Metal Reviews

Good Will Hunting - 8/10

This is the kind of film I guess many people would call pretentious, but I liked it a lot. Great performances from Matt Damon, Stellan Skarsgård and Robin Williams, and Ben Affleck was actually tolerable.

I don't understand people that criticize stuff by calling it "pretentious"...what's bad about being ambitious? But anyways, great movie.

I agree. I have never watched a movie I would call pretentious, and I have seen "Crash" and "Babel".

By the way, the scene where Will explains why he didn't want to work for the NSA is one of the funniest things I have ever seen and heard

i'd call crash pretentious because it acts like its taking this realistic, multi-sided view of racism when really it's a bunch of sugar coated cliches that hollywood thinks are a realistic, multi-sided view of racism

I'd disagree. Crash is an awesome movie...while Babel sucked absolute monkey balls. Babel is seriously the worst movie I have ever seen that actually tried to be good.

Crash seemed like it sought to end racism by minimalizing it with stereotypes which were in fact racist themselves. The reception of Crash made it even worse because every person who saw it made it seem so revolutionary and touching "omg you need to see crash it'll make you understand why we shouldn't hate people. before we saw this movie we didn't understand why racism is bad but now we know that blacks, mexicans and arabs struggle just like us middle class white folk." Or that's at least how it seemed to me.

Death Race 2000- My mind has been blown

Right now my mum's watching some depressing Irish film on DVD, forget the name.

Actually I think they were growth hormones which are legal in the states if i"m not mistaken. As to if it's really immoral thats debatable.

Hooray, someone who agrees with me and hated Crash as well.

RW: Death At A Funeral. Reasonably funny.

At first, I was pulled in by Crash's sentimentality but then 10 minutes after finishing the movie I hated it.

I wanted to see Death at a Funeral after seeing something about it on IFC. I'll have to check that out.

Interview - well done movie about Steve Buscemi cynically interviewing a ditzy actress. like a lot of movies based around a small number of people talking in a room for a whole time it seemed to have trouble filling an hour and a half.

Cynical bastards . But seriously, if you don't like the movie then whatever, but at least give good reasons. "Minimalize" doesn't make any sense whatsoever in that context, and also, how can you criticize the film for presenting racist stereotypes when that was the whole point?

What noodles said makes more sense, but I think the racism in the movie is more realistic than what you guys are saying. Yeah, a lot of it is based off of stereotypes, but what is racism if not stereotypes? I just don't think it's reasonable to criticize Crash when it handles racism a shitload better than other movies (like Babel, which tried to copy Crash but basically sucked)...I mean, name a movie that did it better.

but if they're stereotyping then they're being racist too!!!

anyways, the problems with its racism stuff aside, i thought crash was a well done and entertaining movie

I saw 21 this weekend, I thought it was pretty good. Although I thought Jim Sturgess was going to break out into song a few times... He'll be forever known as Jude to me!

I didn't like it because it was all about messing with your emotions. "Oh noes, she's buying a gun!" "Oh noes, he's going to shoot the dad!" "Oh noes, the daughter jumped in front!" BUT IT'S ALRIGHT BECAUSE SHE BOUGHT BLANKS OH PHEW. Even without the racism it was a rubbish film, no drama needs to be that heavy handed. OH NOES THE BLACK MAN HAS "HAD ENOUGH" AND IS GOING TO BE SHOT! Go away, real life's much more brutal and much less miraculous. It was a rich twat's idea of what life for others is like.

At least Babel didn't punch it into your face all the time. Ok, naked deaf Japanese schoolgirls aside, there was more realism in Brad Pitt trying to find assistance for his shot wife than in the whole of Crash! And how perfectly they summed their relationship up in a single scene! Fine, it hasn't made me want to trust Mexicans with children but it's by far the superior film...

edited for language.

I dunno. I can understand why someone would criticize Crash for being too forceful with the racism, with the way the characters just say things that they would most likely just be thinking. Besides that, though, I personally think it does a really good job...if you can take the characters actions in the movie as metaphors for what people would simply be thinking in the real world, I think the racism becomes more realistic. The storyline itself is great, in my opinion...I think it's foolish to say that it's unrealistic how the characters all meet each other by coincidence, since that's pretty much the point.

On the other hand, Babel is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Any validity the racial aspect of the film had is irrelevant because the storyline was so terrible...seriously, none of the separate stories went anywhere and the way they were supposedly connected was even more ridiculous than Crash's characters all meeting each other. Ugh, don't get me started...

Yeah, see, that's the thing about real life. There's no meaning, it doesn't all add up to one big happy whole. Things happen, children get left out in the desert, immigrants get refused visas, the world keeps turning.

And how were Babel's small connections less logical than Crash's it-all-adds-up crap? How does that work?

They were minimalizing racism making it seem like an easy problem to fix or understand. I guess it wasn't a bad movie but the hype around it I guess made it worse for me.

Greatest movie ever or greatest motherfucking movie ever?

Srsly Christian Bale knows how to pick his movies to play in.

I loved 3:10 to Yuma. Definitely one of my favourite movies.