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Film Discussion => The Vault => Topic started by: MacGuffin on November 12, 2008, 05:32:30 PM

Title: Crossing Over
Post by: MacGuffin on November 12, 2008, 05:32:30 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fl.yimg.com%2Fimg.movies.yahoo.com%2Fymv%2Fus%2Fimg%2Fhv%2Fphoto%2Fmovie_pix%2Fweinstein_company%2Fcrossing_over%2Fcrossingover_smalltitle.jpg&hash=12a65a9e2a2a3706f044b436d0d4f852d5376d9d)


Trailer here. (http://movies.yahoo.com/premieres/10645602/standardformat/)

Release Date: TBA 2009

Starring: Harrison Ford, Ashley Judd, Alice Braga, Ray Liotta, Summer Bishil 

Directed by: Wayne Kramer (The Cooler; Running Scared)

Premise: A multi-character canvas about immigrants of different nationalities struggling to achieve legal status in Los Angeles. Explores the border, document fraud, the asylum and green card process, work-site enforcement, naturalization, the office of counter terrorism and the clash of cultures.
Title: Re: Crossing Over
Post by: Pozer on November 13, 2008, 01:00:52 PM
what happened to Sean Penn?
Title: Re: Crossing Over
Post by: Stefen on November 13, 2008, 01:12:34 PM
Proper Ron Howard type movie that will attempt to contend for awards, but will fail because Ron Howard gets the benefit of the doubt for his shitty proper movies.

Or it could be like Crash and be shitty but still fool everyone.
Title: Re: Crossing Over
Post by: MacGuffin on January 30, 2009, 05:09:35 PM
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blogcdn.com%2Fwww.cinematical.com%2Fmedia%2F2009%2F01%2Fcrossingoverfinal1.jpg&hash=ad717b3db3070b33a82998d871cfea8c7ecdab79)
Title: Re: Crossing Over
Post by: Stefen on January 30, 2009, 09:59:45 PM
Fucking America. GET OUT OF TEH WAY!!!!1!
Title: Re: Crossing Over
Post by: SiliasRuby on February 27, 2009, 02:19:22 PM
I loved Wayne Kramer's first two films but I really really don't want to see this. It opens here in LA this week.
Title: Re: Crossing Over
Post by: modage on February 27, 2009, 02:53:41 PM
everything i read says this is Crash but worse.  but WORSE!  can you imagine?
Title: Re: Crossing Over
Post by: SiliasRuby on February 27, 2009, 03:54:20 PM
Yes, I can imagine. I'm already disappointed. Lets hope it doesn't win any oscars next year.
Title: Re: Crossing Over
Post by: polkablues on February 27, 2009, 05:58:06 PM
There's no way it's worse than Crash.  I'm sure it's very, very bad, but it can't possibly be worse than Crash.
Title: Re: Crossing Over
Post by: modage on February 27, 2009, 06:11:38 PM
Crossing Over is an L.A.-based ensemble social-problem melodrama for people who thought Crash was a bit too subtle. In that one, Paul Haggis constructed every scene to drive home the point that racism is a very, very bad thing. Now, writer-director Wayne Kramer shows how immigration—mostly illegal, but in some cases by the book—creates mayhem in the lives of would-be Americans

http://nymag.com/movies/reviews/54687/
Title: Re: Crossing Over
Post by: polkablues on February 27, 2009, 07:01:03 PM
"Worse than Crash" is kind of like saying "more evil than Hitler."  I guess it's technically possible, but it would really take something special to achieve it.
Title: Re: Crossing Over
Post by: Stefen on February 27, 2009, 09:37:58 PM
Wayne Cramer, Paul Haggis and Eric Roth are all sitting in some upscale restaurant laughing their asses off.
Title: Re: Crossing Over
Post by: john on February 27, 2009, 10:30:37 PM
I totally understand the preemptive snark directed towards this film around here... and it's probably justified.

The synopsis itself is too heavy-handed but, fuck it, Wayne Kramer is more or less two for two and totally deserving of me giving it a chance.

Plus, I just read the AV Club review and it seems to concede that, while it might be terrible, it's almost compulsively watchable and never uninteresting. Which is actually A LOT more than I can say about Crash.
Title: Re: Crossing Over
Post by: SiliasRuby on February 28, 2009, 02:31:41 AM
Well, I'm sold. Its a heavy rental for me.
Title: Re: Crossing Over
Post by: SiliasRuby on March 02, 2009, 10:40:33 AM
I've thought about it and I will only watch this film if they end it with this song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqQv3qef21A/)

Title: Re: Crossing Over
Post by: SiliasRuby on April 01, 2009, 01:25:52 AM
A review I found....so funny.

One of the best actors of all time, Sean Penn, was once in Wayne Kramer's Crossing Over. The story behind why he's no longer in the film reportedly goes that he saw the final product and disapproved of a subplot involving an Iranian honor killing. Now, having seen the final film, I can tell you that this is no small subplot. It's not something he might have easily missed with even one read of the screenplay or asking someone on set, "Hey, what's this movie about?" So, we have two possibilities – either he didn't read the whole screenplay and ignored several of his colleague's major roles in the film or he's lying. Personally, I think it's the latter. I think he saw the final product and knew it would be the worst film on his resume (yes, worse than Shanghai Surprise) and convinced someone to cut him out. Too bad Harrison Ford couldn't have been so proactive.

Nothing makes me angrier than movies that use real-world subjects to manipulate their audience into thinking they're saying something important. Filmmakers who use the pain that people feel outside of the movie theater to craft it into melodrama without taking the concern to do it genuinely are reprehensible. It's not that actual issues shouldn't be used in film but they need to be treated believably and not just as shallow tools by someone trying to pull your heartstrings. By the end of Crossing Over, a film that purports to tell the story of immigration in the United States in the '00s, I was so angry that I was grinding my teeth and I could feel my skin crawl. An early contender for the worst film of the year, Crossing Over is a completely disingenuous slice of awful storytelling, one-note performances, and manipulative melodrama that should not only not be seen, it should be boycotted.

Where do I start? With the poor girl (Summer Bishil) watching her family torn apart because she dared to suggest that we should try to understand the attackers of 9/11? With Immigration Officer Max Brogan (Harrison Ford) and his journey to find the son of a young mother (Alice Braga) he sent back to Mexico? How about Max's partner Hamid (Cliff Curtis) who struggles as his sister (Melody Khaze) becomes too American for his family's approval? She's the one found murdered mere days before her father is going to be naturalized in a ceremony that you know is going to be overblown and melodramatic but you have no idea the depths Kramer is willing to sink to.

Oh, we're not done with the immigrant archetypes. There's the young man (Jim Sturgess) who is trying to pass himself off as a Jewish musician to get residency, a Korean teenager (Justin Chon) tempted by his gangster friends, and, last but not least, the love triangle of Claire (Alice Eve), Denise (Ashley Judd), and Cole (Ray Liotta). Claire is a struggling Australian actress looking for a green card who just happens to run into (literally) Cole, an immigration official who agrees to give the sexy young lady what she needs in return for constant sexual favors. Cole is married to Denise, who happens to be (the movie could have been called "Happens To Be") an immigration defense lawyer herself working on both the case of an adorable African child who can't find a home and the Muslim girl about to be deported. And the circle of fake life is complete.

Actually, Crossing Over isn't as much a circle as a web of lies. Every character is related to another in the forced way that would make a ten-year-old yell "Come on!" If a writing student turned this script in for a class, he would be kicked out of school. The film is full of scream-at-the-screen moments. Where do I begin? The murder confession during a naturalization ceremony, the manipulative use of crying children directed so over-the-top that they become cartoonish, the gratuitous nudity that turns Claire into nothing more than a sex object, the unreasonable end to Denise's arc with the African child, or the shoot-out in which a character stops firing to give a speech about the pride of the immigrant? All of these elements (and several more at that) contribute to the pain

Imagine an entire movie of just the worst, most on-the-nose moments of Crash. At one point, a character turns to another, as the National Anthem plays in the background, and says, "In this country, we call that murder... cold, blooded murder." Murder of common sense, maybe. Murder of good taste. Murder of screenwriting. Murder of cinema. Don't let them get away with it.