Maps To The Stars

“The Weiss family is making their way in a sun-soaked Los Angeles, driven by all the wrong values and rife with money, dreams, fame, envy, yearning and angst.” Yeh? But which footy team do they barrack for? (Let’s ask the questions that matter!)

Also described as “a darkly comic satire of our celebrity obsessed culture” … which is surely something worthy of being parodied. Perhaps the filmmakers are the contemporary equivalent of Edward Gibbon (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire), dramatising the decline of the American Empire or, beyond that, western civilisation?

Even so, given the confronting, cynical and bizarrely brutal nature of this David Cronenberg film – and previous ones – I wonder does he really have a message for us or is he just on some weird little trip of his own? If you like his films, you will like this one; I don’t, and I didn’t. (MMu)

2/5 stars

Written by Michael Muir