Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Crumbs Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 14, 2020

As this review is being written, the world is still reeling from the effects of the Covid 19 pandemic, and my personal neck of the woods, the Pacific Northwest in general and my hometown of Portland in particular, is smothering under absolutely unbelievable amounts of smoke from the horrendous wildfires that are burning up and down the west coast of the United States. A number of recent posts I've seen on social media have understandably been about the toll all of this has taken on overall emotional health, with a general feeling of hopelessness often being conveyed. For those who for their own reasons may be feeling at least somewhat the same way, I might offer a bit of humor and joke that it might be best to put off a viewing of Crumbs, since vis a vis that very feeling of hopelessness, an opening couple of text cards in the film offer a description of a future world where some post-Apocalyptic humans in general have in fact "given up", with little if any procreation and no attempt to remedy a landscape that offers few if any creature comforts.

Candy (Daniel Tadesse) is a scavenger hunting through the piles of rubble of a once great civilization, in what might seem like a slightly anthropomorphized version of WALL•E. Candy is accosted early in the film by a guy wearing a gas mask and dressed up in a uniform with a Nazi armband, which as much as anything may give some idea of the bizarre nature of things. That soldier is later seen in the first of several interstitials of people trying to pawn curios from circa the 20th century, with some of the items having gotten "lost in translation" due to the intervening centuries and, well, the Apocalypse and all. (That particular aspect reminded me of a very funny old book called Motel of the Mysteries, where some future archaeologist unearths an "ancient" Motel 6 and badly misinterprets just about everything he's seeing.)

Candy lives in an abandoned bowling alley with Birdy (Selam Tesfayie, whose name is evidently misspelled in the credits, and whose character is identified at the IMDb as being Sayat). The facility's ball return occasionally magically springs into life, and there's almost a proto-horror feeling a couple of times as it's not quite clear what exactly may be getting returned. Birdy is convinced this sporadic activity is due to an age old spaceship that's been hovering overhead for untold millennia and which seems to be springing back into life itself. Intrigued yet? Well, there's also a kind of shamanic witch (Shitay Abreha) who offers Candy advice on how to find Santa Claus (Tsegaye Abegaz). Clearly this is an effort that, kind of like current events for some as alluded to above, simply requires complete surrender.

Crumbs Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Crumbs is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Arrow's insert booklet contains the following fairly generic verbiage on the transfer:

Crumbs is presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio [sic] with original 5.1 surround and stereo audio. The High Definition master was provided by Lazendera Films.

The IMDb lists the Blackmagic Design Production Camera 4K as having been utilized, and while I haven't been able to track down any authoritative information in this regard, I wouldn't be surprised if this was finished at a 4K DI, since in its best looking moments, fine detail is really exceptional. There's an intentionally hazy, almost Impressionistic, accounting of the many outdoor locales, and some of the most dimly lit interior material can look just a bit on the murky side, but overall detail levels are superb and the palette is naturalistic.

Crumbs Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Crumbs features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 tracks, though I am not enough of a linguist to differentiate between what the disc menu describes as Amharic and Afrikaans, and the pop up menu on my PC drive describes as Arabic. The film has long sections with virtually no dialogue, instead being given over to washes of sound effects and ambient environmental noises. There's some appealing surround activity in the 5.1 track and the outdoor material in particular sounds quite spacious. Fidelity is fine throughout this problem free presentation.

Crumbs Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Crumbs Anecdotes (1080p; 6:43) features Miguel Llanso reminiscing about the shoot. This is kind of like the Josh Hurtado interview with Llanso included on Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway, in that it's for all intents and purposes an audio supplement that plays to excerpts from the film.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:16)

Crumbs Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Crumbs evidently caused quite a stir at several festivals when it was screened a few years ago, and it's not hard to see why. This kind of reinvents the post-Apocalyptic genre in an almost magical realist way, and it certainly introduces the world to two very interesting people, Miguel Llansó and Daniel Tadesse. This won't be everyone's cup of tea, but technical merits are solid and for the more adventurous viewer, Crumbs comes Recommended.