David Cronenberg

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Review: A Dangerous Method

Cronenberg's dramatization of the rise of psychoanalysis
Perhaps the three characters in David Cronenberg's handsome, eloquent dramatization of the birth and near demise of psychoanalysis represent the parts of the psyche that the movement would eventually hypothesize.
By PETER KEOUGH | December 20, 2011

Stuff and nonsense

Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle returns
Despite millions in production design, Peter Strietman's splendid photography, and some witty if trance-inducing music by Jonathan Bepler, the six and a half hours of Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle is sheer movie tedium, inert and unmoving, broken up by imagery that's more irritating than fascinating in its self-indulgent preciosity.
By PETER KEOUGH | June 26, 2010

Days of future past

'SF-1970' at the Harvard Film Archive
Science-fiction films have been with us since Edison’s 1910 version of Frankenstein , but they bloomed in the ’Nam era, nourished by a volatile cocktail of cultural ingredients.
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | June 26, 2010

Review: Splice

Splitting heirs: Variety is the life of Splice
Like its synthetic creature, Dren (Delphine Chanéac), Vincenzo Natali’s unwieldy but provocative thriller recombines DNA from many different movie and literary sources.
By PETER KEOUGH | June 02, 2010

The plots thicken

9/11 Truthers, Tea Parties, Birthers — conspiracy is in the air. No wonder Hollywood is embracing paranoia.
Eight years after the destruction of the World Trade Center — the result of one of the most devastatingly successful conspiracies in history — Americans still take comfort in paranoia.
By PETER KEOUGH | September 11, 2009

By | January 01, 0001

Review: Pontypool

Bruce McDonald deserves some credit for trying
Bruce McDonald's ambitious shaggy-dog story combining elements of Talk Radio , William Burroughs, and Night of the Living Dead succeeds about as well as could be expected.
By PETER KEOUGH | April 15, 2009

B List rewind

Boston Phoenix film critics salute The Fly , King Creole , and The Conversation in The National Society of Film Critics latest tome.
Boston Phoenix film critics salute The Fly , King Creole , and The Conversation in The National Society of Film Critics latest tome.
By PETER KEOUGH | October 31, 2008

By | January 01, 0001

The medium is the movie

In new films, truth is fluid — and controlled by the click of a button
In almost every movie you go to these days you’ll see another screen — a television, a computer, even another movie screen — within the screen you’re watching.
By PETER KEOUGH | March 05, 2008

The Oscars go to Hell

The Devil knows what the nominations will be for this year’s Oscars
Maybe it’s just as well if the writers’ strike forces a cancellation of the Oscars show.
By PETER KEOUGH | January 18, 2008

Silver linings on a dark screen

Film: 2007 in review
The best films of 2007 hold their own when it comes to despair, evil, and treachery.
By PETER KEOUGH | December 18, 2007

Auteur land?

‘Film Culture’ in 2007
Granted, Sweeney Todd is a grim, violent, misanthropic musical.
By GERALD PEARY | December 17, 2007

Open city

The 2007 Toronto Film Festival
In the pioneering early-’80s days of the Toronto Film Festival, the audience actually rose before movie showings for a canned recording of “God Save the Queen.”
By GERALD PEARY | September 18, 2007

Promises kept

David Cronenberg revises History
Eastern Promises begins with uncanny images of birth and death, equally raw and bloody.
By PETER KEOUGH | September 12, 2007

Cutting edge

Cronenberg’s twisted mirror
Some who’ve watched the on-line videos of al-Qaeda executions may suffer a shock of recognition at some images in Eastern Promises .
By PETER KEOUGH | September 12, 2007

Czech imbalances

‘Rare Bohemian Cinema’ at the MFA
Just about everyone who survived the time with memory intact waxes nostalgic about the ’60s, but perhaps none more so than Czechs.
By PETER KEOUGH | August 23, 2006

Seven heaven

Readers speak out on the best directors
Who are the world’s greatest living narrative filmmakers, what I call the Magnificent Seven?
By GERALD PEARY | April 28, 2006

Slither

B-movie shoots for camp and gross-outs
This pleasing B-level gore fest (no relation to the 1973 flick staring James Caan) is an unintentional hybrid of Larry the Cable Guy and Stay Alive as it pits rednecks against zombies.
By TOM MEEK | April 05, 2006

Ask the Dust

Study of writers feels too warm and fuzzy
Robert Towne’s labor of love pays homage to a much-romanticized literary tradition, that of American fiction writing of the 1930s.
By CHRIS FUJIWARA | March 14, 2006

New to DVD on January 17, 2006

Junebug , Enron , Lord of War , Two for the Money , and more.
With the possible exception of the days of Soviet Social Realism, people have gone to the movies to escape the daily grind, not relive it.
By | January 19, 2006