Two films

Caught two films this weekend: one good, the other not so good.

The latter was Kingdom of Heaven, which was a slightly overly long, tedious account of a blacksmith-turned-knight who finds himself amid the battles around the walls of Crusader Jerusalem. I found the angle taken a little dubious to say the least: tolerant Europeans managing a multicultural Jersalem in which all three faiths - Islam, Christianity and Judaism - could be freely practiced. Perhaps someone will point out to me that there was a period when this happened, although I seem to recall it was under Muslim rule that Christianity was allowed to be practiced rather than the other way around. And that's before I get started on the secular message that the main character (Orlando Bloom) seemed to be propagating.

But apart from that the battle scenes were alright; which was the main reason I wanted to watch it, since the director, Ridley Scott had done quite a good job with Gladiator a few years ago.

Crash was different in tone, but very stimulating. There was some uncomfortable laughter at some of the scenes and others that were excruciating to watch. It was extremely thoughtful, but did it challenge my prejudices? OK, some of the characters I was surprised by, but others you felt were being presented in a rather sledgehammer fashion. Still, it's well worth catching and definitely one of the more thoughtful films I've watched in the last few months.