Here are some Cosmopolis reviews
The stylised nature of the language will limit this film’s appeal, and its self-conscious craziness might also be testing to some (why does the professional barber Eric finally visits cut huge steps in his hair?). And after Water For Elephants it remains to be seen whether Pattinson’s teen following really is willing to follow him anywhere. But Cosmopolis does prove that he has the chops, and he parlays his cult persona beautifully into the spoiled, demanding Packer, a man so controlling and ruthless that only he has the power to ruin himself. Lean and spiky – with his clean white shirt he resembles a groomed Sid Vicious – Pattinson nails a difficult part almost perfectly, recalling those great words of advice from West Side Story: You wanna live in this crazy world? Play it cool.
Read the full review here.
More after the jump!
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Like The Social Network, it combines a credible depiction of a person whose age and intellect are dangerously off kilter, while sending its “hero” on an anti-capitalist nightmare odyssey that discharges all the dry cynicism and insouciant doomsaying of Godard’s Week End.
Very neatly abridged by Cronenberg himself from the 2003 novel by American postmodernist writer, Don DeLillo, his screenplay filets out much of the dialogue from the source while expunging the flashbacks, dreams and internal monologues. Robert Pattinson is magnetic as Eric Packer, slick, jaded 26-year-old CEO of Packer Capital who decides to take a fleet of Limousines across across New York City in search of a haircut. This is his best performance to date by some considerable margin. Yes, even better than Remember Me.
Cronenberg doesn’t slim down DeLillo’s simultaneously sprawling and precisely dense narrative as much as he carves his own flourishes onto it. A couple of scenes, including Packer’s interest in bidding on a chapel full of art, and his visit to a night club full of drug-fueled ravers, are only necessary to establish a uniform pace to Cronenberg’s narrative. But in that sense, these scenes are just as essential as the ones where Kinski and Torval give Packer advice. Everything matters in Cronenberg’s “Cosmopolis,” but not everything is necessarily the same as DeLillo’s book. And that makes the film, as a series of discussions about inter-related money-minded contradictions, insanely rich and maddeningly complex. We can’t wait to rewatch it. [A]
Read the full review here.
MSN: (4/5)
The dialogue is rapid-fire, so much so that it leaves bullet holes. And as Eric goes across town in his ridiculous car — with the world coming to him in the form of business meetings, sexual liaisons and even doctor’s appointments in the back of the limo — we realize that Eric is the epitome of modern capitalism. The titans who make our world are small, broken people. And, interestingly enough, if you’re casting for a dead-eyed shark wreathed in unearned privilege, Pattinson turns out to be a pretty good choice.
Read the full review here.
In David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Cosmopolis, a novel by post modern author Don DeLillo, the Canadian filmmaker tackles a dense criticism of capitalism, greed and class. Featuring an ensemble cast built on quick cameos, the film is anchored by a solid, ennui-filled performance by Robert Pattinson, shedding his Twilight skin for something more substantive and reminiscent of Christian Bale in American Pyscho.
Read the full review here.
That said, there’s a consistent air of charged, end-of-days menace running through the film, which Cronenberg handles with an unbroken sense of precision and confidence. He’s well-served, too, by a leering, disintegrating Pattinson, giving a commanding, sympathetic portrait of a man being consumed by his own vanity and power.
Read the full review here.
Bankable Twilight saga star Robert Pattinson is fine in the main part: if his Eric Packer is a little cold, a touch robotic, then so is Cronenberg’s unapologetically stylised approach to the story; this was never going to be a role that called for big emotions. But it’s difficult to see Pattinson’s youth appeal skewing this arthouse product’s audience towards the teen market – it’s just too slow and too talky.
Read the full review here.
Give David Cronenberg credit for one thing: His choice to cast Robert Pattinson was an inspired and brilliant decision. While Cosmopolis is a bit too one-note to allow any proclamations about Pattinson’s range, his opaque, handsome, sometimes robot-like face compliments Cronenberg’s themes and styles perfectly. In terms of what the director seems to be aiming for here, his cold performance is nearly flawless.
Lovefilm (Same critic from Digital Spy)
Sure to split the critics here in Cannes, it sees Robert Pattinson take on the boldest role of his career as a bored multi-billionaire riding a limousine through Manhattan to get a haircut. Confined to mostly the inside of the soundproof limo, Cosmopolis feels like more like black-box theatre than cinema as a series of characters deliver dense, difficult monologues that seem to mean everything and nothing.
It was a smart choice to cast Pattinson, whose blankness seems channeled for nihilistic sarcasm as he screws Juliette Binoche, listens to Samantha Morton talk time and money and takes a pie in the face from Mathieu Amalric. But Cronenberg’s artily staged satire of a capitalist modern world self-destructing never gets out of second gear.
Hitfix (B-)
This is the richest, wittiest, most stimulating material Cronenberg has had to work with in a decade – not for nothing is it his first self-scripted feature since “eXistenZ” – but it will take further viewing and consideration for this writer to decide if the finished film, briskly paced and unapologetically talky as it is, quite makes good on the opportunity. As it stands, the permanently on-message postulating of “Cosmopolis” proves a little wearing, though perhaps more so to jaded patrons on their tenth day of festival viewing. Cronenberg’s keenness to cram as many of DeLillo’s words into a script that amounts to little more than a sequence of ornate two-person conversates threatens inertia, but the film largely avoids dullness.
What’s most surprising is it’s the scenes within Packer’s limo (notably a febrile sex scene between Pattison and a luminously cameoing Juliette Binoche) that are tautest and most flammable. When the film ventures out onto the street, the energy – or, if not energy, the effectively slippery equivalent inherent in Pattinson’s compelling screen presence – dissipates. Longtime Cronenberg loyalist Peter Suchitzky’s camera certainly responds best to claustrophia, invasive too-close-ups and just-too-high angles lending the whole film the sense of a security surveillance tape from purgatory, matters made no less disconcerting by the compressed silent yawns of the sound design and the hovering insinuations of Howard Shore’s spare electro-influenced score, all of which recall smaller, nastier works from the director dating all the way back to “Stereo.” Even when we can’t quite decipher its message, there’s a hint of the didactic about “Cosmopolis” that speaks to its late place in the director’s canon; its emptily chaotic environment, however, is classic Cronenbergia creation, as invigoratingly and reassuringly strange as can be.
An eerily precise match of filmmaker and material, “Cosmopolis” probes the soullessness of the 1% with the cinematic equivalent of latex gloves. Applying his icy intelligence to Don DeLillo’s prescient 2003 novel, David Cronenberg turns a young Wall Street titan’s daylong limo ride into a coolly corrosive allegory for an era of technological dependency, financial failure and pervasive paranoia, though the dialogue-heavy manner in which it engages these concepts remains distancing and somewhat impenetrable by design. While commercial reach will be limited to the more adventurous end of the specialty market, Robert Pattinson’s excellent performance reps an indispensable asset.
(…)
Charges that this study in emptiness and alienation itself feels empty and alienating are at once accurate and a bit beside the point, and perhaps the clearest confirmation that Cronenberg has done justice to his subject. In presenting such a close-up view of Eric’s inner sanctum, the film invites the viewer’s scorn and fascination simultaneously; to that end, the helmer has an ideal collaborator in Pattinson, whose callow yet charismatic features take on a seductively reptilian quality here. It’s the actor’s strongest screen performance and certainly his most substantial.
Robert Pattinson all grown up in “Cosmopolis”
CANNES, France (AP) — Going back to what he does best, David Cronenberg takes a visceral day-trip inside the cushioned limousine of a tycoon who cares little for the bloody, populist riots that explode outside his car in “Cosmopolis.”
All the young multi-billionaire Eric Packer — played by a steely-eyed Robert Pattinson — wants is a haircut.
Packer spends the entire film, which premiered Friday in Cannes, crossing town to get one but is waylaid when the U.S. president’s visit to the city causes traffic chaos. Yet when he eventually makes it to the barber, his haircut is interrupted and he leaves in futility, half-shaven.
For Cronenberg, a master of provocation, the significance of this probably goes beyond a debate on the quality of haircuts at barber shops — though judging by Pattinson’s slick red-carpet hair, it is probable he opted for a stylist.
In the surreal “Cosmopolis,” — full of long, introspective dialogue — the portrayal of cold, moneyed arrogance is a warning against the perceived greed of current times.
The oversexed, 28-year-old Packer has made his billions as an asset manager in a dystopian Manhattan and is so self-obsessed he barely registers the violent protests against capitalism around him. The only time Packer seems worried is after a doctor tells him, in one of the movie’s many comic moments, that he has an “asymmetrical prostate” — with prostate-gazing an obvious synonym for navel-gazing.
Pattison — who is most famous for playing a vampire in the teen “Twilight” series — said he was nervous about the complex role.
“I spent two weeks in my hotel room worrying,” he said, joking that “actors aren’t meant to be intelligent.”
But the ego and cynicism stretch beyond his character and infect the whole landscape.
The film starts with a quote: “a rat becomes the unit of currency,” that turns out to be true for the movie’s characters, who all seem to be part of a individualistic “rat race” each struggling to get his or her 15 minutes of fame.
The last scene sees a claustrophobic 22-minute face-off between Packer and a crazed man trying to assassinate him, played with standout brilliance by Paul Giamatti. The two talk on a couch, separated by a screen that Cronenberg said conjures up images of a Catholic confessional, exploring how selfish the world is.
Pattinson, whose past public appearances have caused mobs of teens to swoon, said he identified with the role, joking that he sometimes thinks “people are trying to kill me.”
The film was based on a 2003 book by Don DeLillo, who was at the Cannes Film Festival alongside Cronenberg and said the film’s dialogue was directly lifted from the novel. Still, at many points, the drawn-out dialogue seemed to have more elements of a play and the movie dragged.
At the post-screening press conference, Cronenberg justified with aplomb the film’s introspective qualities. “For me, the essence of cinema is a person, a face, speaking.”
Pattinson said he loves Cronenberg’s other films — which include the 2011 “A Dangerous Method” — but the Canadian director said “I always had the feeling he’d never seen any of my movies.”
The film has drawn inevitable comparisons to current financial woes and the timeless themes of greed vs. poverty and populist anger, but Cronenberg said any link to current affairs was accidental. Still, the shooting did coincide with global anti-capitalist protests that began in late 2011.
“(After filming) in the evenings, to read about the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, it seemed at points that we were working more on a documentary,” he said.
DeLillo said he wrote “Cosmopolis” after being struck by the massive gap between rich and poor in Manhattan.
“New York City streets at the turn of the century seemed suddenly filled up with white stretch limousines,” he said.
People come to Cannes to dream, and this gritty, cynical film was seen by some Cannes revelers as a downer. So where was the hope?
“The hope is embodied in the fact that the movie got made in the first place,” Cronenberg said with a dry smile. “It’s not an easy movie to get financed. In Hollywood, $200 million is spent on movies that are extremely conservative, not-edgy. The hope is in the art.”
Filmoria 5/5
For those expecting the explicit, hand-shooting and manic portrait the teaser trailer screened, you may feel a little deflated after watching. But if you open your eyes just a little wider, you’ll quickly realise you are witnessing filmmaking at its highest, most satirical and down-right demented quality. The picture is fuelled by existential imagery, dialogue and tones – the staggeringly slow pace of Packer’s limo is symbolic of his desire for safety, gently cocooning him in plush comfort from the horrors of the outside world, whilst his desire for ‘more from life’ is painted from his eternal boredom and isolation. It’s with these themes that Cosmopolis tremendously succeeds. Never does the audience feel sympathy or empathy with Packer, yet they know such a large amount about him and understand his complex and bizarre mind that it’s impossible not to become involved with him.
[…]
Despite being a small-scale and intimate project, Cronenberg doesn’t leave his directorial flair with the valet parking staff, he makes the film a visual whirlwind of weird and wonderful. The picture heavily relies on colour and strong exhibition and Cronenberg’s camera fails to miss even a stitch of the leather upholstery – his latest is a shiny, flashy diamond enclosed in a equally flashy transportation device.
[…]
But the film’s true driving force (excuse the pun) is Pattinson’s utterly fearless, audacious and sizzling performance. Both Twilight stars have now had films here in Cannes and both Kristen Stewart and Pattinson have given some of the festival’s strongest roles. Packer is a multi-layered, cynical, and chillingly captivating character; he’s a gritty brush-stroke of our modern day society, a itching rash that demands attending to. The world in which Packer resides in is one of disgusting wealth and luxury yet crippling doubt, paranoia, and self-loathing. Pattinson’s darkly comic and distressingly real performance here embodies everything Cosmopolisdesires to express; he whispers and scuttles but his manners and aura leave a deafening echo hanging in the tainted, dystopian atmosphere.
Anderson, Cronenberg earn Oscar buzz at Cannes
Another star-stacked, glam-packed edition of the Cannes Film Festival concludes on May 27, and as the end nears critics are jacking up the debate over potential frontrunners for Oscar gold in 2013.
It’s too soon to tell if another underdog movie such as “The Artist” will emerge from this year’s competition at the 65th annual Cannes Film Festival.
Dark tales of crime and romance have certainly earned critics’ praises, such as the Brad Pitt crime drama “Killing Them Softly.”
There’s no certainty that this pick and others can parlay any early momentum into an Oscar sweep in 2013. But if the critics are right, these films will be among the nominees at next year’s Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles.
[….]
To the chagrin of his fans, Canadian director David Cronenberg has never been nominated an Oscar — even with such fine works to his credit in recent years as “A History of Violence,” “Eastern Promises” and “A Dangerous Method.” His latest film, “Cosmopolis,” could finally break that track record. Based on the novel “Cosmopolis” by Don DeLillo, this adaptation stars “Twilight” hunk Robert Pattinson as a womanizing billionaire who travels across Manhattan one day to get a haircut. That journey inadvertently takes the cold, detached man into the lives of several disparate characters, including a stalker and a mistress. Cronenberg amassed a fine ensemble cast for this project, including Paul Giamatti, Juliette Binoche, Samantha Morton, Kevin Durand, Samantha Morton, and Canadian star Jay Baruchel. “Cosmopolis” also shows, yet again, just how far Cronenberg also come from his 70s’ horror roots in films such as “Shivers,” “The Brood” and “Scanners.”
Read more here
David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis is a complex and incredibly nuanced film that adapts its source material handily, representing Don DeLillo’s novel with cinematic specificity and Cronenbergian methodology. Multiple viewings will be required to fully grapple (and perhaps enjoy) the result, but the film’s incredible dialogue and insightful rhetoric will challenge audiences in the best way.
[…]
Robert Pattinson’s Eric Packer solidifies what some critics have suspected for a while now: the dude is more than a perfectly-chiseled face. Pattinson likely gets a bad rap because Twilight’s source material is inherently ridiculous, but there’s little the actors involved with that series can do to improve it. Cannes 2012 is an interesting year for both Kristen Stewart and Pattinson, because they are doing what they can to remove the baggage of their shared vampiric past. I’m inclined to say they’ve both succeeded. Talking about Stewart’s performance in On The Road should be saved for a review of that film, but the strength of Pattinson’s Packer is enough to separate the actor from the insanity of Stephenie Meyer fandom.
It’s unclear right now whether or not Cosmopolis is a definitive Wall Street film, because the pacing could be torment for audiences unwilling to listen to the various exchanges in and outside Packer’s limousine. Yes, Cosmopolis can feel long, but it’s also very tight: DeLillo’s original dialogue is lifted from the book, and the film is all the better for it. The discussions might not be gory or explosive, but the lines are exciting in their own way‹think sexy and snappy; crisp and crazy. The script might not initially induce the “good movie chills” cinemagoers eternally lust after, but there’s a lot to take in here, and a second viewing is definitely warranted. When audiences aren’t busy piecing together the narrative, it will be easier to enjoy the juicy critiques of society and rhetorical reflections in Cosmopolis, of which there are plenty.
[…]
Whatever the film’s message, it certainly allows for the flashing of plenty of actorly skills — more so than a movie that calls for an actor to mope around as a lovelorn vampire a la Edward Cullen, and more so than many other films, for that matter. Pattinson is on screen nearly every one of the 108 minutes of Cronenberg’s surrealscape, and he is asked to pull off a difficult mix of unctuousness and nervousness, which, on first viewing, he mostly does.
Cornenberg’s Cosmopolis: Canadian director looks for first Palme d’Or at Cannes
CANNES, France – The annual film festival in the south of France ends on Sunday with the awarding of the Palme d’Or and the other, lesser prizes. Usually by 10 or 11 days into the festival, attendance is starting to wane and critics have more or less decided which films they think will win.
But on Thursday night all anyone seemed able to talk about was the debut of Cosmopolis, a new film by David Cronenberg. The 69-year-old Canadian is something of a fixture at Cannes, having presided over the jury in 1999 and shown his films Crash (1996), Spider (2002) and A History of Violence (2005) at the festival.
None took home the Palme d’Or – in fact, no Canadian film ever has – but Crash was given a special jury prize for daring and audacity, something only a French film festival could pull off. Cronenberg also won a kind of lifetime achievement prize in 2006.
Cosmopolis did not receive universal acclaim from critics after the screening Friday, although the love-it-or-hate-it reactions actually bode well at a festival which often rewards divisive films. (Last year’s Palme d’Or went to Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life.)
[…]
Telegraph UK (4 stars)
Cosmopolis picks up on and runs with all three of the central themes that have emerged over the last 11 days of the Festival: our response to chaos; the collapse of the era of excess; and the terror, and comedy, of death. It could almost be a bizarro prequel to Leos Carax’s Holy Motors, another film in which a limo ride becomes an odyssey. At its heart is a sensational central performance from Robert Pattinson – yes, that Robert Pattinson – as Packer. Pattinson plays him like a human caldera; stony on the surface, with volcanic chambers of nervous energy and self-loathing churning deep below.
EW Inside movies | IBN Live | CineEurope
Twitter Updates:
FilmLandEmpire Cosmopolis is a radical and lo-fi experiment which zigzags between the compelling and the boring #cannes2012
annasmithjourno Robert Pattinson a good fit for Cronenberg’s cold, weird Cosmopolis, which is VERY talky (even during sex scenes)
robbiereviews Cronenberg’s COSMOPOLIS talky but terrific, with a steely, sinuous turn from Pattinson. Chillingly current too. #cannes
ThomasAdamsonAP Cosmopolis: Violent, surreal predictably shocking – Kronenberg’s prostate-gazing capitalist satire
Astrostic Cosmopolis – radically stylized&inhuman, ideas fly at you like data in a detached but riveting stream, perfectly complimenting
XanBrooks Blown away by Cosmopolis at Cannes. A film of cool, diamond brilliance. Perfectly fitted, a tale for the times. Note to jurors: this one
MoviesOnVM Also, Cosmopolis is fascinating and dull in almost equal measure but it may well be Robert Pattinson’s best performance to date -AS
AWLies Cosmopolis is absolutely nothing like I thought it would be, but totally ace nonetheless. R-Patz is the real deal #Cannes2012
filmnickjames Robert Pattinson in COSMOPOLIS looks like James Dean playing James Bond #Cannes2012
OnTheCroisette: Pattinson really impressed me, by the way#Cosmopolis
via Larry Richman
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Great reviews! So proud of Rob! I already knew he was amazing, so glad the critics see it now too
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