Crumb

Rating:
Summary: A film that gives real weight to the term "tortured artist"
Review: What makes an artist tick? Here's one answer, specific to R.Crumb, that makes for compelling viewing. Almost painful to watch sometimes, I still could not take my eyes off the screen. I did not come to this movie as a fan of R.Crumb, and I'm still not a fan of his work for the most part, but this film is mesmerizing. BTW, there are two pages of comic panels by R.Crumb in this month's Conde Nast Traveler magazine for those viewers that are fans of his art.

Rating:
Summary: Intense, brilliant documentary-style film
Review: Great art should make you feel something, and this film makes a lot of viewers squirm in discomfort during certain scenes. Not because it's gross or disgusting, but simply because it's so unflinching in it's observation of this artist's life. Highly recommended. . .

Rating:
Summary: Speaks honestly and sadly about our sick and twisted culture
Review: This is about a film about the results of abuse when the children involved were brilliant individuals with incredible sensitivities and talents. I would love have known more about the sisters. I don't find Crumb unusually twisted compared to most people of our modern American culture--I do find him extremely and unusually honest and able to articulte not only visually but verbally his vast visionary talent along with his probably pretty normal hang-ups and fettishes. He is a sweet, sensitive soul that can see too much. Just his mere observation about the craziness of everyone mindlessly wearing advertising--he is right--it is totally nuts but we all unthinkingly do it. This movie has been an incredible addition to my life as a human being and artist. I only wish he could know this because he was disturbed after having seen the movie--he said that he wished he had never seen it!

Rating:
Summary: Movie transcends the subject
Review: I have always considered Crumb a marginal artist (and this is from someone who grew up during his heyday), but after watching this film I am astonished he even survived growing up. It is truly a shame there are not more places in American society for those like him and his brothers. If there had been, when they were younger, possibly his brothers would not have had the problems they did.

Rating:
Summary: An American Original
Review: Do you know that impressed me most about Robert Crumb? The way he could brush aside incredibly remunerative offers without even hesitating. Sad, isn't it? This artist refuses to adhere to the American ideal of "anything for money". . .which is probably why he's living in France right now. This is the sad, startling, exhilarating story of his life and circumstance and about how art can enable a person to overcome his (extremely abnormal) background. I saw it twice in the theater and bought the video as soon as it appeared on the shelves; I've seen it many, many times. R. Crumb himself is still a puzzle, but the purpose of this movie isn't to dissect one man's life for a tabloid-sated audience; it examines the sources and purpose of art itself.

Rating:
Summary: superonline
Review: I want your film OK

Rating:
Summary: A good movie that tells truth without apology...
Review: Until the very end of the movie, I held the criticism in my head that the omission of the views and lives of Crumbs sisters was something other than that they had declined to be interviewed, as stated at the end. I agreed that the criticism by the "feminists" of Crumbs comic about the headless woman was inaccurate; I thought that it had less to do with rape than with the typical (though unfortunate), male desire to "use" (I am not sure what words are allowed here) a woman's body without any regard as to what might reside between her ears. That Crumb is maldeveloped in regard to gender relations seems obvious, but a misogynist he is not. His physical appearance of that of a geek or a nerd merely leaves one to wonder as to just what any "normal" looking person has inside them. In bars people act like they are in heat, but because Crumb has put these desires and thoughts on paper puts him up for criticism for merely being honest about what most of us lie about.

Rating:
Summary: A cartoonist, an outsider, like a car wreck
Review: If you haven't seen this documentary, you are missing something special. This guy was at the center of the Haight Ashbury scene, and was so pursued by his own demons that nothing could get inside. I couldn't stop watching.

Rating:
Summary: Thrilling, exhilarating and very sad
Review: This film is a heady mix; R. Crumb's work is exhilarating, his charm and rectitude in the face of his own enormous talent and his harrowing early years are inspiring, and the interviews with his siblings and Mom are intriguing and heartbreaking.

Rating:
Summary: terrific
Review: i'm stunned that there aren't more reviews of this movie here. this is a splendid, sad, funny amazing movie. ( i guess most of the amazon readers would rather be reviewing "cold mountain" or something. oh well.) one of the best movies of the last five years--far and away better than anything in your local cineplex. compelling, lascivious and true. END