databeast Reviews

Hardware (1990)

It's a good movie to analyze, but not always great to watch

[8/10 · 26 July 2005]

First off, let's get my bias out the way, I'm a die-hard fan of this movie, and this review is definitely intended to get the reader to give it a chance.

The film is riddled with industrial (music) culture references and cameos, and if you're into that scene, there's a certain sick thrill about seeing Carl McCoy as the zone trooper, and seeing footage of proto-industrial performance artist Monte Cazazza in this. The general tone and ambiance of the whole piece of wonderfully clichéd cyberpunk.

And that's really the interesting thing about this film. While there are a plethora of terrible sci-fi slasher flicks out there desperately claiming the 'cyberpunk' moniker, here is a film that claims to be nothing more than a sci-fi slasher flick, and manages to be somewhat of a pulp-cyberpunk classic instead.

The whole movie is a mood piece, designed more for its ambiance and the feel of its world, than particularly flashy action sequences or on-screen 'wow' factor. It's meant to be a genre movie, but it manages to feel like a 'serious' film under the influence of some heavy drugs. Not a bad thing really, but your tastes may disagree. Personally I've always liked that sunset-filtered-through pollution look that Bladerunner was infamous for, and hardware utilizes the same rather well.

Genre movie it may be, but it shows far less cheese coating and terrible acting than any of the current glut of genre movies being produced for the Sci-Fi channel. In fact the whole movie feels more like a good pulpy cyberpunk novella than a genre movie by far. Calling the movie 'mood music for rivetheads' isn't really an insult to it.

Crash (1996)

It. helps to read the books, but that's not necessarily a good thing..

[7/10 · 23 July 2005]

Like many of Cronenberg's other movies with a literary basis, it's hard to watch, understand, or review the films he creates without having seen the original movies.

In an era when filmmakers are often criticized for ignoring the source material when adapting works to the screen, Cronenberg tends to go the other way, creating movies that are unrewarding nonsensical for people not already familiar with the source material (one of my favorites, Naked lunch, would likely be on the bottom of my list if I weren't already a William S. Burroughs fanatic).

Likewise with Crash, a movie that will have you saying 'what the hell was that all about?' for the rest of the day after watching it, unless you already dig the psychotic, proto-rivet-head literary musings of J.G. Ballard. Of course, if you do, then the film won't give you anything new, just provide eve candy to supplant a work you're already familiar with.

If you're a fanboy of the dementedly surreal and Cronenberg's perversely postmodern take on social commentary, you'll probably end up with this in the film library; if not, you'll probably be demanding your rental fees back.

In a nutshell: like much of Cronenberg's stuff - not guaranteed to make sense to anyone but Cronenberg himself, caveat emptor.