Naked Lunch; Bolt

Naked Lunch (David Cronenberg, 1991) - B-

This sort of pure metaphor isn't really my thing, but I do admire the fact that Cronenberg at least made an attempt to give it a somewhat coherent literal dimension. Essential for fans of the filmmaker since audio-visually it's probably the most Cronenbergian Cronenberg film ever, with characters constantly caressing fleshy typewriters and sucking addictive gooey liquids out of tubes protruding from the heads of buglike alien creatures. So there's that. Also: Peter Weller circa 1991 = James Woods + Daniel Craig.


Bolt (Byron Howard & Chris Williams, 2008) - C

You know, movies have been sending talking dogs and cats on cross-country adventures since time immemorial. Was it really necessary to contrive such a labored set-up to do so here? There's this TV show about a superhero dog, you see, but the dog actor thinks it's all real, and the producers of the show go to ridiculous lengths to maintain this impression, but then the producers decide that it's too predictable for the dog to save the day every time, so they end an episode with the dog's owner and sidekick captured by the show's villain, only the dog thinks it's all real, you see, and then the dog gets trapped in a box and shipped across the country, and now has to find his way back to his owner, who he thinks is in grave danger, but he thinks he has superpowers, you see... Complicated but largely charmless, and not very funny; the delusional hero thing is hard to pull off, and the movie doesn't make it work. I must say though that this is the best, most immersive use of 3-D that I've ever seen.