Cosmopolis
Entertainment One | Release Date: August 17, 2012 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
58
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 35 Critic Reviews
Positive:
20
Mixed:
12
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The PlaylistSimon AbramsAug 15, 2012
Everything matters in Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, but not everything is necessarily the same as DeLillo's book. And that makes the film, as a series of discussions about inter-related money-minded contradictions, insanely rich and maddeningly complex. We can't wait to rewatch it. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineBud WilkinsAug 12, 2012
Diamond-hard and dazzlingly brilliant, David Cronenberg's film plays like a deeply perverse, darkly comic successor to Videodrome. Read full review
80
The New York TimesManohla DargisAug 16, 2012
A cold, funny number about the erotics of money and the seduction of death. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJohn AndersonAug 16, 2012
Conventional it is not. Engrossing it is. Read full review
80
Boxoffice MagazineDavid EhrlichAug 15, 2012
It's Cronenberg's most willfully weird movie since "Spider," and it should prove a tough sell despite Pattinson's ample star power. Read full review
80
VarietyJustin ChangAug 7, 2012
An eerily precise match of filmmaker and material, Cosmopolis probes the soullessness of the 1% with the cinematic equivalent of latex gloves. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfAug 7, 2012
Director David Cronenberg - who knows a thing or two about bodily expressions - understands, finally, what to do with the Twilight star, turning his zombified handsomeness into a stark canvas upon which we can project our own anxieties. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezAug 24, 2012
Cosmopolis may be a cerebral mood piece, but it is loaded with strong performances that connect on an emotional level. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversAug 16, 2012
This mesmerizing mind-bender ought to prove two things: (1) Robert Pattinson really can act; (2) Director David Cronenberg never runs from a challenge. Read full review
75
IndieWireEric KohnAug 16, 2012
Since 2005's "A History of Violence," Cronenberg has ventured beyond the grotesque allegorical interests of his earlier movies, a shift that has led some longtime fans to assume he has softened up. As an enjoyably peculiar anti-capitalist indictment, Cosmopolis proves otherwise. Read full review
75
MovielineAlison WillmoreAug 15, 2012
Pattinson does a quietly marvelous thing in finding vulnerability in Eric without making it seem like softness. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyAug 7, 2012
The trouble with Cosmopolis, David Cronenberg's faithful-to-a-fault adaptation from Don DeLillo's 2003 novel, is that it's more metaphor than meat. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzAug 23, 2012
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. Read full review
70
The New YorkerDavid DenbyAug 20, 2012
Cronenberg has made an eccentric and beautiful-looking movie - a languid, deadpan, conceptualist joke. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriAug 18, 2012
Cosmopolis is often beautiful, but at times it feels like a movie sealed off from itself. Read full review
70
SlateDana StevensAug 17, 2012
Because I've long been captivated by Cronenberg's keen intelligence and highly personal cinematic vision, 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. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianShawn LevyAug 23, 2012
The journey on which he takes us may not satisfy in the ways we normally ask of movies, but if it did it wouldn't be a Cronenberg, would it? Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovAug 22, 2012
As a portrait of both man and society in exquisitely poised decline, it's harrowing, hilarious, and horrific in equal measure. Read full review
63
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsSep 7, 2012
The 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. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsAug 23, 2012
I just wish Cronenberg hadn't adapted the book on his own. Behind the camera, he does remarkable things, turning Packer's limo into what Cronenberg himself has described as an upscale version of "Das Boot." But the playlets constituting the whole are thick, stubbornly undramatic affairs; the verbiage is lumpy, self-conscious. Read full review
50
Washington PostStephanie MerryAug 30, 2012
It feels like each and every moment bursts forth with urgent dialogue, and yet what does anyone actually say? Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleAug 23, 2012
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. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeMark FeeneyAug 23, 2012
The novel is extremely funny. It's hilarious as well as horrific (all sorts of bad things are going on outside the limo - and a few inside of it, too). Yet whenever the movie is funny, it feels like a mistake. Comedy has never been a Cronenberg strength. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertAug 22, 2012
Its characters are bloodless, their speech monotone. If there are people like this, I hope David Cronenberg's film is as close as I ever get to them. You couldn't pay me to see it again. Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia PuigAug 16, 2012
Robert Pattinson must be hellbent on escaping the world of sparkly-skinned undead to take on the starring role in the leaden, obtuse and ultra-pretentious Cosmopolis. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubKeith PhippsAug 15, 2012
As Pattinson nears the bottom - both of his fortune, and to all appearances, his sanity - Cronenberg has to take the film somewhere, emptying out into a confrontation between Pattinson and a disgruntled former employee (Paul Giamatti) that never fully ties together all that's come before. Read full review
50
Village VoiceKarina LongworthAug 14, 2012
To the extent that Cosmopolis functions as a super-literal conceptual exercise, it's simultaneously irritating and fascinating. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanAug 8, 2012
The film comes off as an elaborately didactic and overheated lecture. Read full review
40
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottSep 7, 2012
Alas, in Cronenberg's hands, it just comes across as cold and lifeless and exhausting. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyAug 16, 2012
It is a disappointment coming from writer-director David Cronenberg, who has proved such a master at mind games. Cronenberg is perhaps too faithful to the book. The topic is provocative and certainly timely, but the film never achieves the incisive power of his best work, "A History of Violence" for one. Even an A-list ensemble that includes Juliette Binoche, Samantha Morton and Paul Giamatti can't save it. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanAug 16, 2012
There are plenty of ideas to gnaw on, given that Cronenberg has adapted Don DeLillo's intense novel of a New York on the verge of dystopian breakdown. But frustratingly bland work from lead Robert Pattinson results in an awfully watery stew. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyAug 7, 2012
After a strong run of films during the past decade, David Cronenberg blows a tire with Cosmopolis. Read full review
30
TimeRichard CorlissAug 7, 2012
Vapid, claustrophobic drama. Read full review
25
New York PostKyle SmithAug 17, 2012
The climax is as dull as reading the dictionary of a language you do not speak. Read full review
25
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliAug 16, 2012
Sometimes, even a little gratuitous nudity can't save a movie. This is one of those occasions. Cosmopolis easily trumps "To Rome with Love" as the biggest disappointment of 2012 from an established director. Read full review
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