…but really, can anyone escape Westworld? No. Not in the least. Even if you do not watch Westworld, it’s everywhere in your feeds and in your grill, so basically you’re stuck with it until it goes off the air (and even then, people still talk about it). But that’s okay! Westworld is great in the way that all dark prestige … Continue reading
It’s Westworld time, ladies and gents: The new season is up and running, with more robot-on-human murdering, and even more techno talk, which I wrote a short breakdown about for Thrillist. Like, really short, because all I’m doing is talking about mesh networking as related to “Journey into Night,” the season opener. I plan on doing more … Continue reading
April is such a good month for movies directed by women* that this month, for Paste Magazine‘s Films By Women spotlight, we used three in-theaters movies and only two at-home movies to round out the list. Pretty neat! And those in-theater movies are pretty great, being Zama, Blockers, and You Were Never Really Here, which you already know my … Continue reading
I don’t know of a more elegant way to say this, guys: Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s new movie suuuuuuuuuucks. It gives me literally zero pleasure to call Kings, her interpretation of the events leading into and surrounding the 1992 L.A. riots that erupted after the acquittal of the officers guilty of beating Rodney King, one of the worst … Continue reading
Each year (at least, each year since 2012) I cover Independent Film Festival Boston, I usually do a bit of promotion on this site – previews, lineups, general pleas to the audience to go buy some tickets to the great film festival of my hometown. This year I decided to do all of that over … Continue reading
Whether this counts as a review or not is sort of up to the beholder; I don’t think it’s review-ish, myself, but I wonder if it might read that way to others. Regardless, I approached writing about William Friedkin’s The Devil and Father Amorth from a more specific place. It’s mind-blowing to me to watch Friedkin, … Continue reading
I’m 33 years old and apparently liking Super Troopers and its sequel, Super Troopers 2, is a sign that I need to evaluate my taste and perhaps take a good, hard look at myself in the mirror. Honestly, it probably does say something about me that I still think dick and fart jokes are funny, but if … Continue reading
Anytime a director takes a really worn-out formula or structure and freshens it up is a good time (more often than not). So Lowlife, a movie where a man in a luchador mask roughs people up for a sex trafficking, organ snatching sicko, is my kind of a thing, a clear descendant of the grimy, violent … Continue reading
Nothing bugs me more than a horror movie that refuses to stick the landing when it counts. That’d be Ghost Stories. I’m basically paraphrasing the intro to my review, but I’m not sure what else I can say; you’ve got a movie about a guy with clear father issues who grows up and spends his life … Continue reading
Honestly? I can’t imagine a more useless exercise than making an airy biopic, one-part screwball comedy and one-part “great man” drama, about Jean-Luc Fucking Godard, if not because I find him repellent (even though I dig his films), then because Godard would probably definitely find the idea utterly useless. (Note: He called the movie a “stupid, … Continue reading
A few weeks ago, thereabouts, my good buddy Oktay Ege Kozak and I sat down to record a new episode of The Playlist‘s Over/Under Podcast to talk about Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica and his bizarre-ass movies. To avoid pigeonholing the second of these two movies, Underground: Underground isn’t anywhere near as bizarre as Arizona Dream, the first of these … Continue reading
I’m a fan of Super Troopers and I’m not ashamed of it, though damn if reviews of Super Troopers 2 aren’t going out of their way to suggest that people who like these movies are somehow unevolved or troubled. (Essentially: Fuck those reviews. Review the movie, not the people who like it, I mean shit, I grew … Continue reading
I feel a tad weird going to bat for a big, dumb, early summer season blockbuster where The Rock is friends with a gorilla, and the gorilla mutates and supersizes after encountering Evil Science™ produced by Evil Corporate Scumbags™, and then The Rock and the gorilla fight a bat-wolf and a dino crocodile (which is … Continue reading
I don’t hide my predilection for Italian cinema over French cinema, mostly because I’m comically loyal to my Italian roots and to the old “Italian and French folks don’t get along” stereotype, but I’ll let you in on a secret: I like French movies. I like them so much that my name appears a whole … Continue reading
A little bit of inside Crump info™: I tend to rate on the lower side than the higher side for more movies than not (with certain recent exceptions). The reason for this tendency is none other than Rotten Fucking Tomatoes, one of my least favorite things to happen to film criticism since Cole Smithey, the … Continue reading
A note: I rarely, if ever, use the word “masterpiece” in any material I output about films either recently released or yet to be released, because in most cases that’s a bullshit word used in bullshit contexts for bullshit reasons by bullshit people. Most often, you hear about masterpieces on the festival circuit before the … Continue reading
Finally! I have words for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, not in print, but spoken aloud by my mouth; if you know me you know that I do not like this film very much because it’s awful, and I have enough awful movies in my life without being gang pressed into admiring one I find repugnant … Continue reading
Foreword: Volker Schlöndorff’s Baal made me want to throw up all over myself. I’ve sat through some truly ugly and thoroughly noxious films in my time, many of them more overtly hideous than this one, but boy oh boy, I cannot think of the last time I sat through an 80 minute film that felt this … Continue reading
In its own modest, tasteful way, Olivia Newman’s First Match is a harsh watch, a movie loaded with social and political (and sociopolitical) messages that shouldn’t feel modern but do anyways. That’s 2018 for you. We’re still that country. The film leaves no trace of whiteness and makes no mention of whiteness (at least that I recall), … Continue reading
I don’t pretend to have a mind for economic concepts. My review of Jed Rothstein’s The China Hustle is the first time I’ve ever felt free to use that as my hook, so I expect it reads more naturally than anything I’ve written on material in the same ballpark. Basically: If you think we’re out of … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 