Maps To The Stars

Maps To The Stars:  Another terrible David Cronenberg film.  Ha.  He hasn't made a good flick in thirty years, yet his *reputation* grows.  After making Rabid, The Brood, Scanners, The Dead Zone and The Fly, Cronenberg ended up taking himself seriously and has since shat out one pretentious art movie after another.  This one isn't as crappy as Cosmopolis, but it's still garbage.  The dumb plot is a tangle of loose threads ripped from previous dark Hollywood fables like Sunset Boulevard, Mulholland Drive, The Player, etc., etc. and sprinkled with some Psychopathia Sexualis For Dummies mumbo-jumbo.  Here's the story:

An aging self-absorbed movie actress desperately tries to land the lead role in a remake of a decades old cult movie that starred her sexually abusive mother.  While wringing her hands at home alone waiting to hear if she gets the part, the aging actress is haunted/taunted by her mother's sexy ghost (mommy died in a house fire long ago).  The aging actress hires a nutty burn-scarred (the scars are barely noticeable for most of the film) personal assistant, who turns out to be recently released from a loony bin and the daughter of the aging actress' ruthless massage therapist (who knew there could be such a thing!) who has problems of his own, like hiding the fact his wife is really his sister, and that his unsurprisingly maladjusted children (the son is a child star who, for some reason, is haunted by the ghost of a Make A Wish Foundation girl he visited in a hospital) seem intent on following mom and dad down the same road. . .or into the grave, whichever comes first.  And for some reason, at one time or another in this rag picker's script, all the characters end up possessed by the surrealist poet Paul Éluard, spouting lines from his poem Liberty.  I imagine this was supposed to be some big bad dark Hollywood satire, but, hey, who really gives a shit about Hollywood, anyway?  The only movies more overdone than movies about *people* trying to *make it* in Hollywood are movies about *people* trying to *make it* in New York.

And I guess it's no shocker that a movie with such an incomprehensible script features laughably bad acting. No doubt the cast were clueless at how to interpret their characters' murky motivations--but let's mock their pathetic performances, anyway.  Aging actress Julianne Moore stars as the aging actress, and revisits her star-making performance from Short Cuts. . .you remember that, right?  When she walked around with her hairy cunt hanging out for two or three minutes of screen time?  That made her an *actress.* She don't show her pussy in this one, but she's naked or half-naked most of the time, including one excruciating scene where she's on the toilet and has to take a shit, fart and wipe her ass in front of her burn-scarred personal assistant.  I guess this blatant lack of bowel movement etiquette is meant to show how insignificant the aging actress regards her personal assistant, but. . .ha. . .Moore can barely wipe her own ass. . .it's the worst toilet bowl performance ever. . .ha ha ha. . .I can't believe I am reviewing an actress' fart!  But that's how shitty this movie is, Julianne Moore's terrible attempt to fake a fart and her half-assed ass wiping are the most interesting moments!  How bad was Julianne Moore's shitting and farting?  Chuck Berry's dick would have went limp if he watched it. . .

Anyways. . .

The has-been John Cusack is the ruthless massage therapist (?!?!), and his big scene consists of him assaulting his daughter (you know, the kid he had after he fucked his sister, and who grew up to be the nutty burn-scarred personal assistant to the aging actress).  Cusack has to really wail on his daughter, he's supposed to be giving her body blows that would cause internal bleeding for a week. But Cusack is that nerd actor from Say Anything and The Sure Thing. . .the cute, harmless white boy who has to put in way too much work to get a piece of ass. . .anyway, Cusack, pushing 50, is still a nerd, and watching him in a silly fake rage throw faggy punches at his incest-bred daughter is almost as laugh-out-loud funny as Julianne Moore's fake shitting.

The nutty burn-scarred personal assistant is played by somebody named Mia Wasikowska (or something pollacky like that). . .she's actually not too bad, but Julianne Moore, who's got to be twice her age, looks better naked, so her career arc will probably follow that of Lili Taylor or Juliette Lewis.   

Oh, yeah, Robert Pattinson is also in this movie.  I didn't bother including his character in the plot synopsis since it's completely irrelevant to whatever the muddled story line is, but he stands around looking completely confused for 10 or 15 minutes of screen time, no doubt as perplexed as the viewer as to what this movie is supposed to be about.  He does have a 30 second sex scene with Julianne Moore, and, after fucking her doggy style, he backs away, looking, surprise!, completely confused as to what that was supposed to be all about.

There is one performer who will probably move on from this zero of a movie and achieve *stardom:* Sarah Gadon, a stunningly beautiful actress who, unlike her co-stars, seemed to know what to do with her character, the sexy ghost mom.  She played the role as a creepy/cool temptress, a nightmare figure you both dread and desire.  Unfortunately, Gadon is on-screen for only about 5 minutes.  That leaves an hour-and-forty-five minutes of meandering mediocrity. . .so there's no point in watching this mess. . .unless you are like me, and find personal satisfaction in picking it apart and publicly accusing it of failure.