Retrospective: The Films Of David Cronenberg

A few years ago when we first took a look through David Cronenberg's filmography, we we wrote that it had been a long journey to “respectability” for the eminent Canadian director. But that was just after a string of films ("A History of Violence," "Eastern Promises" and "A Dangerous Method") that suggested that Cronenberg had perhaps hung up his technophiliac/technophobic psych/body horror spurs for good, and that he was drifting into a more stately and accessible phase of his career. After only few prior dalliances with the mainstream, Cronenberg looked ready to settle down and go steady.

But while we're pretty big fans of all three of those films, perhaps he sensed the definite undercurrent of dismay at that assessment last time. His two films since then — "Cosmopolis" and "Maps to the Stars" — may not signal any sort of a return to the clinical yet visceral unease of his early works, but nor are they in any real sense mainstream....