Steven Spielberg - classic or dud

Spike Lee has definitely made some bad films (the last one, Girl 6, the Malcolm X one definitely trends towards the preachy although I wouldn't say it is bad) but even his most over-ambitious failed experiments are more fun to watch than say AI or Saving Ryan's Private.

To all the Benicio Del Toro love (re Traffic, a movie I also dislike), I have to dissent. He was ok, but I always scratched my head at why HE got all the attention and the awards. Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman, superb in so many Soderbergh films (Guzman was particularly fine as Terence Stamp's sidekick in The Limey), were much more memorable and were ignored.

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.

I dunno, Spike vs. Spielberg is a tough call for me, Lee's such a sloppy filmmaker. He's almost the antithesis of Spielberg - the pedantry without the style. He really only has one great, perfect film and that's "Do the Right Thing". There's good stuff scattered in his other movies (I haven't seen 25th Hour) but by and large its one trainwreck after another... Girl 6, Get on the Bus, Bamboozled, Summer of Sam, etc. Has there ever been a Spike Lee movie that *doesn't* end with someone getting murdered...?

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Taking Sides: Steven Spielberg vs Ron Howard.

Just so we're clear that there's a baseline here.

Del Toro has always been a very good physical presence and his charisma is because of his weird mannerisms, he's like Nicolas Cage honed to a zen-like haiku of hand shapes of head tilts

That's the thing I see with Spike Lee...even with his failed efforts (I TOTALLY DISAGREE WITH YOU WITH THE LAST ONE UNLESS THE LAST ONE IS NOT "THE 25TH HOUR" AND I FELL ASLEEP FOR SEVERAL YEARS???), I think there is something a lot more fun to watch...something a lot more provocative to think about, than a lot of top directors, Spielberg included.

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.

I felt like just about the only one who thought Erin Brockovich was a lot more confident and breezy and enjoyable than Traffic. It must've been his Hawks film.
-- Eric H. (ephende...), July 28th, 2005.

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

The last one I meant was She Hate Me.

Andrew. If you ever pose a question that diabolical in my physical presence, I will punch you in the genitals.

I've seen the similarity, too! Way of the Gun would have been infinitely better if Pitt took the Philippe role and the two characters were brothers.

okay it still would have sucked...

I admire Spike Lee's nerve. His most underrate film: Clockers.

Clockers is a very good film! Mekhi Phifer couldn't quite hold his own with the rest of the cast, though.

I think Clockers, Summer of Sam, 25th Hour and Get on the Bus (and the doc about the girls in Birmingham is excellent) all have really interesting elements. They are all seriously flawed in some way though, I won't deny that.

How can you compare Lee with Spielberg? Lee is essentially a director of agitprop, with a few detours into character studies. Spielberg is an entertainer with delusions of grandeur.

Beats me. Someone did it above.

The 25th Hour, with all its longeurs and absurdities, was fantastic. It was one of the more convincingly paranoid films I've seen in recent years.

The main reason I'm contributing is cuz I don't give a shit about Spielberg and I really enjoy Lee.

I kind of like Traffic. I find it impossible to take even mildly seriously, so it's just like Ocean's Eleven w/ guns and sweaty crackhead teenagers. Ooooh lookit Catherine Zeta Jones go from society wife to dealer! Check out the bleach bypass effect in the Mexico footage!

25th Hour is seriously flawed, but it's still a great film. That is in part a testiment to the powers of the magnificient actors employed in it as well as a testiment to Spike Lee. It is a very powerful film to watch, moreso depending on your involvement in certain elements in NYC life. But it is significantly flawed, least of which being that Rosario Dawson couldn't pass for a Catholic schoolgirl teenager if her life depended on it. But yeah, it is a significant portrayal of paranoia and minor neurosises as I've seen on film, ever.

well goddammit when is he going to make that afrocentric-sci-fi film he's always been threatening to do? I would be SO into that. there's a script that writes itself.

I want Delany to script that. It would be awesome.

Xpost yes I agree with you that Traffic is enjoyable from that viewpoint but doesn't hold a candle to what it's meant to do..I think Soderberg is more of a POP filmmaker than he wants to admit..>I was serious about him doing a remake of the Poisiedon (sp who gives a shit I've had several drinks) Adventure.

re: 25th Hour I will fully admit that I'd watch Ed Norton read a phone book but it doesn't really diminish the fact that it'd a good movie. So is Bamboozled, even thoubgh it is a little bit of a mess. Bamboozled haunted me for a long time. The ending of that movie, whether stock "someone get killed tonight" Lee or not, is seriously disturbed and you'd have to have a heart of stone not to think about Savion Glover and people like him for a long, long time afterwards. Which is what I think is the power of Lee vs. Spielberg...they don't belong in the same category. Even if the biggest Lee messes I've seen , I've THOUGHT aobut them for ages and ages. I still think about Bamboozled...a deeply flawed movie (Mainly in Damon Wayans's character) but good nonetheless...sometimes. It still haunts me, the end of that film. I can't think of a Spielberg film that does that to me, even his best. Sometimes I think about how Raiders of the Lost ArK would be better with me instead of Karen Allen...but not the same thing, is it?

Bamboozled might actually be my favorite Lee film, despite its deep flaws and its obvious subservience to the 25th Hour (which is probably his best film, in competition with the good 'ol criterion choice, Do The Right Thing)

I couldn't make it all the way to the end of Bamboozled. I know there's supposed to be some "amazing" montage of little black sambos or whatever. I just got a little lost wrt to the characters and who was doing what and it just seemed so haphazard and formless I think I just turned it off and did the dishes instead...

Alex, you're a dreamer. Imagine a Spike Lee "Dhalgren"? Be so, so, so fucking k-rad.

Karen Allen is great in Raiders!! so much better than Mrs. Spielberg in the second. Every time I see Temple of Doom I wish someone would shoot her.

Dude, Shakey, you and me both. Kate Capshaw is os bad in Doom...I mean that movie is seriously flawed but she's the biggest flaw. I mean why would Indie have time for her, after Karen Allen? She might not be as conventionally attractive but...damn.

I gotta say, as enticing an idea as it is, a Delany + Spike Lee collab would probably be rather hamstrung by the latter's weirdly conservative (almost reactionary) sexual politics.

I LOVE Kate Capshaw! A most convincing ditz. She reminded me of Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey.

Alfred Soto, you are insane.

she doesn't do anything particularly ditzy in Temple. all she does is WHINE. "Indeeeee, I'm going to crryyyyyyyy" arrrrgh sacrifice the bitch to Kali already!

Uh, technically, Temple of Doom is a prequel to Raiders. So the Capshaw love affair came before the Allen one.

I wish I didn't know this.

Dude, I know that by any standard she deserves immolation, but she played the hell out of a puerile stereotype.

True, Shakey Mo. (Like 6 xpost). And I say that after having seen She Hate Me (subtitle: "Black Gigli").

yes, Indy clearly got exhausted with her. I was more annoyed that he went from Karen Allen to the Nazi.

i alreayd know that Doom is a prequel buut STILL wtf. find someone more firey. EWven Michelle Pfieffer would be preferable and she's like the opposite fo fire. That means she is WATER. Kate Capshaw=mud, therefore.

xpost Karen Allen to the Nazi iks like a whole different level of disappointment.

"Uh, technically, Temple of Doom is a prequel to Raiders. So the Capshaw love affair came before the Allen one."

No. In Raiders its clearly established that Allen and Indy had met before - long before - back when Indy was still working with her professor father (which would imply they met back when Indy was a student or at least not an academic authority in his own right, ie, prior to Temple of Doom).

(altho once again the Indy tactic of making the films out of sequence raises a whole host of continuity problems, not just that one. for example, in Raiders Indy says he doesn't believe in magic or religious "mumbo jumbo" - yet in Temple of Doom he witnesses firsthand several things which are CLEARLY magic/mystical mumbo jumbo, ie, the magic of those dumb stones...)

Right, but was there romance between Indy & Allen pre-Raiders?

yeah, Shakey's right. I guess even Indy has to go through that Woody Allen period and favoring M. Hemingway over L. Lasser.

If Indy's taste in women takes an arguable decline over time, how will they top a Nazi in the fourth film?

hahaha - in terms of enjoyable filmmakers who have been around for 25+ years, Woody Allen absolutely slays Spielberg. In my humble pseudo-intellectual Jewish nerd estimation.

Jennifer Lopez. xpst

Tara Reid

Calista Flockhart

John Rhys-Davies

(I can't remember the Raiders script well enough - even tho I've seen the film more than a dozen times at least - but I think there's some kind of "you're such an asshole for leaving me" schtick Allen lays on Indy when they first meet up in that Siberian bar...? which is an amazing scene, btw)

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you have to admit, the Nazi was hot.

the implication I got from that scene was that Indy is a lot older than her, like he deflowered her when she was 12 or something. "I was a child!"