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Sun, March 5, 2006

Crash

I finally saw Crash on DVD this weekend, and it strikes me as yet another in a long line of undeserving Best Picture nominees. By no means would I associate it with Affliction or The English Patient – as faithful reader AC did – it was better than those by far. But it was still quite a disappointment. (Although, a couple of months ago, it wouldn't have been. Back when it was just the directorial debut of the Million Dollar Baby scribe, my expectations were for nothing more than what I got.)

Nobody told me it had Ryan Phillipe in it. Nobody told me it was Magnolia with black people (and snow instead of frogs). (And Kathleen "Bird" York instead of Aimee Mann.)

I liked what the movie tried to say, but it failed to say it very well. I'm done with these "meaningful" movies that throw a bunch of random characters together in wildly implausible interactions and call it an "ensemble piece." Lost has an ensemble. Arrested Development had an ensemble. This is just a bunch of separate two- and three-character stories, tied together by editing.

We need to stop nominating movies for Oscars just because they do something no one else has done. In many cases, there's a reason so many of those things haven't been done by anyone before. They're just not worth doing.

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