Tower and Town, November 2022

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Film Review

Crimes Of The Future – showing from 3rd November

A David Cronenberg Sci-Fi film carries a certain expectation and Crimes of the Future wastes little time in setting the scene of a future in which human beings have begun to develop new organs and adaptions to survive in their mostly synthetic surroundings. In this world, pain and infection are distant memories, and surgery is the new sex. The film follows a pair of performance artists, Caprice (Léa Seydoux) and Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), who have capitalised on this, making their canvas the human body; their public performances involve Caprice publicly performing a kind of ritualistic surgery on Tenser. As Timlin, part of a team tasked with cataloguing and investigating new organs and adaptions, Kirsten Stewart lends a lighter perspective to the film and steals every scene she is in.

Crimes Of The Future is unlikely to appeal to everyone. Still, the stellar cast alongside an intriguing premise carries the film, and Cronenburg’s trademark style will keep you enraptured from beginning to end. It feels at times as though the film cannot quite follow through on some of its ideas but remains compelling throughout.

My Neighbour Adolf – showing from 23rd November

My neighbour Adolf asks the question, what if the most notorious war criminal of all time had not, in fact, shot himself in his bunker and was instead living his life in a suburb? Malek Polsky, played by David Hayman, is a lonely and grumpy Holocaust survivor who finds himself at odds with local authorities who refuse to believe him when a German man, played by Udo Kier, moves in next door. Malek is sure he recognises those “dead blue eyes” as belonging to none other than the Fuhrer himself. 

What follows is a film that treads a line between a mash-up of Rear Window-style psychological suspense and Home Alone-style humour as Polsky attempts to find proof that his neighbour is the Fuhrer; this ranges from following his neighbour’s movements with binoculars from behind the curtains to trying to ascertain the number of testicles he has. 

My Neighbour Adolf keeps you guessing until the last 15 minutes, and the performance by Kier is at times mesmerising and compelling, the actor’s charisma and gravitas distracting from a slightly uneven script. Hayman is relatable and exciting as the viewer’s perspective in the film and the interplay between the actors works well enough to distract you from any minor quibbles with the film.

David Williams (Parade Cinema Manager)