The Crow

“For a ghost, you bleed just fine.” A Gothic masterpiece. Aches from its bones of the time of which that it was released but carries such an absolutely mesmerizing visual style and a poignant, vivid emotional core at the center of its story that it remains timeless. Much like its titular protagonist, The Crow is an immortal gem within the long line of comic book films that we’ve gotten in the past forty-plus years. Brandon Lee is mesmerizing here, carrying a bittersweet aura about him not unlike Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. Michael Wincott is also fantastic here, one of our great underrated character actors. The whole movie is also just beautiful to look at. A beautiful piece of nocturnal visual spectacle, drenched in rain and mud and sludge and dim lighting and trashy fire. It’s like if the album Dirt from Alice In Chains was a superhero movie. Don’t think we’ve had anything quite this gleefully melancholy and emo in the comic book genre in a very long time, but you can certainly see its very clear influence on something like The Batman. I’ve been so against anybody ever touching this movie again, to leave it as the perfect monument that it is. But maybe this upcoming remake will bring back some of the punk rock mood that the genre has been sorely lacking. I think it needs it.