Cosmopolis Reviews

Here are a few reviews for Cosmopolis:

washingtonpost
[...]Cronenberg does have a gift for creating a certain atmosphere. The feeling here is a curious blend of pleasant absurdity and disconcerting unpredictability. Despite the thick dialogue, there’s something compelling about the whole endeavor, because it feels like anything might happen. [...] 2/5 stars


zimbio
[...] Cosmopolis is a fatalistic nightmare, a character study of abstraction, but Pattinson is so compelling, and the language so impressive, it's impossible to deny there's something worthwhile happening onscreen. A lengthy talk between Packer and Benno Levin (Paul Giamatti), a former employee, in Benno's ramshackle apartment, feels more like a two-man play than anything else. It's disjointed from the rest of the film, but important because it takes Packer out of his isolated element. He's suddenly a part of the real world and very vulnerable. He wouldn't have it any other way.

 azcentral
[...] "Cosmopolis" is frustrating, funny, thought-provoking, weird, maddening, worthwhile. It isn't a great movie. Sometimes it's not a good one. Sometimes it is. Ultimately, it is one worth working through, a valuable exercise if you're willing to make the effort. [...]

mdjonline
[...] All of the criticisms you may have heard or held about Pattinson’s performances as the vampire Edward in the “Twilight” films only serve to underline that he is perfectly cast as Packer. [...]

I said “Cosmopolis” is flawlessly directed. Yes, it is. I can’t easily imagine a better screen version of the DeLillo novel, although I don’t much want to imagine one at all. David Cronenberg is a master filmmaker, whose films sometimes fail to reverberate with me, but whose genius cannot be denied. There is a coldness and abstraction in much of his work, a heartlessness. He touched me deeply in films like “Eastern Promises,” “The Fly,” “The Dead Zone,” and even the pain-soaked “Crash.” Then there are films like this. Can one say Don DeLillo found not only the ideal but perhaps the only director for his novel?

mtv

I won't lie. This is not top-notch Cronenberg, in my view, but what's the adage about pizza or sex or ice cream? This one is still worth your time. There ain't much of a narrative here, but the words can be pretty hypnotic, and there's a perverse novelty in seeing Robert Pattinson jump headfirst into such an anti-commercial mood piece. Let me know when you see it, so you can explain to me what it's really about.

philly

[...] I'll confess that a great deal of the limo-bound movie conversation went over my head - Packer stops to admit passengers who give him advice on data analysis, philosophy, art, spirituality, markets, etc. It's dialogue that works on the page of a novel, wherein you can rescan. It flies by on screen, leaving you reaching for Cliff's notes.
Still, trenchant observations peep through. Like the idea that the modern leveraged buyout capitalist and anarchist have something important in common - the self-flattering belief that the urge to destroy is a creative one.

 startribune

[...] The film is all too faithful to its un-cinematic source. The dialogue, transcribed from DeLillo's pages, is flat, cerebral robot-speak. Ponderous arias on the themes of love, death, power, technology and inequality slow the film to a snail's pace like the limousine. Pattinson, modern cinema's premier vampire, is aptly cast as a bloodless tycoon. At times he even copies Dracula, lying full-length in his rolling, leather-lined sarcophagus. The film makes repeated references to abstract art -- the opening credits feature Pollock-like action painting dribbles -- but its anti-realist approach turns tiresome long before the journey is done.