Not all that interested in Jon's guests this week. Tonight it's Robert Pattinson, with a movie that isn't about sparkly vampires. Rotten Tomatoes has Cosmopolis at 65%. Here's the synopsis:
New York City, not-too-distant-future: Eric Packer, a 28 year-old finance golden boy dreaming of living in a civilization ahead of this one, watches a dark shadow cast over the firmament of the Wall Street galaxy, of which he is the uncontested king. As he is chauffeured across midtown Manhattan to get a haircut at his father's old barber, his anxious eyes are glued to the yuan's exchange rate: it is mounting against all expectations, destroying Eric's bet against it. Eric Packer is losing his empire with every tick of the clock. Meanwhile, an eruption of wild activity unfolds in the city's streets. Petrified as the threats of the real world infringe upon his cloud of virtual convictions, his paranoia intensifies during the course of his 24-hour cross-town odyssey.
Packer starts to piece together clues that lead him to a most terrifying secret: his imminent assassination.
Cronenberg revisits subjects that fascinate him: how the organic and the psychological are inextricably intertwined, society's anxieties and phobias, and letting repressed impulses and paranoia run wild. COSMOPOLIS is a culmination of his masterpieces that addresses the alarming global financial crisis of today's world.
It is a hauntingly prophetic fable that turns the future into history and suggests that the archaic might be our eerie future.ROBERT PATTINSON.
And a couple of RottenTomatoes carefully selected review snippets:
An eerily precise match of filmmaker and material, Cosmopolis probes the soullessness of the 1% with the cinematic equivalent of latex gloves.
Justin Chang
Variety
[A] vapid, claustrophobic drama...
May 25, 2012
Richard Corliss
TIME Magazine
Toronto Star
An airless and inert expression of a capitalist kingpin's odyssey across a threatening New York City.
Todd McCarthy
Hollywood Reporter
A parade of hollow didactic encounters.
Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly
In the company of actual actors, Pattinson is reduced to a piece of furniture, most of which displays more expressiveness than the immortal R-Patz.
Marshall Fine
Hollywood & Fine
If intellectual sarcasm is your thing, you might like "Cosmopolis." Either way, the movie is too pretentious for its own good.
Cole Smithey
ColeSmithey.com
Hard to endure due to its pretentious nature, but deserves credit for inspiring a unique form of wrath - rage against the Cronenberg
Cameron Williams
The Popcorn Junkie
Another Cronenberg film badly in need of an exploding head.
Jim Schembri
3AW
Hyper-stylised, cold, cerebral, difficult, stylish, at times visually sublime and at times unintentionally humorous, Cosmopolis is David Cronenberg back in Cronenberg Land ... You can't say it's anything other than unique.
CJ Johnson
ABC Radio (Australia)
Don't listen to the haters -- this linguistically complex and eloquently dark film is much more clever than pretentious.
Grant McAvaney
MovieFIX
Cosmopolis is a soulless, confusing, bore of a film, a pretentious message movie where the message itself is lost in dialogue equal to verbal masturbation where big questions are asked, and waffling diatribes are given in response.
Matthew Pejkovic
Matt's Movie Reviews
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