This is Cronenberg at his finest form. Follow his deftly acted palette of characters down their kaleidescopic downward spiral in this self-reflective piece about the steep personal prices of Hollywood. Julianne Moore, John Cusack and Olivia Williams are all in peak form. Relative newcomer Mia Wasikowska delivers a delicately handled career-high performance. Robert Pattinson delivers another solid performance the likes of his efforts in Water for Elephants and The Rover. All round, a superbly poignant sort of dramatic social commentary, if, at that, a disturbing one.

Well written Maps to the Stars engaged me from the first scene. Considering the challenging topics the film navigates, the film covers this uncomfortable territory with ease and grace. I watched the film twice and will probably watch it again. The writing provides a fundamental structure and well formed characters that manages to show the darkness of incest, psychosis, and violence in a tolerable and human way. Not an easy task by any stretch of the imagination. This requires talent on everyone's part. This film is well done in every sense. The facade of the persona is not written as an evil demon and neither is the darkness. Maps to the Stars blends both as simply human qualities. Qualities that are faced by many everyday. However, kept as a forbidden secret. Bravo!

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.

This sick idiot Cronenberg is a thief, not a filmmaker. These criminal types of PR mindbenders promoting this crap should be serving a well deserved life term sentence in a Siberian gulag doing hard chain gang prison time for this complete obscenity! The film star swine implicated with this somehow non–government regulated movie non-industry, thus still legal mentacide versus human populations, simply sold their dignity and little souls for a fat pig's payday. We desperately need the censors of old back to protect us from such crimes cloaked as legitimate filmmaking entertainment! This present unashamed low life method of entertainment has ruined the minds and morals of this nation!