Cronenberg tackles grief -- in his way

 -- A blind date in a trendy restaurant hardly seems odd, until you realize the restaurant sits in the middle of a  cemetery.

--  In the same cemetery, tombstones are equipped with video screens that allow relatives to observe the deteriorating bodies of their loved ones.

   You probably won't be surprised to learn that The Shrouds -- the movie in which this cemetery serves as a major backdrop -- was directed by David Cronenberg. 

   Cronenberg made his feature debut in 1970 with Crimes of the Future, a title he used again for an entirely different movie in 2022. 

  Known for movies such as Eastern Promises, Spider, A History of Violence, Naked Lunch, The Fly, Videodrome, and Scanners, Cronenberg has become a  recognized master of body horror, an artist who transforms ordinary realities into dreamscapes rich with bizarre possibilities.

   I was late seeing Cronenberg's second Crimes of the Future. I never reviewed the movie but reacted negatively to a work in which Viggo Mortensen played a performance artist whose body grew strange new organs that became part of an art exhibit. 

   In The Shrouds, Cronenberg employs three principal actors for a chilly exploration in which grief and technology make strained connections. 

    Vincent Cassel plays Karsh, an entrepreneur who owns a cemetery that boasts his technological innovations.  Karsh, we learn, abandoned his career making industrial videos, opening the cemetery after his wife died of cancer. He couldn't bear to part with her. Ergo, the cemetery where he could visit her corpse by using an app that, on command, peeked into the high-tech shroud that encased her decomposing body.

  Diane Kruger does triple duty as Karsh's wife (seen in flashbacks), as his sister-in-law Terry, and as the voice of Hunny, the Avatar who serves as Karsh’s secretary.

  A disheveled-looking Guy Pierce turns up as Maury, Karsh's tech-savvy brother-in-law; he helped design the movie's futuristic cemetery.

   Oh yeah, I forgot Sandrine Holt, who plays Son-Min, the cucumber-cool wife of a dying Hungarian industrialist who wants Karsh to open one of his signature graveyards in Budapest.

   If you've ever seen Cronenberg, you can't help but notice how much Cassel has been made to look like the director whose wife died in 2017. Similarities aside, Cronenberg doesn't deserve to have his film seen only through a personal lens, even if the movie began -- as he has said -- with his reaction to his wife's death.

    Both Kruger and Pierce bring energy to their roles. Cassel, on the other hand, creates a character whose subdued demeanor plays against an inner life mired in grief and obsession.

     As I watched The Shrouds, I weighed what I was seeing against horror notions about the body. Forget the soul, we’re nothing but accumulated flesh, bone, and blood -- or so the argument goes.

     When Karsh says he misses his wife's body, it's as if he's saying that her physicality encompassed the totality of her being, thought and emotions included. Don't take this as a sexist expression: In the body-horror canon, men are subject to the same existential condition. 

      All of this has a sexual component: Mired in desire, the body craves other bodies, and gives their loss the force of an addiction that can't be shaken.

     Of course, The Shrouds can't entirely be measured by any theory, partly because the movie extends a variety of other thematic tentacles: paranoia-inducing political theories, issues involving ecology and techno-tyranny (Karsh sometimes puts his Tesla into self-driving mode), and social taboos: A sexual scene between Karsh and Terry, his late wife's sister, brims with libidinal hunger.

     All of this begins when Karsh's high-tech graveyard is vandalized. The mystery behind the vandalization runs throughout the movie, but generates little intrigue, and a mostly chilly tone can make it difficult to tell when Cronenberg is serious or mocking the genre in which he's working. Maybe both are happening simultaneously. In any case, feel free to laugh.

      You can sense the presence of a complex intelligence at work in The Shrouds, but the movie suggests more than it delivers.  Cronenberg plays with many ideas that don't seem fully imagined, and the movie's many tangents sometimes obscure the unbearable grief that puts Karsh into an emotional shroud he can't seem to escape. 

      Someday, I may look at The Shrouds again. For now, I take it as the faltering work of a director I admire. 

           

     

     

     

Bob's Cinema Diary: April 12, 2024 -- 'Arcadian' and 'Damaged'

 Arcadian

Nicolas Cage headlines  Arcadian but the character he plays spends much of the movie off-screen and unconscious. Cage plays Paul, a father who flees an unspecified apocalypse with his two infant sons. The movie quickly leaps ahead to show how Paul and his now teenage sons (Jaeden Martell and Maxwell Jenkins) survive an onslaught of buggy monsters who seem to attack mostly at night. After an injury leaves Paul in a near comatose state, the kids take over. Sandwiched  between post-apocalyptic survivalist drama and straightforward horror, Arcadian benefits from the naturalistic performances of its young cast. Paul's sons are joined by Charlotte (Sadie Soverall), a girl from another outpost. She and Jenkins' Tommy try to be typical teenagers even as a hellish catastrophe unfolds. Director Ben Brewer skimps on explanations and shortchanges the initial potential of what might have been a more developed story about a stern but loving father trying to save his sons. In short, a movie whose narrative insufficiencies limit its chances for success.

Damaged

Director Terry McDonough tries his hand at a hardboiled serial killer movie that transports a Chicago detective (Samuel L. Jackson) to Scotland. Jackson's Dan Lawson, an alcoholic cop who still has some detective chops, has a reputation for investigating serial killings and for overstaying his welcome on the force. Acting as a consultant, Lawson teams with Scottish policeman Glen Boyd (Gianni Capaldi) in the hunt for a killer who dismembers his female victims as part of what appear to be perverted religious beliefs. The movie receives a substantial boost when Vincent Cassel shows up. Cassel plays Lawson's former Chicago partner, a French-born detective who left police work, moved to England, and still retains a bit of charm. An international flavor doesn't enhance a grisly tale, and the actors are limited by a screenplay that places them in too many improbable scenarios to keep the movie from misfiring.

‘Underwater’ plumbs the depths of movie junk

Kirsten Stewart races about in a thriller that can’t freshen a familiar formula.

Much of Underwater takes place ... er ... underwater. Now, we’re not talking azure waters where fish display themselves in glorious technicolor. No, we’re talking the forbidding darkness of bottom dwellers; i.e., ocean depths as great as nine miles.

In this water-logged adventure, both characters and the camera grope to find legible images to support what apparently was intended as an exercise in breathtaking excitement.

You’ve probably read that Underwater is another Alien knockoff, a movie about a desperate crew that tries to survive the destruction of its deep-sea diving station and an attack by a monster, glimpsed mostly in quick cuts, but eventually revealed to have razor-sharp teeth. I’m waiting for a monster that torments its victims by gumming them to death.

Is the sea taking revenge for man’s insistence on exploiting its bountiful resources or is this an opportunity to see Kristen Stewart — her close-cropped hair, dyed blond — race about in her underwear, much as Sigourney Weaver did toward the end of Alien.

A knockoff? Maybe. But director William Eubank should have watched Alien more closely. Rather than building toward deadly encounters, he races through them, dulling any chance of providing tension that lives up to the movie’s pounding score.

Underwater demonstrates only minimal interest in characterization as the survivors of this deep-sea disaster pick their way through the rubble in hopes of reaching evacuation vehicles. We're left to wonder which members of this small group have a chance of surviving.

As you might expect, the script could have been written on the back of a napkin, but in this case, one that had been used to sop up a wine spill that made it seem as if all the story beats had run together.

To further burden the actors, they’re often asked to wear industrial-strength diving outfits that obscure their humanity and make them look as if they might have been at home in some misbegotten helping of 1950s sci/if.

Amid images so dimly lit, it’s not always easy to tell what we’re watching, we meet the crew members who accompany Stewart’s Norah on her survival quest. These include the outfit’s captain (Vincent Cassel) and the resident wise-ass (T.J. Miller), as well as another woman (Jessica Henwick) who also will scurry about in her underwear before the movie ends.

Employing an editing style that turns the movie’s images into a kind of visual shrapnel doesn’t help sustain interest. Massive amounts of CGI probably were required to create this underwater environment. The end result for me: a glub and a half.

Putting Jason Bourne back into action

Matt Damon returns as an assassin without memory as director Paul Greengrass extends his action set pieces to preposterous extremes.

If you want to spend a couple of hours watching Matt Damon play a character who's running for his life, Jason Bourne -- the latest in the series about an amnesiac spy -- might be the movie for you.

If you're looking for something more, you'll probably have to look elsewhere. We all know that the world seems to be gripped by chaos, but reproducing that chaos on screen doesn't always result in a satisfying movie experience.

With director Paul Greengrass returning to the helm and Damon jumping back into the Bourne saddle, the movie turns into a dizzying attempt to build a story around a reveal in which Bourne learns more background about himself that has been hidden from him by the CIA.

Bourne, you'll recall, has been programmed to kill by the CIA. Aside from quick flashbacks from his past, Bourne has no memory of his pre-espionage life. He often finds himself being chased by the very agency that turned him into a lethal weapon.

When Bourne resurfaces in Greece, a CIA chief (Tommy Lee Jones) tries to "put him down," i.e., Jones' Bob Dewey wants to assassinate Bourne with the help of a ruthless killing machine called "the asset" (Vincent Cassel.)

Dewey receives additional assistance from Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander), an ambitious CIA tech genius who seems to be able to locate Bourne whether he's in Greece, Iceland, London, and ... well ... I think stopped caring after Berlin.

The action set pieces tend to be so interminable, I wondered whether Greengrass was trying to set records. And, of course, Greengrass' approach expectedly races over-the-top.

That means logic doesn't always prevail. If Bourne makes a five-story flop onto concrete, don't fret. He'll be on his feet before you can say, "Splat." Like a politician who won't take "no" for an answer, he keeps on running.

The movie opens with Bourne earning his keep as a bare-knuckle fighter in Greece. It doesn't take long for him to wind up on the CIA's radar.

As the story develops, we also meet a tech whiz (Riz Ahmed), a hotshot whose company has been compromised by the CIA. Ahmed's character allows the movie to raise issues about privacy in a time of pervasive on-line activity, but we don't sense that we're supposed to take any of this seriously.

Much of the action takes place in front of CIA surveillance cameras, giving the movie a kind of fractured vision. CGI-enhanced car carnage comes into play, particularly in a ridiculous Las Vegas-based chase involving Bourne and a formidable SWAT vehicle.

In a movie that moves this quickly, acting tends to be more suggestive than deep. A bulked up but deadly serious Damon makes the movie feel like an aerobics workout. Looking as serpentine as ever, Jones tosses off a few off-kilter line readings, and Vikander opts for lots of furrowed-brow concern.

Julia Stiles makes an early picture appearance as Nicky Parsons, a former CIA agent with an agenda of her own.

Greengrass (Bloody Sunday, United 93 and a couple of previous Bourne movies) disorienting approach to action has its fans, and I've been one of them. He can edit a sequence into smithereens and still have it make some sort of sense, but -- in truth -- I got sick of it in this outing.

No matter how much urgency the actors try to bring to their work, the movie's kinetic charge takes precedence as the story works its way toward an expected and slightly depressing possibility: another sequel.

It would have been nice, though, if the filmmakers had been able to make this Bourne revival better than the movies that spawned it.

Fairy tales with adult spin

Tale of Tales takes director Matteo Garrone, best known to American audiences for his Naples-based mob drama Gomorrah, in a new direction.

Lavish in its design and lush in its sensuality, Tale of Tales presents three fairy tales from Giambattista Basile, a Neapolitan courtier who wrote in the 1600s.

Garrone tries, with varying degrees of success, to make three tales cohere, but the movie contains too many amazing sights to ignore, and each of the tales offers stern cautionary elements to balance a visual abundance that borders on decadence.

In the first of these tales, Selma Hayek plays a childless queen who's promised by a hooded sorcerer that she'll conceive if her husband (John C. Reilly) slays a sea monster and carves out its heart for later boiling by (what else?) a certified virgin.

For his efforts, the king is mortally wounded, but the sorcerer's promise comes true -- only with a catch. The virgin who boils the monster's heart also becomes pregnant, and gives birth to a carbon copy of the queen's son, a white-haired kid who introduces a Prince and The Pauper dimension to the story.

In the second tale, another king (Toby Jones in an unlikely bit of casting) takes a flea as a beloved pet. By nourishing the flea with an ample supply of blood, the insect grows to an ungodly size and then expires.

The king then decides that he'll marry off his daughter (Bebe Cave) to any suitor who can identify the skin of the recently departed creature, which he has stretched for display in the throne room.

As bad luck would have it, the winner is a hideous looking ogre who carts the princess off to his bone-littered mountain lair.

In the third tale, yet another king (Vincent Cassel) lives a live of unashamed debauchery, bedding as many women as possible.

One day, the king hears the siren call of a beautiful voice coming from a peasant cottage. The king assumes that the voice only can belong to an irresistibly beautiful woman.

The twist: The woman (Hayley Carmichael) is an elderly crone, who lives with her sister. The crone concocts a scheme to sleep with the king. I suppose I needn't tell you that things don't work out as well as she or anyone else might have hoped.

I wouldn't say that each tale is profound, but in sum, the movie dishes out its visual pleasures in such unstintingly large portions that it's almost impossible not to feel sated.

Gangster life with a French accent

Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) was one tough customer.
Mesrine: Killer Instinct is part one of a pair of gangster movies that opens in Denver Friday (Sept. 17) and continues with a second installment – Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1 – on the following Friday. In the hands of director Jean-Francois Richet, the narrative can be alarmingly choppy, but a spectacular performance by Vincent Cassel (as the notorious Jacques Mesrine) turns the two movies into must-see gangster viewing. Richet traces Mesrine’s origins from his service in the French army in Algeria to his death in 1979. Richet hints at the gangster's motivations, but never skimps on showing Mesrine's brutality. That’s important: Mesrine proves a charismatic and nervy figure, but his behavior -- particularly when it involves violence -- is nothing less than appalling. Part one includes a fine performance from a heftier than ever Gerard Depardieu; Part 2 makes room for Mathieu Amalric, as a thief who’s appalled by the way Mesrine courts the media. Mesrine evidently had a knack for escaping from prison, as well as for self-promotion. It’s a bit of a cheat to do a quick-hit review on four hours worth of movies, but if you love gangster fare, Richet's richly realized look at a real-life French master criminal should become part of your movie-going vocabulary. (French with English subtitles.)