nathancarroll Reviews

A History of Violence (2005)

Spider 2: Viggo vs. the coffee

[9/10 · 30 September 2005]

Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, M. Butterfly, Existenz, and Spider all have a lot to say about cognitive repression and screen memories. With A History of Violence, we get another franchise to these contemporary Cronenberg operations, but also a clear sequel --an explosive opposing force to Spider, and just as much about the history of psychoanalysis as violence in film. Sadistic desire not only haunts Tom Stall as a repressed doppelganger, it rubs off on the whole family. Its reappearance is celebrated by the community and country and finally changes all involved once its let out of the bag. Suddenly, everyone is repressing Tom's violent 'other' -and by extension, Cronenberg makes an argument that society is both complicit and culpable in Tom's destruction. As usual, Cronenberg sees the world from the disease's perspective. This is not the history of Tom Stall, it's about the disassociated perspective of cultural violence and its human cost. At the end of the day, it's closest relative is Peckinpah's Straw Dogs. If finally minor work by Cronenberg's standards, it's still corn fields ahead of most Hollywood fare.

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

A perfect film.

[10/10 · 28 March 2001]

Deftly mixing elements from Sturges, Capra, and yes, even De Palma, the Coens along with Sam Raimi have fashioned a modern masterpiece. As with all Coen films, they invite you into their jokes, and if you don't get them, they just don't seem to care-- and that's a good thing. A huge flop, film lovers with a sense of history and humor will be gushing about this one for a long..long..time. Bordering on a musical version of "Brazil" at points, it is as deliberately studied a critique of contemporary American capitalism as it is a searing stare at Hollywood. Paul Newman like all of the Coens' and Raimi's meticulously selected actors seem literally born for their parts. Using the most classical of Hollywood stylistic techniques in the most seamless manner, but with added auteur hyperbole they show us who we are through the comic lens of the camera, always reminding us that it is just a movie. Listen for the title of Amy Archer's Pulitzer prize winning article. Favorite line: "the people look..like..ants."