A.I. - any good or not?

ok that post is less otm than i suggested but i mainly want to say the ending is good

couldn't get through the whole thing tonight but the first 50 minutes of this thing are exquisite and heartbreaking. haley joel osment going "no. no no no no no" is maybe the most awful i've ever felt during a film

also my god the cinematography

Came in here to defend Allen Iverson. Now disappointed.

I saw this film when it first came out but the only thing I can remember about it now is the really cool alternate reality game that went with it.

“is 50 years... a long time?”

“i don’t think so.”

ok yeah “spielbergien wussiness” is completely wrong-headed, this movie isn’t sentimental it’s emotionally unsparing. it also has a ton of contempt for the rich

I think the scene with David shoving spinach into his mouth to gain love from his mother until his face starts melting off is a perfect microcosm of this movie.

Everytime I see this I feel different things. It’s his Vertigo. Perverse self examination that could be picked over forever.

The ending is absolutely crucial. Never grasped the simple mawkish reading. It’s primally bleak. One of the great movie endings.

It's among the best movies ever made.

I should also step back from the sentimental/horror dichotomy. It’s a lot of these things simultaneously. I think it is messy and awkward. And heartbreaking, mythic, and self-annihilating. In totally fluctuating levels. But that’s what makes it.

When you have the big E.T./Amblin moon rise for the first time gloriously and it turns out to be an agent of destruction... you kinda know.

I agree that this is one of if not the best, and far and away the most fascinating and interesting movie by a major director of the 21st century so far. Has easily the 2 singular best performances in any modern film I've seen in Haley Joel Osment's David (still unfathomable to me that such a labyrinthian performance was produced by an 11-12 year old!) and the still to this day criminally underrated Frances O'Connor as his "mother" Monica (one of the rawest and most devastating performances in any film I've ever seen). I'm not one to usually comment or care much about the "INTENSITY" or Academy Award worthiness of actors performances in movies I watch, as that is so far down the totem pole about what usually interests me most in films (especially high concept Sci Fi like this)... but those 2 main performances are truly incredible, and they are so so integral to the movie as a whole. I can't imagine this movie with a different actor in either part having even a fraction of the visceral impact that it does with them.

Your first post circa is absolutely OTM; you can intensely feel something entirely different and find a dozen different things in it that've burrowed into your skull to pick over endlessly on every viewing. I don't disagree that the ending is totally obliterating and very dark (the whole film is in general!), but I don't think the surface sentimentality of it is an incorrect reading or simple window dressing to disguise the horror and darker implications of what's going on. The constant juxtaposition of those sometimes schmaltzy but always intense and honest feelings of wonder, sentimentality, and the wanting and need for love intrinsic to a child's "human" experience against the ceaselessly dark and eventually apocalyptic backdrop of the film's world constantly bearing down against them is a feature, not a bug or distraction, and wholly intended IMO. It's what gives this film its great and terrible power to evoke so many different and intense feelings so candidly.

OTM. Love this film.

The ending is absolutely crucial. Never grasped the simple mawkish reading. It’s primally bleak. One of the great movie endings.

― circa1916, Tuesday, June 9, 2020 8:08 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

fiercely otm

but also trevor is right too

i think about this movie all the time, but oddly have seen it only once. need to revisit.

I have been fighting the good fight for this movie since it came out but I don't think I've watched it in at least a decade...there's something deeply, foundationally, unnerving about it. In Freudian terms, it's where unheimlich meets melancholia.

I think a lot of people don't get the movie, in part, because they fail to get that it has a rare instance of a diegetic narrator -- he's speaking to an audience within the film itself. (Sort of.) (But it's still important.)

though it's overly reductive of both their sensibilities, the kubrick vs spielberg thing that gets read into this movie is somewhat of a handy way to describe the tension at its heart. intention doesn't matter, but if spielberg intends a "happy" ending then this is like staring in the blinding white light of emotional need in a way that's so hard to stomach, not unlike Lear going mad at the death of Cordelia.

I love this film. I didn't read the ending as bleak, I read it as something profoundly alien and basically incomprehensible. But I haven't seen the movie since it came out, need to revisit.

Loved it when I watched it last year, & realized I'd completely misunderstood the ending when it came out.

Watch me forever seems to be completely shut down. I miss your crazy antics Kakler!

suspended due to this mishap: https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3pymx/ai-generated-seinfeld-show-nothing-forever-banned-on-twitch-after-transphobic-standup-bit

I did like it quite a bit, faults and all. It's one of those things that gets really overrated by people who love it to counter the hate from the haters. Should watch this again.

rewatched this movie this week after not seeing it since it first came out and it's so weird and incredible and sad. the effects and makeup are amazing and haley joel osment's performance is miraculous. there are maybe 10-15 minutes that could be trimmed out of the middle but overall i was blown away. this is so obvious i probably don't need to say it, given the textual pinocchio parallels, but it feels like a fairy tale in the sense of the original brothers grimm/charles perrault sense of having this innocent character who is tortured by terrible and horrific life circumstances for 90% of the story.

going back and reading old posts above clarified for me how the movie has a surface-level mawkishness and also a deep undercurrent of pure tragedy somehow simultaneously. it's a fucked-up movie

otm

it's a fucked-up movie

deeply

im gonna pretentiously quote my own old pretentious post because i still kinda like this idea: there's something deeply, foundationally, unnerving about it. In Freudian terms, it's where unheimlich meets melancholia

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the world."

was glad to see Jonathan Rosenbaum had this on this Sight and Sound list...he was a very lone voice in its favor when it came out.

Didn’t Jim Hoberman like it too or am I misremembering?

I don't remember! I do remember Armond White loving it too.

this and eyes wide shut were the big critical fights i took an interest in during my early cinephilia.

According to the ballots, it just missed making the top 250

xp same, plus Femme Fatale

Let us revisit: https://www.villagevoice.com/2001/06/26/the-mommy-returns/

"Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence is less a movie than a seething psychological bonanza."

hell yeah it is.

Femme Fatale was good too, as Eric seems to be pointing out. It’s currently not available to stream on any service according to JustWatch.

Is there any movie that lays bare the dark heart of the fairytale better than the one this thread is about, intentionally or otherwise, although I charitably assume Spielberg did intend it, all of which somebody probably said way better than me a few posts up.

intention doesn't seem to matter if you're gonna be this psychologically exhibitionist whilst retaining artistic control. it's quite a feat. might be a good double feature with Fabelmans. it also feels spiritually akin to vertigo for me.