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There have been a boatload of apt justifications for the not liking the thing, just as there have been a boatload of apt justifications for admiring the thing.
http://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=6&topic_id=55206
http://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=6&topic_id=56977
Some of the JUSTIFICATIONS, personal or otherwise, mentioned in the above threads -
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"If a movie attempts to touch upon such a pervasive and mammoth issue as racism, it better be near flawless, as hack direction, hack writing, hack music and hack casting generally tends to usurp everything else.
I hated this movie because I thought it was kowtowing to our most basic thoughts on racism. Everything about this movie was neon, incandescent even. There wasn't one moment where I felt like I wasn't being batted upside the head with the same rote ideologies I've been hearing all my life.
I think this movie is a bag of horseshit. There is no correlation between my contempt for this movie and some hidden inability to confront the issues at hand. I well up everytime I see Killer of Sheep. I laugh hysterically everytime I see Putney Swope. I'm touched everytime I see Sitting in Limbo. Crash is an empty shell masquerading as a profound chunk of open dialogue. There is most definitely a difference."
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"I wanted to like it but after the 10th absurd coincidence, it got to be too much. then the music got to be too much. then I grew tired of every single scene attempting to be an epic message on race relations. I kept waiting for Keenan to pop up ("MESSAGE!") everyone keeps comparing it to Short Cuts (structure-wise). but at least the coincidences in Short Cuts were feasible. these were just..."
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"If you need a glorified after-school special to *force* you to think about racism, you're probably beyond repair.
I really don't like this stance that if you hated Crash you're most likely a cold, empty vessel. I am a very emotional participant of the cinema. That said, Crash did nothing for me. The only emotion it raised was sheer anger that it has attracted a phalanx of doe-eyed supporters."
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"Coincidences never really bother me in movies.
Why do characters always have to learn lessons? I think that's the thing that made me so fucking mad, was the way the filmmaker tried to show all of the lessons learned.
Especially the way that the Persian man learned his lesson. The catalyst scene to him learning that he's wrong is such a cheap awful horrible disgusting thing to do in a film. It's like the old horror device where the creature attacks...and then the character wakes up with a gasp in a cold sweat.
That and the music is fucking awful."
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"I didn't feel cheap because I was manipulated. I did however think that the way in which they tried to manipulate the audience was a cheap method. If you can get real emotion out of the audience, cool. And I've seen the most blatant of tearjerkers and had ZERO problem with them (Old Yeller will STILL put a grown man into a tissue box). But the 3 minutes of slow motion mourning of the shot child just to have the child not be shot made me fucking angry. If they'd had an initial reaction, cool. If they'd had one or two shots of slo-mo, cool. But I thought they had already planned the fucking funeral by the time the film went back to speed. They dwelled on it so long, just to have a "peek-a-boo! fooled you!" twist to the shot girl that I thought "What the fuck?!? How can you get away with that?"
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"I learned that Sandra Bullock and Brendan Fraser are two of the worst actors in the history of cinema, that Paul Haggis fancies himself a pretty transcendental yarn-spinner, that the score was something straight off of a Body Shop compilation CD, that everybody hurts, that rappers shouldn't act, that Jennifer Esposito is the poor man's Pia Zadora, that Tony Danza (if used properly) is a wonderfully talented motherfucker, oh yeah, and that there are no Asian or Aboriginal people in Haggis' altruistic mosaic."
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"We do. We most definitely do. And I know I'm being incredibly broad and confrontational and immature with this post, but I'm really, really shocked that so many people have warmed to this pablum. I can't recall a more recent trip to the theatre that has left such an awful taste in my mouth.
I found Haggis's method of racial, ethical and personal quantification to be quite insulting. You can't put such dire issues into capsule by using old-hat script mechanisms and fairytale coincidences. The fact that almost every character had to redeem him/herself was grating enough. Every square inch of this film was condescending and limp and I think it cuts to the heart of the very same lot of people who refuse to disagree with anything that promotes ye ol' utopian softshoe.
That said, I honestly believe that anyone who enjoyed this movie was wearing Zircon-encrusted blinders for at least two hours of their life."
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"There was nothing complex about the film. Exsistential? It was a rote paint-by-numbers. I agree with you that the film WASN'T about redemption. But that's not what many people have been saying and it certainly goes against the intentions put forth by Haggis.
The cardboard characters, the way too sharp dialogue, the overt symbolism, the Sierra Club soundtrack bellowing from on high, the snow...EVERYTHING about this spells highschool journal keeper. A soft-centered tone poem about an all too real facet of daily life should not be attracting so much praise."
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"That's a dangerous way of thinking. If it's not sinewy and muscular and scored deep with conviction and love and hate, a film about something so pervasive and involving should not have been made in the first place.
As mentioned earlier in the thread, I think a prime example of mainstream media successfully tackling the issue of race was the Pryor/Chase SNL skit, or, alternately, something like All in the Family. Until the mainstream sees fit to finance a picture as biting and resounding as Killer of Sheep or Putney Swope, I think comedy is the only useful vessel for an exploration of such."
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"First, I'm not a huge Denby fan. Anthony Lane, as frothy as he can be, is far superior. Something about Denby gets under my skin.
I didn't appreciate this review. In fact, I'm wont to disregard the entire article after reading the very first paragraph:
"If there’s an ill-tempered remark that has ever been uttered in the city of Los Angeles that hasn’t found its way into Paul Haggis’s “Crash,” I can’t imagine what it is. “
If he can't imagine another ill-tempered remark that has ever been uttered in the city of Los Angeles that hasn't found its way into Crash, well, then, he probably has no concept of racism, pedestrian or otherwise. What a foolish thing to say.
"Crash (opening May 6th) is about the rage and foolishness produced by intolerance, the mutual abrasions of white, black, Latino, Middle Eastern, and Asian citizens in an urban pot in which nothing melts. "
Eh? Asian? Please. Talk about a shrift. The only time any Asians appeared in this film were as goofy marble-mouthed comic foils. Any critic who makes a point of stating that Asians were involved in this story's mosaic is an idiot. Any critic who fails to pounce on this strange omission is missing out.
"I think it’s easily the strongest American film since Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River"
I have a hard time taking anything from here on in seriously. Crash and Mystic River are the two most recent great American films? Wow. Denby's asleep at the wheel."
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"Nice summary. Well said. But I still agree with every line Onstad wrote.
Bullock's character was a joke. When she told the maid that she had earlier treated like a sack of dirt that she was her best friend, I almost lost it. My finacé and I exchanged looks, mere inches away from laughing like a pair of hysterical Tom Cruises doing whip-its in a Coney Island funhouse. Compare Bullock and the hispanic maid in Crash to that smarmy manchild and the hispanic maid in Solondz' Storytelling and you have a canyon of difference.
I can't believe I haven't yet mentioned the angelic kevlar girl surviving a hollowpoint to the face. Pretty stirring stuff. Really makes you think."
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"The acclaim around this movie says more about America's inability to deal with race, than the actual film does. Anything that makes white folks feel justified in being racist assholes gets rave reviews. Cuz, see, "everybody's racist!"
And if you don't agree with that, fine...but this has got to be one of the cheesiest, corniest, non-ron howard affiliated movies i've seen. I'm really surprised that Wilford Brimley didn't turn up somewhere in this. Like i said somewhere else "Deus Ex Machina - The Movie".
Maybe I'm bitter, or cynical. But this movie soft-handed racism in such a way that it seems like really a waste of time and money.
Boo-muthafuckin-hiss this movie"
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How are those not personal justifications for not liking Crash?
And, if I remember correctly, 95% of these boards lit up at the very sight of criticism landing on this movie. There were maybe five or six people in total that vocalized their problems with Crash. The rest of the boards were, if not fawning, accepting of its supposed merits. You're confused if you think the hate was suffocating.
And what are you talking about, you though it was 'okay'? You gave it a 9/10 upon seeing it AND you didn't even have a problem with the music!
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