Crash (1996)
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CrashWritten and Directed by David Cronenberg.
This obsessive adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s novel turns into a hard psychological affair of sexual compulsion and hardcore demency when a group of emotionally detached individuals find pleasure, sex and escape in car accidents. A truly weird film about the deepness of our modern world’s perversion, a deranged visual experience that puts your head in an exhausting twist.
Commonly, for most of us human beings, a car accident fuels our desire for voyeurism in a twisted way. It’s something behind our control, we need to watch. Ballard’s novel relates sex with technology written in a cold, detached way. Cronenberg’s movie is no different. Right from the start he puts you in the main role – you, as the voyeur, as the eyes that fuel every emotion; the technology and the characters as mere pawns in the twisted world of wreckage. Filmed as an almost diabolical nightmare, there is no certainty of time, days become night almost vaguely, the characters are almost pathetically empty – yet, deeply disturbed, deeply rooted into their intense fetishism. More than a mere visual journey, it twists your brain as if you were in a permanent car crash. Here, the crash is just a mere metaphor for our consumerism, for our detachment of emotions. We root in objects, in technology. Here the sex is the extreme personification of our evilness, of our constant pursue of the next object to attach.
This wonderful and heavy disturbed film is such a weird experience, yet so violently real that you become glued to its visual dementia. It’s almost as if the plot advances with no sensation of time or place, and the only real thing to hold on is the exact same love the characters embrace. Gorgeously shot in deep blues and whites, a gorgeous disturbing soundtrack by Howard Shore, intense sexual intercourse and a great cast of actors, just brilliantly off-beat. But because the plot advances in a dreamlike state and the characters appear out of the blue like dead bodies and stay like that in a trance for the entirity of the film, because the atmosphere is deeper than the actual notion of conflict-resolution, because the soundtrack is shrieking, Crash is almost a bad movie, one of those you hate for life, because it is so true, so intense. This is, truly, a heavy movie, not for every taste.
Most fans of Cronenberg that grew up with his dark low budget fantasies about body modifications and paranoia in the 80s seem to be put of by Crash, as if this is one of the less serious of the “serious period” of the master craftsman. But in my opinion Crash suits the filmmaker’s vision as good as any other bizarre film he made: the twisted characters and the wrecked cars and Arquette’s body. The eeriness that shivers your perceptions is pure Cronenberg. Yet, if you feel compelled and secure of your own dilemmas, watch it and you’ll never see a car accident with the same eyes. I’m having difficulties getting in a car at night without visualizing Elias Koteas character Vaughan coming up the other side of the lane. Painful, but just plain gorgeous for those who don’t fear giving up their secrets and embrace their darkest sexual deviance. Buy this DVD from Amazon: Heartbreak Score: More Screenshots:
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The Big Sleep (1946)
Adapting Raymond Chandler’s confusing and hardboiled book is not for the faint of heart. Does Howard Hanks and Company deliver it? After we read the book, we watch the film.
The Big Sleep (1946)
Adapting Raymond Chandler’s confusing and hardboiled book is not for the faint of heart. Does Howard Hanks and Company deliver it? After we read the book, we watch the film.
The Big Sleep (1939)
The first novel by veteran crime writer Raymond Chandler pretty much invents the hardboiled genre of crime fiction. A tough but always clever plot that unfolds with dark twists that will test your street skills. First we read the book, then we watch the movie.
The Big Sleep (1939)
The first novel by veteran crime writer Raymond Chandler pretty much invents the hardboiled genre of crime fiction. A tough but always clever plot that unfolds with dark twists that will test your street skills. First we read the book, then we watch the movie.
The Spielberg Face
Here is an interesting essay dedicated to one of the most imitated Cinema artifices, populated by of the master of melodrama Steven Spielberg.
The Spielberg Face
Here is an interesting essay dedicated to one of the most imitated Cinema artifices, populated by of the master of melodrama Steven Spielberg.
P3rsp3ctive (2011)
A tribute to the Cyberpunk genre, Perspective is a beautiful short film made by amateur director Mehmet Can Koçak
P3rsp3ctive (2011)
A tribute to the Cyberpunk genre, Perspective is a beautiful short film made by amateur director Mehmet Can Koçak
Bummer Summer (2010)
Few movie directors can be proud of achieving realism and artistic perfection. Zach Weintraub does this in his first feature. Shot on a ridicule budget and using a single DSLR camera that is perfectly balanced by Nandan Rao’s perfect black and white photography and using pretty much no written dialogue, Bummer Summer is a delicate surprise (…)
Bummer Summer (2010)
Few movie directors can be proud of achieving realism and artistic perfection. Zach Weintraub does this in his first feature. Shot on a ridicule budget and using a single DSLR camera that is perfectly balanced by Nandan Rao’s perfect black and white photography and using pretty much no written dialogue, Bummer Summer is a delicate surprise (…)
Docs for People 2: Free Fruit for Everyone (I Am Los Angeles)
Los Angeles, the film entertainment capital of the world, is known as a place of glitz and glamour, palm trees, and living the high life. Hollywood, after all, is a place where dreams can come true. But is also a place where many dreamers come to meet their reality. Some succeed, but far more pack up and…
Docs for People 2: Free Fruit for Everyone (I Am Los Angeles)
Los Angeles, the film entertainment capital of the world, is known as a place of glitz and glamour, palm trees, and living the high life. Hollywood, after all, is a place where dreams can come true. But is also a place where many dreamers come to meet their reality. Some succeed, but far more pack up and…
My Joy (2010)
Director Sergei Loznitsa’s first fiction is a deep journey through the alienation and Soviet remains on the remote population around Russia’s deepest villages. It’s also a journey of a man, Georgy, that gets lost in his cargo truck deep into the wilderness unable to find his way, just like the characters that he encounters, filled with desperate and starving violence and psyche.
Keep reading for the full review and more shots of this fabulous movie, and remember: you read it first on Heartbreak Motel!
My Joy (2010)
Director Sergei Loznitsa’s first fiction is a deep journey through the alienation and Soviet remains on the remote population around Russia’s deepest villages. It’s also a journey of a man, Georgy, that gets lost in his cargo truck deep into the wilderness unable to find his way, just like the characters that he encounters, filled with desperate and starving violence and psyche.
Keep reading for the full review and more shots of this fabulous movie, and remember: you read it first on Heartbreak Motel!
Docs for People 1: Scrapertown
California is a Place are putting some gorgeous docs out there, short, human, and simply beautiful. Scrapertown is a cute little tale of a group of young folks that created a club for scrapper bikes, complete with a king and a strict membership, that requires the bike to be approved beforehand
Docs for People 1: Scrapertown
California is a Place are putting some gorgeous docs out there, short, human, and simply beautiful. Scrapertown is a cute little tale of a group of young folks that created a club for scrapper bikes, complete with a king and a strict membership, that requires the bike to be approved beforehand
Top 11 Weird, Strange and Best Song Versions
There are tribute bands and there are bands that earn their gold doing miserable and sloppy versions of popular songs, but countless covers abound that are weird and truly beautiful. You probably didn’t know most of these are actually versions so be prepared for a top 10 of the most underrated and bizarre covers ever. Start the journey!
Top 11 Weird, Strange and Best Song Versions
There are tribute bands and there are bands that earn their gold doing miserable and sloppy versions of popular songs, but countless covers abound that are weird and truly beautiful. You probably didn’t know most of these are actually versions so be prepared for a top 10 of the most underrated and bizarre covers ever. Start the journey!
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
The only directing effort from the actor Charles Laughton, this is a phenomenal exercise in style and narrative, one true classic that inspired many and is as frightening today and breathtaking as it was 60 years ago.
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
The only directing effort from the actor Charles Laughton, this is a phenomenal exercise in style and narrative, one true classic that inspired many and is as frightening today and breathtaking as it was 60 years ago.