CRASH
Starring Holly Hunter, James Spader
Dir: David Cronenberg
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Say what you want about David Cronenberg, ("he sucks" you 
might say after seeing this film), but if you understand 
the man's "Ouevre", his whole resume of films, you will 
see he has never varied in his central theme, which is 
mainly some sort of weird concept about man becoming machine, 
or insect, or vice versa and all laced up with kinky sex. 
Perhaps you have seen some of them:

The FLY - Man turns into fly (Kinky element: corrosive saliva)

NAKED LUNCH - Typewriter turns into fly, man turns into centipede
(Kinky element: Bug powder, sodomy)
VIDEODROME - Man turns into VCR (Kinky element: S&M)
DEAD RINGERS - Twins turn into each other (Kinky element: 
customized medical instruments)
That's just to name a few. So it comes as no surprise that 
Cronenberg would seize upon JG Ballard's novel of autmotive 
disaster fetishizing "CRASH". The similarities between that 
work and W.S. Burrough's NAKED LUNCH are many and both fit 
in well with Cronenberg's twisted kinky obsessions, in this 
case the erotic charge that comes with death and near-death 
experiences (in NAKED LUNCH it was hangings, here it is car 
crashes), the transfiguration of man into machine is in this 
case man into automibile; broken legs are fitted with elaborate 
and kinky metal devices, twisted wreckage promotes sexual lust, 
and so on.

All that would be fine and good were there something
resembling a movie to hang the (by now somehwat mundane) 
concept on. What we get in lieu of a plot is a dull series 
of softcore porn sketches shot in a gray Toronto light that 
makes one long for the comparitively comforting cheesy glow 
of some late night Cinemax Red Shoe Diary. 

James Spader and Holly Hunter both deliver credible, interesting 
performances as spaced out accident survivors who are drawn into 
a cult of car crash fetishists (Spader especially has always 
excelled at this sort of somnambulistic role), but they are 
given little to do except f*ck. 

On the plus side, the movie is very short. C-