Cronenberg (Toronto, March 14, 1943), master of biological horror, of disturbing atmospheres and of a universe as personal as it is non-transferable, director, writer and screenwriter, has directed twenty feature films. For years he has been considered within a group called ‘the three C’ of contemporary horror cinema, along with John Carpenter and Wes Craven, although lately he has sought to distance himself from the genre. He began studying biochemistry, to later pass to literature as a writer of fantastic stories, a genre that he devoured in his youth, and later, already installed in Hollywood, become a director and screenwriter of recognized prestige. These are the ten best films of his on platforms ordered from best to worst.
Image of ‘Crash’. /
Crash (1996) Available on Filmin
Starring James Spader, Holly Hunter and Rosanna Arquette, it is an adaptation of a science fiction novel by JG Ballard. The film shows a controversial study on the sexual attraction that the current culture has experienced towards the automobile. A dark, erotic, strangely sad, gloomy film that mixes sex with technology, and which won the Cannes Film Festival’s Special Jury Prize. To a man, accustomed to risk in his sexual life, a car accident will take him to a world stranger and more tortuous than the one he knew with an irresistible and destructive attraction for the woman his car crashed into. .
Viggo Mortensen, in ‘Eastern Promises’. /
Eastern Promises (2207) Available on Apple TV
Starring Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts and Vincent Cassel. A man linked to one of London’s most powerful organized crime families, he sees his life shaken when he meets a woman who accidentally uncovers evidence incriminating the family he works for. Film that shows the unlimited brutality of the Eastern mafias installed in Western Europe, Cronenberg’s second work with Viggo Mortensen, director and actor explores the psychological and physical aspects and the destiny of a man who may never reveal his true nature.
Jeff Goldblum in ‘The Fly’. /
‘The Fly’ (1986) Available on Disney+ and Apple TV
Starring Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis and John Getz, a remake of the Kurt Newman film that became a small classic of the fantasy genre in the fifties, and that here does not detract from the original in any way. David Cronenberg adapts to his peculiar filmic universe the odyssey of a scientist who, in the middle of the matter transmigration experiment, will suffer an alteration of his genes that will be intermingled with those of a common fly. Excellent work by Jeff Goldblum who, according to his own confession, Cronenberg chose for his bulging eyes like those of flies. The atmospheric lighting of operator Mark Irwin, the inspired soundtrack by Howard Shore and the shocking makeup effects of Chris Walas contribute to the perfect functioning of the film that saw an equally disturbing second part, but inferior to this one, directed by Walas himself.
Mortensen in ‘A History of Violence’. /
‘A history of violence’ (2005) Available on Movistar
Starring Viggo Mortensen, María Bello, Ed Harris and William Hurt. A commissioned film, based on a comic book by Vince Locke and John Wagner (where the devious and the experimental continue to clearly preside over their concerns), and which is supported by extraordinary interpretive work by Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris and William Hurt. The story is related to the mythology of western cinema and its derivations in film noir narrated with an academic classicism: The owner of a bar in a small town in Indiana, spends quietly with his family until that peaceful existence is altered. when some thugs impose terror on their premises. The owner reacts by confronting the intruders who will end up dead. Television makes him a local hero and new dangerous-looking characters soon appear in town. Strangers claim to have recognized him on television after many years of searching for him. His place begins to be watched and soon so is his house with his family and his children. The theme of the previous life that takes its toll in the present, a very common argument in the western
Image of ‘A dangerous method’. /
‘A Dangerous Method’ (2011) Available on Apple TV
Starring Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender. A look at Freud and Jung, a story based on true events, whose screenwriter, Christopher Hampton, is also the author of the play that inspires the film, which in turn is based on an original novel by John Kerr, where the tortuous and the experimental remains evidently presiding over the director’s concerns: The young psychoanalyst Carl Jung begins an innovative treatment on a patient under the direction of his teacher, Sigmund Freud. Eager to delve deeper into the mysteries of the human mind, Jung discovers that some of his ideas clash with Freud’s theories, at the same time that he succumbs to an exciting and dangerous romance with the sick beauty.
Image from ‘Naked Lunch’. /
‘Naked Lunch’ (1991) Available on Filmin
Starring Peter Weller, Judy Davis and Ian Holm. Based on the novel by William S. Burroughs partially adapted: After the tragic accident suffered by his wife, a writer who falls into addiction to certain drugs, begins to suffer horrible hallucinations that transport him to a completely Kafkaesque nightmare world. Cronenberg returns to develop one of his usual disturbing, suffocating and anguished atmospheres common to his work, with themes as common in his films as the intersection of the body and the machine, biological changes or infections. The real stars of the film are the special effects that create terrible and disturbing monsters and insects perfectly integrated into the action.
Walken in ‘The Dead Zone’. /
‘The Dead Zone’ (1983) Available on Apple TV
Starring Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams and Tom Skerritt. A wonderful film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel of the same name in which Cronenberg stands out both for achieving an oppressive atmosphere with moments of true fear, and for making an exhaustive portrait of the character brilliantly played by the enigmatic Christopher Walken. A young professor suffers an accident that will make him spend five years in a coma. Upon waking up, he discovers that he possesses extrasensory powers and is able to tell the future. The police will ask for his collaboration to solve a murder… The filmmaker delves where Stephen King only sketched and gets one of his disturbing productions. Stephen King says that this is one of his favorite adaptations of all those who have made his novels.
Jeremy Irons had a double role in ‘Inseperables’. /
‘Inseparable’ (1988) Available on Filmin, Prime Video and Flixolé
Starring Jeremy Irons, Genevieve Bujold and Heidi von Palleske. Cronenberg, who has always known how to portray both illness and the mysteries of the human organism in its double physiological and psychic aspects, achieves a perfect conjunction between both tendencies, with Jeremy Irons in the double role of two twin brothers, both gynecologists, one charming and one the other introvert. They are the opposite faces of the same personality: they share the same customs, the same apartment and the same woman. But when a special woman enters their lives, the bond that unites the twins is, for the first time, threatened. And this threat translates into a descent into an abyss of perversion, drugs and madness.
Still from ‘Videodrome’ (1983). /
‘Videodrome’ (1983) Available on Filmin and Apple TV
Starring James Woods, Sonja Smits and Deborah Harry. Cronenberg’s disturbing look at the world of video, in full boom in 1983, and how it transforms society. It narrates the process of transformation, physical and mental, of a man who runs a small-time television channel in which pornographic products are broadcast on the edge of illegality. One day he picks up a pirated signal from a new channel, Videodrome, whose programming consists of very realistic torture. A trip to a world where sadomasochistic games, extremely violent torture and snuff-movies are shown.
Protagonists of ‘They came from within…’. /
‘They Came From Within…’ (1975) Available on Apple TV and Prime Video
Starring Paul Hampton, Joe Silver and Lynn Lowry. The film that consecrated David Cronenberg throughout the world. In a residential complex, a scientist creates, through genetic modifications, a kind of slug. When these beings penetrate the body of a man they turn him into a patient afflicted by an insatiable sexual and murderous instinct. Shocking staging in which the filmmaker made up for the lack of budget for expensive special effects with an overflowing and perverse imagination with a touch of paranoia and sexual lust.
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