Search the Community
Showing results for tags 'Don Cheadle'.
Found 2 results
-
I feel like I just watched the love child of "Do the Right Thing" and "Pulp Fiction." On hallucinogens, because for whatever reason, I could *swear* I remember the story line about Sgt. John Ryan (Matt Dillon) helping his father (Bruce Kirby) off the toilet, but that's forty minutes into the movie, and I remember *nothing* else up to that point; yet, I remember this scene so vividly that ... how could I *not* have seen this film before? This scene isn't exactly a highlight that they'd put on YouTube. "Crash" would make a fine episode of a television series; to win an award signifying "Best Motion Picture" of the entire year? Boy, that's a real stretch - it is hit-you-over-your-head obvious (not the plot; the presentation), in a terribly condescending way. All these different train wrecks have departed towns such as "Meanville," "Nastyland," etc., and they're each taking the express lane to "Luv Station." Meh, like I said - a fine television episode; not best picture material by any means. Although I love the message of this film, it resonates the same with me as Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for Literature - just as some serious author or poet who spent a lifetime honing their craft got cheated out of a literary award, a more serious, less contrived film got cheated out of the Academy Award for Best Picture - that's not to say that Dylan is "bad" at literature, or that Crash is a "bad" movie; just that neither perform - *in these particular categories* - at these (theoretically) most prestigious levels of accolades. An interesting sidenote: Although "Crash" was released in 2004, it didn't qualify for the 2005 Academy Awards because it didn't play for at least one week in Los Angeles. Aug 12, 2015 - "Paul Haggis: Crash Didn't Deserve Best Picture Oscar" by Ben Child on theguardian.com -
Having recently re-watched "The Candidate," Robert Redford's 1972 political satire about California politics, I decided to watch its "companion piece from the next generation," Warren Beatty's "Bulworth" from 1998. Thirty minutes into the film, it seems like a strange, love-child of "The Candidate" and "Network" (remember Howard Beale (Peter Finch) losing it, and screaming, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"). That said,"Bulworth" is going to have to get better for me to like it as much as either of those two films. I'm not going to write up a long review of this, but it really grew on me over time. I started out not liking it *at all*, but then I saw that Beatty was taking some serious risk, and not going for a wide audience - who, exactly, *was* his target audience? There's doubt in my mind as to what this movie was even about, other than a politician growing stones large enough to speak the truth - this one goes straight to my heart because I *don't* think it's parody that partisan politics is corrupt in *both parties*. The day everyone is required to be an independent, and the two-party system is done away with is 1) the day a snowball freezes in Hell, and 2) the day I begin caring about politics and politicians again. As for the ending(s), I had a troubled feeling, but I honestly don't think it changes anything, because the gist of the parody was in the middle of the film. My respect for Warren Beatty went way up for having the courage to make this movie - perhaps the best political parody I've ever seen because it went, in its own *very* quirky way, directly to what desperately needs addressing.
