Mike Goes To Movies

Crash (1996) + Viggo Mortensen and David Cronenberg Chat (2019) Last night I had the absolute pleasure of attending a TIFF special viewing of Cronenberg's highly controversial Crash, hosted by Viggo Mortensen, and followed by a discussion by him with Cronenberg himself, who surprised the audience with an unannounced appearance at the theatre. The night was started with some interesting words by Viggo that helped to set the audience for the viewing (especially for those that, like myself, had not seen Crash before). In talking about Crash and Cronenberg, Viggo said one of his favourite things about the director is that, in his films, Cronenberg never tells the viewer what to think. Unlike many films today, Cronenberg's films usually do not have the moralistic objective or cathartic ending, delivering to the audience a specific and intended message by the filmmakers. I found this a particularly interesting statement coming from Viggo as his recent, highly-acclaimed Green Boo...

Love, Death & Robots (2019) Love, Death & Robots is the highly-anticipated Netflix anthology series headed by directors, David Fincher and Tim Miller. It is a re-imagining of sorts of the Heavy Metal reboot that the two had, for long, planned on making. The series is eighteen standalone science fiction stories, each brimming with violence, nudity and profanity; though the series is animated in gorgeous fashion, it is definitely not for children. As with most anthologies, LD+R can be somewhat of a mixed-bag; for every successful segment, there is likely an equally weaker one. The genres range from strictly action, to philosophical and existential, tense thrillers or straight absurd comedies, all within a unique sci-fi setting. As mentioned, one area where the series succeeds across the board is in its highly diverse and exceptional animation. You can see from this images that the segments range from fully-rendered and realistic computer animation, classic hand-drawn ani...