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larry-464
Reviews
Sugar (2008)
One predictable cliché after another
I'm astounded at the great reviews for this movie. (BTW, some of the long reviews here recount in great detail the plot of the movie. Huh? Why do people do this? I don't need plot details, I need to know if the movie is well done and worth seeing). As I watched the movie (rented) I started calling out each of the predictable plot points to see if I could nail the exact number of seconds until they would appear. Ooohhh, the players enter a bar in rural Iowa and start dancing with some white girls (all absurdly gorgeous btw). Betcha can't guess what happens next! The whole movie is like this.
This could have been a great movie. Why not spend some time really exploring what it is like to be a dark-skinned man who doesn't speak English trying to order breakfast in a rural Iowa café?! Let me get into his head, take me through the emotions, challenge me, make me think. Instead we get a brief movie-of-the-week formulaic version. Maybe I've just seen too many movies and I'm doomed...
In Bruges (2008)
Shocked at the positive reviews; trite and predictable
OMG I am dumbfounded by all the glowing reviews. I think that I have to fault the script the most. Trite, formulaic, every "ironic" interaction was telegraphed to the viewer minutes ahead of time. When Colin Farrell's tough guy character is in the restaurant and has an interaction with an obnoxious weenie American, I've seen this exact scene so many times before... It was an agonizing 5 minutes as you sat through the predictable screen writing 101 set up moves culminating in the oh so ironic "punch" line. Painful. Colin Farrell's acting was way too forced and over-the-top for me, he seemed like he had to try way to hard, I found it distracting. Admittedly, the script and the directing are largely responsible here. Maybe I've seen too many movies, but this was just plain bad.
Crash (2004)
Shockingly bad and formulaic
A truly awful, moronic, super-PC, formulaic Spike-Lee-Robert-Altman wannabe. The other one-star writers have already summed it up well, bless their hearts for saving me from all the 10-star crazies on this one.
I quote "Sugarspheres": "It was indeed thought-provoking--all throughout the movie, I kept wondering how in the world can such a horribly pretentious, unrealistic movie get so many raves? One review, which I wholeheartedly agree with, comes from Peter Debruge of the Miami Herald. He writes 'Contrived, obvious and overstated, Crash is basically just one white man's righteous attempt to make other white people feel as if they've confronted the problem of racism head-on.' This was exactly how I felt while watching this movie. The characters were predictable one-trick ponies, the dialogue was preachy and unrealistic, the situations and coincidences were preposterous."