A Couple Quick Movie Reviews
CRASH
I finally got to see this when my writing group, in lieu of having any new material to present to one another, decided to have a movie night. I wanted to like this movie more than I did. The writing was tight, the performances were outstanding, and the direction, cinematography, and music were all in place. So why did it leave me cold?
As an examination of race relations in present-day Los Angeles, I found the story to be facile and unconvincing. Most of the characters hold at least one racial bias and are willing to sound off about them at the drop of a hat, hitting us over the head with the theme.
To its credit, these characters are also presented as being neither completely good nor completely evil. In one scene, Matt Dillon's racist cop heroically saves the same woman he molested during a DWB incident the night before. But these coincidences, wherein all the characters randomly interact with one another over the course of the film, become a little hard to swallow. What are the odds that the daughter of the Persian shop keeper is also the coroner handling the body of the carjacker who happens to be the brother of Don Cheadle's character and also happens to be killed by the cop partnering with Matt Dillon's character, etc? Pretty good, I'd say, in a Los Angeles with a population of only two dozen people.
So, the movie doesn't really work as a story of race relations. As a story about people living in fear, however, the movie makes more sense. I wish it had focused more on that angle.
Mick LaSalle's review of Crash in the San Francisco Chronicle sums up my feelings pretty well. Read it here.
Good Night and Good Luck
I really liked this movie, which is not to say I didn't have some criticisms as a would-be screenwriter. As presented, Edward R. Murrow doesn't have much of a character arc, and there's no sense that he's in any real danger from his pursuit of Senator McCarthy. There are sub-plots that go nowhere (for example with Robert Downey Jr. and Patricia Clarkson's characters).
That said, the two things that made the movie for me were the message -- that it's the media's responsibility to report the truth and that sometimes it comes down to one person to decide to do that -- and the performances, especially David Strathairn's Murrow.
The movie felt like an old Playhouse 90, something Rod Serling might have written back in the golden age of television, simply told and with a strong moral theme.
I finally got to see this when my writing group, in lieu of having any new material to present to one another, decided to have a movie night. I wanted to like this movie more than I did. The writing was tight, the performances were outstanding, and the direction, cinematography, and music were all in place. So why did it leave me cold?
As an examination of race relations in present-day Los Angeles, I found the story to be facile and unconvincing. Most of the characters hold at least one racial bias and are willing to sound off about them at the drop of a hat, hitting us over the head with the theme.
To its credit, these characters are also presented as being neither completely good nor completely evil. In one scene, Matt Dillon's racist cop heroically saves the same woman he molested during a DWB incident the night before. But these coincidences, wherein all the characters randomly interact with one another over the course of the film, become a little hard to swallow. What are the odds that the daughter of the Persian shop keeper is also the coroner handling the body of the carjacker who happens to be the brother of Don Cheadle's character and also happens to be killed by the cop partnering with Matt Dillon's character, etc? Pretty good, I'd say, in a Los Angeles with a population of only two dozen people.
So, the movie doesn't really work as a story of race relations. As a story about people living in fear, however, the movie makes more sense. I wish it had focused more on that angle.
Mick LaSalle's review of Crash in the San Francisco Chronicle sums up my feelings pretty well. Read it here.
Good Night and Good Luck
I really liked this movie, which is not to say I didn't have some criticisms as a would-be screenwriter. As presented, Edward R. Murrow doesn't have much of a character arc, and there's no sense that he's in any real danger from his pursuit of Senator McCarthy. There are sub-plots that go nowhere (for example with Robert Downey Jr. and Patricia Clarkson's characters).
That said, the two things that made the movie for me were the message -- that it's the media's responsibility to report the truth and that sometimes it comes down to one person to decide to do that -- and the performances, especially David Strathairn's Murrow.
The movie felt like an old Playhouse 90, something Rod Serling might have written back in the golden age of television, simply told and with a strong moral theme.
posted by Ken Sharp at 9:14 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home