Bruce Wagner
Occupation
Filmmaker
Maps To The Stars Review
By Rich Cline
Excellent
As it explores Hollywood's inbred underbelly, this film becomes increasingly deranged and also rather dark and creepy, but it's so fiercely entertaining that it's impossible to look away from the screen. With razor-sharp performances, a brutally witty script by Bruce Wagner and snaky direction from David Cronenberg, the film is perhaps too knowing as it explores a group of fiercely ambitious people who will stop at nothing to get what they want.
Things kick off as Agatha (Mia Wasikowska) arrives in Los Angeles and is collected by chauffeur Jerome (Robert Pattinson), who is also of course an aspiring screenwriter and actor. Focussed and determined, Agatha visits the ruins of a Hollywood Hills home before using a friendship with Carrie Fisher to get a job as an assistant to acclaimed actress Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore). Facing middle age, Havana is desperate for a comeback role in a remake of the movie that made her mother a star. Meanwhile, 13-year-old teen pin-up Benjie (Evan Bird) has completed rehab and is ready to act again, encouraged by his manager mother (Olivia Williams) and self-help guru dad (John Cusack), who are unnerved when they hear that Agatha is back in town. Clearly everyone has a secret that can jeopardise their career paths. And they're connected in ways no one wants to acknowledge.
The knotted mess of the plot is carefully unpicked over the course of the film, which only makes everything that much more intense and nasty. While it's blackly funny, the movie's overall tone is extremely grim, as these wealthy stars are crippled by emptiness and desperation. They're also willing to do just about anything to get ahead, from celebrating someone else's misfortune to blatantly lying about their pasts.
Continue reading: Maps To The Stars Review
'Maps To The Stars': The Movie That Took 20 Years To Write [Trailer + Pictures]
By Michael West in Movies / TV / Theatre on 11 August 2014
'Maps to the Stars' looks a real curio of a movie. Check out the trailer below.
Ok, so David Cronenberg's latest movie Maps to the Stars - which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May - will more than likely pull in a sizable teenage audience, given it stars Twlight's very own Robert Pattinson. Though without making too many assumptions, a chunk of those paying their $20 may have thought better of it by the end of the satirical drama, which delves into the celebrity-obsessed culture that made Pattinson's vampire franchise a global hit.
It's written by Bruce Wagner, the tattooed Ambulance driver turned novelist who Cronenberg has compared to James Joyce. "He's unafraid to express the moment . to go to the darkest places. Hollywood is his Dublin," he told the Los Angeles Times, adding that Wagner is "a kind of star on the red carpet. He's not a typical writer. He's comfortable with cameras and microphones.
Continue reading: 'Maps To The Stars': The Movie That Took 20 Years To Write [Trailer + Pictures]