How entertaining? ★★★★☆
Thought provoking? ★★★☆☆ 21 August 2014
This article is a review of MAPS TO THE STARS.
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“Our lives are rich and full, made from the ashes you left behind,” Dr Stafford Weis (John Cusack) to daughter Agatha (Mia Wasikowska)
Fashioning a psychotic, hilarious Hollywood soap opera on celebrity, amorality and self-obsessed ambition is an odd choice for a director who normally trawls the bleakest aspects of humanity. But like Martin Scorsese, being a septuagenarian has not dulled the verve or talent of David Cronenberg. Flexing his creative muscles have made for a trio of uneven immediate predecessors (COSMOPOLIS, A DANGEROUS METHOD, EASTERN PROMISES); though he is back on form, creating his usual unsettling hermetically sealed worlds, and this time bringing the laugh out loud.
Anyone who has seen 1990s mini-series WILD PALMS, executive produced by Oliver Stone, and written by Bruce Wagner, will feel echoes in the latter’s writing here. While WILD PALMS’ Los Angeles was surreally futuristic and disturbing, MAPS TO THE STARS, set in the present, still has an other-worldly vibe. Sating all appetites is the sole pursuit, disregarding all others the concomitant. Hellish cityscape, den of iniquity, film noir hole, might have been the modus operandi, if not for the ripe dialogue. Zinging line after line tempers the nightmarish quality, where violence feels to be a sliver away. Perhaps intending to be universal in its ideas of solipsism, the film business is characterised as containing such high stakes that one is actually thankful for the moat of difference making the conniving palatable.
Fashioning a psychotic, hilarious Hollywood soap opera on celebrity, amorality and self-obsessed ambition is an odd choice for a director who normally trawls the bleakest aspects of humanity. But like Martin Scorsese, being a septuagenarian has not dulled the verve or talent of David Cronenberg. Flexing his creative muscles have made for a trio of uneven immediate predecessors (COSMOPOLIS, A DANGEROUS METHOD, EASTERN PROMISES); though he is back on form, creating his usual unsettling hermetically sealed worlds, and this time bringing the laugh out loud.
Anyone who has seen 1990s mini-series WILD PALMS, executive produced by Oliver Stone, and written by Bruce Wagner, will feel echoes in the latter’s writing here. While WILD PALMS’ Los Angeles was surreally futuristic and disturbing, MAPS TO THE STARS, set in the present, still has an other-worldly vibe. Sating all appetites is the sole pursuit, disregarding all others the concomitant. Hellish cityscape, den of iniquity, film noir hole, might have been the modus operandi, if not for the ripe dialogue. Zinging line after line tempers the nightmarish quality, where violence feels to be a sliver away. Perhaps intending to be universal in its ideas of solipsism, the film business is characterised as containing such high stakes that one is actually thankful for the moat of difference making the conniving palatable.
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“Worst thing: Go on Oprah again, fess up, do the Lance Armstrong thing, new money stream,” Stafford
Vaping. Is there a more efficient shorthand for a movie character speedily conveying an annoying douche bag personality? That’s two movies in a row for Cusack having that weakness (see also DRIVE HARD). Our meeting of his patriarch, to a cut-throat showbiz family, has him puffing on an e-cigarette while spouting about the Dalai Lama. His TV self-help guru reeks of charlatanism. Channelling menace and charisma to mesmerising affect, Stafford is determined to protect his patch of paradise; yet, like his fellow denizens, no matter the achievements/accumulation, dissatisfaction is bone deep.
Son Benji (Evan Bird), who was making $300,000 per week on a television series when nine years old, at 13, has emerged from rehab (!!), and is ready to reprise his cash cow role as the lead of the “Bad Babysitter” kid comedy franchise. World weary ennui has created a mini-monster of barely suppressed bile, while at the same time, during moments of introspection, his fragile psyche is an open wound. Manager mother, Christina (Olivia Williams), is more Stepford business leech than maternal protector. Unusual comfort originates from estranged sister, Agatha, who, emerging from a Florida psychiatric institution, arrives uninvited.
“We tried to have fun, the critics got it anyway,” Actress of movie “Thrill Kill”
Like an effed up THE PLAYER, connections are made throughout the film community (in the loosest sense of the word possible), and we meet an incendiary Julianne Moore. Spoilt and suffering from mummy issues, a level of jaw-dropping obnoxious behaviour emanates from her aging starlet Havana Segrand (calling personal assistants “chore whores” is just the tip of a monumental iceberg). Unpredictability, and meltdowns that cannot be ignored, make for a joyous performance; and (climactic cop-out aside) typifies a mesmerising watch.
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