Steven Spielberg post-1993: Vote for the best

He never knows when to stop with the schmaltz and the bludgeoning metaphors, otherwise I'd say SPR (first act is easily the best war cinema of all time) or Munich (end doesn't obviate the rest, say, but comes damn close to doing so). This leaves Minority Report & WOTW, both of which are A+++++ sci-fi thrillers (xcept for the annoying Cruise factor, but I can deal). Hmm.. I'll go with Minority Report.

Minority Report seconded.

SPR never did anything for me. Munich I've yet to see. Crystal Skulls was awful. AI seems like Minority Report for kids with Jude Law, so no.

Catch Me If You Can is good fun without any baggage (do you see) so that.

Minority Report thirded. I remember the hype over talented newcomer Colin Farrell back then.

I'd say the first act of WOTW is really good but it gets real dull. A.I. is the shittiest of them all.

The only one of these I haven't seen is The Terminal, which I can only presume is the shittiest of them all.

(Qualifier: I am one of those freaks who thinks this is a very rewarding section of Spielberg's career.)

Dunno if yr of the particular mindset, Eric H, but I'm open to critical re-evaluations of A.I.. I've only seen it once, shortly after it came out. I had just arrived back in the States from a trans-Atlantic flight & proceeded to get very stoned w/ a friend & we went to see it. As such, my memory of it is faint, but my impression at the time was that it was aesthetically rich, but too guarded with respect to the Kubrick legacy for its own good. I wouldn't mind reapproaching it, epecially after reading Noel Murray's take on it here.

AI is nearly as clever as it thinks it is.

first act is easily the best war cinema of all time

It's great but it's not THAT great. I suppose it depends on what you mean by war cinema.

OK, so I guess not "easily," but based on what I've seen, the extended Normandy beach scene contains what I can imagine would be the most verisimilitude that war-fiction has to offer but, then again, I've never been "in the shit."

SPR inspired the normandy landing level in Call of Duty, which is probably the most visceral gaming experience I've ever had.

Oh no doubt about it it is great on that level.

tbh I didn't even realise he did WOTW, one of the very few films I have walked out (of the living room) on because of aforementioned Cruise irritation.

I can't decide, I kind of really like JP2. It's fun.

xpost the me/NT - I'll tell you what though: I recently watched Ken Burns' WW2 opus & it made me realize the attention to detail that Spielberg put into that scene. It really is fucking uncanny how similar to actual war footage it is.

I'm with Eric: this is a particularly rich part of his artistic career. The Lonsdale sequences in Munich, for example, have a sophistication – the use of irony and reliance on clever dialogue – you don't expect from Spielberg. I'm very happy with Saving Private Ryan sans the bookends; also War of the Worlds and Minority Report.

Amistad is the only one of these I can't remember thinking was all that great, but when it came out I was still (to my sort-of shame) nuts over Titanic and nothing else in theaters compared.

WotW and Munich are, for me, the best of Spielberg's single-year pop/serious diptychs.

I watched 'Catch me if you can' again the other day. Lighthearted stuff but a lot of fun.

xpost : I would argue for MR/CMIYC in 2002. But can MR be considered "serious?"

Also (to clarify my first post) - I think Munich is brilliant. One of the best films of that year. But the {SPOILER WARNING} fucking/hostage-shooting montage at the end really pissed me off. Kind of like the girl in the red dress in Shindler's List. I just wanted to grab the guys shoulders and shake him & let him know: "We get it already. You've made a film for the times. Leave it to us to read between the lines."

Munich by a pretty healthy margin over AI, Amistad, WotW, Ryan.

Whatever gets my vote here won't have gotten it by a "healthy margin."

I kind of like that this grouping is now bookended with two entertaining but basically unnecessary franchise installments.

yeah, neither of those will likely be part of the discussion.

all the others have more serious flaws than Munich.

Dinosaurs II is the only one I haven't seen, and the latest Indy is easily the weakest of the rest. Tho admittedly it's nowhere as godawful as the last 20 mins of Minority Report.

Pvt Ryan gets all its credit for being explicit, which is all that keeps it (after the opening sequence) from being a very long update of WW2 movies like A Walk in the Sun.

"Pvt Ryan" is nothing after the opening sequence.

But that (the opening sequence) alone justifies its greatness.

voting for munich. haven't seen private ryan (or wotw), and i don't remember much about minority report besides lots of white surfaces and blinking lights. a.i. and crystal skull are terrible.

xxp

noo, that final part with the sniper guy in the tower describing the position of the oncoming germans, and the only thing the audience was aware of was the thundering sound of tank tracks, was intense.

If Spielberg made "short films," well then whatever.. but he paints in broad strokes only, so it unfortunately becomes necessary to edit his films for him.

totally forgot he did the terminal. i saw it in a hotel room and it sucked me in, but it's not a great movie or anything.

I've seen zero of these movies. I haven't specifically avoided them because of Spielberg, but none of these looked even vaguely interesting. Am I missing something?

xxxpost: yes, I forgot about that. you are correct.

xpost: yes

voted wotw, which was pretty scary and good except for the scenes with acting, but i haven't seen pvt. ryan or munich or amistad

i will admit to enjoying the "light" films on this list, ie the terminal and catch me if you can

indiana jones is the only one i can remember actively hating, though i think maybe a.i. pissed me off too

but Tom Cruise acting is pretty scary!

TLW - Noisy and incoherant with flashes of vintage Spielbergian tension.
Amistad - Saw it on telly once, think I found it OK but overlong and a little preachy.
SPR - Best first 20 minutes ever, rest of the film pointless.
A.I. - Lovely first act, some nice ideas all the way through but a mess.
Minority Report - Would be an absolute cracker without the final act.
CMiYC - Great fun the first time, tiresome the second.
The Terminal - Very poor. A good idea for a movie, but the tone is woefully misjudged.
WotW - Really overrated. Nice effects though.
Munich - The only one I haven't seen, and the best of the lot from what I gather.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Cock - Just stop it.

I think it goes to Minority Report, on balance.

The Terminal and Catch Me If You Can are light only on the surface, which is all that Spielberg-dissers tend to see.

so you would agree that they are "light"

Minority Report isn't my least favorite on this list (that's probably Amistad or Catch Me If You Can), but I think it's problems might be the most crippling.

(And it's got a far less risky/raw Cruise performance, too.)

still the only Colin Farrell film I like too.

Not a New World fan either, huh Alfred?

when it gets the inevitable director's cut release, I'll watch it again (or has it got a director's cut release already?).

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51nlL%2Bwd8XL._SS500_.jpg

which one is Farrell?

(I just went to his filmography to try to come up with any other titles, but Miami Vice and Phone Booth were the only two good ones I pulled up. I'm probably in the minority for liking those ones.)

mohawk, bro

(xpost)

DiCaprio's Catch character is more authentically tragic than whatever the fuck was sposed to be going on with him in The Departed.

You know Morbs, you've almost perfected that Armond-driven "praise unpopular X by bashing popular Y" impersonation.

That is because there is irony involved in The Departed (multiple shootings, rat on the railing at the end etc.)

irony /= bad jokes

A.I. Artificial Intelligence is my second favorite film of the decade so that.

Eric, i think comparing a truly "light," insubstantial fireworks show starring the Brandon deWilde of our time to another of his starring vehicles -- which isn't seen as IMPORTANT because it's an effective comedy -- is legit.

xxpost: I was not making a joke. LD'Cs character in teh Departed is not supposed to be sympathetic.

Brandon DeWilde was hot, though.

xpost: wait, no, I guess he is. But all that is undercut by the scenes at the end of the film, so the nihilistic emptiness trumps whataver sympathy were supposed to have for his character.

The most nihilistically empty thing about The Departed was that it got made.

o snap!

(I just went to his filmography to try to come up with any other titles, but Miami Vice and Phone Booth were the only two good ones I pulled up. I'm probably in the minority for liking those ones.)

HA, I loved Miami Vice probably waaay more than I should have.

AI by far for me. Prob Munich second. I have blathered about AI all over these boards for many years now...

SPR is pretty shitty. I think i also wrote this somewhere else but it basically raises an ethical dilemma only to run away from it.

Miami Vice looks gorgeous, but broods too much.

I wanted whether diplomatic immunity allowed Gong Li to enter Cuban territory for mojitos.

xp: not possible!

I want guns/action/death equally intermixed with heavy posturing in my Mann films!

I didn't see it, bcz it was called Miami Vice

If you won't listen to me anymore, Morbs, I know you at least still listen to Keith U. ... maybe.

Catch Me If You Can. If Minority Report hadn't had such an awful stupid ending, it would be that. I really liked that film.

I always listen to you! but I don't read Keith that much, tho I like most of his Spielberg-related stuff. His claims for Crystal Skull were a bit much tho.

I always listen to you!

As an anti-barometer, I understand.

(p.s Dr. Morbs) I know the defenition of "irony" - it's like 10,000 spoons, when all you need is a knife, or something else Winona Ryder said to that one lady.

voted Lost World cos while it is admittedly weak compared to the first, by the time the godzilla stuff was happening i was just having a blast watching the shit hit the fan

I havent seen any of these. How is that possible?

pathological Spielberg aversion?

maybe. the last i remeber seeing was the first jurassic park and quite frankly CGI dinosaurs scare the shit out of me

also dawson leary's spielberg obsession

TLW - pretty empty and cynical-feeling
Amistad - blah
SPR - i really did like this but i feel like spielberg and hanks topped it several times over with 'band of brothers'
A.I. - good ideas, great looking, but not truly great or anything
Minority Report - yeah that final act takes it down some, i don't like sci-fi films that take their twists from "l.a. confidential"
CMiYC - good
The Terminal - didn't see
WotW - pretty awesome until the ending, not because of what it was but how it was done
Munich - another stupid ending but great up until then
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - there are actually some great parts in here but they're constantly undercut by some horrible ideas and twists. entertaining enough but so stupid.

a lot of people completely hate this guy but i like him, i just think even his best recent films are occasionally compromised by some stupidity. he seals the deal totally and then he has to add in some extra bullshit that reminds you, "oh right this is why people hate him".

still deciding between munich & minority report

Minority Report - yeah that final act takes it down some, i don't like sci-fi films that take their twists from "l.a. confidential"
CMiYC - good

It was based on a novel, dick.

Er.. It was based on a Dick novel.

isn't the movie pretty substantially different from the PKD short story?

dunno, don't read dick novels.

yeah, paycheck was a real masterwork too

the fact that SPR is so infuriating makes me want to vote for it even more. the rest don't have much that grabbed me. i never saw munich.

The Lost World -- crap
Amistad -- skipped it
Saving Private Ryan -- I agree with consensus: great opening scene, the rest pretty meh
A.I. -- not a masterpiece but by far Spielberg's most interesting film this decade.
Minority Report -- entertaining
Catch Me if you Can -- entertaining
The Terminal -- didn't bother
War of the Worlds -- tripods were badass, ending was insulting (c'mon, the son was so dead.)
Munich -- a bit heavy handed (no duh it's Spielberg) but I liked it a lot

a lot of people completely hate this guy but i like him, i just think even his best recent films are occasionally compromised by some stupidity. he seals the deal totally and then he has to add in some extra bullshit that reminds you, "oh right this is why people hate him".

^^^^

Catch Me If You Can. If Minority Report hadn't had such an awful stupid ending, it would be that. I really liked that film.

otm. i like catch me a lot. all the sci-fi films on the list have some great sections, but i don't think any of them hold together. private ryan annoyed me on several levels. ditto munich, which i think is his most confused "serious" movie. have not seen either of the action-franchise sequels in this bunch.

xp: examples of "extra billshit" plz

(Eric, why did you wanna have this same thread, again, you sadist?)

catch me if you can by quite a bit.

xpost there is absolutely no example of "extra bullshit" any of us can tell you about these films that isn't going to result in you saying "yeah that is rich coming from a bunch of JUDD APATOW FANS" or whatever it is you are up to these days, morbius. we've done this 100,000 times now and no answer is ever good enough for you, because apparently other people are not allowed to have their own opinions about hammerfist "important" directors without it being "bullshit" in your opinion. why do you even ask at this point?

I just wanted to do a poll where these maligned masterpieces (et al) were the only candidates, just to see what would happen if Spielberg movies people generally, y'know, like were taken out of the mix. (Though now I'm starting to see it's likely Minority Report will run away with it.)

SPR. The movie has some memorable moments apart from D-Day. The conversation in the empty church at night, the Edith Piaf scene, the horror of the Panzer and the 20 mm...

a.i. definitely had extra bullshit, if i remember

xp

xpost like i mean someone has already brought up the munich sex scene, morbs. did you just not read that post?

a.i. definitely had extra bullshit, if i remember

In the middle third, maybe.

see, I think AI is the best because the "extra bullshit" kinda adds to the richness of the film imo. it's kinda a statement on the whole "extra bullshit" spielberg worldview!

ha! x-post

a.i.'s "extra bullshit" actually adds to the films' oddness, imo. i think the oedipal "die in your sleep with mommy" ending is intended to be bittersweet but it ends up being creepy.

morbs while you nodding your head sagely at how powerful the sex/massacre scene in munich was everyone else in the theater was just like o_O O_O ¯\(°_o)/¯

no schef, there are scenes I can accept are s(t)inkers, like the aforementioned "Columbo" finish of MR or some of the musical excesses of John Williams. The Terminal might've been a minor classic w/ someone other than Hanks.

yeah, the Munich sex scene; brilliant, and thoroughly reinforces the theme of family, procreation and nation.

ryan & latebloomer: AI's scenario has been reported to have been pretty much untouched from Kubrick's last treatment. All those scenes were in the version he worked on, AFAIK.

x-post

hahaha yeah, all that sweat flying in the camera was especially gross because the guy sitting next to me in the theater had the worst b.o. ever

omar -- Keith Uhlich was nodding too!

http://www.reverseshot.com/article/munich

...sex often takes us beyond the legitimate, and as Avner has – time and again – denied himself physical intimacy during his years-long mission (engaging, instead, in a series of homosocially slanted actions and dialogues with his Mossad colleagues), he is ill-prepared for the release that this shot illustrates. Avner’s pain springs from, among other things, a misguided empathy and, courtesy co-screenwriter Tony Kushner, a queerly metaphoric denial of self. Per Kushner, there’s a theatrical remove to the shot’s conception that Spielberg – so often one to lead his audience away from the abyss, and not always disingenuously – then illustrates with Judeo-Christian (or De Palma-esque) apocalyptic brio. And yet, there is no transcendence here. Facing God, for Avner, is finally a narcissistic action, an extended Kabuki fright-mask gaze inside his own void, a four-barreled Sense-Surround horror that not even a lover’s benedictive touch can entirely assuage.

hostage shooting/forceful penetration sequence = everything that is wrong about Spielberg boiled down into one scene; (sorry contrarians)

if that was the idea intended, it was an astronomically epic fail imo

I want someone to defend Always and Hook.

that's interesting about Kubrick and AI. the strangest thing about AI is that it retroactively makes spielberg's films a little more interesting because it exists as a commentary on them and spielberg's whole aesthetic style.

xxxpost: If that was 'berg's intention with the life/death-making proposition, the symbolic weight sticks, but its execution was sloppily handled.

There are definitely defense of Always to be found. Hook, not so much.

I have no plans to see Always, JP2 or Hook.

well, S.S. didn't inherit AI at the time of S.K.'s death -- Kubrick told him, You do it.

As Uhlich suggests, Munich scene might be as much a Tony Kushner thing as Spielberg's.

I like the sex scene in Munich a ton, too. Maybe you really have to be a De Palma fan to like it, judging by Keith's quote upthread.

The Lost World -- Terrible.
Amistad -- Decent. Bit preachy.
Saving Private Ryan -- Good opening scene.
A.I. -- Not seen.
Catch Me if you Can -- Enjoyable watch, probably the best of this bunch.
The Terminal -- Awful.
War of the Worlds -- Tom Cruise ruining it too much for me to notice if it was of any merit or not.
Munich -- Almost liked this, but some of it really bugged me (all the Israeli men hand-picked for the assassination squad are completely conflicted over what they're doing? Really? Apart from Daniel Craig's really off the wall caricature. The scene in the shared safehouse etc.)

i like the sex scene in hook

CMiYC is marred by some quite appalling sexism.

I like the sex scene in Munich a ton, too. Maybe you really have to be a De Palma fan to like it, judging by Keith's quote upthread.

I could accept this if the tone justified Eric Bana's sweat and arched back (yummy though they were).

"all the Israeli men hand-picked for the assassination squad are completely conflicted over what they're doing? Really?"

The AIPAC types said this too. If they weren't, there wouldn't be a movie. It's the way to dramatize the debate over the endless Middle East stalemate, rather than do a 'straight' period piece.

(Daniel Craig being conflicted over being a 00-killer in Casino Royale, and coming round to being a Western supremacy warrior for the concluding fanfare, is one reason I don't expect much out of Quantum of Solace.)

Daniel Craig being conflicted over being a 00-killer in Casino Royale, and coming round to being a Western supremacy warrior for the concluding fanfare, is one reason I don't expect much out of Quantum of Solace.

Dennis Perrin on Obama to thread.

Yes, please.

TLW: couple good suspense scenes
Amistad: I find it a Patriotic cheat to make a movie about the slave trade (with foreigners as villains) rather than slavery itself in the 1800s
SPR: not just bad, but fascist, and even the amazing opening is bad history
A.I.: I love "We are in a cage," but yeah, this goes wrong somewhere after the first half hour
Minority Report: goes on too long, and awry, but I love its distopia
CMiYC: sexy comedy, but not-very-compelling psychodrama
The Terminal: again, the real story is so much more interesting
WotW: so scary it got me and kept me all the way through--I found Cruise pretty plausible as a shitty dad (my vote)
Munich: my second choice--I find it searching and plausible, but it probably helps that I agree with its "message"
Crystal Skull: great motorcycle chase ending in the library, and that's about it

That said, I'd recommend seeing all of them at least once.

My rankings.

Munich (2005) / War of the Worlds (2005)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Minority Report (2002)
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
Catch Me if You Can (2002)
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Amistad (1997)

Looking at them in that order, I realize I only have strong love for the first three. Beyond that, it's reservations all the way. (Though I'm still an apologist, I guess, since I think they're all "interesting," at least.)

worst aspect of each that I've seen:

SPR: HAVE I BEEN A GOOD MAN? HAVE I EARNED IT? (paraphrasing, I think, fuck that ending in the ass)
A.I.: that it doesn't end with the robo-boy staring at his vision of motherhood for all eternity
Minority Report: gotcha! ending
WotW: I think the part where Tom Cruise climbs inside the alien's vagina and blows it up with a hand grenade; everything that follows
Munich: preggo-fucking/hostage-killing
Crystal Skull: aside from all the awful CGI, the pyramid collapsing etc. was Mummy 3 bullshit

I'm probably least unhappy with Minority Report. SPR's opening is great, but overshadowed by eight hours of Band of Brothers.

That post is the most on-the-pop-cultural post I've ever seen. Was there no aspect of any of these movies that didn't but you just a little bit more than the same thing that bugged everyone else in the world?

Example: worst part of A.I.: Robin Williams' holographic cameo

fite!

I doubt anyone bitched about Crystal Skull going Lucasarts CGI more than me.

Other than that, probably not. The Minority Report ending apparently bothered me less than everyone else, though. It was just the worst part of the only movie on here I'd want to vote for.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) - William H. Macy as a whiny, manipulative little bitch! That is kind of funny. They need to not have so many WATERFALLS though, I mean, sheesh, I get it. Gravity, ok.
Amistad (1997) - So inspiring and powerful they put the character of Roger S. Baldwin on the $10 U.S. bill. Nice!
Saving Private Ryan (1998) - My mom likes three R-rated movies and this is one of them.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) - It has like six endings, and four of them are pretty good! Actually, this movie should have jut been about der sexlixher Roboter Mensch Jude Law. Rorw!
Minority Report (2002) - Freaking awesome, an inspiration for car design everywhere.
Catch Me if You Can (2002) - Okay when the Leonardo DiCaprio character looks in his old family's house, when he's all a long-hair, and he can't have Christmas with them, and he runs away? I cried for like 45 minutes. Well after the movie ended. I had to be talked down before we could play Scrabble.
The Terminal (2004)
War of the Worlds (2005) - Didn't see bcz of that blonde girl and bcz I did not want to cath a cold.
Munich (2005) - Not as good as his previous films about New York/London/Paris.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) - Had three endings and one of them was pretty good! Antsssssssssssssssss=

I don't remember any holographic cameo!

I haven't seen most of these since they were in the theater or just-released on DVD. If I could force myself to sit through Munich again, something else would probably bother me.

x-post

think you have your JP sequels confused, William H Macy's only in Jurassic Park III.

He was DR> KNOW, jovial holographic Einstein with Rayman-style physiology.

Oh man nevermind then, JP2 was balls.

Abbot = the gamechanging critique!

William H. Macy as a whiny, manipulative little bitch! That is kind of funny.

That was JPIII, not directed by Spielberg and superior to The Lost World IMO.

xpost

What was official name of JP3?

Jurrasic Park: the Stachening

I think it was just Jurassic Park III.

Jurassic Park: Again? Really? Fuck This Shit.

DIANOSAURS

the quickening

re: Colin Farrell

I recommend Tigerland. It's one of the great Joel Schumacher exceptions (see The Lost Boys, Veronica Guerin).

i like the sex scene in hook

― metametadata (n/a), Wednesday, November 12, 2008 2:01 PM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Pederastic Park?
by Adam Parfrey

A vicious sort of urban legend began to flourish about the time of Richard Gere's alleged alliance with rectal rodents. Its subject was Steven Spielberg, and the gossip had to do with the director's overweening fascination with child actors. Mindful that hearsay is sometimes false, we are withholding the delicious details. But the fact that this rumor exists at all confirms an underlying unease over the presumably innocent entertainments created by Hollywood's oldest Wunderkind.

Spielberg's latest theme park-style extravaganza, "Jurassic Park," isn't as explicitly swishy as his failed "Hook," but it reveals components of the auteur's personality that have parents wondering about the movie's appropriateness for children.

"King King," "The Lost World," and "Godzilla," three monster epics cannibalized by "Jurassic Park," achieved their thrills without resorting to on-screen menacing of tots. Indeed, only on milk cartons can we find children so physically raped as the celluloid juveniles of "Jurassic Park." The film's sadistic tone is established early on, when a fat child challenges the paleontological theories of protagonist Sam Neill. Neill turns on the boy, and in low, menacing tones, he demonstrates to the child how a prehistoric nasty would mangle and devour him. Adding a distinctly Peter Kurtenish frisson, Neill slashes near the child's belly and crotch with a large, sharp claw.
Perhaps among all our "childlike" wonderment with the subject of dinosaurs, we forget that child abusers commonly invoke the threat of large beasts to frighten and silence their victims. Is the director conjuring the trappings of childhood obsessions only to wield them for a darker purpose?

Although overtly sadistic, "Jurassic Park" was reined in by its obeisance to special effects; it revealed few of the excesses of "Hook," in which Spielberg's psychodramatic inclinations were allowed to roam free.

"Hook" is the culmination of over a decade of false starts in bringing J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan to the screen. At first, Spielberg was reportedly considering a live-action redo of the Disney animated feature, starring Michael Jackson as the perpetual pre-pube. But the auteur of suburban childhoos wasn't satisfied with a simple remake.

The high-concept Hollywood sound bite, "What if Peter Pan grew up?" not only indulged Spielberg's predilections, it provided the film's investors with a tinkingly trendy phrase redolent with the "recovery" metaphysics that have become the ethos for Hollywood's haut monde, the same haut monde who have lately forsworn the continual cocaine-and-Quaalude concatenations so relentlessly documented by former Spielberg producer Julia Phillips in her autobitchography, You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again.

The recovery movement is led in part by ex-drunk John Bradshaw, who smilingly encourages his readers to throw off the ruinous shackles of adulthood in order to "liberate the inner child." It comes as little surprise that Steven Spielberg takes part in Bradshaw's therapies, which include workshops where "lullaby music is played and participants cradle and stroke one another."

Asking Steven Spielberg to liberate his inner child would be akin to asking a serial murderer to actualize his anger. By his own admission, Stevie has experienced little in the way of adulthood outside of his overprotective upbringing and the adulatory, toadying fantasy land of Hollywood. Bradshaw's "inner child" therapy is a mere baby-step away from the Diaper Pail Fraternity, a Sausalito-based group for grown men who revert to incontinent fantasy, where surrogate mommies exclaim and coo as they wipe the kinky kid-fetishists' dirty behinds.

Spielberg's is redolent not only of the inner-child component of recovery, but also its darker aspect: child molestation. Bradshaw seeks to place blame for psychological malaise on a dimly remembered past in which some form of traumatic abuse took place. The less the so-called abuse is remembered, the more convinced are Bradshawian therapists that it actually occurred. At the time that "Hook" went into production, all the radio and television talk shows fixated upon child abuse in a catharsis of mass scapegoating. Suddenly, millions of Americans were convinced that they had been molested by their nuclear family or ritually abused by Satanists.

On the crest of the child-abuse wave, Spielberg's Peter Pan project was transformed into Hook, whose ad campaign abandoned the traditional flying fairies in lieu of a stark visual of the prosthetic steel claw gleaming against a black background. The gruesome hieroglyphic was a perfect mnemonic device (see Hook, think Hook) ”but more importantly, it transferred any possible pedophilic overtones from Spielberg himself (the auteur hero) to the classically pederastic fantasy figure of Captain Hook, the fiend who spirits children away to a Neverland where Cabbage Patch foundlings enliven the sodomitical lives of Village People pirates.

Here, Spielberg could be evading responsibility for his alleged tendencies by projecting them onto his villain, a strategy employed by Hitchcock and other directors renowned for their sadistic inclinations.

Peter Pan had, of course, become such a dusty chestnut that almost no one would object to its pedophilic content.

Who would remember that its author, Sir James Barrie, was a full-blown boy fancier who never consummated his marriage to actress Mary Ansell and carried on a passionate "friendship" with the sons of Sylvia and Arthur Llewelyn Davies?

Even today, no one can comfortably explain why Barrie insisted on naming his eternal child "Pan," after the goatish satyr of mythology.

In a tradition begun by Sir Barrie, most stage productions of Peter Pan cast a boyish woman in the lead role, a transvestite tradition Spielberg may well have paid homage to by casting Glenn Close as the bearded pirate named "Gutless."

Pederastic organizations such as NAMBLA insist that children are wise, sexual creatures who should be given the opportunity to be fondled, sucked, and anally penetrated by middle-aged men.

The NAMBLA Bulletin has a special column called "Boys in the Media," tracking the doings of such Hollywood chickens as Macaulay Culkin, known affectionately in the Bulletin as "Mac." The self-described "Ganymedian" L. Martin, who write the "Boys in the Media" column, spoke by phone about Stephen Spielberg and Hook.

"Spielberg is known for his interest in young boys, certainly," said Martin. "A lot of the members have been talking about Hook, telling me how much they enjoyed it."

NAMBLA spokesman Renato Corazza refused to confirm or deny Spielberg's possible membership in the Man/Boy Love Association: "We don't divule our membership rolls."

And is it merely accidental that another pederastic magazine goes by the acronym P.A.N. (Paedo Alert News)?

Spielberg's costume designer Anthony Powell endows Hook's "Lost Boys" with a cute Benetton-meets-Oliver Twist look tailor-made for the chicken-hawk sensibility. Dance of the Warriors, a futuristic fantasy about a warrior cult of young boys who fight right-wing Christians for the privilege of having sex with aging boy-lovers, sports on its cover a salt-and-pepper boy couple who almost precisely mirror two of Spielberg's Lost Boys. The book appeared in the pedophilia sections of gay bookstores just at the time that Hook was going into pre-production.

Just who are Spielberg's Lost Boys? Walter Keane-style big-eyed orphans? Lord of the Flies in Suburbialand?

Hook's smarmy press kit tries to make each personality distinct. There's Rufio ("the proud leader of the Lost Boys, whose determined jousting with Peter for the honor of guiding the troupe of ruffians leads to a new understanding between the two rivals in Neverland"); Ace ("the Lost Boy with all the angles figured out for his peers"); Thudbutt ("whose imposing size belies his gentle disposition among the Lost Boys--but don't get him angry!"); No Nap ("a street urchin complete with suspenders, knockers, a newsboys cap...and a heart of roughened gold"); Latchboy ("the curly-top redhead who always finds himself in the thick of any mischief contrived by the band of tarnished angels"); Pockets ("one of the smallest Losy Boys, who has a particular soft spot for helping Peter get his wings in Neverland"); and Too Small ("the tiniest Lost Boy in stature but one of the feistiest in nature, who wears his pajamas through thick and thin").

Hook's emotional highlight, strangely absent from the shooting script's first revised draft, is the touchy-feely communion of the adult Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. We're treated to prolonged takes of the tykes touching and caressing Robin Williams's face and body.

When the Lost Boys smear war paint on Wiliams's naked torso, the idyll is reminiscent of a certain gay body-painting video advertised in The Advocate "that focuses on creative eroticism, that expands and extends the beauty of foreplay."

There's not room enough to detail the pedophilic implications of other Spielberg productions: the man/boy relationship in "Empire of the Sun," which begins with John Malkovich's comment about young Christian Bale's "sweet mouth" and reaches its emotional climax when Malkovich directs the chicken to move his cot next to his; the child-alien/human ectodermal interactions in Close Encounters; and the sanitized incest theme of Back To The Future.

However, it was E.T., Spielberg's most exalted triumph, which seems to clothe boy-love fantasy in New Age vestments.

Spielberg uses every trick in the director's chapbook to induce us to love a wrinkled, potbellied cosmic interloper that hides in boys' closets and communicates with a glowing, phallic finger.

It was young Henry Thomas's taunt to his twelve-year-old celluloid brother--"penis breath"--that had Spielberg conjure, if only for a disturbing instant, the image of a bald-faced lad with a cock in his mouth.

Although the "negligent" participants got off with nary a knuckle-rap, we must not forget that Spielberg also produced the actual snuff film "Twilight Zone," in which Vic Morrow and two young children were beheaded during filming.

Perhaps the most perverse aspect of Steven Spielberg's work is its obsessive posture of sentimental innocence.

Psychologists trained in the vocabulary of sex criminals often note the cloak of goo-goos and sugar frosting as the subconscious moral gymnastics of repression and guilt transference.

But now that "Jurassic Park" has more openly revealed the overtly sadistic aspect of Steven Spielberg's curious desires, there is only one more place to go for this self-styled avatar of contemporary myth. His movie, "Schindler's List," was filmed in Auschwitz.

Jurassic Park: Again? Really? Fuck This Shit.

say that to the Spinosaurus's face. SAY IT.

http://dinonews.net/forum/avatar/le_spinosaurus.jpeg

Indeed, only on milk cartons can we find children so physically raped as the celluloid juveniles of "Jurassic Park."

Oh man I believe I have been looking at the wrong milk cartons? o_O

Even today, no one can comfortably explain why Barrie insisted on naming his eternal child "Pan," after the goatish satyr of mythology.

I can't believe I read that whooollllllle thinnnnnnng.

all you need to know about Adam Parfey (dude who wrote that essay):

AP: The earliest memories I have is of the Upper West Side apartment my family lived in, in Manhattan. I recall looking out our third floor window at passersby. Being the late 1950s, all the men seemed to wear hats. I wondered what might happen if I dropped a book on a behatted man who raised his fist and shouted obscenities. This is the first realization I had that books could really affect people in a profound way.

this is still my fav

NAMBLA spokesman Renato Corazza refused to confirm or deny Spielberg's possible membership in the Man/Boy Love Association: "We don't divulge our membership rolls."

a glowing, phallic finger

How does this GUY know so much about pedo-everything?

Behatted!

When the Lost Boys smear war paint on Wiliams's naked torso, the idyll is reminiscent of a certain gay body-painting video advertised in The Advocate "that focuses on creative eroticism, that expands and extends the beauty of foreplay."

I think that movie wld be almost as entertaining as Dancing with Cats.

Dennis Perrin on Obama to thread.

I know YOU know everyone who runs for prez is just fine with being a 00-killer. There IS a Perrin post on Casino Royale tho.

the part where Tom Cruise climbs inside the alien's vagina and blows it up

Every gay man would tell you that was an anus.

Everybody knows that martians only have cloacas

or (excuse me) cloacae

hint: Tom Cruise climbs inside

cloacae is such a great word

"Tom Cruise, please come out of the closet."

i thought the martian anus was pretty cool

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/8128/earthbound002lg2.png

Please tell me that is a graphic from Life Force.

Judd Apatow is responsible for every movie that might conceivably be both touching and raunchy.

I think I liked this and Zak & Miri more than any of the actual Apatow-verse movies.

xxposts: or wait, that's not Mother Brain, is it?

It just wouldn't be a Spielberg thread without ethan posting that pedo article.

Munich (2005) - Not as good as his previous films about New York/London/Paris.

LOL, I can't wait for Spielberg to get his back up off the wall.

Amistad narrowly over Minority Report. I don't know what movie you guys saw, but the one I saw was fantastic, particularly the sequence on the boat.

The entire sequence from the beginning of the lightning storm until the end of the first tripod attack in "War of the Worlds" is one of the best pieces of sustained action and tension Spielberg has ever done. Almost certainly the scariest thing since "Jaws."

xpost I remember the boat sequence being very intense, but I also remember the many courtroom scenes being less so.

I don't mind Anthony Hopkins' Paul Muni imitation too much either.

The entire sequence from the beginning of the lightning storm until the end of the first tripod attack in "War of the Worlds" is one of the best pieces of sustained action and tension Spielberg has ever done.

I'd stretch that out until the ferry gets overturned. One solid hour of stomach-knotted tension, in my opinion.

WotW is pretty excellent, too.

I will never, ever, ever see The Terminal if I can help it.

but it's an Obama favorite!

(going to use this recklessly and daily)

why

because he's awesome.

i can barely remember Amistad but i remember liking it. plus i really dig courtroom dramas....

I like the sex scene in Munich a ton, too. Maybe you really have to be a De Palma fan to like it

nope.

Bump, et al

i've seen a few of these and they were all pretty awful. only one i haven't seen that i'd like to is "munich."

"amistad" had some powerful scenes but didn't really do it for me as a whole.

SPR was a strange movie, but strange in a good way. It was a war movie that respected the experience of foot soldiers in a way few movies ever do.

saving private ryan is great
i loved catch me when it came out
i'm also of the opinion that he can be great, i think he's just got some tendencies i wish he did away with

voted SPR

The Terminal has Catherine Zeta-Jones, which is more than I can say about any of these other movies. Oh wait, Amistad has one of my college suitemates and his fam.

ORLY?

A bunch of my friends/singing associates are singing in the credits to "Saving Private Ryan" but not even that was enough to convince me to see the movie.

I think everyone just should have watched the 1930 'All Quiet on the Western Front' instead. I get the feeling (never having seen the Hanksy) that 'Saving Private Ryan' is a color rip-off of it.

i haven't seen SPR since it came out in the theaters, but remember thinking that the opening was ace and that the rest was boring jingoistic nonsense. i'll have to give it another go.

didn't get through the first fifteen minutes of Munich, but there were circumstances

MR was fun, but yeah the ending
no terminal
no cmiyc
no amistad
AI: lol weed
indy: LOLOLOLOLOLOL
wotw: i liked it

yeah i dont think there was anyone who wasnt blown away by the opening, it's classic

The present-day stuff in SPR is just wretched sentimentality. As is the sequence where the mother of Private Ryan is notified of his brothers' deaths - she lives on a picture perfect Kansas farm, glowing golden in the arms of the sun. Gag me.

The beach landing at Normandy was ace.

no mythology allowed in cinema, huh

there is no disputing about taste - my taste in cinema is sacred

Catch Me If You Can is good fun without any baggage (do you see) so that.

That's my pick as well.

Minority Report and WotW were both good thrillers until their conclusions, which both had tacked on happy endings that just rang false.

The end of WotW was SO MIND-BOGGLINGLY STUPID. They should have just dealt with Dakota's cracked-out PTSD and called it a day.

Catch Me, possibly because I haven't seen Munich.

I enjoyed the Robot Chicken version of Munich more than I enjoyed the actual Munich:

http://www.adultswim.com/video/?episodeID=8a25c39215d7c8da0115d8c5075901cb

Scooby Doo is a more dynamic leading man than Bana.

I don't enjoy the Robot Chicken version of anything.

The Lost World -- never saw it, but Jurassic Park scared the crap out of me
Amistad -- saw this fairly recently, didn't make much of an impression
Saving Private Ryan -- I voted for this despite the corny sequences. This has such amazing and hugely influential action sequences. There have been about a million movies since this that have tried to copy it, Lord of the Rings probably being the most notable.
A.I. -- hated it
Minority Report -- saw this a couple times in the theater, thought it was ok, but not great
Catch Me if you Can -- I remember enjoying this when it came out, but can't remember much of it now
The Terminal -- this didn't really work for me
War of the Worlds -- The first hour of this movie blew my mind, it was so scary and the special effects were incredible. When Tom Cruise is trying to stop his son from going over that hill to fight the aliens, I was thinking "Yes! They are going to have an awesome showdown with these aliens", but instead we never get to see what was over that hill and the entire movie falls apart. Very disappointing.
Munich -- meh

1. Munich
2. Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report, AI

I don't think I outright dislike any of the films on the list (though the new Indy was a huge disappointment). I tend to go easy on Spielberg though, guy was a HUGE part of my childhood looking back.

HUGE.

Also, I suppose WotW should go down there on the crowded #2 spot.

Watching Lost World on USA right now and, even making exceptions for choppy commercial-break-undone pacing, this is pretty definitely more unsatisfying than the new Indiana Jones.

`Minority Report - yeah that final act takes it down some, i don't like sci-fi films that take their twists from "l.a. confidential"
CMiYC - good

It was based on a novel, dick.

― Sugar hiccup, Makes a pig soar and swoon (Pillbox), Wednesday, November 12, 2008 1:27 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Er.. It was based on a Dick novel.

― Sugar hiccup, Makes a pig soar and swoon (Pillbox), Wednesday, November 12, 2008 1:28 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

isn't the movie pretty substantially different from the PKD short story?

― The stic.man from the hilarious 'Dead Prez' albums (some dude), Wednesday, November 12, 2008 1:30 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

dunno, don't read dick novels.

― Sugar hiccup, Makes a pig soar and swoon (Pillbox), Wednesday, November 12, 2008 1:30 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this was a pretty dumb exchange

dick story begins more or less the same as the movie, middle and end are way dfft

thing with munich is that i think the only real moral tension in it is between spielberg's love of a good action sequence and his narrative. the action scenes are great and exciting, but then you're supposed to feel bad about them. which i'm sure somebody could write a whole essay about the anguished depths of that tension, but i never get any depths from spielberg's moral explorations. he likes his audience too much to indict it for its complicity (not that i'm necessarily a big fan of indicting the audience, a la haneke -- it can be a pretty shallow move of its own). but i don't really think munich ends up indicting anybody, except in a vague "do unto others" way. and the glimpse of the new york skyline at the end puts the cheap shot in cheap shot. i think i sprained my eyes from rolling them.

the action scenes are great and exciting, but then you're supposed to feel bad about them. which i'm sure somebody could write a whole essay about the anguished depths of that tension, but i never get any depths from spielberg's moral explorations

I don't follow -- we're supposed to feel bad about enjoying them, or is feeling bad the aesthetic effect they cause?

actually i'm not sure it's either. well, it's definitely not the latter -- the aesthetic effect is excitement, because he's a great action director. but the question of whether we're supposed to feel for enjoying them, i don't know. eric bana is supposed to feel bad for participating in them, but i don't think the movie's (or spielberg's) level of reflection is such that we're supposed to question our own enjoyment of tense blowing-shit-up-and-shooting-people entertainment, or that spielberg is questioning his own skill at purveying it. it felt more unconscious to me -- like, he can't help but make exciting action sequences, even if they undermine the ostensible moral point of his story.

(...whether we're supposed to feel bad for enjoying them...)

Certainly had Spielberg chosen the Daniel Craig character as a protagonist we'd get the thrill of committing violence and (maybe) some of the ambivalence you note.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Munich. It's brilliant.

Munich. Cause it gets Jews laid.

Okay... I really thought for about 30 seconds that this was a Steve Guttenberg post-1993 poll.

munich!

opening of SPR is unfuckwithable too.

there are bits of gold in some of the others.

Don't know what I voted for the first time around, but this time I voted WotW 'cause I think AI and Munich will get adequate support.

voted minority report

the scene where he gets his eyeballs replaced & is chased by the mechanical spiders is A++++++++++

hmm i should watch Minority Report sometime. Tend to confuse it with Vanilla Sky.

From those Spielbergs I've seen Saving Private Ryan, A.I. & Munich. Never been into war movies, and Munich is just crappy, so that leaves only one choice.

for some reason i've seen a couple of these

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Could've called that win a mile away, but I'm pleased with the place and show.

And once again it looks like I'm not going to be tripping over myself to see The Terminal for completism's sake.

Any director would be proud of a top five like this.

Good to see the voter turnout here too. ilx may be more anti-Spielberg than pro-, but the results show there's still interest.

The bad-TV finale of MR is what carried it to victory.

EH, just cuz no one thinks The Terminal is the best of all those doesn't mean you shouldn't trip yourself.

The bad-TV finale of MR is what carried it to victory.

Yes, I'm sure that's what motivated every last one of the 25 voters to vote for it, the ending.

Imagine if Seth Rogen had given the script a "polish."

I'm fine calling the ending to WotW a crap copout, fwiw. The intensity and commitment of the first hour, tho, is enough to merit my vote.

not so much the ending as "It's based on PK Dick, and I'm an ILXor ..."

But every entry in the top five has a flawed ending.

except for Munich. (and I'd argue Ryan)

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) 2

ok who the fuck

except for Munich. (and I'd argue Ryan)

Please, don't.

Saw The Terminal last night. Tom Hanks is Borat, CZJ is eye-candy. A little schmaltzy but definitely not horrible. Tucci is pretty great imo, really captures the corporate feel.

This is by far, miles better than JP2-The Lost World fwiw....

Hardly Borat -- closer to Chaplin w/ a funny accent -- but yes, it's good.

You must tell me the film where Chaplin does the awkward "foreigner doing a high-five", I must have missed that one.

he didn't live long enough.

Is there a documentary about the guy The Terminal is based on? I can almost guarantee without seeing it it's probably better.
Same with The Informant, and that Crime scene cleaner story that somehow got turned into a comedy.

Every year that there's no Spielberg film in the mix, ILX movie conversations die.

Amistad less stuffy than I remembered, despite its feel-good Oscar trappings. Hopkins evokes the J.Q. Adams I know from lit and history rather uncannily.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6Ru9Y9Xwjg

plot descriptions make this sound like Au Hasard Balthazar with extra bathos.

Au Hasard Bathos-ar

Aw, has hard balls, hoser

Amistad less stuffy than I remembered, despite its feel-good Oscar trappings.

it's criminal this only got one vote

I will admit I never saw this movie because I just can't take Matthew McConaughey seriously.

i like amistad

middle passage sequence is amazing

YES

the woman with her baby

i will never forget it!

I totally forgot about the Middle Passage sequence and my heart almost stopped.

McConoughheyhey isn't terrible but the surprise is Morgan Freeman, who plays a wealthy freed slave or something and stands around making portentous remarks and looking very uncomfortable in period clothes.

Woman? Baby? Mind's gone blank.

Over the side.

amistad mopin'

Oh the middle "passage"!

Yes, that sequence is horrifying, obv.

i really hated amistad. almost as much as i hated ai. i realize i am not in the majority here tho so im not going to push it

i wouldn't have voted amistad but it is insane it's behind lost world and crystal skulls (the only two complete duds up there and both pretty clearly easy money). would've voted catch me over ryan.

i like Amistad quite a bit, but the three best for me are AI, Catch, and War of the Worlds. he should do his Kubrick impression again and film Napolean

I'll rewatch Amistad one of these days, since I've been Spiel-born again.

i really hated amistad. almost as much as i hated ai. i realize i am not in the majority here tho so im not going to push it

I'd like to know why; basically, based on subject matter and the sequence I posted to this thread, I have a visceral reaction to this movie that isn't quite rational and I'm curious as to where you thought it went wrong.

Uh oh. Is this new one gonna make me CRY?

yes.

it's gonna be like an unholy monstrosity combo of Au Hasard Balthazar and Umberto D, just you wait.

And John Ford and "Black Beauty" ! Haha! I'm there.

"How Brown Was My Horsie"

i didn't like amistad either, probably because i found it more stuffy and oscar-bait-y than alfred apparently did. it's certainly got powerful sections! but even bad spielbergs always have a couple of good set pieces. and when he trains his "i WILL make you feel something emotionally" evil* formalist powers on something as powerful as slavery, you know he's gonna succeed at least in part.

*note i dont actually think this is evil, and is usually where the best parts of his stuff come from, especially when there's a tension produced by simultaneously going for a mood of restraint. which is why i woulda gone for munich.

blount's right though that the only out and out howlers here are crystal skull and lost world. a remarkably strong body of pop filmmaking really.

I dunno, the play was pretty much sniffed at my the highbrow critics (ie Ben Brantley); I fear another overblown adap, Color Purple-style.

xxp

Will rep for "A.I." ( whose ending I will always defend) and WOTW (which is crepey and intense until the actual terrible ending ).

xpost: i find the trailer curiously unmoving, but really if there's a bunch of shots of a horse running beautifully through WW1 battles it's gonna be something to see, at the very least. this material is right in his wheelhouse, but yeah could get pretty gross too.

I'm trying to think of what the good setpiece in "AI" was... maybe the part where Haleybot crashed and they had to reboot him?

good setpiece in a.i. is the whole movie. was there a plot?

there's so much primal terror in the scene where the mother abandons him i can barely stand to watch it. a difficult movie to watch without squirming, really.

xxp Of the top of my head: The balloon chase and capture leading to the Flesh Fair. The journey to Manhattan with Gigolo Joe. The trip underwater to Coney Island...

he kinda towers over his peers from the 70s for this period right? anyone want to argue for scorsese in a head-to-head? malick maybe but i'm not sure that's a fair comp. altman? woody allen 94-00 is maybe stronger?

xp "Off the top of my head"

balloon chase one of the worst white zombie vids ever

george lucas r.i.p. heaven needed a zillionaire with o.c.d.

my main recollection of "A.I." is wondering why it hadn't ended yet and why I was still watching it; it didn't elicit any strong emotions in me at all, largely because I honestly could not have cared less about Haleybot

AI sucks

lol @ "evil formalist powers" though, that sums this guy up pretty succinctly

anyone want to argue for scorsese in a head-to-head? malick maybe but i'm not sure that's a fair comp. altman? woody allen 94-00 is maybe stronger?

would argue all of these guys are better, esp if you include Woody's 80s-90s run

although man Altman went waaaaaaaaay downhill in the 80s

well child actors usually kill a movie for me. a.i. woulda been a lot better if they'd gotten tom hanks and done it like that movie where marlon wayans is a baby that tries to eat out his mom.

i may be remembering that wrong.

Creepy kid actor plays creepy kid robot. Fail to see this as a problem.

wow apparently i really need to see little man

strongo, I think you're thinking of the upcoming Breaking Dawn

Creepy kid actor plays creepy kid robot. Fail to see this as a problem.

No problem at all... if you thought the robot was creepy. I thought it was boring and contrived, likely because I've overdosed on all of that type of "oh noes robots with emotions do inappropriate things" story in years of reading dubious amounts of bad science fiction

^^^

Calvin (Marlon Wayans) is an extremely short man who is a convict and a thief. With the help of his cohort Percy (Tracy Morgan), Calvin plots a museum robbery to steal one of the world's largest diamonds. After the successful robbery, the duo is almost arrested, but not before Calvin manages to stash the diamond in a handbag.
The thieves follow the handbag's owner to her home. There, they discover a couple, Darryl (Shawn Wayans) and Vanessa (Kerry Washington), who are eager to have a child. Calvin and Percy hatch a plot to pass Calvin as a baby left on the couple's doorstep. Darryl and Venessa, wanting a child, immediately adopt the baby as their own. However, Venessa's dad Pops (John Witherspoon) has a bad feeling about Calvin.
A local goon, Walken (Chazz Palminteri), discovers the deception and demands the diamond from Percy. Percy sells out Darryl and now Calvin, in a series of comedic maneuvers, manages to rescue Darryl and have Walken arrested. They are given a substantial reward for the recovery of the diamond.
Before he leaves, Calvin thanks Darryl for taking care of him even though he wasn't really a baby. Calvin is about to be out of Darryl's life for good, as Darryl watches him leave. Calvin is crying hysterically, so Darryl decides to let Calvin stay around and from that point on, the two men become the best of friends.
The film ends with Calvin and Pops playing with Darryl and Venessa's new baby, who looks exactly like Darryl (Shawn Wayans's face on a baby's body).

imagine if Spielberg had directed that

see i totally WAS misremembering!

LITTLE MAN

still totally scarred by that movie

that ending would be fifteen minutes longer and we would've cut to the wayans brothers escorting real life little men to billy barty's star on the walk of fame all solemn like

lol

RIP Billy Barty you were great in Day of the Locust

P sure Armond was a fan.

of billy barty? well, who wasn't!

god i loved under the rainbow so much when i was a kid

best setpiece in ai was when annoying chris rock robot gets shot through a fan, but thats about it

i havent seen amistad in a long time (and obv only once) so its hard for me to id what i hated so much about it, def on the oscarbait thing for one, but there was more than that

"oscarbait" needs to be more rigidly defined imo

AI is a deeply flawed film, but there are parts of it that I really enjoyed and have stayed with me.

omg i remember the LITTLE MAN thread! i have spent my entire adult life on ilx, it turns out.

I found the Hounsou's WE WANT FREE chanting in the courtroom grotesque and offensive coming after the Middle Passage sequence.

yeah the reason i only like amistad is that iirc the rest of the movie is kind of offputting in terms of racial politics...i actually don't even remember what i mean by that, though.

wasn't it "GIVE-IVE US FREE"?

I found it hard to be put off by that considering that if I was in a similar situation and had a tenuous grasp of the language I was trying to communicate in, I think I would still do exactly what he did.

Luckily John Williams would have had your back.

I would really need to watch the whole movie again to defend this position but what I remember is that there are large chunks of uncomfortable/disagreeable instances of racial politics that were entirely appropriate given the subject matter and the time period.

for me at least, the power of AI doesn't come the "robot with human emotions" angle but more like "humans are robots with emotions." so there's that Freudian "uncanny" effect in watching this robot perform at being human, and that leads to a reflection on your own performance as human, your own robot-ness. which is profoundly unsettling but also true, imo.

and that's why the final scene resonates so strongly with some people, i think: it's this constructed fantasy of a reconciliation, of becoming a "real boy" and not a robot, or of giving yourself that illusion, and so , i think, the ultimately untenability of our ultimate desires, that even if we got them we'd reject them as false.

I did find it shrewd that the scriptwriters made the decision to frame the Amistadians victory before SCOTUS as a sentimental one. "What is their STORY?" John Quincy Adams asks Morgan Freeman more than once. The movie suggests he accepted the case to settle a score with political enemies who denied him reelection and used the best strategy to win; the fact that Adams was the most notorious opponent of the gag rule in the House is barely mentioned.

If Spielberg had hired better scriptwriters, he could have a historical tale as fraught with ambiguities as Munich. Instead we get GIVE US OUR FREE, the queen of Spain jumping up and down on her bed, and that embarrassing confrontation between John Calhoun and Martin Van Buren.

the queen of Spain jumping up and down on her bed

Oh god, I'd forgotten this entire movie.

War of the Worlds was one of the most affecting and harrowing film experiences I have ever had -- what was said about the sequence from the lighting storm through the first tripod attack, or even the whole first hour, was OTM. Also I thought the scene where the tripod first emerges was incredibly beautiful -- the way the onlookers are torn between their flight impulse and their irresistable curiosity (everyone filming, Tom Cruise continuously looking back in wonder even as he tries to escape death). I also loved the way it looked when people were vaporized.

I agree that the son surviving was hard to believe, but I thought there was a wry twist in the ending -- "Your son is alive...but so are your ex-inlaws"

amistad isn't the best of these but hounsou's is definitely one of the better performances from this bunch

i rescreened war of the worlds over the weekend and it was killer, really one of the best end-of-the-world movies ive ever seen

at the end when tom cruise and son are hugging my grandfather wandered into the room and said skeptically "they gay?"

I still maintain that War Of The Worlds could have been an amazing movie if Cruise was killed off somewhere before the Tim Robbins scene and the rest of the movie was about the kids. I'm not being knee-jerk anti-Cruise either, I think it could have been a great shocker and a way to give the storyline a needed lateral kick where the film needed it (gawd, that Robbins scene is HORRIBLE)

i kinda always thought that robbins and cruise should have switched roles, but rewatching it i thought cruise was pretty great

woulda been great if Anthony Hopkins had shown up as John Quincy Adams to give Cruise advice.

givvus us fee, he no doubt quipped when approached

o_O at the 3 votes for Lost World

wtf objecting to Give Us Free

suprised to see so much love for minority report, AI and war of the worlds. i haven't seen amistad, but the former three are uniformly terrible. biggest problem is that they're emotionally inert. spielberg & williams work frantically to manufacture a semblance of sentiment, but to no substantial effect. none of the characters is worth caring about, and the circumstances of their cinematic lives are only as involving as the action sequences and special effects propelling them. AI tarts itself up with vague philosophical questions and abrupt tonal shifts, but never manages to be much more than "interesting". minority report blows an interesting premise with hamhanded execution and gaping plot//thought holes. and war of the worlds, for all the money and technological wizardly at its disposal, can't improve on its campy 50s predecessor.

these are "watchable" movies, and they can certainly be involving. i'd happilywatch any one of them on cable if i were bored and nothing else struck my fancy. speilberg hasn't lost his gift for staging suspense and action scenes, but there's something depressingly vacant about all of them.

i think that A.I. is bad and crappy, but MR and WOTW are both fairly entertaining. you don't really care about the characters in them, which definitely hurts the movies, but that's more of a script problem than a spielberg problem imo

it's a tom cruise problem, rly

it is and it isn't. i mean, i don't hate tom cruise. i'd like to cuz i think i should cuz he's clearly a putz, but he's not a bad actor and he's singularly good at just plain being charming on a movie screen. i loved eyes wide shut (and i did, up to the last 10 min) as much for cruise's performance/presence as for kubrick's direction and all the bug-nutty goings on. cruise can do well if used well, so i guess i do blame spielberg for the emptiness of his recent film. i mean, that used to be his gift: his ability to invest big-budget spectacle with affecting sentiment, and to invest mere sentiment with something that felt like genuine emotion.

"...recent films."

i think his performances range from fine to good for large parts of both movies, right up until we're asked to empathise with him in any way- unfortunately, these are usually focal points, and maybe it works for a kubrick study of a situation, but imo it falls down when it's spielberg asking you to *feel*

again, i really think the problem is on the page. the first half of war of the worlds is great - and involving on a character level imo - but it really loses its way after the son runs off. i kinda see what you mean with minority report - the set pieces run away with the movie, plus the third act sucks. though i think it's still a perfectly entertaining movie, and the actors bring a lot to the table where the script couldn't be bothered (thinking of samantha morton and colin farrell, even neal mcdonough)(and peter stormare, duh).

also, just a thought: spielberg might be the best director ever when it comes to his ability to break down a cynical audience (which is why his detractors find him so problematic), but these movies are... i hesitate to call the material 'adult' but they're darker than his great crowdpleasers of yesteryear, which perhaps = fewer opportunities to paper over problem areas in the script with jurassic park style wonderment. (dont take that as a knock against JP btw, which is an amazing freakin movie)

I really enjoyed "Jurassic Park" but the whole "I know this operating system... it's a UNIX system!" thing killed me with lols and came perilously close to throwing me out of the entire movie.

also: wtf objecting to Give Us Free Morbs OTM

From what I remember, anything dealing with Djimon Hounsou in Amistad was worthy. Everything else was tedious.

i think i'd go with that, yeah

suprised to see so much love for minority report, AI and war of the worlds. i haven't seen amistad, but the former three are uniformly terrible. biggest problem is that they're emotionally inert. spielberg & williams work frantically to manufacture a semblance of sentiment, but to no substantial effect. none of the characters is worth caring about, and the circumstances of their cinematic lives are only as involving as the action sequences and special effects propelling them.

well, one response to this is that they're just not emotionally inert, especially not AI. but that doesn't get us very far beyond our own emotional reactions to the movies. (and not sure why you'd be surprised about AI, it has a pretty substantial reputation at this point, though don't ask me to prove that.) and accusing AI of a lack of sentiment is....interesting.

but another response is that i think you're judging the movies according to a standard that doesn't quite matter with later Spielberg, for better or worse. the family story in War of the Worlds really seems pretty much incidental to the real thrust of the movie, which gets its emotional heft from our own contextualizing of the movie within historical/real-world catastrophe. whether the family survies or not is basically a macguffin of a sort.

oh im sorry, i was typing too fast. i mean "a semblance of sentiment" (as you put it) in regard to AI...

i mean you've basically given a great summary of why AI is so fascinating for me.

yeah, that's fair, and i do find AI more and more fascinating every time i see it. i put "interesting" in quotation marks, but it's a genuinely interesting film. problem is that it it isn't very involving on any other level, and doesn't seem to understand its own intentions. it consists of three distinct mini-movies, each with its own rewards and problems, and while they're clearly connected with one another, the larger film never really makes any real sense of this jigsaw structure. the opening sequence is a small-scale family drama, resembling something that might once have aired on amazing stories, i.e., a twilight zone episode focused on the emotional dynamics of a family. this is probably the most successful part of the film, as the home & family culture are convincing, the mother's grief and need are affecting but subtly portrayed, and HJO's david is both sympathetic and subtly terrifying. the filmmaking often veers into the easy emotional/situational shorthand that's both spielberg's greatest gift and greatest weakness as a filmmaker, but the deliberate, "kubrickian" chill he seems to be shooting for keeps things balanced.

the second chapter is a picaresque quest, in which our robot pinocchio seeks to become "real" and thereby to earn a reunion with his lost mother. here the icy restraint of the first part of the film is jettisoned entirely, in exchange for wild action, broad comedy and a colorfully exaggerated (but hardly convincing) vision of the future. the radical discontinuity is clearly meant to indicate a gulf between isolated, genteel wealth and nearly post-apocalyptic poverty, but it simply doesn't work. what we see instead is a contrast between the comfortable, middle-class lifestyle that spielberg has always presented as "normal" and a garish, phony-baloney, disneyland-cum-thunderdome thrill ride. david's eventual encounter with his maker and location of the "blue fairy" gives this 2nd act a wonderful false conclusion, and i half think that the movie should properly have ended there ― not that this would have "fixed" its structural problems.

love the third chapter. it has almost nothing to do with the first two, and only makes an emotionally, narratively and tonally incoherent movie that much more nonsensical, but it's brave, looks great and does finally manage to wring some real pathos from david's plight. the main problem here is that it makes a long and episodic movie feel nearly interminable and adds nothing to what we've already seen. the shots of drowned david praying eternally to the blue fairy made exactly the same point, but in a crushingly downbeat manner. the unearned deus ex machina that finally allows him to experience the connection he desires exists only to give us, the audience, a moment of conflicted uplift and a sense of narrative/emotional resolution. spielberg clearly wants to give us those things, that's his style and even his philosophy. i can see what he thought he was saying: "you want it, but you can't have it, and it isn't real, but it seems real, and isn't that real enough?" it doesn't work for me, though. we already understand the horribly limited and selfish nature of david's desire, and see too how he is us, how false and real, rational and irrational are arbitrary distinctions when it comes to human emotional need. giving him what he wants, as beautifully as this final act is realized, adds nothing to a film that never decided what it meant to be.

Oh I guess I never saw the structure as anything other than a Disney style three act thing (with the middle act being the weakest).

1) middle class utopian thing (except it's really about the attempt at the middle class utopian thing, what with intense grief and this notion of literally buying love undercutting it all--I agree this would be an effective movie in itself).

2) the fall from grace and attendant wandering. Etc.

3) the third act revelation of his own, for lack of a better word, repeatability or falseness.Which leads into the repetition or "false" version of act one (again pretty obviously undercut).

All of this is interesting to me because it demands to be interpreted along the Disney or early Spielberg lines but almost constantly makes that investment recoil as repeatable/mechanical etc.

yeah, that's fair, and as the deliberate subversion of an expectation based on what "spielberg" and "disney" are ordinarily taken to mean, it's both laudable and intellectually engaging. but for me, that's a thin reward. *shrug*

do want to take back the "terrible" characterization, though. that was far too harsh, as all three are ambitious and interesting, if not wholly successful, AI being the best of them and war of the worlds the worst, IMO.

The fractured structure may well be Kubrick's DNA showing through. I've been watching the Kubrick blu-ray boxset and it's mentioned a couple of times in the documentaries that Kubrick liked to work on getting a number of separate story parts (I think five was the number mentioned) for each film, then tried to join them with whatever connective tissue he could come up with. This pretty much bears out when you watch the films.

This poll needs a redux: A Steven Spielberg Poll (1994-2018)

Forgot about all the great slapstick in Minority Report. Cruise having to keep his eyes from falling into the grate, so good.