Cosmopolis
[youtube=http://youtu.be/dS9jc3BnLRc]
It’s been suggested that the reasons the bad press received so far by Cosmopolis are twofold: a great author (Don DeLillo) wrote a subpar book, and a great director (David Cronenberg) was unable to save it from becoming a similarly subpar film.
Audiences will be the ultimate judge but it did seem like an unlikely journey from page to screen. Cosmopolis takes place almost entirely in the back of a limousine, as Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson), a young hedge fund billionaire, is on the verge of losing everything he’s worked so hard for while being chauffeured across midtown Manhattan on his way to get a haircut. We know that New York traffic can be unforgiving but that’s just ridiculous.
And just ridiculous is how some view this Cronenberg/DeLillo collaboration. “You wonder what Twilight fans will think when they see Cosmopolis,” posits TIME’s Richard Corliss before answering his own question. “Actually, they won’t. The word will get out.” The Financial Times is no less forgiving: “By the time we reach [Packer’s] potential assassin we want to say, ‘Kill me. Please. Anything. Just put an end this cerebro-sensory inanition.'” And the Guardian is clearly feeling let down: “You don’t go to a Cronenberg movie for comedy, but rather for something exciting, exotic, daring and precise: really, none of those things is present in this agonisingly self-conscious and meagre piece of work.”
LIST: Cronenberg’s The Fly in TIME’s Top 25 Horror Movies
NewsFeed’s Flicks Pick: It’s mindless but it sure sounds like fun: and for that reason alone, we’ll take The Expendables 2 over Cosmopolis.