Steven Spielberg - classic or dud

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Being that we own like 600 DVDs and go through at least 3-4 netflix movies a week, we do like us some crap, but the only Spielbergs we have are EOTS, Duel, and the Indy box. Point being: he blows ass.

I do own Traffic. It's not a superwatchable excitement popfest, no, but as an amalgam of a few short slice-fo-life novellas made into an epic, it's great, and beautiful to watch and listen to. I'm a sucker for the sustained chords in Benicio's ballpark at the end.

I think what everybody on this thread needs to do is go rent Buffalo Soldiers and see where Lee AND Spielberg have completely missed the fuck out.

As for SS, he's pretty great through Raiders and progressively spottier since.

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I'm partial to Buffalo Soldiers because that's about 50% or more of our active duty military, especially during peacetime, so as long as guys like NRQ want to request more "convincing war movies" why not show a little bit of the real fucking deal?

Have you ever DONE drugs, Eric? More importantly, have you ever been on speed?

And Requiem wasn't 'sex with a black man' it was 'doing a double-dildo scene on a mirrored coffee table in front of a bunch of Wall Street fuckers.'

I've got no intentions of rewatching any of those three movies again anytime soon, mind you, but at least I remember shit that happened in them and felt affected by the events depicted, which is more than I can say for anything our thread topic man has done since he did that one movie with our very own Alba, I think he was 10 or 11 at the time?

also i've never seen a spielberg movie that made me want to talk about it. there is a good article on war of the worlds in the new york review of books though -- it didn't make me want to see the movie, but it made me want to reread the book but i think they ran the article coz they're selling reprints of the gorey illustrated version of the book.

wait.. i forgot that i heart the indy films too. they're totally funny.

The 'sex with a black man' came before that, and was the deciding moment in her basically turning into a drug whore.

And yes, it's very enlightened to say it doesn't matter what race they were, but it was still two young pretty white women having sex with black men for drugs, in both cases being clearly presented as depths-to-which-drugs-will-make-you-sink. And realistic? It was realistic that the rich suburban princess in Traffic went from honor student to ghetto crackhead in two weeks or whatever? It was like the worst reefer-madness hysteria imaginable.

plus spielberg is abt setpieces and sodenb really isnt, i prefer the latter cuz sexier but this is apples and oranges, like hitchcock vs ford

but above i only meant if you want to cf spielberg w anyone it shd be something anon like disney. like maybe steve year to year hasnt made anything as great as the incredibles, in awhile but maybe we cld be more rigorous abt our weight classes?

well, are there any biopics about public figures that aren't kinda like high-school filmstrips? you have to admit it's light-years ahead of "nixon."

i mean schindler's list sorta opened the floodgates to emotionally manipulative holocaust flix -- jacob the liar, that one about the piano player (i think it was called "the jew who played piano good"? no, that wasn't it) if you want to stretch it, "life is beautiful" and etc. came out the same year as swing kids too.

same argt. can go for maybe a few of his other big blockbusters? like if nothing else he was the first to be that audacious. that was the dinosaur lure fersure -- i.e. we can take something outrageously schlocky that conjures up claymation and make it EXCITING and SHINY.

like once he taps that inner sap potential, everyone can follow suit, but until he comes up with the formula, it doesn't seem so obvious? or at least achivable?

well, any ray harryhausen dinosaur movie is at least as good as JP, but i think the last one came out in like 1970. so i guess you're right actually. but i don't think the concept of a "dinosaur movie" is inherently schlocky!