I put off watching this classic, even though I’ve been watching more Westerns lately, all because I have never been able to stand John Wayne. His politics were godawful, during the 70s at least, and I’ve also never liked the way he seemed to feel about women. It comes through in his performances, to my eyes, though I don’t know anything about his biography.
Anyway, I finally rewatched this film. It is truly great, as are both Wayne as the…
Would have given it three. It’s a good-looking middle brow thriller, I guess, with a really starry cast. But despite the running and the back flips I just never go for Tom Cruise in this shiny kind of movie. I like him fine in something like Magnolia or Eyes Wide Shut or even Tropic Thunder, but when he’s a hotshot he drives me nuts. Just too shallow.
I liked Jeanne Tripplehorn and Gene Hackman; but I’d rather have Wilfred Bromley…
This film is my favorite Cronenberg and my favorite Jeremy Irons performance(s) as well.
Cronenberg’s usual fascinations are there: complicated feelings about women, fascination with surgery, mutation and technology, and questions of identity and intimacy.
But unlike most of his other films since this one, Dead Ringers is low on body horror scenes of explicit gore and more concerned with a drama of interpersonal relationships and identity. The tools for surgery on mutant women are terrifying and disturbing, as are…
Between this movie and Cronenberg’s The Brood, we get the picture: Divorce is Hell, especially on the children. And it makes screaming, drooling, bloody monsters of us all.
The film’s famous and incredibly intense performance from Isabelle Adjani has to be seen to be believed. She is an actress known for portraying emotional extremes, as she did in The Story of Adele H. and Camille Claudel, and this tops them all.
But even more surprising to me was the equally…
