A Constant Visual Feast

In my mind’s eye, I can picture you all looking at your smartphones in puzzlement, wondering why, in the youth of 2019, I am still writing about films that came out in 2018. 2018’s over! It’s done! Move on to the new year! Get with the program, Crump. 

But of course we’re never done with movie years. Movie years are done with us. You may be aware that on Sunday, the 76th Golden Globes presented statues to some good movies and TV shows, but also presented the trash-level-bad Bohemian Rhapsody with a comically undeserved “best picture” trophy, and “Shallow,” the marquee song from Bradley Cooper’s A Star is Born, with a “best original song” trophy. Guess which I’m more offended by. I didn’t do any words about Bohemian Rhapsody or A Star is Born in 2018, but a) I haaaaate the former, and b) I’m lukewarm on the latter.

For my money, they’re both small stuff next to Brady Corbet’s Vox Lux, in which a young girl survives a school shooting, writes an earnest pop star, is appropriated by the pop cultural industrial complex into a Lady Gaga-esque star, and then, years into her adulthood, held culpable in yet another mass shooting. I dig Vox Lux. It’s one of my honorable mentions for 2018! But more than anything else it’s much more aware of the mechanics of pop stardom than its two contemporaries, besides being a better movie overall.

You can read my full thoughts on the trio over at Polygon.