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In The Shrouds, David Cronenberg Faces Grief Without Flinching
David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds is a stark, unflinching exploration of grief and bodily decay, delivered with the signature aesthetic that birthed the term “Cronenbergian.” Over fifty years, Cronenberg has returned obsessively to the fragility and malleability of the flesh, but rarely with the personal urgency on display here. The story follows Karsh (Vincent Cassel), a bereaved husband who creates GraveTech, a morbid yet tender technology allowing the living to monitor the decomposition of their loved ones via encrypted app.
Inspired by Cronenberg’s own loss—his wife Carolyn’s death from cancer—The Shrouds is less a horror film than a dark philosophical meditation. Like his later works Cosmopolis and Crimes of the Future, it unfolds largely through cool, deliberate conversation, its pacing more theatrical than cinematic. Diane Kruger hauntingly plays both Karsh’s late wife and her sister Terry, blurring lines between memory, longing, and transgression. Guy Pearce, as a sardonic tech savant, completes the quartet.
Though The Shrouds teases a conspiracy plot, the real story lies in Karsh’s obsessive refusal to move on—a study of grief as stasis disguised as innovation. The film’s shocking imagery—wounds, decay, disfigurement—isn’t gratuitous but necessary, stripping away the sentimental gloss that too often sanitizes cinematic death. Like The Fly or Dead Ringers, it penetrates “beyond the veil of the flesh,” confronting the horror of mortality with unnerving tenderness.
Uninterested in tidy resolutions or mass appeal, The Shrouds demands a viewer willing to sit with discomfort and rawness. For Cronenberg, grief, like flesh, is something to be explored without shame, fear, or illusion. In a culture that prefers beauty to truth, The Shrouds stands as a brutally honest elegy—and a devastating, necessary one.
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Cheech and Chong’s Last Movie — A Reflective, Lively Tribute to a Cultural Phenomenon
In Cheech and Chong’s Last Movie, director David Bushell crafts a warm, inventive portrait of Richard “Cheech” Marin and Tommy Chong, the comedic duo whose work defined a particular strand of American counterculture. Blending candid interviews, scripted desert road-trip scenes, and a rich archive of visual and audio material, Bushell offers more than a retrospective; he delivers a meditation on endurance, friendship, and creative rebellion.
The film traces Marin and Chong’s unlikely convergence in late-1960s Vancouver, where Marin, a self-exiled American draft dodger, and Chong, a Canadian musician, first collaborated in an improvisational theater group. Their evolution from musicians to pioneering comedians is chronicled with detail and affection, illuminating how their stoner personas found an eager audience in a generation questioning authority and embracing new social norms.
While notable omissions — such as their collaborations with Joni Mitchell and Martin Scorsese — leave certain dimensions unexplored, the film compensates with its emotional resonance and narrative vitality. Scenes of the two men adrift in the desert, humorously searching for a mythical destination called "The Joint," provide a charming, lightly scripted framework that evokes the essence of their humor: wry, self-aware, and disarmingly sincere.
Bushell’s direction balances playfulness with reflection, avoiding hagiography while celebrating a legacy that extends beyond mere entertainment. Record producer Lou Adler, a key figure in their ascent, offers additional historical texture, anchoring the film’s exploration of fame and cultural change.
Ultimately, Cheech and Chong’s Last Movie is a fitting tribute — not merely to a body of work, but to a bond that has survived the shifting sands of time and taste. It is a reminder that sometimes, the most enduring revolutions are the ones carried on a wave of laughter.
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