Now that "A History of Violence" seems to have ruffled many a feather, let's examine his extensive his body of work.
I, along with half the folks who saw "Violence" loved it, while the other half hated it. Not a lot of grey area with this film.
Regardless, I think "Crash" is his most misunderstood film, "Videodrome" his most popular and/or controversial and "The Dead Zone" his most accessible.
He is one of my favorite directors and I'd like to know what the metacritic community thinks of him.
My favorites (and I haven't seen "Naked Lunch", "M Butterfly", "Shivers" or "Fast Company") are "A History of Violence", "The Dead Zone" and "The Brood".

For me, The Fly is his best film, by a mile. I haven't seen Violence yet, but I will. He not only paid homage to the original film, he reinvented it and turned it into one of the most horrific love stories ever made. It didn't hurt that his vision included incredibly unique special effects which were as shocking as they were awesome.

His follow-up, Dead Ringers, had two great Jeremy Irons performances, but not half the entertainment or soul. Naked Lunch is one of the most unique films ever made, and I doubt that anybody could have done a better job, but let's face it, scads of people would hate it after only a few moments. There's others to mention, so maybe I'll come back a little later.

I'm a big Cronenberg fan, but any director with a huge body of work like Cronenberg is going to make his share of stinkers. I liked his most recent film, A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE well enough, but thought he made some mistakes, one of which was changing the gangsters from Italian to Irish. That was a bit off-putting because I just didn't buy it.

The other flaw in an otherwise good film is the fact whether Viggo Mortensen is/is not the former gangster. There should have been ambiguity over this. It was clear to me, as a viewer, what the answer was.

I actually think that Cronenberg's best work was done early in his career when he made all those low-budget horror films in his native Canada such as SHIVERS, THE BROOD & RABID.

Although I enjoy his early work as well, my favorite films of Cronenberg's have always been his science-fiction films from the 80's -- Videodrome, The Dead Zone, and The Fly, in particular.

It's an unfair comparison, I know, but I was recently rewatching The Running Man and halfway through it I started thinking about Videodrome and how superior it was in every way. How the film presses the envelope further as its story progresses, eventually spiraling out of control, is a perfect reflection of society's instiable desire for the next big thing in entertainment and how far we will go to see it. In viewing the film, you almost become a censor yourself, deciding whether or not to turn off the film as Cronenberg continues to challenge what you're willing to see. It's genius, really.

I am also a big fan of Dead Ringers, not only for Irons' performances, but for it's unique story and perverse sense of intimacy. There are few films like it that I can think of that are even remortely similar or comment on the seperation of people in the saw way, so it is forever stuck in my mind.