Cosmopolis

Everything matters in Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, but not everything is necessarily the same as DeLillo's book. And that makes the film, as a series of discussions about inter-related money-minded contradictions, insanely rich and maddeningly complex. We can't wait to rewatch it.

Director David Cronenberg - who knows a thing or two about bodily expressions - understands, finally, what to do with the Twilight star, turning his zombified handsomeness into a stark canvas upon which we can project our own anxieties.

The trouble with Cosmopolis, David Cronenberg's faithful-to-a-fault adaptation from Don DeLillo's 2003 novel, is that it's more metaphor than meat.

As a portrait of both man and society in exquisitely poised decline, it's harrowing, hilarious, and horrific in equal measure.

Its characters are bloodless, their speech monotone. If there are people like this, I hope David Cronenberg's film is as close as I ever get to them. You couldn't pay me to see it again.

Alas, in Cronenberg's hands, it just comes across as cold and lifeless and exhausting.

Sometimes, even a little gratuitous nudity can't save a movie. This is one of those occasions. Cosmopolis easily trumps "To Rome with Love" as the biggest disappointment of 2012 from an established director.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Cosmopolis is for people who want something different and are willing to be tolerant in order to get it. For everyone else expecting something along the lines of Oliver Stone's Wall Street, a straightforward but well-done drama, Cosmopolis is going to be a disappointment. It is not so much weird as plain odd. I don't dislike the movie but do find a lack of effort (particularly the lighting) and feel it could have been significantly better.

David Cronenberg's swift return to kinky, psycho-social territory is a welcome one. Cosmopolis is a cold, moody character study, that highlights the indifference of the 1% percent and how a millionaire can be lead to a path of self destruction during a limo ride to the barber. Everything revolves around this millionaire, played with chilly precision by Robert Pattinson, who surpassed my expectations. But one of the best part of this movie are the many supporting characters who revolve around his life during the course of a day, whether its his wife (played with skill by Sarah Gadon), his spiritual and financial advisers, potential assassins or his eccentric mistresses. In their respective scenes, each were able to add something new to the film and the millionaire character at hand. The episodic editing was well executed, and, though built on a weird premise, Cronenberg's screenplay was filled with broad rambles, spliced with moments of truths. I did take issues with how distant the film felt at times and its ambiguity may bother some, but that's the way it was meant to be. In the end, it felt distant nature yet intimate in scope, and is surely one of the most underrated movies of the year.

Cronenberg is back to his obscure, out there ways but with this movie we just get a dull and exhaustive mess.

The movie is supposed to be an exploration/parody of some psycho-social blah blah blah... It feels like a lecture, it plays like the lecture that a professor of sociology would give if they stumbled into their class drunk. If you are one who enjoys "cinema art", who likes to watch movies with chin-on-fist going "Hmmm..." because it makes you feel closer to Socrates, above the common plebs, or just comfortable in the knowledge that not all filmmakers are sane than this is for you. If you are one of the "commoners" who watches movies for entertainment I would suggest looking else where.