A Dangerous Method Reviews

There are some plays that are meant to remain on the stage. This is one of them.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

A Dangerous Method is beautifully crafted and abundant with subtext but it's also sterile, dramatically turgid and at times, kind of a drag.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10

While [it] offers up the kind of creepy, carnal delights we usually enjoy in a Cronenberg flick, I found myself more intrigued by the matters of the mind that are more fleetingly addressed.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Cronenberg doesn't go in for any exploding heads this time, but the surging emotions and heady ideas on display in his adaptation of Christopher Hampton's play The Talking Cure are equally combustible.

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Exploding the era of the costume drama with both its style and its ideas, David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method pushes repression to its breaking point at every turn

Full Review | Original Score: 85/100

For Cronenberg fans who didn't desert him after he stopped blowing up heads and started exploring them, it's yet another intensely calibrated portrait of repression and expression.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

Cronenberg's comments are largely constrained to the subtle placement of his actors in the frame, to suggest the ever shifting power dynamic between the characters, who form a kind of love triangle.

Full Review | Original Score: 87/100

Fassbender provides a solid tortured performance alongside stand-out support from Mortensen; unfortunately the film hinges on the Sabina character that in Knightly's hands lacked the necessary punch to elevate this film.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

...Knightley's histrionic performance verges on the embarrassing.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

is remarkably restrained, sometimes to a fault. In fact, there are no obvious visual Cronenberg flourishes, and maybe some surrealistic touches might have upped the ante a little.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

Its eye for detail makes things so real and worthy of a work of scholarship.

Full Review | Original Score: A

It's little more than repetitious conversation - conversation that uncovers little new or titillating on the topics of sex, madness or the process of psychoanalysis.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

A Dangerous Method is masterful filmmaking on all levels, but alas, it also leaves you dreaming that Fassbender and Mortensen will return to these roles in a more focused story on the fathers of psychoanalysis.

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For the sake of your own mental health A Dangerous Method should be avoided, but the Cronenberg curious might want to endure it to prevent any onset of mania.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

While the moments of psycho-sexual interplay allows Cronenberg to indulge in his obsession with the kinky, the Canadian auteur shows a surprising restraint that his own written works don't have.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

IF you're up for some solid intellectual stimulation and don't mind having to work hard for it, this one will really give you something to discuss with friends afterwards.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5

While very much a dialogue-heavy historical film, all the recognisable elements of Cronenberg's preoccupations can be found in A Dangerous Method.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

The film is understandably talky, but there was enough passion and drama in it to hold my attention. It is a good primer on psychoanalysis.

Full Review | Original Score: B

Both Michael Fassbender and Viggo Mortensen are impressive, but the film belongs to Keira Knightley, who gives a quite astonishing performance, one modelled closely on existing film of women patients who suffered from this kind of hysteria.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

All in all, this film is impressive: the attention to detail in the costuming is wonderful, the lighting is brilliant, and the cinematography is gorgeous.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5