mckw93 Crash is a movie with great ensemble cast and acting, with excellent cinematography. The movie is decent overall, highlighted by it's intense and emotional moments. It's interlocking style is certainly not original and it's plot does feel superficial and overdone. The movie's controversial Oscars win has certainly set unrealistic expectations and a wave of negativity. While being one of the weakest winners, it is far from being a terrible film. Unfortunately it will always be remembered for all the wrong reasons.

botfeeder The acting was superb, the story was impeccably woven.People tend to either love or hate this movie. Some of the criticisms I have seen:1). Lack of realism. Characters and situations not plausible. Certainly true but not necessarily strikes against the film. Extraordinary situations make for a gripping story. Implausible characters are legitimate if they serve as a path toward insight into real people. 2). Too formulaic. (this one I can't comprehend. Perhaps on a superficial level. I read one critic referred to something along the lines of there being a "interwoven stories of an alienated populace in Los Angeles" genre.The most striking thing in this movie to me is the morally bipolar characters. Those characters who have a strong moral component alternately exhibit extreme good and extreme evil. None of the characters have the moral tenor of traditional dramatic characters- good guys, bad guys, bad guys with a streak of good, good guys who bend the rules, etc.It doesn't seem obvious to me what this is trying to tell us about real people, but it does force us to look at people from a very different perspective than we have been taught and are accustomed to doing.When I read that Ta Nehisi Coates loathed the movie, I knew that I had judged it correctly. This is not a film that will appeal to one dimensional minds.

Ghassan Mansour Good endeavor, nice story but built up too much with exaggerated coincidences and illogical outside-the-universe plot that keeps telling you that you are in a movie but not a real life.For anyone who didn't watch Amorres Perros, the movie will be considered a masterpiece.But still a fine good movie, however, it doesn't deserve Best Picture.

Matt Sewell Oh boy. As a feminist accidentally born with testicles, I can tell you, there's nothing I look forward to more than a film reminding me how privileged white males like myself are the scum of the Earth. I generally use movies like this as a sort of intellectual self-flogging to make up for the thousands of years of oppression my people have caused the entire world. This one, however, didn't amount to much more than a sappy, manipulative Disneyesque take on the state of racism in the United States.We know we're in trouble early on when Sandra Bullock's privileged character warns her liberal husband to be worried about two African-American gentlemen on the street and she turns out to be correct. It's like the film is shooting itself in its foot from the get-go. Afircan-Americans should NEVER be portrayed in a negative light on film or in television. They've suffered enough. Later, we meet an atrociously disgusting white police officer in the character of Matt Dillon. He molests an innocent African-American woman (as one suspects white police officers are apt to do on a regular basis) and then, as though the film wants to make some clever statement about irony, the same racist cop saves the same poor, innocent African-American woman from a burning car. The director plays games like this with the audience throughout the picture. It's like he's learned the very worst lessons Spielberg has to offer. Set the audience up, smack them sideways in a manner the filmmaker no doubt considers "clever." It's not. The whole movie reminded me of the patronizing scene in Schindler's List when Liam Neeson notices white flakes in the air. The audience thinks, "Snow! Christmastime! Yeah!" and then he walks a few blocks and we see it is actually ashes from burning Jews. Crash is nothing but an endless series of episodes like this. It looks like it was written by a freshmen cultural studies major who hasn't had enough Liberal Arts training to learn how to make his art subtle and, thus, more meaningful. Avoid this at all costs. For a great movie to feed your white guilt, I recommend "The Brother from Another Planet."