Steven Spielberg - classic or dud

Looking at that list above I realize I've disliked a LOT of his movies, without even really realizing they were Spielberg flix. I mean the only movies that I like in that list are Raiders, Last Crusade, Duel, Catch Me If You Can (and that's not even an active like because I forgot I saw it until recently) and...uh...well, I don't actually like Jurassic Park at ALL but Jeff Goldblum dresses fantastically in it so I'll give it a little bit of a pass (THAT FINAL SHOT OF THE T-REX AND THE RAPTORS IS THE ABSOLUTE WORST SHOT IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF CINEMATOGRAPHY AND DIRECTION AND THAT IS A STONE COLD FACT PEOPLE). I'd like Saving Private Ryan better if the bookends were deleted and it was about a half hour shorter.

Dr. Morbius, how about you discuss the "disturbing adult themes" in, say, Catch Me If You Can?

jaws fucking rules ally. jpark3's pretty great, the best of the bunch no doubt. poltergeist was pretty great. band of brothers was incredible. into the west was rousing fun.

Jaws does NOT fucking rule!

UNIFIED WORKS suck anyway

ie his refusal to end his recent movies unyuckily is the price he is prepared to pay for the chance to shoot [x] idea

i don't buy this really, but i wd admire SS lots if i discovered this is where he's secretly at

oh, begone intentionality! i think most movies are compendia of bits with lots of redundancies put in to keep front office happy. it's always been like that(?). spielberg is a total enigma as a man -- i have read a biography of him and know NOTHING about him.

but cutting through or ignoring the 'greatest generation' blah i've been impressed by the action scenes in the saving private ryan/band of brothers projects.

as with albums, ignore the rubbish bits.

My hyperbole is totally correct, watch JP again and wait for it...that final shot of the freaking T-Rex. Claymation dinosaur, why you ruin shot all the time? I would've liked Jurassic Park better if there was no dinosaurs, but instead Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider.

Anyway I am still interested in finding out how Spielberg classics like Catch Me If You Can or The Terminal or The Lost World explore more disturbing, dark, and adult themes than Bamboozled and are more complex than The Big Lebowski! I'll give Morbius Soderberg.

XPOST ARGH STOP IT WITH THOSE MORPHED ANIMALS

Does this make him classic, or just Darryl Zanuck reborn?

I stick with my B+ assessement. He has good chops, and a consistent record. I like him OK, but nothing he makes excites me much.

aimless -- steve is hurt, but he will try to improve his record for next semester.

what's your point here exactly? that people in film school like him because he's successful? wtf does that have to do with anything

>how about you discuss the "disturbing adult themes" in, say, Catch Me If You Can?<

No, not a classic. Quite a decent Missing/Inadequate Dad Complex meditation (major Spielberg motif), tho, with both Leo and Walken putting in unusually deep performances before returning to check-cashing roles.

The Terminal: America as Last Best Melting Pot AND Dubya's Fortress ("America is closed").

JP2 was the last of his I skipped.

I think Walken's performance in Catch Me If You Can is completely immemorable, as immemorable as he gets, at least. Also, I'm not sure how I understand in what way Savion Glover's character in Bamboozled is any more of a "2-D sketch" than Leonardo DiCaprio's character here (note: this does not imply that DiCaprio's character IS a "2-D sketch"). And yes, the 25th Hour beats the crap out of both of these movies, and anything Spielberg's done in, oh, 10 or 15 years. I was keeping off the sucka punches on the "Spielberg more provocative than Lee" comment but if you wanna kick yourself in a metaphorical discussion-genitals go ahead!

Not quite. Film schoolies love him because he is the archetypal film school product. Speilberg sat through all the same classes, learned all the same rigamarole as them and then he went out and became the Nu Robot Overlord of films. It sprinkles fairy dust (read: imagined money & power) over the whole film school experience.

Never said that. But Lee can't really fake provocation regularly anymore. Cine-hipsters turn to City of God, Y Tu Mama Tambien etc for that pose now.

Yeah, Walken's much more memorable sleepwalking through gangster and vampire roles, or SNL. Hey, he recites lines off the expected beats!

I was quite moved by the ending of The Terminal and chilled by A.I.

By the same token Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't make $250 million as an actor by being chopped liver, either. Although it is rather hard to pin down exactly what his talent was. Your point being?

I thought the whole cast was excellent! Anchor and Blunt stood out. Enjoyed Colin Firth doing whatever the hell he was doing. Josh O'Connor confirmed he can still be great even when the script gives him less than enough. I'd love to see Wyatt Russell cast in some sort of "annoying second banana who turns out to be the lead" Richard Dreyfuss-type role.

Disclosure Day prompted us to go back and watch War of the Worlds, which neither of us had seen. Pretty intense, well-made obviously. And pretty faithful to the book, although it highlighted for me how narratively slim the story really is. The one big change from the book makes the plot even shakier. Wells had the Martians fleeing their planet because it was becoming uninhabitable, but in this telling the aliens have been planning this for like a million years (with the buried tripods and all) — which makes it seem extremely careless of them not to have done some basic biological research into earthly pathogens before launching the invasion.

it's an iraq war movie, poor planning is baked into the theme

Yeah, I think it works better as a 9/11 movie (the first half, more or less) than as an Iraq allegory. The ending just kind of happens out of nowhere, it's not really set up or developed thematically.

War of the Worlds is great when it's a remake of the familiar material - set up and delivery - but falters when it detours (family drama, Tim Robbins; was Tim Robbins *ever* a good actor?). Some incredible scenes/moments, though.

Bull Durham, Jacob's Ladder, especially The Player.

It's also an odd film narratively because the flawed hero doesn't exactly get redeemed. He doesn't do anything to contribute to the defeat of the aliens. He does manage to keep his daughter safe but loses track of his son (who goes off and survives on his own). I guess his one big inspiration is realizing that there's a still-working car he can steal. His biggest accomplishment is killing Tim Robbins, which happens offscreen and is a pretty gray area morally and ethically. But in general Cruise's character ends the movie as the same impulsive not-very-focused guy he started it as.

xpost He's definitely well cast in Bull Durham, that's for sure. But his filmography has definitely been a mess since (checks notes) he won an Oscar. I haven't seen The Player in ages, I wonder how it/he holds up ...

Beautifully.