Steven Spielberg - classic or dud

Allyzay, you have hit it on idiot-male 'debates' on the internets! However, you're still all wet on equating Spielberg with run-of-the-mill schmaltz. (at least post-Color Purple, that was a mistake)

I'm glad you guys hate S.S. given the snarky twaddle you like tho. "Schindler's List" has more intentional laughs than several Coen films.

-- Dr Morbius (wjwe...), July 28th, 2005.

IRONY

Excepting Jaws and Close Encounters and maybe Jurassic Park (<1997) I don't really care about him.

My big issue with his films is the race/gender-handling and how awkward-but-well-intentioned-he is w.r.t. this.

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(And I don't rememeber ET that well, just that I found it profoundly mawkish. I think if I saw it again I might like exactly what you like, M., - the weird and freaky bits.)

Unfortunately this part of ET lasts what 5-10 minutes.

"Lou-Jean, a blonde woman, tells her husband, who is imprisoned, to escape."

when being blonde is outlawed, only outlaws will be blonde....

Yeah, there was nothing at all mawkish and MOR and suburbanite about Traffic.

(tho my favorite movie of his is THE LIMEY! Terence Stamp! blithely evil Peter Fonda! Yes!)

I give you The Limey, though.

Know the enemy, people.

I agree with this, Malcolm X is one of my least favorite Spike Lee joints (though I have it in my Netflix, just to make sure that I'm right).

Anyway, I agree with the statements about Schindler's moral ambiguity (which is a matter of fucking historical record, why white wash the dude when his own actions quite frankly white washed his moral ambiguity anyway), also the whole Neeson speech at the end where he's quivering on the floor like I don't even know what, carrying on about how each item represents a person he could save...it's so....argh. I don't even know what it is, it's so high school play. This is a fault of Neeson was well as the director, cos Neeson is awful, absolutely atrocrious in the scene...and the girl in the red dress...and the really specific bookend about what the holocaust was about, which I remember even when I was a kid seriously alienating my mother whose non-jewish relatives were persecuted...Spielberg's whole agenda with that movie...the unnecessary nakedd women everywhere...the weirdly unambigious character played by Ralph Fiennes...Ugh. The movie has it's good qualities and has its heart in such the right place but goes so, so wrong.

I like movies like Downfall better, where everythying is not so...excuse the pun here...black and white.

Re: Soderberg, Alex is totally, totally, so unambiguously and so horrifyingly and so mind-shatteringly OTM about Traffic. That movie was not very good and the only things saving it was Benecio Del Toro, but that's Benecio for you, he even saved crappy boring Bond films for me. I like Soderberg's pop epics better, someone else touched upon his POP sensibility and how it is edgier, less hamfisted and LOOK AT ME than Spielberg's...Erin Brokovich and Ocean's Eleven are both fantastic movies, despite all odds (ie Julia Roberts and Andy Garcia). They are both fantastic pieces of film-making, inherently entertaining and watchable and the messages (esp. EB) are not so I AM GOING TO HAMMER THIS INTO YOUR HEAD SO HARD YOU WILL NOT KNOW WHERE YOUR ASS IS AND YOUR HEAD IS ANYMORE as Spielberg tends to be. Soderberg's more "serious" movies...well...Solaris was shit, dude. Let's hope he remakes Posiedon Adventure real soon.

xpost Why apologize, it was a great post, better than expected, and I was highly entertained and quite frankly, I salute you, sir, for that post.

Del Toro only started to earn the plaudits he earned for Traffic in 21 Grams. Before then he was coasting on mannerism and sheer weirdness.

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I think that's part of the thing, right? I feel like Spielberg, "recently" meaning since 1990, wants us to THINK about his movies. THINK SO HARD yr brain explodes, right? But he doesn't give us that much more than base questions we might have already had. What questions does AI raise that you might have already had? What questions does it explore in a way that someone might unthink their other way of thinking? That's something I don't like. The feeling that I SHOULD be thinking, reconsidering, after watching Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, AI...except he doesn't give you anything besides a pretty middle-America-stereotype way of thinking about it. He doesn't actually explore the questions he raises, he doesn't give you anything different from what the Hollywood cliche says he should...

I won't tell you that Spielberg is a "bad" director...it's just that he's not a "good" director in my estimation of good either. I'd rather watch Lee or Scorcese's worst films than Spielberg's...because even Girl 6 or..well, wait, I won't defend recent Scorcese but even the Aviator gave me a bit to think about.

xpost Lee IS very sloppy...but in a way I like that about him. It's like there is TOO MUCH going on in his head to contain in one movie, you are left asking a question. I don't feel this sentiment about Do The Right Thing, Bamboozled, or 25th Hour. They are not sloppy movies, though you are left thinking. A lot. Summer of Sam and Girl 6 are really well meaining train wrecks...

Re: Del Toro, I agree that Cheadle deserves more love than he gets, but Del Toro is very good. Del Toro also looks like the swarthy Brad Pitt. Has anyone else noticed this? They're dopplegangers, cross-ethnicity. THink about it.

So OTM. My friends still think I'm fuckin' crazy. Popist entertainment vs Rockist Grand Statement.