A good film marathon

Sat down with a friend the other night and watched a couple of great films.

TV writer Paul Haggis's Crash is a fantastic early directorial outing. About the lives of a number of Las Angeles residents and how they each interact with each other over one day. This is a film about racism in America, and could at times feel like it's slipping into cliche, but I felt engaged throughout by his beautiful direction and clever writing. All of the characters are in some way un-redeemable, and yet they all redeem themselves in some way. A film that continued to surprise me throughout, wanting me to hate and then realising that the emotion is only self-destructive. As Australians we can look at a film like this and dismiss it as American racism and we don't experience stuff like that here, but to do so is dangerously naive. There's a little bit of racism in all of us, and we all have within us the potential to hurt and to heal. A wonderful film highly recommended.

Zach Braff's directorial and writing debut is a wonderfully imagined film called Garden State. Great performances by the three leads and wonderful support from Ian Holm, made for an incredibly engaging piece of cinema. I saw this at the cinemas when it came out last year, but watched it again with Blackers as he hadn't seen it before. I loved it then and still do now. My favourite thing is the way Braff builds his story. As his main character comes out of his anti-depressant numbness so does the film. Set off by a wonderful soundtrack, this is a special film about roots and friendship and how feeling pain is as important as feeling love.

So hire these couple of films. You won't regret it.