Cosmopolis might be Cronenberg’s most personal film and that is pretty scary. The guy who brought us Rabid, Scanners, The Fly, Videodrome and History of Violence (to name a few) has gone back to the high tech stuff that fueled his version of William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch and his film Crash—not the Oscar winning one that sucked.

Based on Don Delillo’s novel of the same name, Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis uses the source material surreptitiously to weave a web of futility. There’s an “inside is safe and outside is turmoil” feel to this flick. This film is a vehicle for a socio-political discussion about corporate greed and the media. Cronenberg tries to tackle what is really wrong with this country and how truly paranoid we’ve become as a society.

Is The Master, Paul Thomas Anderson’s hauntingly intimate epic, about Scientology? That’s been the focus of attention for many with only peripheral interest in the film itself, hoping perhaps for some kind of searing roman-a-clef takedown of L. Ron Hubbard and his movement. And, after all, it’s easy enough to do a certain kind of math in putting together the inspiration for Lancaster Dodd (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), the author/philosopher/guru from whom the film takes its name. If you’re looking for clues that The Cause is in fact a thinly-disguised stand-in for Dianetics, you’ll find them.

You’ll also be missing something fairly extraordinary.

With attention to detail and a filmography time table to rival Stanley Kubrick, Paul Thomas Anderson seems to be deriving pleasure from emulating other director’s styles while being fiercely independent and creating a unique world of his own with a stable of consummate actors.

Hard Eight (1996)

A hard luck gambling saga showcasing the repertory of actors Anderson would come to draw upon in later films. John C. Reilly is mentored in casino logic by an ailing Philip Baker Hall. Gwyneth Paltrow and Phillip Seymour Hoffman round out this flick. Even Samuel L. Jackson shows up before he was in everything.

Killer Joe’s opening credits gives us the heads up that we are seeing the second collaboration between writer Tracy Letts and Director William Friedkin—the first joint effort produced Bug. Sporting an NC-17 rating due to some full frontal rampant nudity and graphic sex, Killer Joe has an even weirder vibe that hangs over the entire flick.

Here the writing/directing duo tries to recapture the critical acclaim of Bug with this screwed up potboiler, but Killer Joe only half translates to film. The whole viewing time I was wishing I were watching the play on which it is based and not this mostly defective film. What’s weird is that, even for all its flaws, the film left a haunting memory. Replaying scenes in my head and the strange, warped, uncomfortable feeling I got from watching this flick has somehow morphed into the same feeling of recalling a dream, like, ‘did that really happen?’