Blog Posts by Jonathan Crow

Photo by IFC Films"The Catechism Cataclysm" opens with a meandering shaggy-dog tale about an old woman with a gun. The story is being relayed by Father William Smoortser (Steve Little), who can't seem to draw any kind of religious relevance or meaning from the tale, leaving his parishioners baffled.

Smoortser is an unlikely priest. He's an emotionally stunted man-child who seems more interested in heavy metal than in the Good Book. In fact, he claims that he got ordained because he really dug Judas Priest.

Photos: Universal PicturesJason Biggs went down in cinematic history as the guy who defiled a dessert in the first "American Pie." He was, of course, playing the hapless and ever-randy Jim Levenstein, a high school student who, along with his friends, vowed to lose his virginity before high school graduation. The movie was a massive hit that spawned two sequels along with a quartet of straight-to-DVD spinoffs. It also redefined the level of raunch acceptable in a comedy. It's hard to imagine the "Harold and Kumar" movies or "Bridesmaids" without "American Pie."

For the movie's third official sequel, "American Reunion," Jim, Michelle, Finch, Oz, Stifler and the gang are getting back together for, you guessed it, a high school reunion.

I recently spoke with Biggs over the phone. He confessed that I was one of the first journalists he's talked with about the movie, and his responses had the free, conversational air of someone who hasn't talked about a subject ad nauseam.

"This story is more similar to 'American Pie' both dramatically and tonally than any of the other sequels, for sure," said Biggs. "It's a great trip down memory lane, and everybody is back. It really makes a difference."

Check out the trailer, exclusively on Yahoo! Movies.

Photo: Fox Searchlight"Martha Marcy May Marlene" opened last week in select cities, but I think talking about it on Halloween weekend is much more appropriate. Though there's no shortage of horror flicks this season offering plenty of thrills and gore, there are few movies more quietly unnerving coming out this year than this film.

The movie opens on Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) escaping from an overpopulated farmhouse in the Catskills and disappearing in the woods. We later learn that the place is home to a back-to-land, Manson-style cult run by a charismatic leader named Patrick (John Hawkes). Later in the film we see that he starts calling her Marcy May, and with a song and a health drink spiked with a Micky, he manages to win her heart. Of course, that's the way he wins over all the dozen or so women in the cult. Martha is so wounded and eager to be a part of something, she soon finds a place in the cult. That is, until she gets pulled deeper and deeper into Patrick's crimes.

'Psycho' (Photo: Everett Collection)What would Halloween be without a good horror-movie fright?  The good people at Movieclips.com put together a little video montage of some of the best movie screams in cinema.

Janet Leigh's scream in "Psycho" is probably the best known. After all, the folks who first watched the movie didn't even know they were watching the "Citizen Kane" of slasher flicks. They thought they were watching a movie about a woman who stole a pile of money from work. When Anthony Perkins starts stabbing Leigh the shower, her screams were, no doubt, matched with the audience's.  In "Halloween,"  Janet Leigh's daughter Jamie Leigh Curtis shows that being Scream Queen is hereditary. Also in the mix is Neve Campbell facing down Ghostface from "Scream," Shelley Duvall cowering as Jack Nicholson goes to town on a door in "The Shining," and Donald Sutherland looking more creepy than normal in "Don't Look Back." Who else is there? Click ahead and find out...if you dare.

Photo :Roadside Attractions

The new movie "Margin Call," which opens in select cities today, centers on a 24-hour period in a Lehman Brothers-like firm that finds itself on the wrong side of some very bad investments. First time writer-director J. C. Chandor could have made an overblown movie a la Oliver Stone, with clear good guys and villains squaring off in dramatic monologues against the backdrop of Hamptons mansions and private jets. Instead, Chandor, who is the son of a Wall Street stockbroker, offers a much quieter, and, one surmises, a more realistic take. The film takes place in the sterile halls and boardrooms of a Manhattan office building. The conversations are tense and hushed. With one exception, no one comes off as an overt villain. Everyone approaches the crisis, which could be ruinous to millions, with a completely amoral logic.

Photo: Sony Pictures ClassicsSpanish director Pedro Almodovar is one of the few directors out there — like Fellini, Kubrick, and Ozu — whose films you can identify from a single still. He populates his movies with bright colors and a heavy dose of kitsch. And they're always gorgeous. His stories are often deliciously over-the-top melodramas involving sex, desire, revenge, family betrayals, and gender confusion. It's a combination that has made him hugely popular abroad. Almodovar is the most successful non-English language director in the world.

His latest movie, "The Skin I Live In," which opens in selected cities this week, has all the trademarks of an Almodovar film but is all together a darker, chillier work.

Phot: Fox SearchlightWith the exception of being recognized by a handful of Hollywood casting directors and the odd theater maven, Jessica Chastain was a complete unknown this time last year. Heck, she was an unknown this past March. But ever since Terrence Malick's gorgeous "Tree of Life" hit the silver screen in May -- and which comes out on DVD this week, there has been a plethora of films featuring Chastain — "The Help", "The Debt," and most recently "Take Shelter." Later this year, there will be more movies starring the ginger-haired actress: "Coriolanus" and "Wilde Salome." That's six, count 'em, six movies in the span of seven months.

Even more remarkable is how different Chastain is in each role. In "The Help," she's a bubbly Southern sexpot. In "The Debt," she's a deathly Israeli Mossad agent. And in "Tree of Life" she is a grieving '50s housewife. Her range is something to behold.

I managed to talk with her while she was on location in Canada for a horror flick called "Mama." We talked about working with eccentric director Terrence Malick, having a busy movie schedule, and the prospect of winning an Oscar.

'Blackthorn' (Photo: Magnolia Pictures)As everyone who's watched director George Roy Hill's 1969 movie masterpiece knows, Butch Cassidy, along with his partner in crime the Sundance Kid, died in a hail of bullets in Bolivia. This week sees the release of Mateo Gil's film "Blackthorn," in which Cassidy didn't die in a blaze of glory but grew old and grizzled while raising horses in the Andes under the assumed name of James Blackthorn. Sam Shepard plays the aging gunslinger who loses his horse — along with his saddlebags stuffed with life savings that was going to take him back to America — when he's shot at by Eduardo, a Spaniard on the run. Instead of killing him, Butch takes Eduardo under his wing. In turn, Eduardo, who doesn't know Butch's true identity, lures him with the prospect of a fortune pilfered from a rich mine owner.