Cosmopolis Reviews
Top CriticThe rapid dialogue is dry and mannered, like a David Mamet play, there's virtually no story and Cronenberg's visual scheme is cold and claustrophobic.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
It feels like each and every moment bursts forth with urgent dialogue, and yet what does anyone actually say?
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| Original Score: 2/4
There's not really a movie there, nothing that sustains itself from scene to scene and nothing that's worth watching from beginning to end.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The film is all too faithful to its un-cinematic source.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
"Cosmopolis," because of its allegiance to the book's mannered, offbeat language, feels like it never wakes up.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Poor Pattinson does the best he can. He's not terrible. But he's definitely out of his element, if not beyond his depth, an altar boy in a bishop's robes.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The story seems to cleave into cerebral disquisition and primal sex.
The movie isn't for everyone. But if it grabs you, prepare for it to stick in your head for days.
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| Original Score: 3/4
A flawlessly directed film about enigmatic people who speak in morose epigrams about vague universal principles they show no sign of understanding.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Despite the constrictions, Cronenberg keeps the space handsome and active. For long stretches, Cosmopolis is dreamy and funny, in an off-centered way.
David Cronenberg meets Don DeLillo at last, and it's as if all the angels of heaven have come together. And said nothing.
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| Original Score: 1/4
I took a strange pleasure in submitting to this movie's stilted but weirdly poetic rhythms. But I freely acknowledge that for others, enduring Cosmopolis may be less fun than a backseat prostate exam.
I never imagined describing a film as a cross between The Bonfire of the Vanities and Last Year at Marienbad...
It's all vapid snark, didactic sermonizing and bewildering shock tactics.
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| Original Score: 2/4
DeLillo's brilliant analysis of the destructive power of wealth that took such seductive hold on page has a tough time gaining traction on screen.
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| Original Score: 2.5/5
It's like a dream that engages and drifts, until waking with a start in a finale that's as bracing and raw as the rest of the film is coolly distant.
Frustratingly bland work from lead Robert Pattinson results in an awfully watery stew.
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| Original Score: 2/5
Conventional it is not. Engrossing it is.
Mr. Cronenberg's direction throughout "Cosmopolis" is impeccable, both inside the limo and out.
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| Original Score: 3.5/5
If you can get past the psychological density of the source material and the tabloid noise around the star , this mesmerizing mind-bender ought to prove that Robert Pattinson really can act and Director David Cronenberg never runs from a challenge.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Sometimes, even a little gratuitous nudity can't save a movie. This is one of those occasions.
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| Original Score: 1/4
"Cosmopolis" is Cronenberg's best film since "eXistenZ" and further viewings may place it higher than that.
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| Original Score: A-
We're supposed to be feeling . . . something. That we don't might be Cronenberg's own endgame.
Cosmopolis is almost certainly some kind of masterpiece, but I have to admit it's probably not for everyone.
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| Original Score: 5/5
A sensual, propulsive thriller, the apocalypse as viewed from lush interiors and a hermetic remove.
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| Original Score: 4/5
An eerily precise match of filmmaker and material, Cosmopolis probes the soullessness of the 1% with the cinematic equivalent of latex gloves.
A carefully prepared freeze-dried entrée, sans jus, that fails to stir the appetite.
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| Original Score: 3/4
[A] vapid, claustrophobic drama...
What we can't argue is that Cosmopolis is the work of a master filmmaker, one who is determined to have us think about the ideas packed into the trunk of this limo bound for the furthest corners of the psyche.
An airless and inert expression of a capitalist kingpin's odyssey across a threatening New York City.
Threatens to soar and to be important, but it only offers flashes of lucidity. That said, there's a consistent air of charged, end-of-days menace running through the film, which Cronenberg handles with an unbroken sense of precision and confidence.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
A parade of hollow didactic encounters.
