Steven Spielberg - classic or dud

always is junk but spielberg really pumps that sucker full of movie magic. the filmmaking is virtuosic but there's no restraint (Lincoln really makes you appreciate how far he's come in that respect) - so you're sorta getting his best and worst, in that you see what happens when he uses his full powers on unredeemable material. there's some great, exciting parts that you cant imagine anyone doing better, but the story just doesn't deserve it.

all yall complaining about bad hacking scenes in skyfall need to appreciate the master of bad hacking scenes in jurassic park

it was the '90s

1.5 years after this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doAnB5_eDnw

she doesn't hack anything in jurassic park she just uses a computer w an admittedly goofy GUI. like, there are no pop-ups where skulls laugh at you. it is in fact a unix system. now there IS that pop-up in an earlier scene where a cartoon of wayne knight laughs at samuel l jackson but that sets up a great slj delivery ("PLEASE!") so it's excused.

The full quote is, iirc, "PLEASE! God, I hate this hacker crap!"

if spielberg makes a movie about samuel l jackson fighting kid unix hackers, all manner of sins will be excused.

SLJ smoking in Jurassic Park was one of the last times we saw anyone do it (a) indoors (b) in front of children

debating his merits.

Tom Carson: If you compare my two pieces, it should be obvious that I think more highly of Schindler's List than I do of SPR. My problems with the former have to do with how the third act does, in my view, shunt aside the horror of mass death in favor of sentimentality about the handful of people Schindler saved. To my mind, there's an equation between that red coat and Dorothy's red ruby slippers—she's The One—and what about the thousands of children sent to the gas chambers who got stuck wearing gray that day? I'm as grateful as anyone that Anne Frank is famous because we have her testimony. But at some level, to single out an individual victim of the Holocaust is to deny the horror of its anonymity. Like, if the kid hadn't been so noticeable—and sorry, but she's as cute and tough as Shirley Temple, guiding our responses somewhat—Schindler's conscience wouldn't have been stirred?

By and large—because I do admire how Goeth is characterized, and we'll get to that—I also don't agree with you that the movie is really all that informative about the nature of anti-Semitism or how the Holocaust came to be, since a viewer without prior awareness wouldn't find much that explains either. Its power comes from re-creating the Holocaust's atrocities so intensely that you feel you're watching—or, if you're susceptible, almost experiencing—the real thing. That bothers me. We have a lot of newsreel documentation of the actual camps, and the paradox is that Spielberg's very scrupulous and horrific facsimile ends up having more authority for the audience because it's superior as filmmaking. There's something disturbing about the fake version replacing the documentary one at that level.

Matt Zoller Seitz: I don't agree. Where Spielberg excels is where narrative cinema itself excels: at helping you understand the physical, visceral experience of going through something, whether it's a mundane contemporary moment or some grand historical turning point. Where Spielberg flounders, I think, is when his films are trying to hard to put things in perspective, to put a frame around it. The strongest section of Amistad for me is that flashback to the Middle Passage, which conveys the full physical as well as moral (immoral) reality of the slave trade better than any mainstream American film or TV production ever had. The lived experience of being under fire and seeing people blown up around you is the most valuable and memorable part of Saving Private Ryan, although that film's "men on a mission" template tends to turn a story with Apocalypse Now/Dr. Strangelove absurdist aspects into something that feels, or plays, much more conventionally. The guys argue about the logic or necessity of saving this one guy, but the movie makes it clear from the very beginning that they're risking soldiers' lives for a symbolic or PR gesture. And even at the end, the film has a deceptively complex/simple way of asking if it was all worth it: it's concluding, I think, "Yes, it was worth it, in that they saved this one guy's life, and that's what you can take out of it—and maybe it's the only unambiguously positive thing to come out of it all."

But you're still aware that almost everyone else in the platoon died, and they all had lives, too, lives that were just as valuable as Ryan's.

The film is bracketed with those cemetery scenes, which are admittedly very sentimental and perhaps unnecessary from a plot standpoint, but even those aren't as straightforward as they initially read. We start and end with an image of the American flag, but it's not a robust, pristine, poster-ready image of a flag. The flag is tattered, and the sun is behind it. You see the flag, but you also see through the flag, a multi-valent image that might be—as odd as this sounds!—too subtle for the intended audience. Visually Spielberg is incredibly subtle, even when he's being loud and spectacular, but those kinds of subtleties tend to get lost in the din.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/steven-spielberg-hollywood-historian-a-debate-between-matt-zoller-seitz-and-tom-carson

My problems with the former have to do with how the third act does, in my view, shunt aside the horror of mass death in favor of sentimentality

This is the context that makes the ending of AI so powerful and weird.

I hope you're not saying that ending is sentimental.

it's overtly sentimental, it's certainly framed as sentimental--but it's harrowing and despairing. i think i said elsewhere around here that it falls into the "uncanny valley" of happy endings.

i almost feel what MZS is talking about there, Spielberg's great talent for the "qualia" of visceral experience, is what makes that scene (and the rest of AI) so discomfiting and compelling. almost as if kubrick wanted spielberg to direct it just because he knew that quality would put the movie over the top.

from the comments:

DAVID CONRAD | MARCH 19, 2013 4:56 PMREPLY

I found Seitz's comment about Spielberg working in the "Stanley Kramer vein" of "glossy Hollywood entertainment" a bit difficult to understand. Kramer's Holocaust movie, "Judgment at Nuremberg," is a strikingly unglossy film that includes several minutes of actual concentration camp footage. Those images cause the mostly-theatrical violence in "Schindler's List" to fade from memory. But in Kramer's movie the Holocaust footage, however powerfully disturbing, is not essential to the story. It could have been excised without sacrificing any of the script's quality, but what would "Schindler's List" be without the Red Dress girl and the shower scene?

Both films explore issues of collective guilt and individual responsibility, but "Judgment" has the wider, more challenging sample size. The German cast includes uneducated housekeepers, jurists conversant in American legal theory, and an aristocratic widow in addition to unrepentant Nazis. Contrast Marlene Dietrich or Max Schell's characters in "Judgment" with the almost cartoonish depiction of Goeth in "Schindler's List." "Judgment" knows full well the horrors the Nazis committed, and presents them to us in unvarnished fashion, but it also asks us to think about blame. The farthest "Schindler" goes down this road, I think, is to prompt us to wonder what we would have done in the title character's place. How much more true that is of "Judgment," which asks us to imagine ourselves in a variety of different social positions, and as both accused and accuser. Kramer aims for and hits a much higher mark than does Spielberg.

TC: But even when people find fault with a particular movie of his, he's on a sort of hallowed plane I mistrust. Interestingly, in my experience, that's especially true among younger movie buffs -- who might be expected to think of Spielberg as an oldie and, you know, chafe a bit. Instead, he seems to be a hallowed figure to them, the guy who defines what movies can be.

carson makes some good points in there, but I don't know what planet he's living on here - Spielberg's probably as uncool now as he's ever been. it was a little aggravating during award season to read so many people dismissing Lincoln as boring manipulative Oscar bait, and then go on to praise Argo in the next sentence. spielberg's style has become increasingly unfashionable, whereas Affleck is tuned into the 'moment' - i think he's a far worse panderer than spielberg (in terms of degree and in terms of ability), but he's one that people just accept at face value right now for whatever reason

otm

totes otes

dud beyond dud

Contrast Marlene Dietrich or Max Schell's characters in "Judgment" with the almost cartoonish depiction of Goeth in "Schindler's List."

are you fucking serious

at best I would accept (with proof required) that Amon Goeth is as cartoonish as Dietrick and Schell.

thinking of 'argo' and spielberg makes me think of 'munich', which has its flaws but is so well-executed and disturbing in places. it makes 'argo' look so lightweight and easy to digest (which it is.)

Munich is dark, majestic, conflicted, difficult and virtuosic.

Argo is a nice, 20-second double dutch routine.

i like the neat trick argo pulls of making high-powered producers into heroes and PAs into villains.

Union workers literally getting in the way of very important phone calls.

lol

that scene... just the worst

On the other hand: wealthy Dems like Affleck just being themselves.

munich owns so hard. i dont think that movie gets its due

seitz brings up spielberg the showman vs spielberg the artist, and i think that push-and-pull tension is most vivid in Schindler's List - which is why i like it so much. carson's point about the shower scene becoming "grotesque at the moment the women greet real water coming out of the showerheads with ululations of relief" is well taken, and i say that as someone who was never too persuaded by hoberman's criticism of that scene, but i still love the chutzpah of staging an auschwitz gas chamber scene like something out of Jaws. by the time he made Lincoln, which i liked a lot, he was too self-conscious to pull a move like that... closest he gets is the theater fakeout at the end

arkin said 'argo fuck yourself' so many times i thought the sad coda was going to be that he'd developed dementia

munich is basically the standard by which '70s geopolitical thrillers should be measured. i think the only better film in recent years in the same genre is probs 'carlos'

arkin said 'argo fuck yourself' so many times i thought the sad coda was going to be that he'd developed dementia

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Wednesday, March 20, 2013 2:26 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol

A helluva montage: audio of Arkin saying "argo fuck yourself" as Lincoln walks into Ford's Theater, Seward holds the Emancipation Proclamation in awe, and Donald Sutherland as X on the park bench saying, "In that document. Lay the Vietnam War."

Cut to title COMING SOON

really, read what Kael had to say about Abby Mann (the writer of the teleplay and film of Judgment at Nuremberg) sometime. He accepted his Oscar "on behalf of intellectuals everywhere."

http://www.indiewire.com/survey/the-spielberg-survey/

Film: JAWS
Direction: JAWS
Lead Performance: Daniel Day-Lewis, LINCOLN
Supporting Performance: Ralph Fiennes, SCHINDLER'S LIST
Scene: JAWS (various)
Shot: JAWS (various)
Hero: RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK
Villain: SCHINDLER'S LIST
Screenplay: LINCOLN
Score/Soundtrack: JAWS
Worst Film: HOOK

"we have top men working on this survey"

Hook as the worst? It's definitely a bad one, but The Lost World and Always are way worse. wanna say The Terminal is on that level too but I kinda don't trust the viewing I had of it.

re-screened SPR - not as sappy as I remembered but the last half kinda drags. a lot.

"we have top men working on this survey"

This line reads so kinky to me now.

top. men.

We (heh, heh) are not sehr-stee.

Spielberg was being interviewed by Kermode a few months ago and he admitted that he hopes to one day find something he likes about Hook.

is it really that bad? i saw it again a couple years ago and actually kinda dug it. but it was new year's eve and i was pretty hungover so my standards were fairly low.

I think the most effective lead performances in his oeuvre may be by Henry Thomas and Christian Bale.

hook is pretty horrible, the whole thing plays like the dwarf dinner in 'the hobbit' but with worse songs and even hammier acting, if possible.

bale is really good in empire of the sun! ben stiller also surprisingly malevolent.

Bale's best perf, period, is in EOTS.

I'm glad The Sugarland Express got some support down in that all-important #12-15 range in a number of categories.

what women got top billing in Spielberg films? Goldie Hawn, Dee Wallace, Holly Hunter?

Hmm, top billing? Sally Field? Kate Capshaw? Laura Dern?

It's a good question, though I would contend that Karen Allen in "Raiders" is one of the formative Hollywood strong woman roles.

I mean first. Although Hawn is arguably the only one who is the star of the film.

formative? in a retro film? after Hollywood had kinda fucking died?

surely Ebert musta wrote about Bette Davis once in a while?

what women got top billing in Spielberg films? Goldie Hawn, Dee Wallace, Holly Hunter?

Whoopi Goldberg