Gosh, where do I begin.... Cosmopolis is a mess. A big, beautiful and very intelligent mess. It is a very difficult film to come to terms with, especially because Cronenberg seems intent on the viewer not liking it at all. He keeps you at a distance and gives you a cold and analytical commentary on the state of the world as we know it. And it works. Well, sort of.

Let's start with the obvious. Pattinson is fine. He has talent and proves himself to be a very capable actor. The character he plays is the owner of a big company that deals with the world of finance. What they do exactly is never clear, but they are definitely big…

I had high hopes for Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis yet I left disappointed ... I think. I’m unsure of my opinion because it is an enigmatic film - it is dense, different and very difficult. Having never read Don DeLillo’s novel I was unsure quite what to expect but I still wasn’t quite expecting this. It is a postmodern Odyssey and a story for and about our times filtered through the eyes of a blank and privileged dick. Despite being confined to a limo that always slowly crawls forward it is a story that is static to the point of being inert. It is an episodic series of verbose conversations that are flatly expressed and stretched out to a near maddening degree.…

One of the only truly discomforting films I've ever seen, Cosmopolis forces itself upon you in such a way as to assert not only narrative but experiential dominance: this film is terrifying because it drops us into a world which is complete, sane, a world in which everything makes sense - but only because things are meaningless.

The inference of many that not only is Cosmopolis one of Cronenberg's weakest but also one of the weakest films ever made is absurd to me because every individual 'offputting' facet of the film (the unsubtle greenscreen, Pattinson's bizarre anti-realist performance) so clearly and directly contributes to the overall vision of the piece that there is no doubting the films' manifesto (for lack…

Way better than I expected. David Cronenberg is doing things here I’ve never seen before, and they are bold and they are risky. Not surprised so many people hate this. It has the makings of a “bad movie” from points A to Z, but much of it feels so intentional and appropriate to the film’s exploration of the Don DeLillo’s straight Doomsday-ass philosophical conclusions about our global economy’s increasing stratification. His lenses for instance are so unnerving, and that paired with his hideous Digital with a capital D photography makes for a visual language that is as tasteless and apathetic and enigmatic as his horrendous subject. The way this film is cut and covered is an absolute mystery to me,…

"This city eats and sleeps noise. Makes noise out of every century. Makes the same noises that were made in the Seventeenth century, along with other noises that were developed since then." This is just one of many pieces of modern mysticism Eric Packer drones out of his sneering face over the course of this dialogue-heavy, subtext-laden snooze fest. At one point, his frigid cipher of a wife actually asks him what he means, then decides she doesn't want to know - which accurately sums up the willful obfuscation at the heart of their relationship and of this film in general.

Cosmopolis charts the existential collapse of a prodigal young banking tycoon during the space of a single night in…