Steven Spielberg - classic or dud

it's contrarianism to believe Spielberg is a great filmmaker?

Part of being a great anything, I think, is to include mystifying and garish passages in your work.

No, I meant his general ilx curmudgeonliness. I agree with him on Spielberg.

http://www.sembo.se/media/8238016/nice_950x350_top.jpg

i'm generally a spielbs fan but holy wow has he produced some bad shit over the past fifteen years. he's had a pretty decent directorial run, though i missed his one-two punch of tin tin and war horse.

Tin Tin was fun. I couldn't get through War Horse.

Best Spielberg = 'Murder by the Book'

i had some problems with Munich but overall it's a pretty essential film in the '70s geopolitics/terrorism genre. that and Carlos are sort of the ultimate double feature.

War of the Worlds has some "eh" moments but it's just generally great

xxpost

Haha! Not even that great of a Columbo episode, alas.

AI
Catch Me If You Can
The Terminal
WOTW
Munich
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
War Horse
Tin Tin
Lincoln
Bridge of Spies

Only one of those movies looks like it's running in place (and I don't care for The Terminal). They've all got flaws of one sort. Still, an amazing new millennium run.

Tin Tin was so much better than I expected, tons of fun. Loved Lincoln and AI. CMIYC also tons of fun. I forgot to see The Terminal and haven't seen the new one, but seriously, if that list is supposed to mark his fall, man, what a fall. Because even the flawed ones are majority solid, imo. Like, WOTW, what it gets wrong it gets so wrong that it pushes the illusion it's not a good film, but that's just maybe 20% of it - the very end and Tim Robbins. Because the rest is really, really strong. (see also: Minority Report).

Spielberg is so good that he's entered the high standard trap. "Yeah, the first 10 or so movies he made were almost all great, with many iconic masterpieces, and several of the films he produced in that era are almost as good, and sure, the next 10 or so movies have had their share of masterpieces and icons, and yeah, sometimes he was working so fast he released a film a year, sometimes two films in a single year, and OK, most of his recent output has been really solid, too, sometimes great, and even when he's off his films are rarely less than confident and competent, and almost always worthwhile, but other than that, what has he done?"

yeah, I forgot Minority Report! What a run.

Privileging early Spielberg above mid-late Spielberg just sounds like millennials goin' OH I WATCHED INDY, JAWS AND E.T. A HUNDRED TIMES WHEN I WAS 8

I saw all those plus CE3K in their theatrical runs and was happy. Then I grew up and so did he (tho E.T. is already a rich work for adults).

I'm not sure I'd privilege early Spielberg, per se, just that his initial run is pretty unimpeachable. It's not until the 90s that he has his first real misses (Hook, Lost World) and even the latter there has its moments. But certainly his mid to later career is every bit worthy of discussion/thought/debate as his initial stuff. He's like Hitchcock in that regard.

Always was released in 1989.

Ooh, yeah, forgot about that one.

btw the 21st-c thing of his i hate most is the last 20 minutes of Minority Report. Truly like a bad Columbo episode.

It's not until the 90s that he has his first real misses

um, no. i found The Color Purple so mortifying i've never been able to rewatch in 30 years. And i don't quarrel with 1941-abuse THAT much.

(re TCP: adapting a novel in exactly the wrong way)

Yeah, I'm not a fan, but I think that might be my taste. It's certainly well made and acted, iirc.

haven't even seen it once

get with the millennium morbs, we like jurassic park

You've gotta be kidding. Do you understand what's even happening in it?

yeah, this. the ending is nearly as devastating as anything in an ozu film! it's brutal and terrifyingly sad.

otm

I think the only flaw of AI, really, is designing the future-robots to look too similar to past Spielberg/movie aliens. It's definitely a little confusing, especially for a film that's already put its viewers through the emotional ringer.

This is pretty good on AI: http://reverseshot.org/archive/entry/335/6_ai_artificial_intelligence

Often feel one of Spielberg's greatest lifts from the Classical Hollywood era is his ability to smuggle in darker or ambivalent themes into his films while maintaining a more obvious (melo)dramatic sheen.

Watched AI again over the weekend (after screening Jaws and Close Encounters), and sorry to say it didn't seem better on second viewing. There are some basic aspects of it that I don't like -- thin character development, fairly ridiculous logistical details like Joe and David being able to pilot the helicopter/submarine, bad use of narration -- but the main issue I have is that it doesn't actually have anything interesting to say about artificial intelligence. It really did just seem like a Pinocchio story in sci-fi clothes to me. Granted, there were a couple of scenes that tugged on the heartstrings (particularly the one where Monica leaves David in the woods), but by the end of it, I was not only unmoved, but genuinely happy that it was finally over after what seemed like a completely unnecessary, story-arc/momentum-killing coda.

I'm sure I will lose any of you who like this movie (esp the ending) with that statement. I can't overlook it: the ending took what might have been a decent-to-good modern adaptation of Pinocchio and turned it into a maudlin B-movie. I can't find any reason why that ending *had* to happen, other than to give the *appearance of* a happy ending, or one last chance to tug on the heartstrings. Otherwise, fading out with David and Teddy stuck underwater staring at the fairy statue perfectly closes out the story arc, and gives the film a sadly poetic ending to boot.

And not coincidentally, this is my primary gripe with (late) Spielberg -- he seems unable to make a movie that doesn't conform to old school Hollywood cliché, at the expense of a story that could otherwise be interesting and thought-provoking. Terry Gilliam said it another way, and I paraphrase-- "Spielberg movies give you answers, Kubrick's makes you ask questions."

Heh. The hermetic let's-prove-this-thesis-statement approach to filmmaking is what often repels me about Kubrick, who often directs as if he's going to try, dammit, to force feed the answers.

Nearly 1000 posts on this thread - looks like a must read.

I think the AI advance in the movie is not that science has made a human replica, it's that science has made a creation that is not physically or intellectually but emotionally more human than human. Uncorrupted, unconditional love. Time and time again in the film, he is exposed to the shittiness of human existence. And his reward is an eternity of loneliness while society falls apart around him.

But I'd argue that uncorrupted, unconditional love *isn't* human -- it's exactly what you'd expect out of something that was designed and programmed. It executes something very well, but it is incapable of the kind of contradiction and second-guessing of a human. (And also -- similar to HAL in 2001 -- seems primarily motived by self-interest.) While David's story was tragic, it was hard for me to feel a lot for "him", because I knew he wasn't human. I knew he wasn't capable of actually realizing how deluded he was. In fact, I couldn't even justify calling him "deluded", because he was completely ruled by his imprint to Monica. You can't have tragedy without the notion that it might have been averted had the hero just realized in time, or made different choices. This hero wasn't capable of doing that, so the movie's arc was in a lot of ways pre-determined and anti-climactic.

I mentioned in the dedicated thread, but a recent rewatch of WOTW solidified my opinion that the first half is masterful and easily among Spielberg's all-time best and the second half fizzles out spectacularly and makes me wonder if he didn't just have his nephew direct it so he could catch up on his reading.

yeah, this. the ending is nearly as devastating as anything in an ozu film! it's brutal and terrifyingly sad.

― wizzz! (amateurist), Friday, 29 January 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, 29 January 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

LOL

Everything about WOTW is great except Tim Robbins and the very end.

It executes something very well, but it is incapable of the kind of contradiction and second-guessing of a human

Sure, but I think one thing the movie is asking is whether this is a good thing or a cruel thing. Which is part of its tragedy, that being totally good is his flaw. Anyway, tragedy (at least classically, in the arts) is something that can't be averted. I think the most ingenious, painful thing about the whole story is that William Hurt places him with this family knowing fully well they will fuck it up; he's more interested in watching how David handles it. Is it cruel to be cruel to a creation programmed not to be cruel?

Terry Gilliam hasn't made a motherfucking good movie in 30 years

he seems unable to make a movie that doesn't conform to old school Hollywood cliché, at the expense of a story that could otherwise be interesting and thought-provoking.

tell me how Munich does this, for starters.

Is it cruel to be cruel to a creation programmed not to be cruel?

Yes it is! However, once Hurt's character makes the God-to-Adam comparison *in the first real scene of the movie*, it's obvious to me that he's a cruel, selfish, mad-scientist archetype, and I'm left with a countdown to the inevitably tragic ending. That's just too soon to show your hand in a movie imo.

I'm not saying the concept of this movie is bad -- I'm saying Spielberg made a bad movie out of it.

tell me how Munich does this, for starters.

I need to watch it again. Maybe it doesn't!

As work on special effects got under way, Kubrick reached out to one last author, the English novelist Sara Maitland. She was the only nonscience-fiction writer to work on the project.

He wanted, he told her, a story-teller. "By the time I came to the project it had become enormous, unwieldy, unfocused," said Ms. Maitland. She quickly concluded that the story needed to make emotional sense as a myth or fairy tale, and believes that Kubrick realized this.

Kubrick was fascinated by artificial intelligence and fond of robots, which he regarded as a more environmentally adaptable form of human being.

"He decided to make this film because he wanted people to shift to a more positive view of A.I.," Ms. Maitland said. "He was quite open to me about that.

He said, 'I think of them as I'd like to think of my great-grandchildren.' And he's very fond of his grandchildren."

Kubrick also was adamant that the story work in terms of myth. "He never referred to the film as 'A.I.'; he always called it 'Pinocchio,' " Ms. Maitland said.

It was the relationship between David and his mother that most occupied Kubrick and Ms. Maitland. An alcoholic whose Bloody Marys David would mix for her in a vain attempt to win her affection, the mother was the emotional center of the film.

At the story's conclusion, the robots that have inherited the Earth use David's memories to reconstruct, in virtual form, the apartment where he had lived with his parents. Because his memories are subjective, the mother is much more vividly realized than the father, and his stepsister's room is not there at all; it is just a hole in the wall.

For Ms. Maitland, the film would end with David preparing a Bloody Mary for his mother, the juice a brighter red than in real life: "He hears her voice, and that's it. We don't see him turn to see her." Kubrick, however, wanted a coda in which the new race of robots, because of a technological limitation, cannot keep the the mother alive after reviving her. The movie would end with David in his mother's bedroom, watching her slowly disappear.

Ms. Maitland hated this, and was furious with Kubrick for insisting on it. "It must have been a very strong visual thing for him," she says, "because he wasn't usually stupid about story. He hired me because I knew about fairy stories, but would not listen when I told him, 'You can have a failed quest, but you can't have an achieved quest and no reward.' "

https://partners.nytimes.com/library/film/071899kubrick-ai.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz7sPiOoU7A

For Ms. Maitland, the film would end with David preparing a Bloody Mary for his mother

if it'd been a Hendrick's martini it would've been Spielberg's masterpiece.

can't see the video link [work blocked] -- but re: the story above, like I say, the concept itself could have resulted in a good movie imo. I don't think Spielberg made one.

But I'd argue that uncorrupted, unconditional love *isn't* human

this is part of what makes the movie so strange and compelling and hard to watch imo. there's something profoundly discomfiting about its intensity.

(like, there's an implication we're more comfortable with robot parts of ourselves rather than the raw open wound of longing that david personifies)

well, it can be, until children become fully 'human'. xxp

that's a good point as well.

i've come around to the aliens/robots (was this ever settled?) at the end because there's something tragically pathetic about their veneration of humans...

this is part of what makes the movie so strange and compelling and hard to watch imo. there's something profoundly discomfiting about its intensity.

there were parts that were eerie to me, like the scene where David walks in on his double at Hurt's office. He smashes the face off in a fit of jealous/protective rage, and in moments like those, it's clear that because he isn't human, you don't quite know what he's capable of. Again reminiscent of HAL in 2001, and I think had there been a lot more uncertainty like that in the movie, I'd have been more engaged

robots, created by humans iirc. or descended from robots created by humans.

thus the veneration.

xp

i just do not get how anyone can think the ending of A.I. is a "happy ending." what's happy about it? it's so sad.

that said, i have not seen it since 2001. but i remember the ending being incredibly cathartic. i was nearly shaking when it was over. there aren't many times a movie has done that to me (ordet is another one). and i'm no spielberg partisan.