Yesterday two new trailers appeared for David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars. I'm not embedding them specifically because I can't find sharp images (the main one floating around seems like a bad stolen print of a trailer - very underlit) and the international one (NSFW) has too many auto-play ads and works less well as a coherent snapshot of the movie.
I'm hoping Maps skirts the usual trends of public reaction to Cronenberg films. It often follows this pattern:
1. Healthy amount of media coverage and excitement before their films premiere (remember all the A Dangerous Method hoopla?)
2. A curiously muted release (sometimes only limited) with a tiny bit of coverage focused on whichever big star is doing whichever genuinely weird thing they're asked to do in the movie. Think Robert Pattinson getting an enema in the limo in Cosmopolis
3. Almost no follow up conversation online or lines at the box office despite the movies always being genuinely strong conversation pieces...
I hope for better for Cronenberg as one of the world's most consistently fascinating auteurs. The new film appears to be a Hollywood satire about a possibly soulless actress (Julianne Moore) and her new possibly sinister personal assistant (Mia Wasikowska) and a young carnal man involved with both of them Robert Pattinson). Both the actress and her assistant have some sort of dark secret / shady past involving a deadly fire and a bunch of other characters played by Olivia Williams (yay), John Cusack (no sale!) Sarah Gadon (more please), and Evan Bird (The Killing) who is playing a former child star and the brother to Wasikowska.
a brief Yes No Maybe So breakdown
YES
• Robert Pattinson doing my favorite actresses in cars has so far been a pleasure
• Sarah Gadon's role looks interesting - is she a psychotic internal projection of Julianne Moore's or an actual character?
• that largely female cast is intriguing
• I'm all in for movies about showbiz and Cronenberg's outside eyes might provide a funhouse mirror on Tinseltown
• Julianne throwing a hissy fit in yoga pants is pretty funny
• Julianne in general looks like she's having a ton of fun with her part and she's always best when she's serving auteurs
• Julianne with loose morals in bed with multiple people. Yes, please (see also: Savage Grace)
• few actresses are as reliably delicious while playing actresses as Julianne Moore is (see also: Boogie Nights/Vanya/Benny&Joon)
• ... and, well, Julianne because she's Julianne
NO
• Maybe it's just the disorganization of the trailers but is this a chaotic incoherent tonally inconsistent folly of a picture?
• Why did it have to be John Cusack? I want Viggo Mortensen in every Cronenberg picture
MAYBE SO
• Mia Wasikowska has been all possible gradations in movies thus far: great, good, bad, indifferent so it's tough to know whether or not to be excited about her. So very hit and miss and everywhere inbetween.
• Carrie Fisher plays herself in the movie !!! (but, alas, I didn't spot her in the trailer)
[While thinking 'Yes!'] Noooo!"
I'm a completist with Julianne (even if I fall behind sometimes because she works so often. I haven't yet seen Non-Stop or The English Teacher) and try not to miss a Cronenberg so I'm a yes by default but I feel curiously little watching those all over the place trailers which makes me maybeso worried.
How about you?