Sunday, March 12, 2006
Some Post-Oscar Thoughts
So the Academy thinks that Crash was the best mainstream flick of 2005. Well, it's not a bad choice and there are plenty of good things to say about the movie. Me, I liked both Syriana and Munich better, but I have a soft spot for movies with ensemble acting and interlocking storylines and for this reason I won't complain about Crash's win. I rate Crash at a notch below my two favourite movies in this (relatively modern) genre — Robert Altman's Short Cuts and P. T. Anderson's Magnolia — perhaps at about the same level as Ray Lawrence's Australian movie Lantana. What pulls Crash that one notch down is that it doesn't quite develop the third dimension of its many characters. Short Cuts and Magnolia solve this problem by having generous three-hour runtimes and Lantana solves it by having a smaller ensemble of interlocking stories.
The above doesn't address the best new release I saw in 2005: Oliver Hirschbiegel's Der Untergang (English title: Downfall), an ultra-powerful film about Hitler's final days in his bunker that left me stunned, literally. Strictly speaking, this is a 2004 film that happened to get a U.S. release in 2005.
Where does this leave that other much-talked-about 2005 film, Brokeback Mountain? I haven't seen it yet, and I hope to correct that soon, but I note that there is something about the film that seems to inspire parodies of all sorts! In no particular order:
The above doesn't address the best new release I saw in 2005: Oliver Hirschbiegel's Der Untergang (English title: Downfall), an ultra-powerful film about Hitler's final days in his bunker that left me stunned, literally. Strictly speaking, this is a 2004 film that happened to get a U.S. release in 2005.
Where does this leave that other much-talked-about 2005 film, Brokeback Mountain? I haven't seen it yet, and I hope to correct that soon, but I note that there is something about the film that seems to inspire parodies of all sorts! In no particular order:
- Brokeback Heat
- Broke Mac Mountain
- Brokeback to the Future
- Kickback Mountain
- Brokeback Mountain: Christian Edition (no offence intended, so no link)
