Daivd Cronenberg's 'Maps to the Stars' tells the convergent stories of several different characters in Hollywood: at first it appears as if this is one of those films about discrete lives that form a fine web of faint touches, but in fact it turns out that (most) of the characters have serious history, and are coming back together after events that have driven them apart. This reveal is quite well-plotted; the problem is that the characters are all mostly nasty (or at the very least weird), and moreover are so in a uniquely Hollywood way - you can believe there are such people in and around the movie business, but they're simply not the sort of people that most of us meet in our everyday lives. This makes it quite hard to sympathise with them, even if we can see the reason for their meanness and oddness. Cronenberg's movies can be considered cold in general, and although the charge isn't always justified, I watched this one very much from the outside. One thing it isn't, in spite of its billing as such, is a comedy.

A slight departure for Cronenberg, but his unflinching style to delve into the darkness of psychosis is still prevalent. Intertwining stories revolving around the shallow lust for fame in Hollywood. Julianne Moore turns in her usual terrific performance as an actress looking to make a comeback in a biopic of her late cult-star mother. Other performances are solid, as well. The humor is cynical, the script is taut and brings out the depth...or lack of...in each character. Recommended.

In the heart of Hollywood, Havana Segrand(Julianne Moore), an aging actress tries to play the role of a remake of a film her mother starred in. A mysterious girl named Agatha Weiss(Mia Wasikowska) comes to Hollywood on a convoluted, secret agenda. A masseuse for Hollywood celebrities Dr. Stafford Weiss(John Cusack), has a method of giving them therapeutic aid through strange exercises. Stanford's son Benjie(Evan Bird), is a child actor coming over drug addiction and starts to see the ghost of a girl he met in the hospital, also he's a little *beep* And a limo driver for celebrities whose name is Jerome(Robert Pattinson) tries to start a career in screen writing. In a nutshell "Maps to the Stars" is a celebrity drama about celebrities and a ghost story. Directed by David Cronenberg, the film was in the running for the Palme d'Or at the 2014 Cannes International Film Festival. Cronenberg was definitely targeting an assault on Hollywood, and celebrities in general. While watching the film I asked myself,"Is this how Hollywood really is?" As a young 16 year old who wants to be a film director it gave me some chills up my spine. But does Cronenberg truly translate his "hate" towards Hollywood onto the screen. Truly I don't know. The film in itself doesn't feel whole. There are some plot points that aren't explained thoroughly or just not explained at all. Wasikowska has the best performance in the film. No one does a bad job in the film, they're all good but the characters they portray are annoying, especially Moore's and Bird's characters. There are scenes in the film where it feels like a "why is this in the movie" moment. For example the character of Benjie is sitting with his other teen celebrity friends at a bar pretending to be drinking alcohol when it's truly soda in a glass with a lime on the rim. Anyway, as annoying as the characters are it completely threw me off when they were talking about crap. And I mean actual crap. These teens are talking about excrement, and as pointless as it sounds; is it showing how celebrities are? Are they so "bored" that they are reduced down to crap. Are celebrities so excluded from society that all they do is talk about pointless, senseless things that don't even matter, that's just sad and pathetic. Robert Pattinson is very underutilized and his character is my favorite because he's the most normal out of everybody else, and he's barely in the movie! Cusack as Stafford was good, his character is also one of the most normal out of the film. His character though is a little off. A major turn off in the film was in a specific scene. In this scene fire is utilized, and the fire is created by computer animation. It looked cheesy as hell, and definitely took away from a very disturbing moment. I highly doubt it but, did Cronenberg purposely want the fire to look fake? Maybe to say that Hollywood and big star celebrities are fake to the point of not even looking real. Overall "Maps to the Stars" is not an awful movie it has a lot to say but is translated half hazardously onto the screen. Give it a watch it won't hurt.

What hasn't been said about David Cronenberg, that highly divisive, controversial Canadian born-&-bred cinematic auteur? Well, Cronenberg is one of my all-time favorite directors, and I've seen many of his films over the years - "The Fly" (1986) is his masterpiece, in my honest opinion; "Eastern Promises" (2007), his most mainstream feature to date, is not far behind, as well as "A History of Violence" (2005), "Dead Ringers" (1988), "Videodrome" (1983), "eXistenZ" (1999), "Scanners" (1981), and "Crash" (1996).I have now arrived at his latest - 2014's "Maps to the Stars." In borrowing some of the words used to describe Cronenberg's earlier "Eastern Promises," "Maps to the Stars" crosses many borders, and pushes many boundaries. Like nearly all of Cronenberg's work since the beginning of the 21st century, crossing borders (mixing different elements from different film genres together) is increasingly becoming his most frequent mainstay. His other mainstay - pushing boundaries, usually with extreme sex and gore - is the one consistency held over from his earlier science fiction, horror, and psychological thriller films.Since the beginning of the 21st century, Cronenberg has also been becoming increasingly more mainstream - especially ever since his ultra-gruesome crime-thriller "A History of Violence" in 2005 brought him to the attention of the Hollywood mainstream. He's gradually moved away from the "body horror" and science fiction films that defined much of his earlier career, which began in the early 1970s, and has been making more psychological thriller-type films - in line with his earlier "Dead Ringers" and "Naked Lunch" (1991), and perhaps "Crash," too - but still retaining his usual explorations of bodily destruction, graphic depictions of sex, and dark psychological traumas."Maps to the Stars" aims to be a mercilessly savage deconstruction of Hollywood sleaze, self-absorption, and depravity - as well as a relentless deconstruction of the cult of Hollywood celebrity. It's a darkly comic anti-Hollywood satire/comic thriller that's part comedy, part sit-com, and part "soap opera from Hell" (as one previous viewer put it) that takes on a number of disturbing subjects that cannot be revealed here for fear of possible spoilers. The screenplay by Bruce Wagner (from his novel "Dead Stars") tells two separate, yet interconnected stories.The first deals with Hollywood actress Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore, fully embracing a savagely tongue-in-cheek portrait of drug-addled Hollywood starlet egotism). Segrand is the aging, over-the-hill daughter of the famous Clarice Taggart (Sarah Gadot), who rose to fame in the 1970s before she tragically died in a house fire on Christmas Day in 1976. Segrand, who stands in her mother's shadow (while also having haunting visions of her mother's ghostly apparition), wants desperately to play her late mother in a remake of her most famous movie, "Stolen Waters."The second story tells the tale of a wealthy TV psychologist named Stafford Weiss (John Cusack), who's on the talk-show circuit promoting his latest self-help book. His wife Cristina (Olivia Williams) is hardly a stay-at-home mom as she manages the career of her 13-year-old child-star son Benjie (Evan Bird), who's looking to make a comeback after a stint in rehab.Connecting them all is the mysterious Agatha (Mia Wasikowska), who arrives in town and befriends a Hollywood limo driver/aspiring actor/aspiring screenwriter named Jerome (Robert Pattinson, from Cronenberg's earlier 2012 "Cosmopolis"). Agatha eventually gets a job as Havana's personal assistant. Agatha also carries with her some dark personal secrets - a number of very troubling, very dark personal secrets - that will certainly unravel as she ingratiates herself more deeply within the lives of the increasingly desperate and unhinged Havana, and the highly dysfunctional Weiss family."Maps to the Stars" is a confounding film, yes - but not in the way some of Cronenberg's earlier reality-distorting head-scratchers were, like "Videodrome," "Naked Lunch," or "eXistenZ." No, "Maps to the Stars" is more perplexing in its multiple, but intersecting story lines, back-stories, and characters. None of the characters are particularly likable or sympathetic, but that's sort of the point. (Though, it must be said that some sympathy can be heaped upon young Evan Bird as Benjie Weiss, who seems to have no control over his destiny in Tinsletown. And Robert Pattinson's Jerome appears to be the only sane character in the film, and the only one who comes out of this film relatively unscathed - physically and psychologically.) You aren't really meant to like any of the characters, as that is in line with the film's portrayal of the insulated depravity and overall insanity of Hollywood fame and the resulting psychological traumas endured by many of the principal cast members."Maps to the Stars" is certainly up there with many of David Cronenberg's other work. "Maps to the Stars" may have also been a wake-up call of sorts for Cronenberg, too, I imagine, considering that he's spent much of his career in his native Canada (this was his first film made in the United States). If only the film had garnered more mainstream attention, then Hollywood could see its glaring ugliness reflected back at it in the mirror. That's probably why it got so little attention by the mainstream Hollywood press, but, whatever.(As rap group Public Enemy said in 1990 - "Burn Hollywood Burn"!)8/10P.S.: Just when you thought you'd seen it all with "Maps to the Stars," Carrie Fisher herself pops up in a hilarious cameo. (Seriously, I thought I'd never see her in a David Cronenberg feature.)