I’m pleased that The Week gave me the go-ahead to write about Let the Corpses Tan, the new film from married filmmaking duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, whose last feature, The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears, came out about five years ago; it’s an oddball movie, grimy, sleazy, and likely way off-radar for a portion of their … Continue reading
I run hot and cold on Danny McBride, in the sense that I run hot and cold on Danny McBride projects. If you wish to contain his brand of gregarious psychopathy, you have to build the right kind of cage for him, otherwise you end up with a Danny McBride performance without a structure to … Continue reading
…oh, come the heck on, of course I set up a talk with Bruce Campbell about the end of Ash vs Evil Dead, who the hell do you think you’re talking to here. This is my second chat with Bruce, following my first, which orbited the show’s second season, while this one is all about the third, … Continue reading
My rating system has needed work for a good long while; too often I feel like I’m giving films too high a score, and thus giving them a pass on their flaws, when I’m much more mixed on them than the numbers imply. So basically, take my low-ish score on What Keeps You Alive with … Continue reading
Hello! I’m back from vacation. Vacation is why I’m behind on sharing and posting my work. Don’t look at me like that. I’m entitled to go on vacation. Deal with it. Anyways: Here’s Andrei Rublev. There’s a new restoration of Andrei Rublev running in New York City, at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, courtesy of Janus Films. … Continue reading
Second time’s the charm! A few years back I spoke with Crystal Moselle about her debut film, The Wolfpack, and half-assed prepared for it. A week or so back, I spoke with her again about her new film, Skate Kitchen, and prepared much less half-assedly for it – you could say I full-assed it – and the whole thing went … Continue reading
Add The Night is Short, Walk On Girl to the canon of “great drinking movies.” The characters here drink more liquor than any mortal human could possibly imbibe without dying, much less without blacking out; they also have better adventures than most of us do when under the influence, though most of us don’t do the … Continue reading
If there’s a fundamental theme in The Venture Bros., it’s failure. If there’s a fundamental dynamic that dramatizes the element of failure, it’s self-involvement: All of the major characters in the series tend to cause their own problems, and this is as true of the first two episodes of Season 7 as any other episode in … Continue reading
It’s been so long since I put together my big blurb contribution for Paste Magazine‘s list of the 50 best slasher movies of all time (of all time!) that I actually…forgot we hadn’t yet published it. But we hadn’t! And now we have! I wrote about Tenebrae, the Dario Argento meta classic, and you’ll also see re-ups … Continue reading
I don’t think it’s over the line to cite BlacKkKlansman as one of Spike Lee’s best films, and I’m the guy who usually seethes at claims of “masterpiece” directed at movies that haven’t been out in theaters for even a day. Is BlacKkKlansman that? Is it a masterpiece? I’m not sure. Time will tell. But it does stand out … Continue reading
I know what you’re gonna ask: “How does he do it? How does Crump make it to, and make it through, as many beer festivals as he does?” Well my friends, it’s quite simple: I run, I bike, I take evening walks around my neighborhood, I lift, and I try to eat healthy*, and somewhere in … Continue reading
Rachel Dretzin probably didn’t make Far From the Tree anticipating that members of her audience might come back around to Donald Trump mocking a disabled reporter at a campaign rally in 2015 (nice voting, schmucks!). Speaking for myself, that’s exactly what I kept thinking of watching the film (which is based on Andrew Solomon’s non-fiction novel … Continue reading
This month via The Criterion Collection: Dragon Inn. That’s pretty much all you need to know. I went nuts over A Touch of Zen, King Hu’s other grand wuxia film, back in July of 2016, when Criterion added that one to their library and I wrote about the release, though apparently my writing on the matter never published … Continue reading
Welp, A24 isn’t really doing much to promote Augustine Frizzell’s excellent Never Goin’ Back, so I guess it’s up to me, a critic, to champion this gross, tender, raunchy, outrageous, sweet-hearted, and absolutely hilarious film. (It’s one of my favorites of the year. And one of the best I saw at this year’s Independent Film Festival … Continue reading
Upfront, I didn’t have high expectations for The Spy Who Dumped Me; I don’t have faith in studio comedies, and I especially don’t have faith in studio action comedies, because they tend to treat the action with indifference and just joke through fight scenes where characters reasonably should be taking matters seriously. But Susanna Fogel isn’t fucking … Continue reading
Well, that’s another Vermont Brewers Festival under the belt right there. Writing about beer is a challenge, I’m telling you. Writing about beer when part of the job means talking to people who make beer about beer while you’re drinking beer. Movie festivals, music festivals; they’re a cinch. You drink as part of the festivities. Drinking itself … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 