Crash (1996)

David Cronenberg, 1996 (8.0*)
You now need the year of this film as a designator, so it's not confused with the mediocre film (that came later) that won best picture of 2005 in a very weak year (when they were afraid of Brokeback Mountain as well).

Cronenberg’s Crash is the much more interesting one; this one pre-dated the terrible best picture one that resembled a tv show, and was based on SF author J.G. Ballard’s novel (he also wrote Empire of the Sun based on his childhood). In this bizarre story, a group of car wreck survivors are turned on by auto crashes.

After a car wreck in which Holly Hunter’s husband is killed in a head-on collision with James Spader he discovers a strange eroticism to the entire crash. They later get together for romance in a car [that's her on the dvd giving him a lap ride in the front seat!]. He then discovers a group of people who use the energy of these crashes to fuel a strange sense of eroticism. Some even re-enact famous crashes at clandestine events only known to the group itself. Those with scars and injuries, like Roseanne Arquette, become especially sensual in cars.

I’d say this film is more notable for James Spader getting to make love onscreen to Holly Hunter, Rosanna Arquette, and his (onscreen) wife Debra Kara Unger [photo below] in the same film, which I think is my favorite sex group yet in all of cinema.

J.G. Ballard is a very interesting author who once stole some Republican National Committee stationary and sent a memo to the convention that nominated Reagan, with an article on them he penned titled “Why I Want to F*** Ronald Reagan”. This was later published in a collection of Ballard's stories and articles with the story of how he acheived the singular feat.

Crash won 8 awards out of 12 nominations

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Eastern Promises

David Cronenberg, 2007 (8.5*)
Director David Cronenberg is usually noted for more experimental films that can sometimes expose the brutal underbelly of mankind in ways almost too gruesome to bear, such as J.G. Ballard's Crash (the one with James Spader bedding a number of crash victims, such as Holly Hunter and Roseanna Arquette), or Dead Ringers, in which Jeremy Irons turned in a career performance as twin gynecologist brothers who play with the lives of lovers and patients.

In this film, he gives a more straightforward narrative of the Russian mafia. A pregnant teen in London dies giving childbirth, but leaves behind a revealing journal in Russian, which details a rape at 14 and other crimes. Naomi Watts (excellent as usual) as Anna is determined to keep the baby out of the system and find the girl's relatives. She meets a mafia driver with a long criminal past tattoed on his body, played by Viggo Mortensen in his best dramatic performance. Though hardened by life, Nicolai still has enough compassion to give his character depth and complexity, and Mortensen was rewarded with an Oscar® nomination for best actor.

Mortensen and Cronenberg pull off a gut-wrenching and unique fight sequence that will haunt viewers long after the film's more subtle fine points wear off; this is more what we expect from Cronenberg, but the more straightforward narrative perhaps surprised some of his fans, as this is a more mainstream story, with an excellent screenplay from Steven Knight, than perhaps any of his films, including the excellent A History of Violence, also starring Mortensen. There are also fine supporting performance from Vincent Cassel and veteran actor Armin Mueller-Stahl as Russian mobsters.

As a result, this film won 24 awards out of 59 nominations overall. Mortensen won 5 awards out of 13 nominations, but his performance was the only Oscar® nomination for this overlooked crime gem. Cronenberg himself was nominated for 10 awards, but was once again overlooked by the academy.

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Dead Ringers

David Cronenberg, 1988 (6.8*)
This is an acting tour-de-force by Jeremy Irons, who plays twin gynecologists, one of whom has a decidely warped sense of reality. The brothers don’t let people know they are twins, which allows them to switch off with a new lover, played by Genevieve Bujold. It also lets them play around in a world of their own fantasy creation for the most part. Somewhere down road to bliss one brother takes a definitely wrong turn, and ends up somewhere between Salvador Dali and Marquis de Sade. Irons makes both brothers just slightly different, and turns in not only a career best performance but one of the best of all-time.

Puzzlingly, Irons wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar®; a group of actresses led a write-in campaign in protest but the Academy refused to accept the ballots. When he won the Oscar® for his next, and definitely inferior performance in Reversal of Fortune, he said “I have David Cronenberg to thank for this, and some of you out there know what I mean.” Like most Cronenberg films, this one is very disturbing and has some gore, which detracts from an otherwise interesting psychological study, but still worth seeing for the Irons performance alone.

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