"Look, we're gonna spend half the night driving around the Hills looking for this one party, and you're gonna say it sucks, and we're all gonna leave and we're gonna go look for this other party. But all the parties and all the bars, they all suck. I spend half the night talking to some girl who's looking around the room to see if there's someone who's more important she should be talking to, and it's like I'm supposed to be all happy 'cause she's wearing a backpack."
Coworker: Walk the Line is better than Crash.
Everytime I hear someone talking about this I think, "What's Crash?" It's a sign.
Bad movies don't merit being remembered.
By 
, at
8:24 AM, February 02, 2006
You listed a lot of reasons for not liking Crash. And I can't really dispute them. I still liked it, though.
I would argue that Crash is less of the smart, hip movie about characters on a journey as you seem to think it's trying to be. It's more of (you called it) a melodrama. It is an urban melodrama that exists to present a one shot view of how many people do see the world: in stereotypes and what becomes of stereotypes dealing with other stereotypes believing in the stereotype, etc.
Crash is a melodrama, and this isn't a bad thing. It's a choice. And with that choice comes certain elements of the genre. One is the stereotype and how these stereotypes interact. Characters are not required to fully arch, but the idea of the arch is presented, if not made obvious, (such as your freight train remark, which is part of the melodrama.)
Lastly, I felt that it was a well done melodrama. I was surprised it got nominated, if for no other reason than it was realeased last spring. Definitely, not in the same ballpark as Magnolia but it only shares one devise with that film and so can only be loosely compared to it.
That's my take.
By 
Kyle, at
10:04 PM, February 02, 2006
Kyle,
Thanks for the comments. I see your point about melodrama, and fully concede that Crash falls into this category. But you said that, even though characters aren't required to progress through an arc, the idea of them progressing through one is still presented. That's a valid assessment, except I can't remember the idea even coming up in Crash. All the characters are either racist and okay with it or racist and think they're sensitive. Jennifer Esposito hits the roof when Don Cheadle calls her "Mexican," but she has no problem using pidgin-speak on a Korean woman with phrases like "blake light." What gives? Is Haggis saying we're all this stupid? Or just that some people are this stupid and there's nothing to be done about it? Either way, I didn't see any character once look even remotely in the vicinity of the direction of the possible beginning of the smallest arc; they just kind of meandered around.
I'm just saying, if the Academy wants to act like their best picture nominees are supposed to be some winnowing of the field and represent possibly the best 5 performances/films in that category for the year, then they should have picked something else over Crash, like Walk the Line or The Squid and the Whale or Broken Flowers or a test pattern.
By Dan Carlson, at
11:30 PM, February 03, 2006
I hope this doesn't make me seem like a troglodyte, but Broken Flowers does not deserve an Oscar, or even a nomination. It was an enjoyable movie and nothing else.
By , at
9:32 PM, February 05, 2006
...a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces....
O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?
O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.
--Look Homeward, Angel
Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
--John Stuart Mill
We have all read in scientific books, and indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
--G.K. Chesterton
We were, for the briefest of moments, something greater than the sum of our uncertain parts; we were youth itself, in all its painful glory and sharp joy.
--August Van Zorn
--Stephen King
Film lovers are sick people.
--Francois Truffaut
