Episode 67: Crash and Bottom Five Stereotypes

With Oscar season upon us, Mike and Jay revisit one of the most debated Best Picture winners of the modern era: Crash (2004), Paul Haggis’s ensemble drama about race, prejudice, and the tangled moral collisions of Los Angeles. Hailed in 2005 as urgent and important, and dismissed just as quickly in the years since as heavy-handed and self-congratulatory, Crash now lands in a cultural moment where its subject matter isn’t theory or metaphor, but headline news. Did the Academy get it right, or is this prestige cinema that mistakes volume for insight? After the main review, the guys count down their Bottom Five Stereotypes, spotlighting the most tired, reductive character shortcuts Hollywood keeps pulling from the shelf. Then it’s time for a round of Kick Two, Pick Two celebrating the career of Robert Duvall, before the long-awaited reveal of the listener poll results that will determine which Dueling Double Bills Mike and Jay will be forced to endure for the next episode. And the award for white-guy concern teetering on virtue-signaling goes to... Filmjitsu!