Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg) [107.5 points / 10 votes]
"In the year of “Big Data” and Nate Silver, the film that speaks most strongly to today’s world is one that exists in a completely artificial one -- David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis, a work as radical as anything he’s made since Videodrome, and in many ways that film’s inverse. A rip-roaring comedy about the psychology of data and capitalism, Cosmopolis takes us through the journey of a billionaire whose belief in digital patterns is questioned when he is unable to comprehend a disastrous fall in the yuan. In Cronenberg’s world, digital life is a cracking façade: monotone dialogue pops like a screwball comedy, the limousine slowly deteriorates into a piece of junk, and our protagonist’s body physically corrodes in the most absurd of ways.
Cronenberg’s control of each facet of his film is pristinely precise. The performances by its marvelous cast work through the extremely complicated dialogue without ever once flinching (most notably the bravura performances by Robert Pattison and Sarah Gadon). And Cronenberg emphasizes the artificial in every frame while slowly allowing glimpses of creeping humanity like little pinpricks. Edited and shot with razor-sharp skill, Cronenberg’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel might seem like the film the Occupy Wall Street movement has been waiting for, but it’s more of an attack on our constant investment in the signs, symbols and patterns of digital life today. Two characters realize they both have asymmetrical prostates, and one demands to know its meaning; the response: “Nothing... a harmless variation.” The most unsettling thing in Cronenberg’s vision of the future is realizing that not everything can fit neatly into models." - Peter Labuza
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