Editor’s Note: an earlier version of this essay first appeared at Cinepunx.com A long time ago, Francois Truffaut, maker of fancy French films, thought this little American Western called Johnny Guitar had such grace that […]
Author: elbee
Grumpire Founder and Editor-in-Chief.
‘AMER’ AS A REPRESENTATION OF OUR PSYCHOSEXUAL OBSESSION WITH DEATH
“Love, art thou sweet? then bitter death must be;Love, thou art bitter; sweet is death to me.O Love, if death be sweeter, let me die.” — Alfred, Lord Tennyson As a major motion picture, Amer […]
THE VISUAL AND COMEDIC ABSURDITY OF ‘TORQUE’
“Cars suck,” the not-so-hidden message in the opening scene of Joseph Kahn’s 2004 action piece Torque, presents itself with cocksure bravado via a super-stylized spinning street sign. The sequence, a late addition to the movie, […]
AUDIO FANFICTION: ‘SOUTHLAND TALES’
Richard Kelly is as divisive a director as they come. Stylish, moody, and dabbed with dark humor, allusions to morality, and unusually relatable situations, his three feature films to date (Donnie Darko, Southland Tales, The […]
AUDIO FANFICTION: BILL & TED’S MOST EXCELLENT MIX
For years, decades, centuries, millennia, Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted “Theodore” Logan have been lauded as the most premium examples of stoner metalheads in modern cinema. We here at Grumpire, however, think the boys […]
MIXTAPE: WE BE DIPPIN’
For eight years I ran a small, historical ice cream and hamburger stand located on the west side of Nashville called Bobbie’s Dairy Dip. It’s a famous place in Nashville; built in 1951, the colorful […]
MIXTAPE: SUMMERTIME HIP-HOP (NO, NOT THAT FRESH PRINCE SONG)
By mid-June we’re all reasonably starting to feel the heat of the summer sun. Undoubtedly it’s time for chilling in the shade with our besties, enjoying some (very) cold drinks, and cranking up the volume […]
MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRLS GONE WILD
Vera Chytilova graduated from the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) in 1962, but when she entered the Academy, she stood in front of a board of resident […]
MIXTAPE: IT’S JUST A LITTLE CRUSH
This Valentine’s Day Mixtape is dedicated to all my secret crushes. HIT THIS Spotify link AND TRY NOT TO LET ANYONE SEE YOU gushING over all these love notes. tHE mAGNETIC fIELDS, “sTRANGE pOWERS” The […]
HUMBUG: PLEASE LEAVE ME (HOME) ALONE
If you go back and read the reviews from Home Alone’s release in 1990, you’ll find a portion of major critics and publications weren’t too kind to it. Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times said […]
MIXTAPE: GEN-XMAS, VOL. 1
Fun Fact about my work history: as a teen in the late 1990s, I took a job at a local independent radio station. It was a small, 50-kilowatt station, which meant the range was a […]
ADAM WINGARD’S ‘THE GUEST’ IS PURE CELLULOID BDE
Set during Halloween, Adam Wingard’s 2014 film The Guest may be confusing. That’s not meant in a “it’s so deep and mysterious, people don’t get it” kind of way; it’s that the film teeters between […]
WESTERNS, COPS, & PUNK: WHO KNEW?
PUMP UP THE COLUMN EXPLORES THE MANY INTERPRETATIONS OF PUNK AESTHETIC USED IN CINEMA Exactly how much correlation can we draw between punk rock and the Western Movie? On the surface, they do seem a […]