort to make a film about the kinds of things that turn ME on."

I recommend it. Take a chance, and see how much you can identify with yourself. You don't have to tell anyone what you decide.

Rating:
Summary: mediocre
Review: i wont say this is smut, i WONT disagree that this is art (or meant to be art), but its not very good art. I would normally say (to sound more neutral) that getting off on car crashes doesn't shock me, but actually, i had never heard of that before this movie, so obviously it was pretty amazing to me. I cant even really explain why i didn't like this movie, it was just boring to me, and any straight guy would say (any straight guy ive ever met) "how can alot of nudity and sex be boring". it can, i watched the first 20 minutes of the movie, by myself, and got bored, and me and a friend watched the rest later. He didn't think it was that bad, but i'll say i got nothing out of the movie, except recognition of another of the many "crazy" fetishes, that many people have. Yea, this review didn't help you much probably, but dont lie to yourself, this movie was a disappointment, at least compared to other movies by the director. Naked lunch was better (not perfect, but better), and definitely not boring (or AT LEAST not as boring), or the fly (not scanners). David C. (note: i didn't try to spell his last name, because you might hold that against me) makes SOME good movies, and i respect him alot, but this movie was a disappointment. See the fly or naked lunch.

Rating:
Summary: The sound of twisted steel...
Review: This film is insane, frightening, and disturbing - it brings a whole new meaning to "auto eroticism" - but it is also compelling. Compelling in the same voyeuristic sense where we find ourselves straining our necks to see "something" when we come upon a crash scene, or how we watch the host of reality shows that litter television these days. Here we are drawn into a world of ultimate fetish. James Spader and Holly Hunter, two actors who excel at playing quirky characters, are the protagonists. They meet quite literally by "accident" as participants on the opposite sides of a head-on car crash. They meet again in the hospital and then again, when drawn like lemmings to the sea, they are compelled to seek out their wrecked vehicles in the junkyard.

They are soon drawn into a world where people recreate and reexperience auto crashes for their own sensual pleasures. The story line plays upon modern culture's fascination with autos, speed, and power. Smooth, sleek, and beautiful, the car is a metaphor for the ideal human form. The car crash is a metaphor for the ultimate sex act where "two bodies" filled with anticipation collide in a brief "orgasm" of energy. This is the ultimate tension & release, filled with the adrenaline rush of being a "survivor," able to walk away and relive the experience again through telling the tale. Elias Koteas, as Vaughn, is the ultimate macho male, looked at with both lust and envy by both the male and female characters around him. He arranges historical "recreations" of famous auto accidents, and walks away from them, his many scars like "badges of honor."

But as "passionate" as these people seem, they are also very disconnected. They gather to watch crash films over and over, like watching a porno film, replaying things in slow motion, but they fail to ever connect at more than a superficial level. And like a drug, they can't wait for their next fix of cold, twisted steel and resculpted human bodies. They are "drug addicts", locked into this very small world, where even survival becomes a burden, until they can reach the ultimate orgasm by crashing through death's door.

Masterfully conceived by film maker David Cronenberg, himself no stranger to hypnotic and compelling films, the look is crisp and cold, with blues, grays, and chrome dominating the color scheme. Flesh and steel intermingle, as the characters and their autos seem to merge as one and blur the distinction between man and machine. Yes, insane, frightening, and disturbing, yet a compelling film for those looking for a different cinema experience. Highly recommended for the adventurous.

Rating:
Summary: Nice try by Cronenberg but...
Review: I read J.G. Ballard's novel upon which this film is based. I am an avid reader of all sorts of novels and very open-minded, but this book put me off. There were vivid and disturbing images aplenty and little else but manifest self destruction. The utter tawdriness of the novel was so depressing and off-putting, I felt as if I needed a shower after reading it. Cronenberg's movie is reasonably true to the novel -- and that is no doubt the film's undoing. Pairing sex and violent car crashes as a metaphor for mankind's descent into a technological abyss is a good premise. It has the power of instant recognition. (...)? Hoo boy, let's make a movie! The problem is that Cronenberg's execution of this metaphor lacks true resonance. The characters are simply not believable, unless Canada has been completely taken over by zombies. They are fun to look at (good looking zombies!), but they are reduced to being just handy puppets for the Big Message. Don't get me wrong, the actors do a fine job of heroically slogging through this preachy and obvious movie. They do their level best to give Cronenberg just the right tone. Spader is particularly good giving the right tone. He looks bemused and ever so detached, as if he were doing a Christopher Walken impersonation. But one cares not a penny farthing for his character as James Ballard. On the other hand, the female roles as played by Unger, Hunter and Arquette are more compelling than the men's, and one just might conceivably care a little about them. The women actors seem slyly delighted at being cast by the boys in a techno-porn movie. (...) Having said that, is the joke on the men who dreamed up this silly movie, and are the women actors laughing at them? To sum up I wish someone else had written the premise and screenplay, and I wish there was more screen time given to Holly Hunter and Rosanna Arquette. Toward the end of the movie we see them embracing and kissing in the backseat of a wrecked car. There is a sweetness and tenderness in that brief moment that almost makes up for all the dreck that came before.

Rating:
Summary: Fast cars, fast women.
Review: I didn't know what to expect from previous reviews of this film, but I was pleasantly surprised. I was most impressed by the daring of the actors involved. In fact I think fans of James Spader won't be disappointed. This is a typical James Spader movie in which he plays a stereotypical cold and aloof James Spader (but that's why we like him). How many recognizable male Hollywood actors would put their carefully constructed image on the line by engaging in an erotic scene with another male actor? Not many. But fortunatley for us Spader doesn't put commercial limits on the parts he chooses to take.

Bisexuality seems to be a recurrent theme amongst Cronrnberg's most recent movies i.e. 'Dead Ringers', 'Naked Lunch' and 'Madame Butterfly'. It's an acknowledgement of that perennial Cronenberg theme, the dominance of the physical over the mental. The characters give free rein to their desires unburdened of society's restrictive mores and conventions. Their criteria for indulging in these rather eccentric pleasures is whether it excites them or not, society's prejudiced definitions of right and wrong don't enter the equation.

As for the idea that [adult relations] and cars go together, this has always been prevelant in our culture, "fast cars, fast women" as the saying goes. The thrill of stepping on the gas has conveyed an orgasmic high in countless films, books and songs. The auto industry readily endorses it if it can sell more cars.

Rating:
Summary: Wacko!
Review: This ranks right up there with some of the strangest movies I've ever seen. Basically, the storyline revolves around a strange group of kinky people whose fetish of choice is car crashes. (...)I can understand a lot of fetishes, but this one was just a little strange, therefore the plot didn't really pull me in.