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 douchiest film critic in the world*. Not that I loathe Rotten Tomatoes with all my heart, per se – they do list my reviews, which means more eyes on my work – but I do loathe the way middling reviews wind up getting slapped as “fresh” when they’re somewhere between that and “rotten.”
Hence my low-end score for Wildling, a movie I admired more than not but not enough to really call it “good”: It either needed a stronger co-lead than Liv Tyler, or it needed to capitalize on Brad Dourif’s casting more than it actually does. (I’m baffled that anyone would cast Dourif in their genre horror movie and essentially shuffle him out of the story for two thirds of its running time.) Maybe that sounds like small potatoes, but you’d be surprised how much the contrast between parent figures in the coming of age of Bel Powley’s sort-of werewolf teenager impacts the course of the movie. (Or maybe you wouldn’t.)
Anywho: My review for Paste Magazine is up, and you can go read it if that’s up your alley.
*He’s seriously the worst.
A Constant Visual Feast 