Popular reviews

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  Review by amaya ★★★★★ 7

  at first i thought "hey this isn't very cronenbergian" but then a random character at a bar casually asked our protagonist if he was "a faggot" then leaned back to reveal a giant humanoid bug monster sitting next to him and i was like oh sure

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  Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★ 2

  You're reading this... telepathically, non-consciously.

  If you look carefully at these words, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several reasons why I enjoyed watching Naked Lunch - about the impeccable writing, the film's strange sense of humor; about the metaphors, the social commentary.

  This is the first Letterboxd review that I've written in longhand, placed my words down on paper - the paper you so delicately hold in your hand - for a particular form of emphasis, a specific highlighting of the language used, and accentuated via utilization of pen.

  The truth of the matter, the deeply rooted thought whose seed was planted long before you opened your eyes to take in these arbitrary signals, these intricately (or not so intricately) woven symbols, whose legitimate meaning is nothingness, but nothing less... is that you notice something strange about my handwriting, don't you?

  Don't you?

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★ 10

  80

  More or less my writing process.

  Absolutely *astounding* practical effects. Such an effortless world of surreal tangents and horny examinations of procedure. Naked Lunch understands how simultaneously fucked up and liberating it is to Write, not just emotionally but physically. Bug powder always near by, with a parrot cage at the end of the hall. Pain and pleasure, intertwined.

  That face-hugger typewriter thing with the dump truck ass? Cronenberg, you madman!

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  Review by amaya ★★★★★

  it's a kafka high. you feel like a bug

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  Review by COBRARocky ★★★★ 2

  They just let you do anything in the 90s, didn't they?

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★ 3

  Cronenberg takes Burroughs' radical postmodern novel of countercultural obscenity, conspiratorial paranoia and drug-addicted surrealism and reconceives it as a tangible, literal bugfuck noir about the author himself; his political fears, sexual repression, social isolation and artistic control/chaos. Paul Schrader's Mishima is probably the only other biography I've seen operating on this level of intensely expressive, tortured subjectivity.

  Full discussion on ep 284 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS.

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  Review by Casey Malone ★★★★ 3

  I personally would not have invented a typewriter that can cum but that's why David Cronenberg is a genius and I'm just some schmo typing this review on a bone dry keyboard.

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  Review by Dante ★★★★★ 1

  the greatest homosexual movie of all time

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  Review by Steven Sheehan ★★★★½ 19

  Real life tragedy and mind bending fantasy are moulded together by a director working at the very peak of his powers. Cronenberg was the perfect man to bring the fearless writing of William S Burroughs to the screen. His knack for creating oppressive worlds and living nightmares turns the writer's semi-autobiographical book into one hell of a visual trip.

  He doesn't move in time and motion with the Burrough's surrealistic style, instead he vividly brings to life the metaphors within the text. In keeping with the grotesque stomach-churning style he is such a master of, his version is literally crawling with bugs, be they large or small, transforming as typewriters or perched next to the lead character in a bar.…

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★★ 7

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  "Exterminate all rational thought. That is the conclusion I have come to."

  Addiction as metaphor. Naked Lunch is no more about heroin or homosexuality than it is about centipedes or Mugwumps. We get addicted to anything that allows us to avoid those aspects of ourselves we'd rather not look at. Overcoming this addiction therefore involves the double trauma of confronting the addiction itself (confronting our escapism) and of confronting that which we used the addiction to avoid. This is why Bill must shoot his wife twice: once as the trauma which triggers his addictive behavior, and again as the final confrontation with that trauma.

  Of course, in Cronenberg's universe, where psychological phenomena are accompanied by matching physical manifestations, this means…

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★★

  "It wanted to be kissed, same as any other mouth."

  Turning this into a sort of bildungsroman -- far from minimizing Burroughs' novel as a political work (as a few claimed at the time) -- actually makes this both an examination of a unique writer's pioneering process and an emphatic declaration (somewhat an extension of VIDEODROME) that sexual and physical transformation, just like creating art, can be a political act: gradual, unpredictable, probably traumatic, definitely apocalyptic, but no less potent as an opportunity.

  Personally I would prefer this a little rougher formally, a little more urgent; this digests the book's content and tone but not consistently the jagged feel. But that's largely beside the point.

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  Review by CinemaVoid 🏴‍☠️ ★★★★ 7

  Burroughs:
  Taking drugs to write book to take drugs to.

  Cronenberg:
  Taking book to make movie to take drugs to.