A challenging film to engage with if you're unfamiliar with the life and work of William S. Burroughs. Visually it's very surreal and fantastical (the typewriters!), but narratively it doesn't come together in a satisfying way.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Apr 18, 2024

The book is, in many ways screed against conformity, and an ode to consciousness. The film, which is much easier to follow, is as much a tribute to the author who wrote the book as it is an attempt to make some sense of the slippery narrative.

| Jun 27, 2023

A remarkably lucid and enjoyable riff on an unfilmable (some say unreadable) book.

| Original Score: A- | Aug 31, 2022

What emerges is recognizable but fully transformed Burroughs material.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 26, 2022

I yearned for something more disgusting to occur.

| Jul 25, 2018

A challenge if you're expecting a forward-moving plot but there's also more than enough pitch-black humor and straight-faced madness to lighten the mood, especially since Burroughs' strange lingo and vicious knack for language are intact.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 23, 2013

| Original Score: B+ | Sep 7, 2011

...very nearly accomplishes the book's goal of "extinguishing all rational thought."

| Original Score: A | Jul 18, 2009

Obviously this is not everybody's cup of weird tea: you must have a taste for the esthetics of disgust. For those up to the dare, it's one clammily compelling movie.

| Mar 31, 2008

a respectful fugue on Burroughs' life and art ... It can be forgiven its acolyte's soul, for it is willing ...to confront Burroughs' signature themes of addiction and control, and to meld them into ... an evocation of the master.

Full Review | Original Score: 87/100 | Sep 5, 2007

This is the only film in which a typewriter beetle kills another typewriter beetle for being a secret agent. I mention it only because of the relevance of the written word, and typewriters %u2013 portable ones in this case %u2013 are the medium of the mes

| May 5, 2007

Given that nobody could really have adapted Burroughs' book in any literal manner, what Cronenberg does instead is predictably creepy, warped and dreamy.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 8, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 12, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 27, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 23, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 28, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 22, 2004

Stands on its own apart from the book.

| Original Score: B+ | Jan 18, 2004

There are no great scenes, just flat moments of weirdness with lots of schlorping noises.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Jan 5, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 4, 2003