Crash

[lazy0718]

I just finished watching Crash (the 2005 one). Excellent movie, and one I'd recommend to everybody.

I also watched Red Eye, which wasn't all that great, but was decent enough. I actually had something of a Rachel McAdams weekend, as I watched Mean Girls and Wedding Crashers too. I have to say I'm rapidly becoming a fan of hers.

Comments

[grokaloper]

I thought Crash was sort of pretentious, a movie would have been great if they chopped off a couple of the weaker stories somewhat and focused more on the good stuff. I felt stuck with a bunch of underdeveloped characters with very interesting stories where, instead of feeling challenged to fill in the blanks myself, I felt cheated out of full but shorter stories for the sake of one loosely connected longer story with an overbearing theme that was easier to sell.

It certainly had the intended emotional effect of certain character interactions, but those dynamics were occasionally shallow, and I often found myself questioning the motivations of the characters when they seemed to be in the movie for solely theatrical purposes. It's a notch or two below being an "excellent movie" for me, but I would recommend a rental to anyone, so that they could decide for themselves.

[lazy0718]

I'm a sucker for movies with lots of different plots going on (Magnolia, Love Actually, Grand Canyon, etc.) and in this case, I didn't view any story as weak, as they had had something important to say. Granted, they didn't have it all tie together, but I think it would have felt less real if it did.

For me, everyone's motivations seemed to have an inner logic to them...in fact, the only one that didn't involved the television producer (his second time being stopped), and then I found out (though the director's commentary on the disc) that a situation almost exactly like that had happened to that actor in real life.

I have to admit that I'm also a sucker for low-budget films that work...and this was done for only 6.5M, a real feat, if you consider the star power in the film as well. So perhaps I am a bit more lenient with the film than I normally would be, but as it stands now, it's my favorite film of 2005 (can I call it a 2005 film, even though it hit the film festivals in 2004? )