Steven Spielberg - classic or dud

The Terminal stripped him of any claim to classicness.

It's one thing to get excited in a 'film school' sort of way about his technique. It's another thing to sit in a dark theater and be moderately entertained by his movies. But has Speilberg overcome the limits of his medium to create great and lasting art in the way of Cocteau or Fellini or Howard Hawks or Preston Sturges? Not in my view. He generally makes clever confections. He's a great chef.

However, his depiction of the D-Day landing in Saving Private Ryan is a classic that stands head and shoulders above his normal work, including the remainder of SPR.

Take, for example,Brininging Up Baby. It aims at nothing more than sheer entertainment, but it is so entertaining that it sheerly delights me with its artistry and wit, its little-red-wagon sense of fun. It is an exemplar of light-hearted foolery, a gush of google-eyed silliness, a whole 'nother world you step into.

E.T. - The Extra Terrestrial aims at something a bit more than 'mere' entertainment. It wants to achieve a certain modicum of significance, in a warm and fuzzy sort of way - as a statement about wonder and innocence or something like that. But it doesn't really work on that level. It achieves a sappy, happy sentimentality about wonder and innocence. You cry when ET is dying at the hands of the mean, cold-hearted scientists because, um, never mind why. But can you take any part of it back into your life and make it work for you.

That's why Spielberg is meh. He's a perfect B+ student. He gets all the low-hanging fruit and most of the middling stuff, but never quite bags the topmost stuff.

He may be pretty middlebrow, but stuff like Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can, WOTW etc is very entertaining, well made cinema. I agree that he often feels like he's trying to make a bigger statement than he actually achieves, but I cannot think of another director working currently who has consistently entertained me so well over the last 25 years.

No mention of it yet here, but I'm on the side that feels A.I. is one of his best films, too. There's plenty not to like about it, but the stuff that works (the whole opening act, the journey to drowned Manhattan, fuck it, even the ending) is some of the most mesmerising, compelling sci-fi I have ever seen. Real cinema of wonder in a very pure form.

xp

i actually LIKE spielberg and feel he gets a bad rap from "entertainment is not art" types, but howard hawks is a greater director than spielberg for the same reason charles schulz is a greater artist than dave sim.

i. dis. agree. there, that wasn't so hard. in this context, i don't care about great directors. i care about entertaining films. hawks' films are *quite* entertaining. but they don't stand out particularly from hollywood films of the 'classic' (c. 1930 - c. 1960) period.

he has a slightly nasty, right-libertarian view of society based on the rugged-individualist/masculinist ideal (women have to be men). it's this glib view of 'how to deal' that i mean by 'audience-minded'. he's all about winners.

expressive editing (blah phrase, but whatevs) is not film school bullshit. following the aesthetic choices of 1950s cahiers du cinema is film school bullshit!!

point is the kind of stuff spielberg does, like the beach scene, was beyond the dreams of any classic hollywood director. they'd have fucking killed to have done it. maybe sam fuller with spielberg's crew would be the best thing.

# Indiana Jones 4 (2006) (announced)
# Untitled Steven Spielberg/Abraham Lincoln Project (2007) (pre-production)
# Untitled 1972 Munich Olympics Project (2005) (filming)
# War of the Worlds (2005)
# The Terminal (2004)
# Catch Me If You Can (2002)
# Minority Report (2002)
# Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)

This list, of films I have seen, arranged more or less in descending order of quality (last = best) is the reason why I'm not interested in any of the films above:

# Saving Private Ryan (1998)
# The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
# Schindler's List (1993)
# Jurassic Park (1993)
# Hook (1991)
# Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
# Empire of the Sun (1987)
# The Color Purple (1985)
# Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
# E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
# Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
# Jaws (1975)
# Duel (1971)

In conclusion, Thank You Mr. Spielberg for bringing some really fantastic adventures to the big screen, and showing us some highly exciting moments, No Thank You Mr. Spielberg for saddling nearly all of them with increasingly awful casting as time marches on and for trying to choke us to death with your faith in the human spirit or whatever you want to call that unbelievably smug annoying self-congratulatory horseshit.

xpost,
more complexity and disturbingly adult themes
So do the fucking Matrix movies. OMG HE DIES TO SAVE EVERYBODY

this is kinda otm -- it's there in the movies -- but the horseshit bits are outnumbered by the highly exciting moments. or, they're *both* there. same way fall-flat bits of unfunniness and misanthropy coexist with real chills in hitchcock.

otoh, is 'saving private ryan' really that smug? it has those terrible bookends, and the matt damon bits are really annoying, but i've seen far less convinving movies about war.

The first time I saw Duel I knew it was supposed to be "atypical" Spielberg but I still spent probably half the movie waiting for some insipid deus ex machina to rob me of all my actual emotions and replace them with spoonfed lotus blooms. This is what he's done to his legacy.

Looking at that list above I realize I've disliked a LOT of his movies, without even really realizing they were Spielberg flix. I mean the only movies that I like in that list are Raiders, Last Crusade, Duel, Catch Me If You Can (and that's not even an active like because I forgot I saw it until recently) and...uh...well, I don't actually like Jurassic Park at ALL but Jeff Goldblum dresses fantastically in it so I'll give it a little bit of a pass (THAT FINAL SHOT OF THE T-REX AND THE RAPTORS IS THE ABSOLUTE WORST SHOT IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF CINEMATOGRAPHY AND DIRECTION AND THAT IS A STONE COLD FACT PEOPLE). I'd like Saving Private Ryan better if the bookends were deleted and it was about a half hour shorter.

Dr. Morbius, how about you discuss the "disturbing adult themes" in, say, Catch Me If You Can?

jaws fucking rules ally. jpark3's pretty great, the best of the bunch no doubt. poltergeist was pretty great. band of brothers was incredible. into the west was rousing fun.

OBEY

Pretty into Spielberg working with Josh O'Connor

I would love to be in Josh O'Connor.

Apparently he's making a western.

Good. Must be on his bucket list.

The great Sugarland Express was sort of a western: outlaws, Texas, Ben Johnson, cars instead of horses.

hell, you could almost argue for "duel" as a western for that matter

his John Ford tribute?

I'd argue that most of his films are Ford tributes.

Saw this:

The SXSW keynote revealed that he’s currently developing a Western, with the aim to shoot in Texas and eschew Western tropes and stereotypes.

Eschew Western tropes and stereotypes? Aren't those essentially what make a western a western, no matter the setting? Or does that just mean, like, no horses?

He'll make an anti-Western, and it will the first one ever.

Lol

Maybe he will set this one in the east.

Much better trailer for Disclosure Day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCYT8vb2siQ

Looks good, though part of me wishes it literally looked a little different. But Kamiński gonna Kamiński and Spielberg clearly loves the guy.

Started digging in on Spielberg with the 11 year old. Last night we watched Hook which was pretty awful. Dustin Hoffman is the best part of it, easily. Bob Hoskins is good. Almost everything else is horrid. So many lingering shots of cute children smiling. Utterly repulsive and the only Spielberg movie I can think of that looks shitty.

Tonight was Catch Me If You Can which rules. I almost had to pause the movie, I was laughing so hard at the knock knock joke. The movie gets going and doesn’t stop! I had forgotten Amy Adams was in it.

We’ve already seen most of the big classics: Raiders, Close Encounters, Jurassic Park, ET, and Poltergeist. And BFG. Which was bad.

Maybe AI next.

Ha, wonder how that will land with the 11-year old. Have you seen it before? It might kill you.

Utterly repulsive and the only Spielberg movie I can think of that looks shitty.

Otm. There was a hint of "Hook" revisionism some time back, but no, this movie sucks. One of those movies with a huge, elaborate, artificial set that never looks more than a huge, elaborate, artificial set, which I find totally distracting. Dunno what Spielberg was thinking. Maybe, "my next two movies, which will come out the same year, will be two of my best, one finally netting me a bunch of Oscars and the other setting a new, still-unmatched standard for special effects."

And just before Hook was another stinker.

Always has scattered moments of charm from Hunter and Goodman, and it's not bereft of Spielberg movie magic --- Dreyfuss is just determined to tank everything through utter lack of appeal.

Feel like Tintin might make sense for Cow_Art's series, though I'm a poor judge of what's perfect for an 11-year-old versus a year or two younger.

I hate Always because it makes Audrey Hepburn into a buffoon.

We watched Duel with the 14 yr old and he loved it though it’s certainly more slow-burn than a lot of his movies, and almost experimental compared to current cinema.

Feel like that's the film written out of his canon.

xpost

"Always"? "Tintin"? There are a few films more or less written out of his canon. "Always," "Tintin," "1941," "Sugarland Express," "BFG," maybe even "War Horse," possibly "The Post" ...

I saw AI in a theater in San Jose on July 4th. I was living in Texas at the time and my girlfriend and I were scouting out where I was going to move for grad school. My first time really leaving home and going far away from my friends and family and my mother who I was very close to.

The trip went well until immediately after the movie. It pushed the right combination of buttons in my brain at the right time and I broke down crying. I made it to the parking lot weeping and then into the car with my head on my girlfriend’s lap, sobbing.

I have no idea if the movie was good or not. I remember what the family house looked like, some sort of a sexy circus, and a far in the future ending with aliens.

xpost
I think you can add The Terminal, Bridge of Spies, and Ready Player One to that list.

For such a big deal movie at the time, The Color Purple doesn't seem to get namechecked much now

Utterly repulsive and the only Spielberg movie I can think of that looks shitty.

The London-set scenes are rather lovely; won't defend the movie's look much beyond that, but what I wouldn't give for Spielberg to go back to working with someone like Dean Cundey.

A.I. is a fantastic movie, one of his best IMHO, but it didn't properly take with me when I saw it at 17. Revisited in the theater at 42 and loved it.

I've seen it quite a few times, most recently several months ago, and it has never lost its luster for me.

Time to repost this: https://www.ianwatson.info/plumbing-stanley-kubrick/

Last night I rewatched AI for the first time since it was released. It’s pretty sloppy and feels like different ideas/tones are bolted together in a way that’s clumsy and off-putting. The first quarter is really good. When the sick son returns home it gets a little wobbly and once the fake moon rises it totally goes off the rails. Some of the robot designs are awesome but the staging and camera work, it sinks almost to Hook lows.

It gets better after that but never fully recovers and the “happy” ending feels bogus. It would have been better if it ended with David praying to the Blue Fairy. The animated Blue Fairy was wack. The score was overbearing. It was a mess with some really good bits.

I've made my peace with the ending. More and more I embrace messy films by good directors b/c it's fun to think about the mess.

The happy ending Kubrick's idea, I only learned a few years ago.

I don't think of the ending as happy at all. I think it is utterly tragic and heartbreaking. I have no problem with it.

yeah I've come to see the ending (and the whole movie) as an indictment of we humans. Dr. Hobby builds a doll to perfectly perform the unconditional love we crave, and then as the final demonstration of our vanity, programs it to desire a similarly hollow performance as its only motivation. when all else is gone, this pathetic neediness is what remains to tell our successors, to paraphrase Gigolo Joe, that "we were."

Yeah. And at the end of human civilization, David is closest the nu robots (who have outlasted their creators) can come to the real thing, and they are studying him, this last vestige/vessel of humanity whose goodness is 100% artificial, by design.

I wish this looked good (I am not a Spielberg hater), but... it doesn't. The scenes with the little girl and the deer in particular look like something from a particularly uncanny valley-ish Robert Zemeckis Christmas movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFz8czbdPdU

Joke's on you, the deer is real, the people are all fake.

https://www.nbcstore.com/products/disclosure-day-stag-popcorn-bucket

with popcorn in it: https://www.instagram.com/p/DY4nf82Eep7

The trailer for The New One looked okay. My boy Josh O'Connor looked hot as fuck.

Wow, 2.5 hours of Spielberg talking about 2001 as a guest on the new Rewatchables episode.

Yes! looking forward to listening!

just watched and he’s a real joy of a guest.

Yeah this was an absolute delight for me as a fan of him and of Kubrick, so fun. (And I laughed at Bill trying to explain that stupid apex mountain category to Spielberg)

Finally watched Ready Player One on a long flight. Woof. From my secondhand understanding of the source material, there's no question it turned out better in Spielberg's hands than it would with Generic 2010s Tentpole CGI Flick Director. But there's not much to recommend it. The real issues are at the screenplay level - story's a buffet of questy nothinges, screenplay's REALLY flat, themes are muddy, and the pop-culture quotational junkfest just sits there on the screen, neither hateable nor interrogated to the point of becoming interesting. Mendelsohn does his villain thing well enough but nobody else makes an impression. The Shining thing was lame but not even memorably terrible.

I was hoping to find some unexpected spark along the way, like "aha, THIS is what drew him into this..." but of everything I've seen by him, it felt the most faceless and voiceless.

I am excited for Disclosure Day though!

This podcast is often lol fun. Very cool.

"Cruise or Hanks" hahaaa

I hope he does come back for a Jaws episode, my head would fully explode <3

I think it’s hilarious that he insists on always saying the full name of the film, “2001 A Space Odyssey”