Steven Spielberg - classic or dud

ah, "action films" again

I've read that line, and to a degree you're right, but her strength gets exactly one scene to show itself: the bar scene. The rest of the movie Spielberg punishes her for it.

xpost

I do like the ending, though, where they are both tied together and clearly both scared shitless.

Steven Spielberg has found his next directing project: an adaptation of American Sniper, the autobiography of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, which is set up at Warner Bros.

Bradley Cooper is attached to star and has been developing the project as a producer.

gross

normally i'd say ugh yuck get it away, but i actually kind of trust spielberg at this point in his career to do something interesting with that.

with Bradley Cooper? that guy is such a worthless sack of shit

it's hard for me to imagine how it could be good, but i guess i should trust spielby

^^ xp

ZDT pt. 2 - get ready, internet.

i look fwd to glenn greenwald's 2,300 word 'i haven't seen it, but' review.

is Spielberg hate ilx'S MOST BORING MANIA? even w/ ethan gone?

im closer to a spielberg apologist than hater. but chris kyle... ugh

ilx seems fairly pro-spielberg these days

basically everyone just said that they dont like the idea but they trust spielberg dude

is consistently misreading other posters ilx'S MOST BORING MANIA?

gimme a hug

Yeah I love Spielberg but given the material I'm not sure he's going to pull off what I'd like.

Spielberg should make a movie out of "Where Men Win Glory," the Pat Tillman book, instead.

the Chris Kyle book has lots of opportunities for both first-20 minutes of SPR action and maudlin homefront stuff
there's no real narrative hook to it, though - he doesn't overcome anything, we don't even win the war; he was a very good shot who killed a lot of people and was apparently good at being a SEAL for his entire career.

Well he was shot and killed at a gun range. I

So you know he overcame "life"

On Saturday, February 2, 2013, Kyle and a companion, Chad Littlefield, were shot and killed at the Rough Creek Lodge shooting range in Erath County, Texas[16] by 25-year-old fellow veteran Eddie Ray Routh, whom Kyle and Littlefield had purportedly taken to the gun range in an effort to help him with his post traumatic stress disorder.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a8/It_Seemed_Like_a_Good_Idea_at_the_Time.jpg

weird. I hadn't made the connection that the victim was the one who had written the book.

Clint will do it, so I hope you're happy that a guy who hasn't made a good film in a decade or so has taken over.

http://twitchfilm.com/2013/08/breaking-eastwood-to-replace-spielberg-on-american-sniper.html

I'm ecstatic.

wtf, quit thrashing around for ilx villains to hate

what a disaster for snipers

changeling is underrated imho - weird cross between mildred pierce and texas chainsaw massacre - quite unlike anything else in clint's filmog, quite unlike most american movies made these days

wow this is gonna be awful

i mean, when was the last time spielberg actually made a film that was surprising or off-the-wall in any way - eastwood takes more chances, still, for gd or bad (fwiw gran torino was an abomination, but in a weird way it was much more engaged w/ the 21st century than anything spielberg has given us since...)

xxpost

Agreed. Changeling is an oddly enjoyable hysterical-woman melodrama.

i mean, when was the last time spielberg actually made a film that was surprising or off-the-wall in any way - eastwood takes more chances, still, for gd or bad (fwiw gran torino was an abomination, but in a weird way it was much more engaged w/ the 21st century than anything spielberg has given us since...)

― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, August 21, 2013 3:01 PM (41 seconds ago) Bookmark

munich
war of the worlds

when was the last time clint eastwood made a film that wasn't total shit

1976?

will reluctantly concede wotw (as a kind of wonky post 9/11 panic attack w/ only minorly troubling survivalist/dianetical undercurrents), but munich seemed to me to be as much a part of his self-consciously 'majestic-mythic' representation of the past - second world war/holocaust/slavery etc - as anything more forward-looking. but you know what it's like when you're not a fan, you're not looking for the gd in their work...

but gran torino IS a forward-looking movie? a story about the good ol' days of racism and classic cars??

munich seemed to me to be as much a part of his self-consciously 'majestic-mythic' representation of the past

Did you SEE the movie?

gran torino does try - in the worst most hamfisted way possible - to grapple w/issues of race and white rage and old age etc etc - when was the last time spielberg made a film recognisably set in 'the present'?

i did indeed see munich, thanks.

And you still think it was a "'majestic-mythic' representation of the past?" I'm not about to tell anyone how to interpret movies, but if I had to produce a list of 100 things that Munich was, that'd be #101.

when was the last time spielberg made a film recognisably set in 'the present'

WOTW

^^^

i meant w/out the flying saucers or aliens or whatever! you know american families (his best 'area of interest') really looked at in the here-and-now of today w/out the crutch of fantasy, or a recourse to the past (which i really do think tends towards the mythic, precisely because his mise-en-scene is so accomplished) - what's he got to lose??

i always seem to get battered the most when i venture criticisms of spielberg on ilx!!

I don't think a genre-film setting is a crutch.

socki otm

much more engaged w/ the 21st century

9/11 trilogy of Munich, WOTW, The Terminal

spielberg without his "crutches" is often when he gets the most bathetic/unbearable, i think. his crutches sorta allow for some genuine weirdness and imagination that i dont think he'd allow himself otherwise.

xpost

think genre is a bit of crutch for spielberg - it's where he runs for cover every time

dunno if Lincoln counts as majestic-mythic recreation of the corrupt House and devious Abe.

i have to confess i haven't seen the terminal - it looked easily as ill-judged as gran torino