THE WORST:
CRASH (2004)
I didn’t actively hate Crash when I first saw it. Paul Haggis’ schematic, artificial examination of race relations in Los Angeles was a pleasant enough way to pass an evening: I enjoyed watching Sandra Bullock play against type as a sour yuppie, and the vignette with Michael Peña and his daughter was sweet (in a Six Feet Under subplot kind of way). But the whole storyline with Matt Dillon’s Racist Cop® was nothing more than Haggis the mainstream milquetoast trying way too hard to provoke, like a suburban teen buying a Slipknot hoodie at Hot Topic with his mom’s credit card and then wearing it to church. The really annoying thing about Crash, though, was the way it allowed Academy voters (after pretty much ignoring films like Hoop Dreams and Malcolm X) to pat themselves on the back for their willingness to confront “the race issue” by rewarding Haggis’ toothless paper tiger of a film while simultaneously snubbing the superior (and timely) “gay cowboy” movie that apparently made them feel icky and uncomfortable.
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