The Worst Movie of the Decade Relay

Give Paul Haggis a break. He just wanted to be Spike Lee for a day.

No way. Crash has problems, but this is a decade that saw the release of Southland Tales. *Nothing* is as bad as Southland Tales. Nothing.

Nothing.

J.Go

It's so trendy to pick "Crash" as the worst movie of the decade that I just can't help but say, thank God for trends.

"I do not like you, black person, because you are black and I am not and I am a racist."

"Well, I don't like you Asian person, because I am not Asian and I also am a racist."

"And I don't like you either, Arab person, because I am not Arab and, like everyone else, I am a racist as well."

"No, wait, I was wrong. I should not be so much of a racist. Being a racist is a bad thing, and it makes bad things happen in very bad ways."

"You're the best friend I've got."

I may have changed up a few words, but that's pretty much the dialogue that I remember.

I give it credit, however, for being the film that prompted the most incorrect sentence of film criticism written this decade. From David Denby: "(Crash is) easily the best American film since Mystic River."

To paraphrase Lisa Simpson, I know all those words, but the sentence doesn't make any sense. I struggle to think of equivalents. "George W. Bush is the best American president since Warren Harding." "Nickelback rocks out like nobody since Counting Crows."

I still read that line every now and then, thinking each time that I must have misremembered it. But it doesn't change.

Wow, I've never seen so many reviews that so completely misinterpret a movie and its fans.

Which is not to say that Crash Bashers don't understand the movie. But they clearly don't "get" it, the way Roger Ebert and so many others "get" it. But I have to wonder why these people are so enraged by this particular movie. I kind of wish they'd get over it. I mean, come on, worst movie of the decade? That's clearly flame bait disguised as film criticism. Unless they somehow managed to avoid Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2, From Justin to Kelly, all Uwe Boll movies, and every truly incompetent movie from this decade.

JE: I guess it depends on your definition of "worst." The people quoted above acknowledge that "bad" movies are made all the time. But they find "Crash" beyond the pale...

Ouch. Please, no. I think "Crash" was a failure all right, but it had aspirations -- the way teenagers have trite aspirations -- and while it was ultimately frustrating, futile and childish, I don't think it was repugnant. People should have patted its head and sped it on its way to historical oblivion, instead of using its Oscar to clobber its skull in. There are worse movies: asinine movies, evil movies, illiterate movies, movies which have accidentally recorded their technicians' small talk. "Crash" is better than those, surely?

For me, the worst came right at the beginning of the decade, Left Behind: the movie. I get a headache just thinking about it. It could've been disqualified if it were just a direct to video release (where it belonged), but somebody had a bright idea to give it a theatrical release. Just as bad was September Dawn, the kind of exploitation flick René Cardona would've made if he were still alive.

Why did it have to go and take the name of David Cronenberg's masterpiece. Now I have to say " No I don't like the one about racism I like the one about car crashes."

Southland Tales has problems but it's definitely a better film than Crash.

The problem with 'Worst film of the decade' is that it almost always has to go to some little-known piece of schlock like Severe Visibility or Leeches!, so this is really 'Worst film of the decade that a lot of people also saw'.

I agree with what most people on here are saying - Crash may have been overrated at the time and completely undeserving of its Academy Award, but worst movie of the decade? Puh-leeze.

If you want worst, look no further than "Meet the Spartans."

"Welcome to the best movie of the year for people who like to say, 'A lot of my best friends are black.'" -Scott Foundas

Though I don't necessarily consider Haggis' "Crash" a *terrible* movie, that review by Foundas always makes me chuckle.

I liked it when Sandra Bullock was pushed down the stairs by the power of RACISM.

I was with Roger Ebert on thinking this film one of the great films of 2005, as well as this decade. You say, "And if you didn't know that Ta-Nehisi Coates is black, you probably liked "Crash." And if you think his blackness adds credence to his argument that it would not otherwise have had, you definitely liked "Crash."" However, I did not find his race to have any sway on me as to his opinion or mine. I find it difficult to understand what about this movie brings people to such anger. The film, I feel, is a powerful and impassioned look at race and racial clashes in modern America. It does not offer a possible solution for the many atrocities attributed to race in this country because, maybe, just maybe, as long as human nature remains as it is and always has, there is no solution. There will be no perfect society, where race goes unnoticed, where homosexual people are viewed as the same as heterosexual people, this cannot and very well will not happen. As Goldberg stated, "I know a lot of white people in L.A. who think that "Crash" represents an accurate depiction of the way blacks and whites relate to each other." You can probably find just as many black people who agree. The film is disparaged for not displaying race as we want it to be, as we believe we are trying to make it. The film displays race, unfortunately or not, as it is.

Jim, not sure, but according to the principles you set while judging Armond White, or Jim Hoberman (A Serious Man), the excerpts that you suggest do not offer even a single line of valid criticism.

I agree, Crash is bad. It is more than bad, it is immoral. It is so blatantly immoral it uses the physical inspection of a woman its technical fulcrum. It is so blatantly stupid that people just speak sentences that have only to do with race.

But that is not the point. The point is this is not a valid way of attacking a film. Especially by trying to segment out its target audience.

The filmmakers seem to be under the impression that they’re doing a great service by touching the subject. As a matter of fact what they do is take the easy way out, chicken out while touching the broken high tension wire. The film takes a politically correct stand, standing high and mighty up in the heaven and judging everybody by their discrimination counter. This isn’t humane by any means; all it does is tour us through a two-hour discourse of what is discrimination. And it isn’t compelling even for a moment. One doesn’t need to look beyond Taxi Driver to understand what it is to feel real passionately on the subject. Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader had a compelling story on their hands and that in turn was etched out, by means of the real passion they had, into what is quite probably the defining movie on discrimination of any kind. And all this under the pretext of a human drama. Everyone speaks only one language here. And that language seems to only have words that have anything to do with racial discrimination. I don’t have the least bit idea of the culture we’re talking about here, but hey, discrimination is a universal thing. More so in a culturally diverse country as India where it exists in all forms and sizes. All I ask is three questions: does our species only have racial discrimination to offer? And isn’t it really unhealthy on the part of a film to speak unendingly to the point of numbing our senses with all the talk? And yeah, did everyone else miss the very precious element called subtlety?

The thing is Crash is a shallow film. We all discriminate. It is a universal and basic human emotion. No one has a "The-world-is-my-family" heart. So, the secret is not to be preachy and politically correct, but to make something that embraces these shortcomings in us. We all are good, but we all have our bad edges. Discrimination is one of them.

Point is, Crash is too stupid to understand it. Maybe blind. Afterall, it is sitting on a hilltop and lecturing.

The reason why Crash is so awful is because it uses right wing simplification to portray left wing views.
One comment above says it should be patted on the head as one might a teenage effort, but that's to deny its status as a kind of beacon for left-of-centre views. "If we can just fix this, this and this, we will have a perfect world!". Such trite mawkishness ultimately damages any meaningful representation of same or similar subject matter in movies, books, plays for years to come...
"Have you seen XYZ?"
"No... but I've seen CRASH -that was enough. I got the badge now thankyouverymuch."

I would argue a similar case against Schindler's List and much of Spielberg's output, but I realise he is untouchable so I won't do that here.

I wish I knew what it was that went horribly wrong in my evolution as a human being, to have liked Crash when it came out...all three times I saw it, and still not dislike it to this day.

I just don't see where the uniformity of the vitriol is coming from, and why this film is so particularly immoral. It is not malicious, it is not nihilistic...it is intellectually severly limited. I find it curious that people are singling out this mediocrity above all else.

As for my own worst, I'm having a surprisingly hard time remembering something that really hit the spot in its badness. Not just bad in one way, but really a signifier of a lot that I hate. Bruno rankled me in too few ways. Same with Irreversible. I'm blanking on other films where I felt my indignation was righteous. The movie that I think of most when thinking about films I hate is Before The Devil Knows You're Dead. I kind of feel bad, as I love Lumet....but he's made an ugly film about ugly people doing ugly things. It was moronically sturctured, too. It is a nihilistic film in every fiber of its being. It's like 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days' nihilism-in-esthetics, only without the compelling immediacy. I've had enough with these ugly films that present nothing but ugliness. The morality presented in esthetics is something too often overlooked, I think.

I haven't seen 'Crash' since it came out (I was sixteen, before I knew who Kieslowski was) but I still remember liking it and am consistently confounded by all the hate it gets. I can understand not liking the movie, but hating it?

The film doesn't want to be subtle, first of all, although there are performances in it that do (and many that succeed if you ask me - Matt Dillon?). It wants to take a bunch of racist stereotypes and put them, in different combinations, into "what if?" scenarios. Like: "what if the racist white cop had to rescue the black woman he'd molested a day before from a car accident?" or "what if one of the reverse-racist black carjackers were to pull a gun on the successful black TV director, thinking he's white?"

Likely? No. Graceful? …Probably not. But adequate at examining, in wide brush strokes, human hypocrisy? I don't see why not. I don't get how it sets the audience on "the right side of racism” when some of the movie's most emotionally identifiable characters (Dillon, Phillippe, Toub, Bullock) are also its worst aggressors. Yes, the film maintains a consistent morality, but an outsider’s morality – that of the objective observer (us). It’s the film’s strategy to give us that, while also letting us feel the decisions made by the individual characters – however negligible some of them may be.

For this reason I don’t think the film needs perfectly 3-dimenional characters or expert dialogue. To achieve it’s purpose (and its purpose was to be a good, small movie about racism – not, I don’t think, to win Best Picture) it simply needs the right appearances. The situations, with the right-looking actors, hitting the right notes. I don’t think that’s superficial at all – or, it is superficial, but in a perfectly sensible, functional way. The movie is so emotionally loud, almost hysterical; it could’ve been a silent drama. And I like that.

My mom was watching the movie on DVD shortly after it came out. She’s not a film genius (or any other kind), just a casual moviegoer. It had a big effect on her, and she was able to sum up the movie’s point after doing some thinking about it. ”…after doing some thinking about it.” If it’s got her thinking, in the right way, about the right things…never mind how “good” the movie is, just explain to me how it’s morally deficient?

I think Crash would be one of those movies that was generally well regarded among critics but extremely divisive among audiences. Other movies in recent that seemed to create a love/hate relationship were Juno, Dark Knight, Benjamin Button, and Slumdog. I would agree that Crash was among the worst movies of the decade. I think movies that aspire to be great and then fail horribly are worse movies then films that aspire to be run-of-the-mill. Crash was disingenuous, obvious, contrived, and was an unintentional parody to the general public's simplistic view of racism.

Worst Movies of the Decade
Slumdog Millionaire
Juno
Crash
Precious
The Village

Can I believe "Crash" is a ridiculous movie and that those still harping on it years after its release are being more than a little shrill?

Most Best Picture Oscar winners fade away from people's memories, but this one just won't die. It's the people who hate this movie that are keeping its memory alive.

Also, Jim, those quotes from Coates and Goldberg attribute characteristics to those who don't share their point of view on the film, something you brought up a few posts ago about those who did the same to you about "Avatar". I'm not quite sure if you buy into these arguments or presenting them as examples of ad hominem arguments which they pretty much are.

Why don't we focus on the movies "Crash" was desperately aspiring to be, particularly "Do The Right Thing" and "Short Cuts", so that people are aware of how far superior those movies were?

JE: I think Coates' approach (you should read the entire posts he's referring to, also) accurately reveals the methodology of "Crash" itself, which is to define characters' values solely in terms of race. And I hoped that by saying I had nothing to add to Goldberg's anecdotal observation I was making it clear that it was just that -- an anecdotal, ad hominem comment. It's just that we've been going over this for so many years now I thought most readers were already familiar with the arguments, and that this would just be an end-of-decade re-cap. I was a little surprised at how strongly some of the writers I quoted still feel about "Crash." I will add some links to some of the more substantial pieces that have appeared here and on RogerEbert.com to the original post.

Jim, despite seeing what Robert Fuller so accurately described above as "flame bait disguised as film criticism" from all these writers, I wonder where you stand on this debate. I vaguely remember when the movie came out you saying something along the lines of "It's not for me, but I don't have that much problem with it." But I also remember you joining in on a bit of "Crash" bashing over the years as well. I was excited to see what you had to say about people calling it the worst of the decade, since it seems your opinion of it has developed over time.

As far as my take? I liked it a lot, taking it as the big melodramatic movie it was trying to be. It never claimed to represent "real life" or "real people", and clearly Haggis WAS just trying to make sure Spike Lee wasn't the only filmmaker who could toss out a race-related movie.

But seriously, the vitriol spewed at this movie has almost everything to do with its Oscar win (people pissed that it beat "Brokeback Mountain" have since forgotten that argument and just hate it on general principle). I'm sure there are many that despise it without its Oscar win, but it seems every hater brings it up as some sort of affront to movies that it could win an Oscar (when more than a few of those people are those who say the Oscars don't mean anything anyway).

And as Jarrett said, any decade that has inflicted "Southland Tales" on the viewing public can't possibly have "Crash" as its worst movie.

On top of those reasons, I'm just not sure Crash is really a good movie on any level.

Here are the movies I thought were worst of the decade. It doesn't count stuff like Love Guru or Ghost Ship that aspires to trash and achieves it. Some of these directors have even made stuff I really admire.

Crash
Team America: World Police
Fahrenheit 9/11
Dogville
Away We Go
Across the Universe
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
Lady in the Water
Tideland
Slumdog Millionaire

Maybe we can nip some of the "bad movie" discussion in the bud by not bringing up films that had low expectations and low production values. I think the point is that this movie clubs you over the head with its simplistic morality. It screams "I'm an important film!" It has the subtlety of a Carrot Top joke. I felt the same way about "Traffic". In a separate category, I would like to nominate "Little Miss Sunshine" for its "Hey! I'm a quirky, independent film!" message.

JE: Very good points. "Little Miss Sunshine" did indeed feel in parts like a generic "Sundance Movie." What rescued it, for me, were things like the formally audacious opening dinner scene (20 minutes or more on one set!) -- and, most of all, the rapport between Paul Dano and Steve Carrell. Love Toni Collette, too.

Y'know, I didn't like that CRASH won the best picture Oscar the year it came out. I admired what it was trying to say, but felt it could have been told in a more interesting and truthful way. But I don't think it deserves this bile over being called the worst of the decade.

I wish people would have a little bit of reticence and perspective.

The car-jacker who secretly has a lot of wisdom and insight into racial tensions was just a massive contrivance. Characters in this film just randomly say 'racist' things that feel really forced.

Don Cheadle and his girlfriend have sex and then he just randomly makes some really insensitive joke about her being a Mexican, when she's actually a Latino. Previously to that he was presented as a seemingly sympathetic guy. But then Haggis is forcing his themes into the material. Everybody in this film is constantly talking about RACE, in such explicit terms that no actual human being ever does.

Plus Haggis is a Scientologist, the guy has no clue about reality.

JE: Haggis recently resigned from Scientology after many years. It's not clear when or if he resigned from humanity.

Worst film of the decade? My pick (and Ebert's, and the Academy's, for that matter) for the best film of 2005? One of the best of the decade, I say! Does it pander? Probably. Is it in fact in your face and shouting in your ear about its virtues? I suppose. But it got to me and that's something, goddammit. That's something.

I think, if most Hollywood movies (and even many movies outside of Hollywood) were examined as closely as Crash was, you would also see them as made up of cheap stereotypes and banal messages. That's including Brokeback Mountain, which was the film everyone was expecting to win Best Picture that year. If Crash had never made it to the Academy Awards, people would have liked it okay, or moderately disliked it and then moved on. It is the Gentlemen's Agreement of the past decade, a well acted issues picture that sheds no real light on its subject, decently made with a couple of really good sequences. Ultimately forgettable. I can think of much worse movies that were Oscar contenders from the 2000s. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is far worse, as is (and I hope I'm jumping the gun here) Avatar. Also nominated for Best Picture and much worse: Seabiscuit, Finding Neverland, Little Miss Sunshine (probably the worst film ever to be nominated) and The Reader.

I had problems with "Crash" for the reasons stated, and was dismayed to find it on Ebert's Top 10 of the decade ... but I didn't HATE it.

The one movie I most viscerally hated was "Atonement" .... There was some good acting, some beautiful cinematography, then one great long beach scene that was amazing ... but if not for the fact that I was staying for another movie, I'd have walked out, and I never walk out. I HATED that so many people I admire loved that movie, while I loathed what it did to me. I could not get past the fact that essentially a stupid misunderstanding was the whole reason for all that trouble. It was like watching a Three's Company episode without the slapstick. Completely ruined the whole movie for me very early on.

In a decade that saw the pollulation of poorly directed torture porn films like Saw and Hostel, and A-class garbage like Transformers and Bad Boys 2 and countless hordes of awful dumb comedies by Will Farrell and macho-flicks like The Fast and The Furious and all that, Crash can't really be considered the "Worst movie of the decade". It was however the "worstly" overrated movie of the decade, without a doubt.

Nooo! She's convincing me! Nooo! I was young when I saw it! I really liked it. But now, I...I think...I think I don't like it anymore! Noo!

Robert Fuller, IMO there is nothing worst than a psuedo-intellectual film which in actuallity is intellectually empty. Uwe Boll films, Baby Geniuses 2 and others may be bad, but they aren't as offensive IMO as films like Crash which want to be all so serious and important but are just stupid and in some cases offensive.

In fact, I would go further, and this is where I disagree with you V.S., there is nothing more evil than a film which wants to make a Serious Statement about something but instead either makes things worst, simplifies the issue to such an extent that it becomes offensive or is just plain stupid.

In this category, I would put Crash, but also Juno and Babel. Regarding Crash, one moment that has always struck me was when the Iranian shopkeeper was accused of being a terrorist, and he insisted that he wasn't an Arab. The film was criticising these people for accusing him of being a terrorist because he wasn't an Arab, so if he was an Arab, does that mean he would have been a terrorist? Kind of like John McCain saying that Obama isn't an Arab, he's a family man (as if Arabs can't love their families.) The film was meant to be anti-racism, but by implying that Arabs are terrorists, it was being racist itself! The film is so stupid and offensive I wanted to scream.

As horrible as Crash is, THE worst film of the decade was IMO Anatomy of Hell; a film so horrible I couldn't finish it. Mysoginystic, misandrist, enormously offensive, that film IMO would top any 'worst film' list.

"when in fact they're just having their buttons pushed" is right. And I find the button pushing was done very well.

May I add that "Crash" openly sported the "Brendan Fraser Seal of Quality". Some critics and Oscar voters didn't seem to notice that, and hence were fooled into thinking it was a great movie. But for people aware of the BFSoQ, the moment you see him on screen you just KNOW the movie can't be good!

Snakes on a plane didnt win the worst movie ever? Crash was bad but it had a good message, but SNAKES ON A PLANE PEOPLE COME ON

JE: The message of "Crash" is the same as the message of "Snakes on a Plane," is it not? From: "Why, exactly, are there snakes on this plane?" to "We've got to put a barrier between us and the snakes," to "Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherf--king snakes on this motherf--king plane!" Isn't that the level on which the drama of "Crash" is pitched?

Crash was pretty bad, sure, but I struggle to think of a film more mean-spirited and poorly executed than Cabin Fever. Of all the films I didn't finish for one reason or another, this is the only one which I actually could not bear to watch.

It's not that it was shocking or hit too close home, but the characters were the most obnoxiously stupid individuals I've ever seen. The direction was barely competent enough that you could follow the idiocy (while most films this painfully bad are slightly redeemed by the fact that I barely notice them). It sold itself as an Evil-Dead-esque cabin-in-the-woods horror film, but the bulk of the "gore" was just watching people puke.

This movie was so awful that I actually needed a few days to recuperate. Whenever I tried to watch a movie, I'd get a headache and sink into depression. Cabin Fever was so mind-bogglingly terrible that it actually made other films worse for being watched in its proximity. It's a vortex of suck.

Crash is merely cliched and simpleminded. It may be the most mediocre film of the decade, but it definitely isn't the "worst."

Yes, obviously not technically the worst movie of the decade, but surely the most overrated. I'm still blown away that it was generally well received by critics. It made me consider that perhaps the ultra-right is correct, and the media is controlled by super-liberals.

And you can quibble about who wins the Oscars, whether or not Forrest Gump should have beat Pulp Fiction, but lets look at the films it was up against in the Best Picture category:

Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Good Night, and Good Luck
Munich

It's not even in the same league as any of them.

I'm wondering if a lot of people are just pissed off that it beat "Brokeback Mountain" for Best Picture.

Some of the readers are failing to understand the difference between a well-made movie and well-argued movie. I doubt that those involved with Baby Geniuses 2 would defend it as the quintessential narrative on child pychology, no more than Uwe Boll would believe his films are allegories of Bush-era politics.

The problem lies in the fact that Crash IS presenting itself as the consummation of race-cinema. And it is the worst film of the decade because it is pompously aware of its purpose. As Ta-Nehisi Coates says, it doesn't explain why racism continues to exist, it just shows that it exists. Crash argues that the solution to racism is to simply stop being racist, ignoring the policies and politics that perpetuate these problems.

The above films aren't trying to be more than they are - zombies and intelligent babies, but Crash is; Crash is the person at the party quoting Nietzsche and Freud, who when you ask the meaning behind the words they provide further loaded answers, causing some to step aside and ask, "Do you think he ever had an original thought?"

It is a well-made film, but visuals cannot compensate for a failed and exploitative argument. Look beyond the talent and cinematography and honestly ask yourself if anything was learned, or solution presented.

Sure, bad movies get made all the time, but sometimes you have to go out of your way to make something as abhorrently awful as "Freddy Got Fingered". Frankly, I think it's a little sad that people would focus on "Crash" as being the "worst film of the decade", when above and beyond there were worse films.

I understand the argument you and the other critics are making, and certain points are, I think, valid. But "Crash," as another comment stated above, had aspirations. Whether you believe it succeeded or failed depends on your own personal confrontation with race, and I think that no matter which side you land on it's insulting to say that because you land on a certain side, you somehow have an inferior understanding of race relations, as Ta-Nehisi Coates so blatantly insinuated.

I found myself much more angry at a movie like "Transformers 2," because that movie acted as if what it was giving me was what I wanted to see. As if the giant explosions, lack of story, lack of attempt at anything meaningful whatsoever, topped with a truly disgusting dose of racism in a couple of the robots, is what I would find entertaining. It was one of the most insulting movies I watched all decade.

At least Paul Haggis openly stated he wanted "Crash" to spur debate, and wanted people to truly disagree on its merits. The very fact that there's a meaningful debate (you may disagree, but even those angry at the film are making their voices and opinions about race relations heard) as a result of the film makes it difficult for me to go along with this classification that it's "the worst." It's at least got people thinking. That's more than I can say about "Transformers 2" or "Freddy Got Fingered".

JE: You're right that even some people who thought it was a bad movie felt it performed a worthwhile function as a conversation piece. If ripping the film apart for its delusional, superficial approach to race and filmmaking proves to be the most valuable thing it has to offer, then that will be something interesting for us to reassess. I'm reminded, though, of something Michael Haneke said about his worst film (which he made twice), "Funny Games." I'll paraphrase: "Those who hate it and walk out don't need to see it; those who stay, do." I think what he's saying is that if you recognize the phoniness of the set-up, you will be angered and appalled. If you don't, and you watch the whole thing, what you make of the ersatz experience will be the only thing that matters.

[Spoilers]

I didn't hate "Crash" because it was an inept treatment of the problems of race.

I didn't hate "Crash" because it was manipulative or condescending.

I didn't hate "Crash" because it was badly acted.

I didn't hate "Crash" because it was shameless in its attempts to be Serious in the way that only middlebrow movies can.

I hated "Crash" for the unforgivably stupid subplot involving the blank bullets. The movie tries to use it for irony or something like that, but all it does is betray complete ignorance of how guns work.

Any movie that tries to lecture me about the "realities of race" or somesuch foofaraw and yet can't be bothered to get simple mechanical details right is beneath contempt.

I saw Crash and thought it profound and moving. I saw it a second time a year later and thought, "My god, this truly awful dreck." What stays in my memory two years later? The dreck part.

I have only seen "Crash" once, and I still have yet to see "Do the Right Thing." Perhaps I'm equally "beyond the pale" and beyond the point where I deserve a well-reasoned explanation... because I'm just not sure what made this such a terrible movie. I don't want to weigh down this discussion with my thoughts on why I rather enjoyed it, but I would --- seriously --- like to hear a simple, lucid explanation of what makes this movie so bad. (Preferably, of course, with examples from the film. Just saying it was "manipulative and condescending" or "an inept treatment of the problems of race" --- sorry to pick on you Serdar --- doesn't help me much)

JE: First, seeing "Do the Right Thing" -- completely different in style and tone and approach -- may prove illuminating. Spike Lee creates an African-hued comedy (big, bright primary colors that stylize everything on the block on the hottest day of the year) and sets racial and ethnic stereotypes, attitudes and tensions bouncing off one another until the place explodes. The title is a command and a question. Who does? Anybody? It's an open-ended film that invites conversation, whereas I'd say the ending of "Crash" just shuts down conversation with a contrived, nonsensical killing.

Meanwhile, read the complete posts by the people quoted in the original piece above. Some used specific examples from "Crash." Also, I've been writing about it extensively here and on rogerebert.com since 1995. I thought it was an ineptly dramatized, self-righteous Afterschool Special lesson movie, but didn't grow to hate it until I tried to watch it again -- once it started getting so much serious attention from Academy voters. I don't think it would seem so bad if it had just disappeared, another preachy "can't we all get along?" social-issue movie that nobody remembered within a few weeks. (I was trying to think of some other examples but, by definition, I can't remember 'em.). I'll try to look up some of my own pieces about "Crash" from before and after the Oscars the year it won, and will add links to the main post above.

I hated "Crash" on the level of its sheer awfulness as a movie. It was obvious and contrived and insincere. I admit that I was moved during the wrecked-car sequence, and by Matt Dillon's performance overall, but the rest of the movie was unbelievable at best. (I've only seen it once, probably more than a year ago, so if I sound vague it's because I have no plans to go back and revisit the film.) Ebert could not possibly have overrated any movie more than he overrates "Crash."

My pick for the worst movie of the decade (or at least the last nine years): "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." I never like to use the word "boring" in describing a movie, because "boring" means different things to different people, but "Button" bored the hell out of me. It was overlong, contrived, messy, poorly acted, a waste of $100 million and the resources of all involved. What was David Fincher thinking, and why did he choose to direct this piece of material?

My biggest problem with the movie was that, in spite of the title, no one in the film exhibited the least bit of curiosity about Benjamin Button's condition ... lest of all Button himself! His backwards-aging condition was simply accepted as a matter of course. There was no drama, no forward momentum, no energy at all in the film. And yes, I did give it another chance, sitting through it a second time just to test my first reaction. If anything, I hated it even more.

Second pick for worst: Peter Jackson's "King Kong." It was completely unnecessary, WAY overlong, and atrociously cast. Jack Black? Adrian Brody? Awful. The wall-to-wall CGI was also a turnoff; the beasties were disgusting, and Kong himself could not have been phonier. And was I the only one who wondered what in the hell Jackson was doing with VELOCIRAPTORS in his movie? Er, didn't we sit through three "Jurassic Park" movies full of raptors? AND T-Rexes? The film was a complete waste of time.

Dan,

Although I wouldn't call it the worst movie of the decade, I certainly found 'Benjamin Button' to be one of the most disappointing films of 2008.

You might enjoy my review of it (which you can find on my blog, which is linked in my name). An excerpt from my review:

"But the movie feels hollow. Throughout the film I could not help but question why the hell no one gave half a crap that Benjamin was aging backward. No one for a second questions it, or thinks it bizarre, or abnormal, or really gives it much thought. It’s just, 'Oh, that’s just Benjamin'. This was obviously Fincher’s intention, and it was a bad one. Because of the non-chalance that people treat Benjamin with concerning his disease, it makes the audience question it not with an air of curiosity, but with an air of frustration."

When I think back on all I was hearing about 'Benjamin Button,' and the staggering 13 Oscar nominations it picked up, it makes the film feel all the more disappointing in retrospect. That's a list I'd be curious to see/make: the most disappointing films of the decade. 'Benjamin Button' would definitely be on mine.

I don't agree with your assessment of 'Kong,' however.

Would the proper phrase be the Worst "Good" Film of the Decade?

This is a nice discussion you've got going, but I'm pretty sure there was no worse movie than Bedazzled (2000) - even a super-hot Elizabeth hurley could not make this watchable. Brendan Fraser was, as always, the epitome of mediocrity (not to be confused with your last blog) - this one just sucked.

"Crash" was cliched, self-congratulatory, manipulative, and simplistic, and it stole the Best Picture Oscar that "Brokeback Mountain" deserved.

But in a decade that saw the release of "An American Carol," "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo," "White Chicks", and all those horrific "Date/Epic/Disaster/Whatever Movie" atrocities, "Crash" is sadly not even close to the bottom of the barrel.

Why do people think this has anything to do with beating Brokeback Mountain for the Oscar? It's really a dismissive argument, and if you love the movie you should be able to defend it better than that.

It's true that the Oscar win did keep Crash in the public consciousness much longer than it should have been, but it's not like many people really care who beats what in the Oscars, much less five years later. The winners this decade have included Chicago, Slumdog, A Beautiful Mind, Million Dollar Baby, The Departed, Return of the King, and Gladiator. I like some of those movies, but come on....nobody REALLY uses the Oscar as a measuring stick of cinematic greatness - it's just a fun pageant.

I think a film should be judged on it own merits ("Worst film of the decade"?! Really?) and not on the fact that it beat ''Brokeback Mountain'' for the Best Picture Oscar. Which, lets face it, is the only reason you and these other critics and bloggers are still talking about this film. I saw this film when it first came out on video, watched it, disliked it and then moved on. Haven't thought of it much since then. Try it.

JE: Few of its detractors felt "Crash" was anything more than exactly what you describe. It was released in May, 2005, and nobody thought twice when it was overlooked by all the major critics' groups (LA, NY, National Society) at the end of the year. Even the Golden Globes nominated it only for screenplay and supporting actor (Matt Dillon). Then the Oscar momentum started, with some of its defenders touting it as the BEST movie of the year. By the time it became the surprise winner for Best Picture (and screenplay, but not director) ten months after its theatrical release (and six months after its DVD release), it was ripe for a re-assessment by both camps. And that's why so much was written about it then. The Oscar didn't change ANYBODY's opinions about the movie -- it just gave them a reason to talk about a movie its detractors had dismissed out of hand months before. You can explore the critical split at Metacritic (score: 69) and RottenTomatoes (Top Critics score: 76).

Robert Fuller hit the nail on the head: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2.

JE: I remember having to call a suicide help line after seeing the trailer for the first one.

Actually, I can relate. I don't think I saw a worse movie all decade than Tarnation, a feature-length amateur YouTube video made by an egotistical narcissist who somehow managed to convince critics that his life is as fascinating as he himself believes it to be (it isn't) and that he has skills as an editor (he doesn't). This film ENRAGED me.

Tarnation is my Crash.

JE: "Tarnation" -- chosen Documentary of the Decade at IFC.com.

As much as I despise "Crash," I'm gonna have to back "Southland Tales" as well. Granted, Crash is exactly what it wants to be (making it more 'responsible' for its horridness, I suppose), and ST is clearly just a monumental disaster, but still...

Nathan,

I was certainly disappointed in "Benjamin Button," I had expected to like it quite a bit, though I'd been warned by people who'd seen it that it was long and kind of, well, weird. Certainly there have been more incompetent films, but no film pissed me off quite like "Button" did, and that's why I have to single it out. David Fincher is still one of my favorite directors; "Zodiac," "Fight Club" and "Seven" are incredible movies, made by a uniquely talented filmmaker. "Button" doesn't even FEEL like a Fincher movie. And it neutralizes Pitt and Blanchett. So my reaction to it was stronger than mere disappointment.

As to "Kong," the only reason I can see that Jackson rushed to get this second remake in the can is that he got to do anything he wanted after "LOTR." It was bloated, badly acted and depressing; I hated the characters and was disgusted by their motivations; after three hours of non-stop CGI, I felt like I'd endured hell simply to watch an animal get killed. (Yes, I knew how it would end beforehand ... but isn't that also part of the problem with the movie? Hadn't we seen this story before?)

One more really, really bad movie from the decade, then I'll shut up: "Angels & Demons." Tom Hanks, what's happened to you? Where did you go? Why do you insist on playing the most uninteresting, un-heroic character in recent cinematic history? In a SEQUEL, no less? What's that you say? The pay is good? Oh, that explains everything.

Why is everyone dumping on this great, misunderstood film?

Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 is a situationist allegory which inverts the gestalt of the incoherent, oral-anal infantilism of the American consumer so that we actually paid to watch our own homunculi engage in a false self-actualization. We are ALL Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2.

Okay, I'm just having fun with you. I never saw Crash. There was something about how it was described to me that just seemed "off" somehow.

What is wrong with all you people! I am a reasonably well educated person with a passion for films and I absolutely loved Crash.

I always write a few notes on the films I see as soon as I get home from the theater and I saw Crash when it opened in May of 2005. Below are my exact notes on what I thought taken directly from my film diary, written about three hours after seeing the film:

"Crash – Best film I’ve seen this year. Well acted, well written, smartly directed, only complaint, I didn’t like the look of the film. Circular story connecting a variety of Los Angeleno’s from the rich to the poor from the connected to the unconnected. Matt Dillon is outstanding in a whole cast that is excellent. Could and should be a big Oscar contender."

This is what I wrote and I had not read a single review of the film before seeing it and I went to see it because the film starred Matt Dillon, Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock and Brendan Fraser and they are all actors I like.

I still stand by my (surprisingly prescient) review. What I HAVE noticed since then, is all kinds of people of dubious taste and intellect coming out of the woodwork to hate Crash after taking their cues from a few national critics who didn't like the film.

And now, since hating Crash is the accepted critical orthodoxy, now that it has become chic to hate it, everyone simply mouths banal arguments against the film. Very rarely have I heard anyone come up with any thoughtful, interesting or original criticisms for the film.

I think the people who had a vested interest in seeing Brokeback Mountain win Best Picture were royally pissed off when Crash beat it. I mean, if you want to look at stupid Best Picture winners this past decade, you have to include:

Lord Of The Rings - (I love Peter Jackson, but not here)
A Beautiful Mind - (Ron Howard and his usual banality)
Million Dollar Baby - (I have no idea what people saw in this trash)
No Country For Old Men - (the only Coen Brothers film I actually hate)

Michael,

My first reaction after seeing "Crash" was to call my friend who had seen it the week before and say "You could have warned me, you son of a b**h, you could have warned me! You owe me big time now." He has never repaid me.

I also keep dairy entries for many films and all I wrote for this one was "Dear God. I mean... Dear God."

Nor was I upset when it beat out Brokeback Mountain. I was thrilled as I am by anything that makes the Academy increasingly ridiculous and irrelevant. I was also the only person to pick it in my Oscar pool, so that was nice, even though I didn't win.

I will admit though I'd have a tough time picking between Crash and Irreversible as my worst film of the decade. Crash was howlingly incompetent and overwrought but I did at least get some laughs out of it. Irreversible, one the other hand, was not incompetently made but was the most repellent film I've ever seen. Manohla Dargis wrote the definitive review of this monstrosity.

Oh the heck with it, I'll just vote for American Beauty again. Yeah, it was 1999 but it's really deserves to win worst of multiple decades to provide a testament to its all-encompassing loathsomeness.

Crash would definitely make my top five worst movies of the decade, but my top pick would be Little Children. Everything you can say bad about Crash is doubly true of LC; this is a movie that actually contains, unironically, this line in voiceover: "[Character played by Kate Winslet] was not a typical suburban woman." And Slumdog's also a movie that's in some ways an even worse version of Crash, although the very mediocre romantic comedy second half does ameliorate, slightly, the manipulative awfulness of the first.

With all due respect, I think much of your bad feeling about this picture comes from the 'contrarian-but-not-really' attitude that you display from time to time: attacking a generally well-reviewed movie, but one with enough detractors so that plenty of people will also agree with you. I felt the same way when Slumdog Millionaire came out and was over-saturated by awards buzz - when a backlash finally began to build, there you were with an article attacking it. The same is true for other films for which you have devoted many column inches worth of bile over the years, all generally well-received but with a healthy number of detractors so you won't be completely alone in your attacks.

Chinatown is well-shot, with a slimy villain (who you really loathe by the end of the movie), an evocative and oft-ladled-on score and attractive protagonists. Shots containing dead bodies are actually framed well. Why do I bring this up? You have cited all of these reasons at one time or another to justify your white-hot hatred of certain movies.

This is reading more and more like an ad hominem diatribe, which was not my intent when I first started writing this - I usually have great respect for your opinions, and even when you dislike a film you usually give good and convincing reasons. However, every now and then it seems like you pick a film with a decent critical reception and decide to loathe it beyond all reason, choosing criteria such as good photography (so often the trademark of an evil film) and spitting as much venom at it as you can year after year, trying to outdo yourself each time.

Did Crash have some serious flaws? Certainly. Could its big social message be taken all that seriously? No. Does it compare to Do the Right Thing? No again. Is it still worth a watch? I thought so; the cast all did very well and the film was interesting even if you didn't choose to read anything into it. I didn't shed any tears when Brokeback Mountain lost the Oscar because its awards momentum was also due mainly to its subject matter; it didn't deserve to win any more than Crash, Gentleman's Agreement or Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. It's rather sad that its fanatics are still bitter enough about that night to continue in their diatribes.

There have been some mentions of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and though I'm not sure it's the worst movie of the decade (did anyone happen to catch Pathfinder, a movie so bad I couldn't even enjoy it's awfulness), Benjamin Button did make me wonder whether any of Fincher's other films were any good. Benjamin Button has made me look back at Zodiac and wonder if it was really any better or simply fanciful fluff? That would qualify it as one of the worst of the decade for me.

I made a student film this...I mean last year that was pretty horrible. Crash can't be worst of the decade.

Jim Emerson we have constantly conflicting filmic opinions and filmic may not be a word...
but I hope you have a Happy New Year and a Happy New Decade.

This goes to all the people out there!
I agree with nothing you guys say but Happy New Year!

What is Crash saying? I'm not sure which is the primary argument, but here are the two I recall:

1) We're so isolated in the modern age (or in LA, specifically, since the film has almost nothing to do with globalization or the internet,etc.) that our encounters tend to be cataclysmic.

2) Everyone has prejudices, and they make for a poorly greased society. You can tell because everything would be better if the characters in Crash didn't judge one another by their skin colors. Or, in the case of Sandra Bullock and the carjacking, if they did. Okay, outliers and all that.

So how effective are the arguments? I find #1 vastly more interesting, since #2 is obvious and I saw a second-grade play with stronger argumentation of the same themes. But like I said, the film could care less about why we're so isolated today or how to heal the rift. It's incredibly surface: personal isolation is bad and racism is also bad. But sometimes, racism could help short-term problems, and also, despite our prejudices, we all probably have an inherent righteousness that allows us to fulfill our societal functions. So, racism is bad, but you know what, it's kind of okay.

This presents a moral perversion: With a little work, a little challenging by the film, we, as people the film suspects harbor intense prejudices, could overcome our own racist tendencies. But because the film says the world is basically okay anyway, and because of its cathartic aims (which make us all feel content and happy to be alive), it thereby encourages us to keep on keepin' on. No need for introspective reassessment.

Of course, we all probably do harbor prejudices, but racism specifically is a lot more insidious and furtive nowadays, at least in urban areas and the professional world. By exaggerating these prejudices, Crash divorces itself from the actual racism of our society. I've heard the arguments that the racism Crash depicts rings true, but I don't buy it, and anecdotal evidence is a weak foundation.

Crash probably isn't the worst film of the decade (An American Carol might be), but its problems run much deeper than a pompous tone or absurd narrative. It's fundamental theses are undeveloped, obtuse, and in one case, morally problematic.

Crash didn't inspire much admiration or hatred in me. Meh. But I certainly understand how a generally "well made" or even celebrated film can illicit such disgust. My vote for worst movie of the decade would be Juno. Far as I'm concerned the makers of that overrated trash can take home skillets and shove them where the sun don't shine.

Good call on the "Little Children" hatred, Tray. It's certainly my pick for worst of the decade as well. An incredibly smug and condescending film that wastes an otherwise good performance from Kate Winslet and should be taught in film schools as an example of how never to use voice-over narration. I think the title refers to what Todd Fields thinks of his audience.

I'd be curious to see how "Irreversible" is "incompetent", since that word's usually reserved for films of technical ineptitude or gross negligence on the part of basic storytelling. I didn't think "Irreversible" was any of those things -- if anything, it was one of my jury prize / honorable mention picks for the decade, even if I don't feel anyone needs to see it more than once. (Nowhere are we commanded to admire a film because it makes us happy.)

My own feelings about Dargis as a critic are further confounded by her slamming of "Oldboy" -- for my money, another best-of-the-decade -- and her rapturous praise for "Avatar". I'm sure she was honest, but I suppose that means her tastes and mine are more opposed than aligned.

Also, there seem to be two basic "worst" categories at work here. Maybe even three. So Bad It's Good, So Bad I Wouldn't Wish It On My Wost Enemy, and What Were They Thinking.

The first is reserved for terrible films that can qualify, however distantly, as a guilty pleasure. The second is "White Chicks" or "Baby Geniuses 2" or "____ Movie" type productions -- things you wouldn't ever consume as "entertainment." The third is "Crash" and its ilk: they meant well, but my god, look at what they ended up with.

I resented "Crash", but I have to say -- at the same time, I felt bad for everyone involved. They wanted to say something heavy and serious about The Issues, and they just ended up thrashing around in the rabbit snare of their own unadmitted prejudices about other things. I wanted to say it was a good movie, but I simply could not, and again, the more I thought about the stupid blank bullets subplot the more I actively hated the movie for becoming a flat-out cheat.

I didn't feel bad for anyone involved with "____ Movie." They knew what they were doing.

CRASH is certainly god-awful, but worst of the decade? I don't understand why people don't understand the criticism doesn't come at all from its Oscar win, but the terrible way in which it handles its material. DO THE RIGHT THING is amazing, and wonderful, and even a better movie than this piece of dreck. Hell, I'd even take MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA over CRASH, and that's Spike Lee at his most mediocre.

In any case, my vote for worst of the decade would probably go to ... aw, screw it. I'll just stick up for IRREVERSIBLE here. I don't vitriolically hate any movie as some have hated this one on this very blog, and I in fact hate CRASH probably the same level some people hate on this brutal film from Gaspar Nöe.

IRREVERSIBLE is many things - nihilistic, brutal, antagonistic, manipulative, and it features the most unflinching depiction of rape ever filmed - but I find it hard to believe that a film that does all that, and that does it to masterful strokes and can actually inspire people to hate seeing the rape scene enough to hate the entire movie, actually serves its purpose. You shouldn't like to watch rape.

P.S. - I also don't get all the hate for various films of Catherine Breillat. Tell me, how can a film made by a woman about the interpretation/sexualization/repulsiveness of women in patriarchal constructs (like ANATOMY OF HELL) be classified as mysoginistic? Isn't this feminist in one of the most literal and oldest of interpretations?

Freddy Got Fingered is one of the best movies of the decade, and Crash is one of the worst. If you disagree, you should reexamine your views of Truth and Artistry. I'm sort of joking, but not really.

I didn't like Crash simply because it lacked subtlety, and was condescendingly preach. I don't think one needs to keep hitting the audience over the head with a baseball bat to get the point, but that's what it felt like. But the worst, for me, was that it was just plain preachy. Watch this film, and then watch a real film about race relations; the fantastic and still enormously enjoyable Guess Whose Coming To Dinner. That is a movie populated by great actors that comes to the point with great wit and great humanity, making both Poitier's and Tracy's characters more than the racial stereotypes that Crash is made up of, but rather passionate intelligent human beings that recognize a rift and also see how to bridge it through ideas, and not just through mocked-up "Ohmygosh" scenes.

Besides, every time someone says "There's this deep movie" and it has Sandra Bullock in it, they are inevitably wrong. Why she allows herself to be put in films where her limited abilities can be so glaringly underlined is quite beyond me.

Just thought I'd share my experience with Crash. I saw it after it got nominated and before it won its Oscar, so I went to the movie with a certain expectation of quality and went in looking for the elements of the movie that made it one of the years 5 best. Maybe that blinded me to the sheer badness of the movie (although I still hated Benjamin Button), but I liked the movie quite a bit. I haven't seen it since and I have no desire to, but I recall the film touching on in a very emotional, and effective way some of the issues surrounding race. Most people left the theater with a strong reaction, a sign of powerful film making. Now I wouldn't see it again because these types of melodramas rarely hold up on subsequent viewings where all the contrivances are painfully clear and annoying, but that would merely make it mediocre as oppose to anything close to the worst of the decade.

Please, people. DOWN TO YOU.

Sure, CRASH is massively flawed. But it has the occasional good scene, or good bit of acting, or nicely composed shot. DOWN TO YOU may as well not even be a film- there is nothing inspired in its entire running time.

(At college they had a movie channel, okay?)

I find Ta-Nehisi Coates implication that if you liked Crash, you're a terrible person to be, frankly, despicable. It's a movie. It's not "Birth of a Nation" or "Triumph of the Will".

Jim, a question for you:

Would you honestly have picked Crash as the worst film of the decade, or do you think these other critics would have picked it as the worst of the decade, if it hadn't been so critically lauded? Imagine a world in which Crash was the exact same film, but had 45% on the tomatometer, 57 at Metacritic, made 20 million at the box office and didn't get any acadamy award nominations?

Why not pick Slumdog Millionaire as the worst film of the decade? It was similarly over-praised. It similarly oversimplifies complex racial and sociopolitical issues, and is similarly devoid of real characters.

JE: No, I don't think people who like "Crash" or "Slumdog Millionare" are bad people -- just that they haven't looked at the movies more than superficially. I've written about similarities I see between the two and I don't see the point in debating which is worse because I think both are just awful (in terms of acting, writing, directing -- and, above all, morality). But, no, I wouldn't choose either as the "worst" of the decade, or even the most harmful (to the art of movies or to society as a whole). As several of the posters I quoted noted, you could come up with quite a few movies that are more badly made. And Coates even says that he loves some people who believe "Crash" is a good movie. I don't criticize it for its intentions, but for the simplistic ways in which it encourages people to think about (or avoid thinking about) race and racism. I've gotten into that many times, so I won't do it again here. Both it and "Slumdog" are movies that appear to be one thing on the surface, while actually (and perhaps unintentionally) operating on more insidious level. Unintended consequences can, nevertheless, be terrible.

Worst movie of the year? When we have the following candidates?

* Full Frontal
* Irreversible
* Suspect Zero
* Halloween
* The Day the Earth Stood Still

I have three things to say to people who thought Crash was...lets say... the worst praised or talked about movie of the decade, because it wasn't nearly has disappointing, lazy, hackneyed, unforgivable, stupid, piece of rotten looking s*** as these three...

Star Wars 1
Star Wars 2
Star Wars 3

I'm not even going to do them the favor of typing the actual names. Let's face it people, the first Star Wars (epi. 4 I mean), Lucas got lucky. He is terrible and he completely ruined the mythology, the magic, and the legacy of Star Wars, one of the most treasured and loved sci-fi movies of all time. Crash was just crash. At least that didn't contaminate other movies around it.

I guess I found "Crash" to be a broad satire, so even the things that made me cringe, also made me chuckle. And the things that were supposed to make me laugh did so. Certainly not "Odds Against Tomorrow" (anyone looking for a good genre film about race...take a look. It was made back in the film noir days boys.)

The two films that I think completely failed to live up to their self-importance, one being a double Oscar winner and both written by Stephen Gaghan (the worst screenwriter of the decade? next to David Koepp?), were "Traffic" and "Syrianna". "Traffic" was at least measured by the somewhat steady hands of Soderbergh (who evens out to be the most mediocre director of the decade for me) and Benecio's performance. But "Syrianna" was the way you guy's are describing "Crash" without the humor. A heavy handed piece of hogwash about race and terrorism. Clooney does a nice job with the character he's given to play, and like Benecio is more than deserving of the award as he elevated the otherwise piece of trash. But these two movies have to be viewed as a whole and when they are they're rotten oranges dressed in ripe peels. "Crash" worse than these two messes? I think not.

JE: You remind me that all three films use the "child-in-jeopardy" ploy.

"The Passion of Christ" and "Revolver". "Crash" fails to be as offensive as the former or as unwatchable as the latter.

For a really excellent collection of critical essays on Crash, read Howard & Dei's book: Crash Politics and Anti-Racism: Interrogations of Liberal Race Discourse. This will take the reader well-beyond their own opinion and into a deep, insightful, and informed critical analysis. I have never met a person in the US who didn't have an opinion on race and racism. However, there is a vast difference between the opinions everyone has just by living in our society and absorbing the dominant racial discourses that circulate everywhere, and truly informed, studied, and practiced knowledge. The writers of this book have the latter.

I have no idea if Crash is a super-duper accurate representation of race relations in LA. If the film is to be viewed as a general 'this is how the races interact with each other',then it is a failure, just as Closer didn't represent every male/female interaction of every relationship ever. BUT, taken as an individual character study of individuals making specific choices, both films are entertaining, thoughtful, well-acted, and more than worthy of recommendation. The only reason people pick on Crash now is because it had the 'gall' to defeat Brokeback Mountain at the 2005 Oscars. My favorite films of 2005, Munich and Revenge of the Sith, didn't stand a chance. Just as people still bash Dances With Wolves purely because it beat out Goodfellas at the 1990 Oscars. I think it's time to forgive both films of their alleged crimes (and it's also time to forgive George Lucas for the fact that the awfully good Star Wars prequels didn't supplant the original trilogy as the greatest movies ever in your nostalgia-driven minds). Crash may not be a great film, but we don't have to hate it because it's merely a good film. If you honestly can't think of a worse film than Crash over the entire last decade, then you had a pretty great moviegoing decade.

Scott Mendelson

Matt, I detest Catherine Breillat, and you put your finger on it. 'interpretation/sexualization/repulsiveness of women in patriarchal constructs'; with all due respect, and I'm aiming this at her and not you, I think that's hogwash. She has this idea that men hate women and their natural processes. Nonsence. What men do hate are the things she had the woman do in the film, which are anything but natural. She sets out to repel the audience and tries to make some big intellectual statement about men hating women or being disgusted by them. Well, maybe in the pseudo-intellectual world she occupies, but in the real world? The film opens with a woman attempting suicide because... She's a woman. It's absurd. Breillat wraps the disgusting things she has the main character do in pseudo-philosophical nonsence that might sound impressive in a Uni feminism course, but in the real world, are utterly meaningless. The fact that she has a woman attempt suicide because of her gender (yeh, there really are alot of women who attempt suicide specifically because of their gender in France) is mysoginystic. That she believes that men hate/fear/are repulsed by women and are in fact mysoginsystic is both mysoginystic and misandrist. The fact that the gay man doesn't really act like a gay man also defies belief, but then I suspect that she is simply using it as an excuse to film her academic theory. Also, it's interesting as you talk about the sexualisation of women, yet she has said "Directors look for the most beautiful women to star in their films. I cast the most attractive men!" thereby showcasing her hyppocricy. It's bad to sexualise women, but okay to sexualise men.

Like Von Trier, another director whom I loath, I think that cinema would be better off with Breillat.

Jim, I completely agree with you about Crash being immoral, especially in the way it attacks racism yet is racist itself (it's anti-Arab and takes a completely superficial approach to it, but I don't agree that Slum Dog Millionaire is particularly immoral. I think it is a film entirely about style and which must be experienced on the big screen. Unlike Crash, I think that it's lack of depth is a strength rather than a weakness.

Although remember that that "child-in-jeopardy" ploy was also used in "Munich". I think it's a bit used up as well. That sequence is the only one that didn't work for me in Spielberg's movie.

All this talk about Crash being so awful -- when it's earnest at best, overrated at worst -- makes me remember the worst movie of the decade that was so bad no one even talks about it anymore: The Hours.

If you really want a case study in pretentiousness, by people who should know better, I encourage you to go back and watch this mess. Having never read the book, I can't attest to its potential. Upon seeing the film, I could only wonder what a more practiced hand could do. As for end of decade awfulness, I nominate The Hours (and a close second for I ♥ Huckabees).

For moviegoers, 2005 was easily the least memorable, least satisfying year of the last decade, and "Crash" is the one film from that year people are still arguing over. (Even "Brokeback Mountain" dissipated from the public conversation until Heath Ledger's death, and now it only seems to come up in bad jokes, sadly.) Any film that can still inspire arguments this passionate five years after its release must be worth something, and certainly can't be called the worst of the decade.

I mean, "Starsky & Hutch" was released in this decade, people. "Starsky & Hutch."

I bought 'Paranormal Activity' because R.E. said that it was "truly scary". I am sorry that I wasted my money. I will not listen to R.E. again. What a waste.

I bought 'Paranormal Activity' because R.E. said that it was "truly scary". I am sorry that I wasted my money. I will not listen to R.E. again. What a waste. Worst movie of the decade Paranormal Activity has my vote.

"I also don't get all the hate for various films of Catherine Breillat. Tell me, how can a film made by a woman about the interpretation/sexualization/repulsiveness of women in patriarchal constructs (like ANATOMY OF HELL) be classified as mysoginistic? Isn't this feminist in one of the most literal and oldest of interpretations?"

I saw "Anatomy of Hell", and whether it was feminist or misogynistic or any of those things took a backseat to how thunderingly silly it all was.

It's not the worst film of the decade, but it's not subtle. I appreciated sort of the effort, but it was very ham-handed and the plot line, especially concerning the woman who lost the kids in the middle of nowhere, was completely ridiculous.

Lone Star explores themes of races, class, etc. with a much more deft hand. Crash pales in comparison.

To call "Crash" the worst movie of the decade is to erect a giant neon sign 500 feet high pointing straight at you, reading "PAY ATTENTION TO ME I HAVE OPINIONS".

I mean, Jesus. Flawed, yes, but worst of the decade? No sane human being could make that claim, especially in the same decade as Freddy Got Fingered.

This is why I respect Roger, incidentally: he says what he actually thinks, not what he thinks people want to hear, or what would make people listen, or what would make him seem cool. I've only seen him use the word "overrated" about three times in his entire career.

Jim, I hope you read this and will seriously consider THIS the worst movie of the decade:

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

Do I even need to formulate an argument for it? Flawed as Crash may be, it at least acknowledges racism is bad. This film is a willful misrepresentation of evolution in school.

JE: Absolutely. It was my choice for "Worst Movie of the Decade" in one of these critics' polls that asked for nominations in such a category. No competition, really, among the things I've seen. I haven't seen "Wolf Creek" or some of the so-called "torture-porn" stuff -- but by the time Ben Stein was trying to blame Charles Darwin for Hitler, I knew I was watching a debased ideological pornography...

Crash was put on a pedestal by the Oscars, and that does mean something to a lot of the world, so to pretend it doesn't is somewhat naive. Therefore, it is right to criticize that decision by taking potshots at an otherwise okay film that was elevated beyond all measure of reason, artistic or otherwise.

Someone wrote that Brokeback Mountain didn't deserve to win, either, and that it's award momentum was only because of its subject matter. Well, that idea is prejudice of another sort, isn't it? Brokeback Mountain is listed on many of the best films of the last decade lists. Crash is not. And if Crash had any credibility at all in winning the best film oscar, people would not be so harsh about it, but there is ample evidence that it won only so that Brokeback Mountain wouldn't, homophobia in other words, and that is a bitter pill for many people to swallow. So anything that sheds light on that--which means crash/ampas bashing--I am all in favor of.

Ooh, "The Hours." Great call. Really great call. I had indeed forgotten all about that one. I put American Beauty/Crash/The Hours on the same continuum of overwrought, completely off-the-mark and very poorly directed wanna-be insights into the human condition that shout their significance in every angst-ridden closeup and on-the-nose line of dialogue. Predictable is not always a bad thing when you're talking about a story, but when each shot within a scene announces itself two shots ahead of time (esp true of Daldry) it makes for a truly grating viewing experience.

RE: Irreversible

I actually wrote that it was _not_ incompetently filmed. Just loathsome. I see no significance in the "transgressively transgressive" films like Irreversible, Funny Games and much of Breillat. Salo too, if you want to reach back.

Do you think a hardcore Scientologist (Haggis when he made Crash) is going to make a meaningful and intellectual film? I think not.

For a movie about race that actually is one of the worst movies of the decade, I give you Towelhead. Crash is the essence of subtlety and clear-eyed insight compared to that piece of garbage.

JE: So I've heard, but I haven't seen "Towelhead." Just came across an interesting intersection of three points of view about racism in "Avatar" here: http://j.mp/8LzsmM

Revolutionary Road's another deserving pick. I don't think you can put it up there with Crash or Slumdog because no one went to see it, or even with Little Children because it isn't nearly as condescending, but what an awful movie. I don't know if there was a worse scene, or shot, this decade than the shot of the blood dripping ever so excruciatingly slowly from Winslet's dress after she's just performed a botched coathanger abortion on herself because she can't bear to bring another child into the hell of upper-crust 50s suburbia, although the only inkling the movie gives of why Kate hates it so is a somewhat obnoxious real estate agent, overplayed by - who else? - Kathy Bates.

It seems to me that calling "Crash" the worst movie of the decade is wrong for the exact same reason that "Crash" is bad.

"Crash" is far too pleased with itself for hamfistedly drilling into the ground the thuddingly obvious notion that racism is bad.

People who call "Crash" the worst movie of the decade are far too pleased with themselves for hamfistedly drilling into the ground the thuddingly obvious notion that hamfistedly drilling into the ground the thuddingly obvious notion that racism is bad is bad.

"Crash" could openly encourage race war and still be better than "Battlefield Earth."

"...blood dripping ever so excruciatingly slowly from Winslet's dress after she's just performed a botched coathanger abortion on herself because she can't bear to bring another child into the hell of upper-crust 50s suburbia..."

If the implication is that because it's upper-crust, it can't be hell, or that suburbia is inherently innocuous (at least compared to say the projects, which is REAL suffering - and certainly compared to a Darfur), I'd disagree.

As for the movie itself, it was bad, but not so much for the reasons you cite (tho yes there is some clumsiness and ham-handedness, and the famous dinner scene is horribly overacted) as because it's just shrill and relentless and horribly unpleasant to watch.

JE: Well, you can disagree with her character all you like, but those are her motives. She says so. She performs the abortion because she can't bear to bring another child into what she (and the movie) sees as the hell of upper-crust '50s suburbia -- the empty life she has come to despise, the disappointment of not feeling special. As for shrill and relentless -- did I forget to mention those qualities?

*Revolutionary Road's another deserving pick.*

Oh he** yes it is. But picking a Sam Mendes movie is too easy at this point. When I have to name my least favorite director, I don't have to think twice about the answer. Rev Road is yet another smug, hateful and completely off-the-mark (non)expose of suburban (alleged) hypocrisy. It is a definite contender for the dis-honor.

Could Mendes have made the movie I hated most in each of two different decades? I like the symmetry of that. But there's still a year left in the decade. And Michael Shannon was, at least, a redeeming quality. Though Kathy Bates has never, ever been worse. Curse you, Mendes, for making both Annette Bening and Kathy Bates look like babbling idiots.

Well, you can disagree with her character all you like, but those are her motives. She says so. She performs the abortion because she can't bear to bring another child into what she (and the movie) sees as the hell of upper-crust '50s suburbia -- the empty life she has come to despise, the disappointment of not feeling special. As for shrill and relentless -- did I forget to mention those qualities?

This seems like a cross-up, Jim. I didn't even see a post by you about Rev. Road, I was responding to another guy's post. If he was quoting you somehow, I missed it. Also the point of my post is that the character's view is not necessarily incorrect - the poster I responded to seemed to be mocking the notion that life in upper-crust suburbia could be hell.

Paul Haggis himself said that the movie was racism he himself felt put down on paper.

@ Sean Stangland:

I disagree that Brokeback Mountain has "dissipated from the public conversation."

There are current and active websites devoted to it, the Dave Cullen Forums, Bettermost and Finding Brokeback among them.

The Gene Autry Museum of Western Heritage acquired the iconic shirts from the film that are now displayed within it's walls and last month had a seminar at their Wells Fargo Theatre about the film which was paneled by academicians, historians and film critics.

There have been several books published regarding the film and its impact on society, including one called Beyond Brokeback which chronicles the impact the film has had on all sorts of individuals from all around the world.

There is a new book coming out soon written by a professor from USC.

The film is screened at least once a month in venues around the world such as an AMPAS screening in 2008 and the college campuses of Barnard and William & Mary within the last couple months. There is a seminar and screening of the film upcoming in Montreal and a similar event in Paris, France. There's a screening at the Australian Cinematheque in Brisbane.

Annie Proulx, the original author was recently honored by the New York Public Library and she donated a wealth of her material to the organization.

The film has recently been cited by a number of individuals and organizations as one of the best films of this decade, including such diverse places as the London Film Critics, Greece's "Cinema Magazine", the Irish Film Network, Film Critics from Vancouver and Ottawa, Indiewire, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, New York and Los Angeles Times and a host of others.

There was a dance (ballet) version of the film presented in San Francisco last year and an opera version currently in the works.

The term "Brokeback" itself has ingrained itself into the language as both something derogatory (homophobic slurs) or complimentary as in Harvard Medical School's annual "Second Year Show" presented last December titled "Mountains Beyond Brokeback Mountains."

It may in your world "now...only seem to come up in bad jokes, sadly," but it still is having an enormous impact on those it affected, both personally and cinematically. And lastly, there would be no "Crash" without "Brokeback Mountain."

The trouble with upper-crust 50s suburbia being portrayed as some sort of hell isn't necessarily that it's wrong - personally, I'd love to go live in the town where Jane Wyman lives in All That Heaven Allows, but one can certainly see why she isn't happy; the trouble is that it's become such a cliche that Mendes doesn't even think he has to show you what's so terrible about Kate's millieu. He thinks it's sufficient to have her say that she doesn't care for the suburbs 5 minutes into the movie and assumes that we'll all nod our heads in agreement. Of course, the book both gives us reasons for the characters' animus towards their surroundings, and, more interestingly, suggests that the real problem is that they themselves are a pretty vacuous couple who wouldn't be happy anywhere. Mendes seems to have missed that; he thinks that their moving to Paris is a dandy idea that will solve all their problems (although perhaps Leo is too far suburbanized for even the City of Light to save his banal soul), but what her unhappiness and the suburbs have to do with each other the film doesn't say. There's an obnoxious real estate agent, a mentally ill boy who neatly and patly stands in for the suburbs' conformist pressures, a perfectly pleasant-looking, if somewhat boring, dinner party that turns into an occasion for Kate to complain that their neighbors aren't as literate as she is, although she hardly seems to be so learned herself, and that's about it. It's almost a sort of meta-Bad Suburbs movie, or a Youtube parody of one; whereas Little Children at least takes a lot of preachy leaden time showing you how terrible that town is, although of course the result is that it hardly seems more like a real town in America than if Field had just populated it with Disney cartoon villains, Revolutionary Road skips all that. So I came away feeling like I'd just seen a movie about a woman who went mad because she was the only one in her neighborhood who listened to NPR, directed by a director who suggested, through his music, writing, editing, etc., that that was a perfectly reasonable reason to go mad.

Re: Tarnation

Hmm, different strokes I guess? I thought the film was very touching, and its style blew me a way. Caouette pieced together the broken, painful parts of his life into a surrealistic patchwork. I can't think of any other way that the film could have been made. I disagree on the point of narcissism as well since the movie was basically a therapeutic exercise, so of course it's going to center itself on Caouette. I could've sworn Jim was an admirer of "Tarnation", but they may have been a commenter on this blog and not him...

All I can say is that I hold it in very high esteem, and it's probably my favorite documentary of the decade. I've never seen a movie quite like it, but perhaps that means I need to see a few more movies...

Crash hasn't aged all that well and it's VERY on the nose, but I never thought it deserved to be ripped to shreds either. It's decent and the actors are pretty good. It was released in a strong year and it certainly wasn't the best film of '05, yet there are hundreds of lousier flicks from the past decade.

However, I always found it ironic that the Oscar people finally toted out ensemble-cast, sprawling-story director Robert Altman and gave him a special Oscar the same night Crash wins the big prize. Crash is a pale imitation of some of Altman's best work. Not that cranky Bob ever tackled a subject like racism as on the nose as Haggis' film does, but he could make some of the same points simpler and better.

Anyway, let's not forget that Bad Boys 2 came out last decade. That piece of crap was way more insulting and painful to watch than Crash.

@Martin Pal:

I am glad you have proven me dead wrong. "Brokeback Mountain" was far too good a film to have been forgotten, and it seems that perhaps I am the one who forgot about it. You are right, it doesn't loom large over my suburban, sports-bar existence.

In retrospect, "Brokeback Mountain" was the best of the five Oscar nominees that year, though I preferred "Crash" and "Munich" at the time. I would argue, though, that the most influential film of that year was totally ignored: "The 40-Year-Old Virgin."

@Tray and Christopher Long:

"Revolutionary Road" was a total knockout when I first saw it, but as I've thought about it more and more, I realize my opinion may have been formed by a complete misreading of the film -- I saw it with a packed theater, and all of us were laughing through much of it. My companions and I were laughing because we found it darkly funny in the best way; we laugh so that we do not cry. The situation in the film had many unexpected parallels to my own life, and I felt as if the ridiculous arguments of my relationship were playing out in the film, and it served as a brutal reminder to me of just how callous people can be to those they supposedly love.

I have not seen the film a second time, mostly because I know, deep down, that the film was never in any way intended to be funny in a dark way, in a satirical way, or in any way at all. And if that feeling I have is correct, then it certainly wasn't the great movie I thought it was, was it?

When people ask me if I want to watch Crash, I always make sure to ask "Good Crash or award winning Crash?"

Tray, thankyou for that sum-up of why RR is so disliked. I've only seen it once, and I haven't thought about it since, but I do remember really liking it when I saw it.

Linus, Battlefield Earth IMO is just a dumb sci-fi film that is actually enjoyable at times. While it is a BAD film, I think it's bad in the way that Ed Wood Jr's films were bad, but not truly and unredeemable bad as IMO it's not particularly offensive. Yes, I'm sure that some people could draw some scientology subtext out of it, but alot of films have religious contexts.

Jim, Wolf Creek is actually not a torture porn film. It's an old-fashioned slasher horror film in the tradition of Texas Chainsaw Massacre that underlines the horror that lies in the Australian outback, especially since it's inspired by actual events.

Here are five controversial suggestions for worst film of the decade- (no specific order)
1)The Passion of the Christ: The film
explicitly implies that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus, since the Rabbis were given a choice of whom to save and they chose a murderer, as if the choice was ever theirs to make. Those that wanted to have him arrested were presented as dark and 'evil' looking, while Jesus, and his followers, was angelic
looking.

2)Juno: Talk about taking a superficial approach to a serious issue. What offends me is not the decision she made, but that the film treats such a decision as the equivilent of choosing whether or not to buy red or pink lipstick.

3)Baise-moi: What is about repulsive French films their need to justify themselves on pseudo-intellectual grounds? Horrible.

4)Dancer in the Dark: I could opt for any Von Trier film, but I'm going to go for this one. Horrible directed, with an annoying Bjork, it is munuipulative, deceitful and completely cynical.

5)Halloween: Yes, I kinow it's not controversial. The original was a masterpiece; one of the greatest films ever made. This remake is deplorable. It tries to present Michael as a fully realised three dimensional character (which in itself is debatable) but then trashes it. It has an extremely ugly psuedo-realist colour tone that is beloved of recent horror and torture porn films. I don't think it has any redeeming features at all. Truly repulsive.

"No, I don't think people who like "Crash" or "Slumdog Millionare" are bad people -- just that they haven't looked at the movies more than superficially."

I don't think either movie exists on anything but a superficial level. Slumdog Millionaire is pretty overtly ugly and misanthropic, while Crash has more going for it in that it likes its actors and gives them ample oppurtunity to chew the scenery.

I'm gonna walk the plank here and call Brokeback Mountain the most overrated movie of the decade. I didn't like it for one of the same reasons I didn't like Slumdog or TCCOBB: not enough time is spent on the relationship in the beginning to make me care about what happens to it as the movie goes on. Slumdog and TCCOBB are much worse movies in my opinion, while Brokeback Mountain felt more like a missed oppurtunity.

There was just no chemistry, romantic or sexual, between Ledger and Gyllenhaal. Zilch. Compare it to the blossoming sexual relationship in "The Cooler," or any you've witnessed in real life. Both actors, I think, are far more effective when they're apart because when they're together it just felt like a lot of really serious faces. The overt physicality of the sex scenes felt like overcompensation.

Of course they're two straight actors (as far as I know) in a movie - but I don't think that was my problem. I think the movie needed more time to build up their relationship. Since it didn't convince me on an emotional level it did come off as just an 'issue' movie - although I know that wasn't anybody's intention. It felt like every other Forbidden Love movie.

There's more suspense and sexual tension - and I mean this wholeheartedly - between Ed Begley Jr. and Christopher Evan Welch in five minutes in "Whatever Works" than in all of "Brokeback Mountain." Where "BM" is formal, "Crash" is a louder, noisier, riskier film; a film that breaks windows, screams at you and bangs pots and pans together. For that reason, I think, it had more of an effect on me.

The worst film of the decade is an awful bio-pic called "Polanski Unauthorized."

"Crash" at least made an effort to understand racism and had actors who could act and a cohesive script.

re: Robert Fuller on Towelhead

Absolutely agree. I dug up notes I wrote when I first saw it:

A disaster from start to finish. All of the characters are one-note, and they're all the wrong note, building into a cacophony of crap. Once scenes start lasting more than approximately eleven seconds (around the 50 minute mark or so), the movie actually settles down into just plain terrible. The teenagers are, I suppose, meant to be naive, but they come off as stupid. The adults have zero depth. The film itself feels like we're being whipped around from one scenario to the next, none of them interesting but all gradually building in outrageousness. There are what seem to be genuine moments of adolescent sexual discovery, but these oases of reality are surrounded and drowned by deserts of the ridiculous and the prurient.

Definitely a worse film than Crash, and fits the prestige pedigree that would qualify it for this definition of worst.

@ Andrew:

You wrote about Brokeback Mountain: "not enough time is spent on the relationship in the beginning to make me care about what happens to it as the movie goes on."

Wow, that is one statement I have never heard about Brokeback Mountain. The first nearly 45 minutes of the film is about the awakening and then deepening of the relationship between the two characters. I don't know what else you might have had in mind that you needed to see.

If you are straight, maybe you've never had the experience of watching a romantic film with two men and so didn't know how to respond to it. Most gay men would not agree of your assessment that "there was just no chemistry, romantic or sexual, between Ledger and Gyllenhaal."

You wrote: "The overt physicality of the sex scenes felt like overcompensation." That is something right out of the short story and is addressed as such in the film. This is a two man relationship that doesn't involve women. It's very nature is going to be different than a man/woman dynamic. Maybe it's that, because they're not accustomed to it, straight men need to develop a way of watching a gay themed relationship movie. Gay men have been doing that with male/female relationship movies for decades.

"If" you can even get straight men to watch Brokeback Mountain. Even several years after its release, males in the show business community have publicly stated on occasion they still hadn't seen the film, and that includes the likes of Ernest Borgnine, Tony Curtis, Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, Samuel L. Jackson and Mark Wahlberg. Makes you wonder if they voted for crash?

You wrote: "Since it didn't convince me on an emotional level it did come off as just an 'issue' movie - although I know that wasn't anybody's intention. It felt like every other Forbidden Love movie."

I'm not sure what you mean because if it felt like every other forbidden love movie, those are all male/female relationships, so why would this be different? Did you believe all those other forbidden love movies or not?
I'm asking because I'm not getting what you mean by if this movie was like all the other "forbidden love" movies and yet BBM didn't convince you on an emotional level, do any of those other movies convince you either?

Anyway, I don't like the argument that a film is over-rated simply because you (or I) didn't like it.

JE: Haggis recently resigned from Scientology after many years. It's not clear when or if he resigned from humanity.

Nice. When did you resign your ethics?

Really, Jim. Is this an argument? And you're deciding what's a valid one? (I know, I know, "it's your goddamn blog, dammit").

The biggest argument for the validity of "Crash" is the shrillness of the debate against it. All sense seems to leave the "debater" and "you have arguments and propaganda violently bumping into each other, impressed with their own quirkiness."
Exactly. Couldn't have said it better myself. Too bad he was talking about the wrong thing. What is interesting (and funny) is the unknowing (and uncaring) wealth of examples of the old saw "You point a finger at them, you're pointing three fingers at yourself."

But, nobody's thinking—everybody's reacting and then over-reacting. Gee. What does that remind me of?

And it's interesting to see the hysteria amp up after a few cooler heads said "Of COURSE, it isn't the worst movie of the decade." Well, of course, it isn't. We have an example of that just this year-"2012," in which a gay film-maker presented a total world disaster in which only world leaders and the very rich were allowed to survive...and breed. My only consolation was imagining how many of those were in the closet.

The fact is "Crash" has race as a sub-text only. All of the characters live in a fear of "The Other," whoever, whatever, what color, what rank, what strata that may be. And that fear makes them not think, but only react, and not the best way possible. Only fore-thought prevents disaster. And it's set in LA where (I can tell ya) the superficiality is all on the surface and self-preservation is the only motivation.

Sounds like the Bush years to me....

Hmmmm ... all these comments are making me want to go back and watch Crash again!

"Plus Haggis is a Scientologist, the guy has no clue about reality." - Peter Davies.

Now substitute Scientologist with Catholic, or Muslim, or Mormon, or Mexican, or Jew, or liberal. To imply that someone is out of touch only because of a group they belong to, their religion, their ethnicity, or whatever seems a little ridiculous, especially considering the nature of this argument.

JE: Another ad hominem attack. And, for the record, Haggis is no longer a Scientologist. He very publicly resigned over the organization's stance against gay marriage in California.

Martin: "Most gay men would not agree of your assessment that "there was just no chemistry, romantic or sexual, between Ledger and Gyllenhaal.""

Sorry, I'm a gay man, and I completely agree with Andrew. They had zero chemistry, and the relationship seemed purely sexual to me, so as a love story it rang false to me.

JE: Given the world (time and place) in which it was set, I didn't see it so much as a dime-a-dozen "love story." It's a desire story. I don't think we can even say Ledger's character is "gay" by today's stereotypical definitions -- which equate certain behaviors with core identity, a Victorian psychological construct that has persisted in some circles to this very day. Which, I guess, is my way of saying that I bought the chemistry.

@ Robert Fuller:

That's why I said "most". Brokeback Mountain always tops gay websites and magazine polls for the best gay movie ever. I doubt it would if most believed the actors had no chemistry together. The idea you have seems the most prevalent among younger gay men rather than older gay men, so maybe that has something to do with your opinion. That also brings up the question if you buy into male/female love stories and what is the criteria for a person to believe a relationship in a film in the first place? In your scenario you would never believe a male/female love story because you yourself are not interested, but I am assuming there are those that you do like. Also in your scenario the male/female love story (at least it was billed that way) Same Time, Next Year would be invalidated.

@ JE: Ennis del Mar is gay. I've read so many things by gay men who were the same age as the story is set who really now resent that idea that Ennis was not gay.

Some of this notion is because a gay love story was so powerfully
presented that any feeling human being could relate to it and some
homophobic types couldn't deal with that so they have to come up with
excuses--like the characters weren't really gay, so they'd feel better
about it. Also, one thing I've learned from reading discussions about
this film and homophobia is that homophobia does not necessarily equate with "hate". Realistically, you can have a phobia about something but not hate it.

Also, to be clear, I am not accusing anyone of anything so don't take offense. Someone I know always used to tell me "Don't take it personally, unless it is."

I know it got tons of awards....the last Lord of the Rings. Two, not one, overly long battle scenes combinded with a whiney "hero" crawling up an overly long volcano. On a bet I'd have thrown everyone in the lava and saved the last hour for some fries and a cold drink @ TGI Friday's!

After reading Eberts essay in defense the movie and the comments from the lovers and haters, we should all at least give it credit for providing interesting conversation. The kind of conversation that opens up things about us that we are afraid to acknowledge sometimes. I'm not talking about racists finally showing their true colors, but it shows us how we feel about these serious issues that may or may not exist entirely. The truth is they exist for some and not for others. And depending where you stand your view of the film will change completely. Worst movie of the decade, best movie of the decade. Maybe neither, but it's definitely, DEFINITELY, the most debated movie of the decade. That means something.
You want to look at a movie that had similar praise but was truly overrated and one that will be forgotten in the next 3 years: BABEL. That gets my vote. At least "Crash" projected a lot of fears that we have about society.
I also think the bigger picture from all this is how the Academy Awards greatly hurts films. It truly is bad...with exceptions of course.

I just watched it last night and am salivating to chime in. I think that desire you talk about also extends beyond the sexual/love to the personal; the desire to find both the figurative and literal place where you belong (home?). Ennis' home is destroyed at a young age when his father dies. He then loses his subsequent homes with his siblings as they grow up and into traditional roles as parents, etc. Ennis never really finds his footing in "mainstream" society in any fashion no matter how hard he tries to just fit in like he's "supposed to." He marries, has kids, lives in a town rather than with nature, eventually moves in town at his wife's behest, hooks up with another beautiful woman after his divorce because that's what the handbook says to do. Ennis is never truly "home" until he gets away from the urban buildings to meet Jack (gay/straight doesn't matter; Jack is who he LOVES). His insistence on following "the rules" (as instructed by his father) leads to a life of unhappiness. The final scene is a killer. The home he wanted/needed is literally confined to the closet, allowing Ennis to hide the pain of an unrequited life from sight. When he closes the closet door, the shot is from within the confines of his trailer and the window frames the barren nature outside his house, a "picture" that pales to the photo of Brokeback Mountain tacked to the inside of his closet. That shot took my breath away, perfectly capturing just how far removed Ennis is from ever capturing "home."

@ Robert Fuller:

You said: "Nowhere did I even imply a correlation between belief in a love story and sexual interest in it."

I didn't mean your personal sexual interest in it, I meant the characters. Since you think the actors had no chemistry (zero you said) and others disagree, I was wondering what criteria do you decide that on in gay love stories, or for straight love stories--and do you think it matters? I think there's a lot of straight love stories that are mostly based on sexual attraction. I'm not sure how you are separating the sexual attraction and what constitutes the "love story" aspect you didn't think was there.

I think many love stories, gay or straight are mostly sexual in nature. If "love" hadn't entered the Brokeback scenario then they wouldn't have worked at it to the degree they did for twenty years. At least Jack would not have, he had more options.

In the wonderful film Maurice, Siskel & Ebert for two, did not believe the ending, that a man of Maurice's stature would run off with someone who would have been believed to be beneath him at the time, the servant Scudder. But sexual attraction is part of the love story and I find it totally plausible a repressed person who actually found someone to share these things would take that chance. We see that with several politicians in the last year alone, like the Carolina Governor and his "soul mate." Who would believe they would jeopardize all they have (stature)? Ditto Gov. Spitzer. Ditto Tiger Woods.

@ JE:

You said: "One of the movie's dramatic strong points, I think, is that it leaves Ennis's sexuality open to interpretation. Jack identifies as gay, but Ennis doesn't -- not to Jack, and maybe not even to himself."

So you say Jack is involved and sleeping with a striaght man? And that he keeps up that idea for twenty years?

I say, Ennis might not identify himself as such "because he was taught things he doesn't believe himself to be--I ain't queer," but that doesn't mean he is not. The daughter in the Imitiation of Life stories passes for white, might even play that role and convince herself she "is," but as it plays out, that notion is painfully not true and leads to disaster, as it does with Ennis. I think some people, for whatever their reasoning, want to leave Ennis's sexuality open to interpretation because it makes them feel more comfortable about it.

I read an article recently about current teens who are coming out of the closet earlier and earlier. One mother was commenting that when her straight son was exhibiting dating behaviors or interest in related things like that she noticed her and her husband accepting and encouraging of these things, within boundaries, of course. But when her gay son told them of his feelings their response was all about "are you sure" and tons of other questions that she realized they would never ask, do or demand of their straight children. In other words, there's a denial. If you ask gay people or read anything about gay people it is usually quite apparent and they always say they "knew" they were gay or it was apparent if I had recognized it (depending what kind of environment they grew up in). They at least knew they were "different" until it sank in. So, to think that even repressed Ennis was confused about who he was with all the evidence to the contrary is the same old "are you sure you know who you are" mentality that is, to me, condescending that gay people are unsure of who they are. I mean, Ennis DECIDES to go in the tent and be with Jack. They spend years arranging dates with each other, even for only a few days a year. They communicate by mail. Ennis's upbringing might make him act in ways that seem to indicate he's unsure, because he is living in the closet--a lot of what this film is about, but he is sure, especially after Jack's demise, that he can no longer have what it is he wanted all along. In the prologue of the short story, Ennis has wet dreams about Jack. Love is a force of nature after all. I can't see how his sexuality is open to interpretation except that some people, even gay men in denial, have notions that seem to me like the current shirts that state "I'm not gay, but my boyfriend is."

Jim, I noticed you used the phrase "ad hominem" a lot, and, for that, you suck.

Regarding Ennis, I still say the film depicts the living of ones life "in the closet" and that is something I've never heard of in regards to heterosexual relationships and is most referred to in terms of gay people. Robert, you said they didn't seem like two people in love, but if you look at what that meant to them in terms of Wyoming in 1963 which means heavily closeted, I happen to think that's not true. There are a ton of little details in the film that define romance. If it's purely sexual then Jack at least would not be so pursuant of someone like Ennis for twenty years, unless he loved him. It is clear he has allowed himself other options for sexual outlets--picking up rodeo clowns--trying to, Mexico, Randall, etc.

Diana Ossana, the screenwriter, specifically said at the ampas screening that Ennis was gay, so it wasn't ambiguous to the screenwriter. (There's a transcript of the Q&A somewhere on line...)
And, by the way, I'm a complete beilever in the Kinsey scale.

What many Brokeback supporters seem to have missed, and it is a shame, is that the "gay cowboys" jokes all stemmed from a popular South Park episode called "Gay Cowboys Eating Pudding" in which Cartman asserted that independent films were "black and white hippie movies... about gay cowboys eating pudding." This lead to the screening of a black and white film about two lesbians in love and culminated in a film that featured two cowboys who run out of pudding and decided to "experiment with [their] sexuality." When Brokeback Mountain appeared on the scene, this classic episode jumped to everyone's mind, except apparently for certain journalists. Trey and Matt even joked that they would sue if there was pudding in this movie.

But is this movie really the worst of the decade, or are you just being Contrarian?

I was swept up in the 'Crash' hoopla and then slowly I came back down to Earth and realized it did nothing for me upon a second viewing. Sadly even 'In The Heat of The Night' seems to have waned in impact and it didn't have much when I saw it the first time.

I think the best movie I have seen about the prejudices and flaws of people that had a large outstanding cast was Altman's 'Short Cuts'. No it wasn't about racism, it didn't have to be, it was about people and how people are flawed and act in ways we do not like and do not approve of and empathize and all that. It is a masterpiece.

Crash just gave each character a 1-2 punch and that was it.

But is Crash the worst film of the deacde? Maybe not... I do think it is the worst film that is trying to pass as a good film. At least Deuce Bigalow knows it is crap and doesn't pretend otherwise. I also think it is the worst film ever given best picture, finally trumping Gladiator on my list of biggest Oscar flubs.

I'm a fairly well educated person who liked Crash and has only now discovered that apparently smart people aren't supposed to like it. So after reading about half of the comments here, I think I have a basic understanding as to why the hatred:

It is simplistic, and peddles in stereotypes. Seems true for the most part, and yes, it is a morality play that lacks subtly and completely ignores the historical and political complexity of racism.

I grant all that. And I have seen and loved Do the Right Thing and that is a much, much better film. But here's the thing; I think I liked it because at least it was a film about race. That might sound like nothing, but in our extremely apolitical society, wouldn't you rather there be more trite but at least *attempting* to be thoughtful about social problems movies than, as someone pointed out, the insult to intelligence that is Transformers?

Granted, I think part of the problem here is that the people who did not like it were not nor should be the target audience; they are smarter than the film and its sort of ridiculous "can't we all just get along" message. However -- and I hate to say this and sound like an awful elitist but oh well -- to your average American viewer, this film is going to confront them with things they never think about. How aware of we that a good chunk of Americans more or less deny, on TV even on an almost daily basis, that racism even exists anymore?, let alone that is exists in a profound way that none of us can escape from? Perhaps we're forgetting that even this, what appears to be elementary and obvious to us, is in fact a message much of the American public sorely needs to get.

Furthermore, although yes, the characters are judged by this moralistic narrative, at the same time it avoids the sort of black/white structure that usually shuts down conversations about race. Only Dillon in this film is a *racist* per se; the other characters are merely human beings with feelings about race which are often racist. In the public discourse, whenever a celebrity drinks too much and uses a racial slur, the entire conversation revolves around not how racism is endemic in our society and how we all are affected by it, but about whether this person is individually racist (immoral) or not. That just feeds into the backlash mentality which perceives every argument about the power of racism as a simple moral accusation against all of middle/white America. By presenting the characters in this film as human and not wholly bad, at least it makes an attempt to get out of this style of discussion. Again, not enough so for the intellectually picky and the highly educated to appreciate, but the fact that it "got me thinking" for anyone, especially someone not accustomed to thinking about race: isn't that better than not thinking about it at all?

In other words, I would advise all the hard core haters to spend a week watching Fox News, and then watch Crash and consider whether it is really that pernicious of a film for the American public to ponder.

I think Crash was one of the best movies I have ever seen. While I can understand where some of the critisism for this movie comes from, it is really obvious to me that the majority of comments deriding this movie are disengenous. Reading the comments is a telling lesson in human behavior (pack mentality, anyone?)and one can't help but wonder at why this movie aggravates so much. Is it possible that it touched on subjects some people are just not willing to look at objectively? This movie touched some raw nerves and has succeeded in keeping the conversation about race relations in america alive. Well done Crash!

Are you nuts? I thought "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" is one of the best movies ever made. And you thought it was one of the worst? I gather that's because you disliked the characters and their motives. That doesn't make the MOVIE a bad movie.