40 Years of Spielberg
I’m getting sick and tired of HE commenters saying I’m such a Steven Spielberg basher that I have no credibility when I write about his films — that I’m blinded by some blanket aesthetic contempt or whatever. Even Sasha Stone has suggested this. An hour ago I answered a couple of guys who threw this charge at me (“you have zero credibility when it comes to judging a Spielberg movie”) as follows:
I have no credbility because I’m convinced that Spielberg is a high-end journeyman hack with an all-but-incorrigible sentimental streak? There is ample…make that mountains of evidence to back up that view. He’s probably the only hack in Hollywood history with a personal net worth of over $3 billion, but that’s an asterisk, not a disqualifier. He loves what he’s doing and so do tens of millions of viewers, but he’s essentially a showman, a (mostly) impersonal ringmaster in the Ringling Bros. tradition. He’s not quite the Cecil B. DeMille of our time, but he’s in that realm.
I’ve been grappling with Spielberg and his films for 40 years now (starting with the televising of Duel in ’71) and I feel I really know the man inside and out.
Almost all of Spielberg’s movies have been abouherhe fact that he’s a skilled, highly gifted filmmaker who likes to “get” audiences and sell tickets. The charge that was first thrown at him back in the late ’70s and early ’80s (along with DePalma and Lucas) is that he’s a middle-class, not especially worldly or well-read kid from Arizona who likes to make movies about other movies, and that he’s not exactly swept away or lifted up with great feeling or conviction about the world outside the Hollywood realm.
Spielberg hasn’t really grown out of that. He still lives in his own world. War Horse is the latest of his films to make that abundantly clear.
With the exception of Schindler’s List and E.T. — arguably the only two films in his canon that have delivered truly personal, deep-down convictions and emotions (as opposed to generic sentimentality about family, tradition, the American way of life, the U.S. military during World War II, the paintings of Norman Rockwell and Andrew Wyeth, etc.) — Spielberg’s filmmaking passion has mostly been about being nothing more or less than commercially successful filmmaker.
Spielberg’s mission has always been about making Joe Popcorn enthralled and amused and soothed and entertained, and he’s always done this by showing us how happy and soothed and entertained Steven Spielberg is while making a film. He loves wearing that red coat and top hat and shouting “ladies and gentleman!” through a megaphone and bringing out the dancing elephant and the trapeze artists and the lion and the lion tamer with the boots and the whip and the chair.
Few have his naturally strategic directorial eye, or his special compositional instincts and intelligence. He’s always delivered that special mise en scene excitement, that snap-crackle-popcorn, but he’s never been a serious filmmaker who engages with the world he lives in and/or his own personal core issues (other than his love of cinema). He never puts any intimate issues and passions into movies, probably because he doesn’t have any intimate issues and passions (other than his love of cinema). He’s about the cinema of impersonal passion and conviction, about his worship of movies that turned him on as a kid and of great influential directors and great classic films, and of solid craftsmanship and cool smash cuts and great rollercoaster chase sequences and all that.
Steven Spielberg is a jumble of talent and pizazz and a grab-bag of influences without any real core of his own. He’s Mr. Americana, Mr. Hook, Mr. Always (“It’s England, man!”), a money machine, and the most successful shallow filmmaker in motion picture history.
And for 13 years I’ve hated, hated, hated the fact that Spielberg cheated when he went in tight on the old grieving man’s eyes in the beginning of Saving Private Ryan and then cut to Tom Hanks and his comrades on the landing craft about to land at Omaha Beach. That was a wildly dishonest cut (or transition), and for me it brought the whole film down a notch or two.
Spielberg was a golden boy and a filmmaking dynamo operating in the exact right moment in time from Duel through E.T./Poltergeist, although I became convinced when I saw 1941 (which included an hommage to Jaws, four years after that film came out) that he was quite the egotist, and that he didn’t have the outside-the-Hollywood-realm experience or bull-headed integrity to be John Ford or Howard Hawks.
And then he resurged with the third Indiana Jones film (which I genuinely love on an episode-to-episode basis).
And then he found Schindler’s List, a story and a subject he deeply cared about and brought his core convictions to, and almost a total abandonment of his usual look-at-how-clever-and-enthused-I-am devices (except for the little red-tinted girl in the ghetto) and sentimentality (except for Liam Neeson weeping with guilt at the end).
I’ve never thought about that cut from the old man to Hanks at the beginning of SPR. You’re right, very dishonest.
Couldn’t disagree more, and you leave out a lot of his more challenging films — I assume by design, because they don’t support your claims.
Close Encounters is entertaining, but a “popcorn movie”? Hardly. Sit down and watch it now. How is that a lowest-common-denominator kind of entertainment? And while we’re on the subject: Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, Munich, Minority Report, A.I. — those are off the top of my head. Maybe they aren’t challenging to *you* — but you can’t argue that those are merely well-crafted but hollow popcorn movies. Spielberg is trying to say something — just because it’s not what you want him to say, or in the way he says it, doesn’t negate that.
(The bigger problem, however, is that you’re famous for your initial praises of Spielberg projects that evolve into pans over the following month or two. Let’s talk Indiana Jones 4. Or Munich. Etc, etc. I’m sure in a month’s time, War Horse will be a “cinematic travesty” that you hated every minute of…)
Correction: Just youtubed the first ten minutes of SPR. Spielberg doesn’t cut from the old man to Hanks. The cut is from a shot of the old man too an establishing shot of Omaha Beach followed by a few shots of the landing craft heading towards the fight. It’s only after about ten seconds that Hanks appears.
Wells to BoulderKid: I just popped the Ryan Bluray into the player and re-watched it. You’re right, and I’ve edited my post to reflect this. But the implication is CLEARLY that the old man was either Hanks or one of the guys on Hanks’ landing craft. There was NO SUGGESTION WHATSOEVER that the old man was Matt Damon’s Ryan character on some other landing craft. In my book that transition was a flat-out lie — an attempt to hoodwink the audience. Which of course worked until Spielberg spilled the beans at the end. It was dishonest and underhanded.
I think you’re a Spielberg-basher, but that doesn’t mean you’re not right about War Horse, or indeed, half his movies.
I think the real question with Spielberg is, what’s the movie under the movie? The best recent Spielberg movies have a mordant undertone that is buried for 90% of the audience under a happy, rousing exterior.
Minority Report, if you accept that the last hour happens inside Tom Cruise’s head in deep sleep in prison and not in reality, is bleak as hell. AI, about how goddam needy children are, is bleaker yet. War of the Worlds is about how feckless baby boomers did nothing to stop one 9/11 and will do nothing about the next one. Saving Private Ryan’s “dishonesty” is in fact a brilliant reversal of audience expectations that the hero always survives the story; only the chickenshits survive this war.
But then there’s the ones that only have the rousing exterior. Probably War Horse is one of these– but who knows?
Two of the funniest things about Jeff’s Spielberg hardon are: 1) his conviction that it makes any difference to anyone, or anything, anywhere, and 2) his conviction that a dislike of Spielberg’s films gives him a license to make all kinds of unpleasant speculations about Spielberg as a person. Again, the sort of thing that would get him popped in the jaw under different circumstances.
Wells to Glenn Kenny: And what makes people want to take a poke at someone? Sometimes it’s when the offender or provocatuer has said something really stupid or insensitive or thoughtless (like Sid in The Descendants chuckling at an Alzeheimer’s sufferer). But it also happens when the provocateur has hit a truth nerve. Due respect, but I think we both know that I’m not Sid in this instance.
That is exactly what kills Private Ryan. The first time I saw it I knew that wasn’t right. A total blatant manipulative device to wring sentiment from an already willing audience. You didn’t need those scenes, thats why it doesn’t get a pass from me, it ruins the whole enterprise. I was actually glad Shakespeare in Love grabbed the gold that year. He just can’t rid that happy comfort food vibe from his system, its been too successful for him in the past to let it go.
It’s nice to see Jeff lay all this out so it can so easily debunked.
The whole “except for ET And Schindler’s List” caveat is an absurd, slippery slope. So, you’re not going to count Jaws or Close Encounters or Raiders as the absolute peak of their form. A hack makes The Mummy, a hack does not make Raiders. Watch those two films and you will learn the very definition of the term (no offense, Mummy lovers).
And I like Last Crusade better than most but that’s what your citing as a career highpoint? Really?
So, now we’ve got like 5″ except” films and then there’s a whole bunch of debatable movies like AI, Minority Report, Jurassic Park etc etc that are all – whatever their failings – films no HACK could dream of. A hack could produce Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List in the same year?
You either don’t know what the word means or you’re totally misapplying it. Either way, it undermines everything else here.
Next you’ll be telling us you don’t DISLIKE the Beatles you just think they’re HACKS because they produced a bunch of derivative crap, except for Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road. That’s about the level of absurdity we’re dealing with here.
Wells to DavidF: What I said is that Spielberg loves to make movies that “get” people and sell tickets. He’s made a lot of very clever and highly entertaining movies in the service of that effort. What he lacks, and what qualifies him as a hack, is the personal passion element that leads to films that are about real people and things and deliver real lasting substance. Spielberg just bangs these films out, one after the other, War Horse to Tintin to Lincoln to Robopocalypse, etc. Schindler’s List and E.T. are “arguably the only two films in his canon that have delivered truly personal, deep-down convictions and emotionalism (as opposed to generic sentimentality about family, tradition, the American way of life, the U.S. military during World War II, the paintings of Norman Rockwell and Andrew Wyeth, etc.).” His basic aesthetic is almost the same as those guys who made two-reeler westerns on the Republic lot in the ’30s and ’40s except Spielberg is much more talented and successful and works with higher budgets and big-name actors.
Close Encounters is a dark movie when you think about it. Roy’s addiction causes him to lose his job and family, and yet you still root for him. And because the aliens go away for so long, his wife will be dead, and his kids will be old by the time he comes back.
It amazes me that people can criticize Spielberg (which they’re free to do) but then champion directors of the classic era like Ford or Hawks, when their brand of sentimentality is even more overt. What really separates Sergeant York from War Horse? If Spielberg put a scene like “old time religion” in his movie, you wouldn’t hear the end of it. (And I really like Sergeant York, and that scene.)
I’m pretty sure that 99 % of all directors out there would love to have the talent of that “hack”…
Your views on Spielberg are admirably high-falutin’, and I endorse everything you’ve said on The Bearded One.
Where everyone sees hypocrisy, Jeff, is the fact that, very often, you champion fairly middlebrow crap in the Spielberg vein. You were BREATHLESS over the pedestrian Captain America. You side with the dubious Rod Lurie types. You thought fucking “Morning Glory” was worth discussion beyond the five minutes after the end credits rolled. You can’t rail on against Spielberg and still be such a boring mainstream whore at the same time.
Wells to Gabe: Captain America was one of the few superhero films to really work because it took place in the true-blue patriotic period of the early 1940s. Morning Glory was pilloried because it didn’t take the same condeming view about Rachel McAdam’s go-go producer character that Broadcast News expressed about Bill Hurt’s ethically slippery anchorman. Lurie’s Nothing But The Truth was a very well made film. We all succumb from time to time to middlebrow films. You don’t?
Is it kind of a generational (ie, younger than mine) to include JURASSIC PARK in with Spielberg’s classics? I grew up worshipping JAWS, one of the most perfect movies ever made, and even if I always thought Raiders and E.T. were just mildly overrated, there’s never been any denying their skill or how much they meant to Gen X and beyond…
But JURASSIC PARK? I was 20 when that came out, had read the book, was super-stoked expecting it to be a JAWS/CLOSE ENCOUNTERS level heavy-hitter masterpiece… I liked it fine and to this day it’s a pleasant, painless rewatch and the effects are still great, but honestly on first viewing it was one of the bigger disappointments of that era. It just seemed too “light” and cutesy, it had that CARTOON LECTURE and Attenborough bumbling and those annoying kids and all that wide-eyed wonder with push-ins on a RAG TAG CREW (a la Twister or Dante’s Peak) that other than Goldblum was kind of lame. And again, Big Bird herself, Laura Dern, continuing Spielberg’s tradition of matronly blonde asexual actresses; It barely registered more than CONGO or NO ESCAPE with Ray Liotta to me as a 20-year-old, but to this day you hear guys about 10 years younger than me acting like it was a Star Wars-Rocky-Jaws level formative classic for them.
I’d say it’s pretty much minor Spielberg, a 2.5, 3-star affair that isn’t much more memorable than Arachnophobia or Tremors.
The fact that you’re sick and tired of it doesn’t make it any less true. I’m sure that Spielberg slighted you in some way that you took personally 20 years ago, and now you take it out on each film he makes. Same as the Criterion situation. War Horse may indeed be awful, but you’re the last person I would read to find out.
I think Jeff can’t grasp the fact that Spielberg is a true believer in the magic of movies. And most audiences want to believe in the magic of movies too and he is the closest to a sure thing to deliver this magic.
And why does his magic work compared to other (successful) directors like Michael Bay? He wants you to like the main characters despite their flaws and he is not afraid to use a bit of sentimentality – compare this to Shia LaBeouf’s character in “Transformers 3″ who has no likeable character treats and stumbles through the movie with no sense of purpose.
I for one hope for plenty of more Spielberg magic and wish you would use the word hack for people who really deserve it…
“Just youtubed the first ten minutes of SPR. Spielberg doesn’t cut from the old man to Hanks. The cut is from a shot of the old man too an establishing shot of Omaha Beach followed by a few shots of the landing craft heading towards the fight. It’s only after about ten seconds that Hanks appears. ”
Nevertheless, the standard-film-grammar implication is that the old man is remembering storming the beaches at Normandy. When in fact, Private Ryan was not at Omaha Beach at all.
Sorry, Jeff – Your backing down on the SPR opening doesn’t hold water.
You said there was “no suggestion whatsoever” that the old man was Damon except, as I said above, he has a 101st lapel pin on him.
It’s not OBVIOUS because it’s not supposed to be obvious. It’s only LYING if someone calls him “Captain Miller” and at the end he goes, “OH, I’m not Miller. I’m Ryan.” As it stands, it’s just a cinematic device.
I already used the Psycho example but you could really think of ANY movie to point out similar examples of dishonesty. How “Dishonest” is it that Glinda never told Dorothy she just had to click her stupid heels? Why doesn’t that bring that film down a whole notch?
Also, it’s rich to see a guy who reveres Tarantino and the Coen Bros. accuse Spielberg of only making movies about movies. Pshaw.
Does this one little two-second switcharoo in SPR really still negate the entire film for all you guys, 13 years on??? Just furthers my point that so many smart movie critics are actively looking for the least little provocation so they can turn on the entire movie. It’s one tiny element. It doesn’t erase the other 150-some minutes that are awesome.
I mean, I think the wheelchair race through the hospital corridors in DAYS OF THUNDER is the dumbest thing ever put to film, but it doesn’t negate the other 100 minutes of ABSOLUTE CINEMATIC PERFECTION. You guys would write off whole movies because of their one or two false moments.
See also: Bana fucking the Munich out of his wife. It’s a cringe-worthy scene, but everything else is so awesome, YOU JUST PRESS ON.
Oh, and I nearly forgot THIS gem:
“Almost all of Spielberg’s movies have been about him…”
Eagerly awaiting your critical pieces about “hacks” like Hitchcock, Woody, etc.
OF COURSE Spielberg’s movies are about him, in some way. That’s why he IS NOT A HACK. Hacks don’t make meaningless drivel. They’re drawn to the themes in some way.
Here’s another Wells GEM:
“Spielberg just bangs these films out, one after the other, War Horse to Tintin to Lincoln to Robopocalypse, etc.”
Yes. Lincoln was a total Eloi snoozefest — is that why it’s taken years to go into production, during a number of rewrites? Because I don’t know that hacks rework the screenplay over and over again before they shoot a movie… and lumping Robopocalypse in — a movie that isn’t even in *preproduction yet*??!!
There is a hack in this conversation… but it’s not Spielberg.
If Spielberg were a college football coach who let his assistants rape children, HE commenters would be the asshole students overturning TV trucks in protest of his firing.
Storytellers have styles. So long as they work to continually refine and grow within their styles I’m not sure what more you can ask of them. Blaming Spielberg for liking schmaltz is like blaming Scorcese for liking gangsters. Do we consign Capra to hell for his efforts? I agree that Spielberg sometimes declines into bathos, but which movie maker doesn’t?
I think two things play into Spielberg bashing, and one is a jealous resentment over his success and power. But the other, the purer one that underlies some people’s frustration, is the suspicion that if he tried a little harder he might make a movie that changes the game forever. Or perhaps it would be better to say that there was a time when we thought he was going to, and then he seemed to settle for less and so now people refuse to forgive him for it.
Why ‘obsess’ about Spielberg’s so called weaknesses, when he’s clearly one of the top 3 filmmakers of all time?
Is he that talented (in your mind) that you think he should have made even more great films in his lifetime?
Raiders, Jaws, Schindler’s List, ET. Legendary. Scary Good.
I didnt even like Private Ryan that much (on an ‘entertainment’ level), but I admired the skill of it.
Anyone who directs a film like ‘Schindler’s List’ deserves a lifetime pass.
From a 100% trustworthy source, delivered a few minutes ago: An award-winning screenwriter who had collaborated with Spielberg was asked what Spielberg’s conribution had been to the film they worked on together: “The Spielberg formula,” he said, “is nonstop action followed by a group hug, and all of it smothered in lousy music.”
Lex FTW. On all counts (including the Days of Thunder one).
Oh, snap!
Jeff Wells FTW in Post #21.
I sure loved that big hug at the end of AI. That was one happy ending, smothered in music, following a whole bunch of non-stop action!
And Minority Report? Same deal. Remember that awesome action scene in The Color Purple? Remember that big hug at the end of Close Encounters when that dude left his family to go on a spaceship? Howsabout the non-stop action in Schindler’s List – when that dude made the speech in the factory and then that other speech by his car and then there was Hebrew music when the Russian dude came? And when Eric Bana and Geoffrey Rush finally got bizzy at the end of Munich as the music swelled in the background? Yeah….quelle formula.
We could do this all day.
Good point from Mr. F. about Wells slamming Robocalypse while it’s still in pre-production. Usually he at least waits to see the POSTER before taking it apart.
Man, it’s sliding downhill fast here. We need DZ, stat, to add some BO analysis to the thoughtful work going down.
On a pure level of technique, Spielberg is unparallelled. His pure film sense in terms of composition, blocking, rhythm, mise en scene, editing, use of sound and what have you is preturnatural and he’s been copied so much over the last 35 years that it’s easy to take these gifts for granted — the man has literally single-handedly rewritten the grammar of film. And all of this is just instinctual. You can watch any Spielberg film and there will always be some passage, some shot, some camera move that takes your breath away. He’s that good.
Unfortunately, he’s an idiot savant. In spite of all those gifts, he’s not really all that smart and he has terrible taste. And when he lets his conscious bad taste get in the way of his unconscious instincts, that’s when he always runs into trouble. He starts to second-guess himself and you can see this battle running between his elegant simplicity on one hand and his desperate need to be liked and seem “important” on the other. This is a man who butchered his best film, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, removing all the spontaneous human moments and adding a schmaltzy ending to it for its initial “Special Edition” (he subsequently amended the mistake on video, but it speaks volumes). In other films, he gets scared to let the power of his images speak for themselves, so he slathers mawkish John Williams music over them wall to wall. He constantly trips himself up by getting in his own way.
Think THE COLOR PURPLE and its cringeworthy moments of bad judgement and tonal miscalculation. The tonal trainwreck that is HOOK. Or, as Jeff mentioned, the bookend to SAVING PRIVATE RYAN — it’s not the opening shot that sinks it, it’s the final one, with it’s clunkiness and bad acting by the old man when he leaves the wreath on the grave. Or think how good and restrained A.I. is until we get to the wacky computer voiced by Robin Williams doing his ALADDIN schtick. MUNICH is a masterful film that holds up incredibly well, but there’s that horrible “fucking his wife intercut with Mossad killing terrorists” montage and that awful self-important score with the exotic middle eastern wailing slathered over everything. It’s like he can’t help himself. All the talent in the world can’t make up for bad taste.
Dirty Harry once famously said that “a man has to know his limitations.” Not only does a man have to know them, he has to have the capacity to recognize them AS limitations. I love and admire Spielberg and his movies to death, but jesus he’s infuriating at times. I will see WAR HORSE with an open mind, but I can smell Oscar-bait from 10 clicks away and I don’t like the fumes I’m picking up so far….
Like “Saving Private Ryan”, I was similarly infuriated by “Citizen Kane”. He says “rosebud” at the beginning…we spend the whole movie dying to know what that meant, only to find out (spoiler alert!) that it’s a just a stupid old sled. I’m mean really.
Film Fanatic wins the thread. First paragraph is spot on.
Oh shit.
I’m one of the Spielberg defenders here, though admittedly more in reaction to Jeffrey’s hate than to my own admiration.
Having said that… I’m alarmingly in agreement with much of Film Fanatic’s above post. I guess he’s, in a way, being critical of much of Spielberg’s work without perhaps being such a complete douchebag about it.
Correction though… Spielberg never wanted to add the “inside the ship” ending to the original Special Edition of CE3K. (hence why it was later removed) He added it as a part of a deal he struck with the studio to allow him to do the other changes he wanted. That’s the only way Columbia would finance it.
Or think how good and restrained A.I. is until we get to the wacky computer voiced by Robin Williams doing his ALADDIN schtick.
Silliest complaint I’ve seen about the movie. The whole second half adventure is the fairy tale, and Williams fits right in there.
“If Spielberg were a college football coach who let his assistants rape children, HE commenters would be the asshole students overturning TV trucks in protest of his firing.”
As a PSU alumn, I sort of resent the analogy based on how you worded it.
For it to be true, HE commenters would also have to overturn tv trucks everytime they came out of a theater having just watched an awesome movie made by Spielberg. And to your point… perhaps they should.
That’s what the students do up there on GOOD nights – the media never covers it because it’s not considered news. They have cops out in riot gear and on horses several times a year simply because it’s Saturday night.
More on point – even if you waiver on the degree of skill and passion and excellence in Spielberg’s work as a whole…. just compare him to the other tens of thousands of directors out there, past and present. What actual percentage of them would you want directing any particular movie instead of Spielberg? 2% 1% 0.006%?
Wells has a right to his opinion, but I think it paints too broad of a stroke and exhibits no perspective. If Spielberg is a journeyman hack, how do you describe the countless people so obviously beneath him? – like Joel Soisson, or Michael Lembeck, or Christopher Cain, just to name a few (that I had to look up).
Who are these people?
Exactly.
I would wager that a lot more of Jeff’s colleagues other than Sasha and Glenn would also agree with Spielberg-bashing charge if they were to read several year’s worth of posts that completely back up this sentiment.
Look at the LINCOLN posts alone, until the day that Jeff’s preferred choice of Liam Neeson “ankled” the project, there was very little mention of it being a doomed to failure film entirely due to Spielberg being a complete hack.
The bottom is that Jeff has such a predictable knee-jerk reaction to Spielberg (like Lucas, only not quite as seething), the only value in any posts about him or his films are contained in the commentators remarks. IE, here it is Lex rightly bringing up some truths about JURASSIC PARK – especially how much of a let down it was when the book & Spielberg should have equaled a JAWS level experience.
@DavidF – perfect example of THE MUMMY to RAIDERS to illustrate the true difference between a “high-end journeyman hack” and master filmmaker who might only occasionally approach the level of “artistic genius” but is none the less the peer of Hitchcock, Hawks, Ford, etc.
I don’t think it’s correct or fair to call Spielberg a hack simply because he makes mass-audience films.
You’re basing your hack argument on the idea that Spielberg’s films rarely come from a personal conviction or his own emotional center. BUT YOU’RE MISSING THE POINT. Spielberg grew up with mass entertainment, and that IS his personal conviction. Spielberg absolutely adores moving mass audiences with big, sweeping films and awe-inspiring moments because that’s what moved HIM as a child. It’s part of his DNA.
I think you’re using the term hack to rankle people, because there isn’t any way to truthfully believe Spielberg is a hack. He shows too much artistry in what he does to be called a hack, and you know it. No, Spielberg will never be confused with Scorsese or Malick or any other deeply personal directors. However, like Hitchcock, Spielberg has a certain touch with mass audiences and has made several huge films that continue to resonate today. He might be sugary and baiting the lowest common denominator, but he certainly is not a hack.
A few random observations on this post:
1. 1941 proved that Spielberg was no John Landis.
2. Spielberg does have a sentimental streak combined with a worry over being not at one with his vision of mass audience taste.
3. Any serious discussion of Spielberg’s best films needs to add both EMPIRE OF THE SUN and the first 3/4 of MUNICH.
Jurassic Park was totally constrained by Crichton’s technocratic book and script. Jaws wouldn’t be Jaws if it had to pay lip service to insurance policies, DNA sequencing, lawyers, chaos theory, and computer hacking. Everything adapted from Crichton’s work has had this problem. Remember how many pseudo-scientific hoops Congo had to jump through just so we could see apes get shot with lazers in the last ten minutes?
BTW, Munich shows that someone needs to talk Spielberg in to making a hard-R action/crime film in the Michael Mann film. Every action beat in that film is thrilling in a way that I don’t think I’ve quite seen before.
“Remember how many pseudo-scientific hoops Congo had to jump through just so we could see apes get shot with lazers in the last ten minutes?”
Line of the week.
Michael Bay is a hack. Stephen Sommers is a hack. JJ Abrams is a hack. McG is a hack. Renny Harlin is a hack. Roland Emmerich is a hack.
Steven Spielberg is a master of form, if a little shaky now and again on content. I’d rather watch any of Spielberg’s worst than the best of any of The Hack Pack above. There’s always something interesting to be picked up on in a Spielberg film.
Also, from Jeff’s initial review of Crystal Skull:
“Sections of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull are a great deal of fun. I felt jazzed and charged during a good 60% or even 70% of it. I was more than delighted at times. What a pleasure, I told myself over and over, to swim in a first-rate, big-budget action film that throws one expertly-crafted thrill after another at you, and with plotting that’s fairly easy to understand, dialogue that’s frequently witty and sharp, and performances — Harrison Ford, Shia LeBouf and Cate Blanchett’s, in particular — that are 90% delctable from start to finish. It gave me no real pain, and a healthy amount of serious moviegoing delight.”
I think RAIDERS may be Spielberg’s best film and the least Spielberg-ian movie he’s ever made. A main character that doesn’t love anybody, only gives a fuck about himself and his goal, a stone-cold don’t think twice hardened killer when he needs to be, no cute kids in the movie (except for Sallah’s brood) no hugging (well again, Sallah does provide one hug) no “I Love You.”, bodies getting hacked up, stabbed, chopped up, an ending that features full on FRIDAY THE 13th level gore – hell, he even kills off a monkey in that movie. Think he’ll kill an animal in a movie now? For all the complaints I’ve heard about TEMPLE OF DOOM Being dark and grim over the past 25 or so years, RAIDERS is way tougher. The only thing he’s done on that level since then is MINORITY REPORT.
I’ve read a lot of Spielberg biographies recently (loved Nicole LaPorte’s THE MEN WHO WOULD BE KING) and Jeff is right, Spielberg is a showman/businessman first and director second. For a man whose movies are so cuddly and family-friendly the man can be a cold bastard when he wants to be: Example: Writer works with Steven on a project, Spielberg doesn’t like the first draft, tells writer to re-do it. Writer re-writes it, Spielberg reads it, still doesn’t like it – calls up writer to fire him, Writer says “You don’t know how much this hurts.” Spielberg replies “I suppose it does.” and hangs up.
He can be nasty when he wants. Also love the story of how when he was involved with BACK TO THE FUTURE. Sid Sheinberg at Universal hated that title, suggested SPACEMAN FROM PLUTO. Zemickis told Steve he had to fix this and Steven replied back with a mocking “Thanks for the comical suggestion, Sid. It really gave us a good laugh this morning.” After that – not a peep from Sid. That’s how Spielberg roles.
“the man has literally single-handedly rewritten the grammar of film.”
Film fanatic, can you explain or elaborate on that a little further?
Is Spielberg the best filmmaker/film-storyteller ever? Of course there’s a decent argument that he’s not. Sure, a lot of his stuff (I’m especially reminded of his Goonies/Batteries Not Included/InnerSpace producer days) especially, seemed to just bleed together into an extended LSD trip a la Disney. One DOES need a bit of a tolerance for schmaltz to really enjoy his stuff (which speaks back to Jeff as well, whose ‘schmaltz tolerance’ setting is and always will be set exactly to absolute zero). And to this day, I ‘d love to see the secret early-70s Nassau Vacation photos that John Williams apparently must have of Spielberg that are his ticket to eternal Amblin employment in the scoring department.
Having said that… I really, truly believe the reason Spielberg gets so much of the hate you’d never see vomited on other directors, such as DePalma, is because so many of his movies have just happened to mostly be about hard-working, decidedly-UN-sex-obsessed, and God-fearing MIDDLE-CLASS PEOPLE (or, as I’m reasonably certain Jeff and his favorite colleagues call ‘em, “bourgeois scum”).
At the risk of sounding like LexG, how many folks have EVER called out Woody Allen for making the SAME DAMN MOVIE over and over again about strikingly attractive, slender, hyper-rich, and oversexed Manhattanites for 40 years now?? If Spielberg’s repertoire was a tenth as annoyingly repetitive as Allen’s, his Hollywood career likely have been relegated to slinging dogs at Pink’s by now. But as I’ve seen over and over and over again here and so many other review sites, if Allen shit on the sidewalk, Wells and his pals would (with scary glee) lick it up, call it Oscar-worthy ice cream, and award it 15 stars.
Wells & Co. ABSOLUTELY LOVE seeing flick after flick full of folks they consider to be “like them”: rich, complicated, intellectual, super-successful, accomplished. Yet in the very next breath, they’ll condemn middle-class audiences for going to the movies that do the EXACT SAME THING, i.e., that depict middle-class families as anything better than losers, racists, sellouts, or desperate, secret-hiding religious hypocrites.
And it’s just so achingly obvious why: Too many Hollywoodies just don’t wanna see movies about folks they frankly consider beneath them on the social and class scales (though of course, they’d never admit it). It all boils down to simple human hypocrisy. For them, the story of where in the world poor, poor Mr. Allen might get his next Soho-club quickie is ALWAYS going to be infinitely more compelling than the story of how some lower-middle-class, happily Protestant, midwestern–raised privates survived through WWII.
Late to the party, once again. I’m kind of with Jeffrey on Spielberg, though I love more films than he does. EMPIRE, much of COLOR PURPLE, MUNICH, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, JAWS, some of HOOK is really magical. JURASSIC PARK, is great fun. MUNICH is the last film of his I really liked. MINORITY REPORT had it’s moments, but devolved into a whodunit. WAR OF THE WORLDS was fantastic until the sappy, impossibly illogical ending. RYAN’s opening was astonishing, but then it devolved into a rote WWII flick. There’s so much to love about his technique, his mastery of the medium, but then something goes awry and the films become overly sentimental or sappy or weird. He frustrates me, because I recognize his talent, but it gets wasted on becoming heavy handed or overly sentimental. I’ll see WARHORSE and wish I could keep an open mind, but then my ears become blasted by an over-used John Williams score. Another demerit in my book.
.
To elaborate on my earlier, Vidal-tome-length comment…
None of that was to crap on Allen in particular. I think both “Annie Hall” and “Hannah And Her Sisters” are quite enjoyable. He makes movies about what he knows, and as it happens, he’s lived the charmed Manhattan life. I just don’t understand why Spielberg (and again, for all his limitations) doesn’t get the same consideration from critics.
Again soundling like LexG: if I had Mark Cuban-size money, I’d happily hire both Allen and Spielberg to make two films… and SWITCH THE SCRIPTS. I’d send Steven out to make the Manhattanites-with-mental-sexual-issues flick, and Allen out to make the SoCal Little League-finds-aliens-living-under-the-dugout flick. I bet the resulting films would both be astounding, to say the least. I’m just sick of one getting all the praise and the other getting all the ‘yes, buts…” in the world.
?No, Spielberg will never be confused with Scorsese or Malick or any other deeply personal directors
This is rubbish. On what planet is Spielberg not a personal director? He’s called Close Encounters his personal dream on film (said recently, but wouldn’t do it now having children), ET is subtly about divorce and dealing with loss,Schindler needs no explanation. He made SPR for his dad, and for the veterans of that era. Then we get to the past decade, which not only showed his change in visual style, but thematically as well. For the first time he used his films to deal with current political issues. Minority Report: over-reliance on technology, and government unlawful detainment. War of The Worlds and Munich both dealt with terrorism, with the former being about surviving, and the latter being about how to respond to it. And he caught heat from both Zionists and Arab leagues for his critical response to their tactics. AI dealing with what it means to be human, and if that really matters.
So what the hell separates Scorsese that makes him more personal? Another crime story where peoople curse? A B movie horror thriller? A biopic of Howard Hughes? It’s amazing to me the flack Spielberg gets for this shit, when he’s at least putting himself and his positions out there. You know where he stands when you watch his movie. What the hell has Fincher done where you see what he’s about? What statement has he ever made? And I like Fincher, but for people to diminish Spielberg’s status as an “artist” while trumpeting other directors who also continue to make escapist entertainment is completely disingenuous. I’d love for someone to explain why Dragon Tattoo is somehow more worthwhile than War Horse, other than it’s hard R and it’s violent
Said it before and it rings true no matter what anyone here says.
Black folk (me included) adore The Color Purple the movie. We “get” it in a way that I guess others “get” movies like “Barry Lyndon” or “Hannah and Her Sisters” so my eyes rolled over and glazed over on criticism of that. We’ll just see it differently, and that’s okay.
Surprised no one has mentioned “The Sugarland Express” one of the most intensely depressing and audacious endings of any of Spielberg’s films – what year was that, 1974? The year of “The Towering Inferno”.
Just because you say it doesn’t make it true, Jeff. And you do have a tendency to praise, then forget that praise. Your initial review of “SPR” when you were Mr. Showbiz did not call such attention to what you feel ruins the movie for you. You dug much of Minority Report, and even the ending of War of the Worlds didn’t stop you from breathlessly writing what you loved.
Must suck to spit it out instead of swallowing it. Pun intended.
And it is ridiculous to act like a psychologist…you know nothing about the man personally. We don’t know that much about YOU but you still manage to keep a following. Ask Amy Irving about him and his passions before their divorce, or on the other spectrum, Julia Roberts and their butting heads…wait, never mind. One of them you never talk about and the other you can’t hide your contempt for either.
markj FTW.
Since Gary Oldman once called Spielberg the Goebbels of Hollywood, I would hope Jeff’d do what he can to help Gary get nom’d for TTSS.
Even if Jeff’s criticism is valid, and much of it is either not valid or absurd, he might as well criticize Barnum & Bailey for giving us dancing elephants instead of a production of Waiting for Godot.
Stop the John Williams bashing right now.
The man is one of the greatest film composers ever.
Even when he is sugary bad he is great.
Stop it!
Some of you guys are weird, talking about 3/4th of a good movie, or, “It was good until that one three minute scene.” Do movies exist as percentages now?
I wonder how much Spielberg leaned on JJ Abrams to put in the schmaltzy ending of Super 8? Almost as bad as War of the Worlds or the ‘I coulda done more’ scene at the end of Shindler’s List. Truly awful. Nothing ruins a film more than a forced emotional ending, and it is unfortunately, Spielberg’s biggest flaw.
Oh shit, renown tough guy Glenn Kenny is here….we all better watch our step.
You know what, Rashad? That’s a pretty good point. I retract my statement.
“I’m getting sick and tired of HE commenters saying I’m such a Steven Spielberg basher that I have no credibility when I write about his films”
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
Heat, kitchen. You’ve written this argument for TEN YEARS. I feel like I’ve read it for TWENTY.
It’s old. It’s tired, it’s stupid, it’s WRONG, and guess what? NO ONE EVER AGREES WITH YOU. Not your readers, not your friends, not your lady partners, NOBODY.
That doesn’t mean you’re wrong in hating Spielberg. IT JUST MEANS YOU’RE ALONE. Alone in your apartment eating peas hating someone NO ONE ELSE HATES.
JESUS EFF CHRIST JEFF, go back to hating Thanksgiving already, you Asperger’s-suffering misanthrope.
Seriously, STOP telling us who you hate. That’s all this site is anymore, HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE. Your writing got shitty, you’re reporting got lazy, and it all started when you chose to turn your blog into a constant screed about ALL who in-your-own-mind wronged you- Spielberg, Lucas, Bay, Jackson, Nolan, comic book movies, people who dislike bail-jumping rapists, fat people, Latinos, Republicans, waiters, the entire Wi-Fi industrial-complex, food court patrons, photography subjects………
And worst WORST of all: your very own readers.
Do us all a favor- do YOURSELF a favor, Jeff: take a week off, come back, and write ONLY about what you LOVE.
LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE.
No more hate. Try it for a WEEK. Try it for a DAY.
This place is the most negative blog I read. That I’ve EVER read. Every other post is a HATE post, begging for comments telling you how horrible a person you are. THESE ARE RANDOM STRANGERS, who have never met you, who don’t know why you’re a nice guy or a interesting man or a charming boyfriend or a wonderful father or a dedicated film critic. They just know you as the grumpy guy who HATES everything and pokes a stick at his readers to get them to visit.
You need an intervention, Mister Wells. Someone needs to pull you aside and convince you to just BE NICE for a while. Not forever, not always, but CHANGE WHO YOU ARE. Be who you USED to be, a great writer people wanted to read, instead of who you have become- a CAR WRECK your readers come to gawk at.
Wells to Ray: and Spielberg were the topics yesterday because the curtain has just gone up, and I have feelings and convictions that are mine, and this is an hour-to-hour, day-to-day column so whatever the action or the shot may be, that’s what you cover or write about. What would you have me do? Write about my love for the film and for Spielberg in general because you want more love in your HE experience? Do me a favor and get out of here and never come back. I mean it. Leave. You’re really an asshole.
“No more hate. Try it for a WEEK. Try it for a DAY. You need an intervention, Mister Wells. Someone needs to pull you aside and convince you to just BE NICE for a while. Not forever, not always, but CHANGE WHO YOU ARE. Be who you USED to be, a great writer people wanted to read, instead of who you have become- a CAR WRECK your readers come to gawk at.”
Excellent idea, Ray. Better yet: drop Jeff in the middle of a non-filmfest-hosting RED STATE to do it in.
We’d have the raw footage for a huge hit reality show in seconds flat…
Your on it Jeff – just look at his mainly lousy output for the Noughties – yikes. He actually fell into the modern movies biggest, mostly ghastly phenom (which IMO started with Matrix 2) making a huge blockbuster that everyone saw and not many people liked in Indy 4 ( and agree with you wholeheartedly about ‘Last Crusade)
And I absolutely LOVE his best stuff. But sheesh, ‘Munich’ nominated for Best Director? I even resent that milky, soft, bleached cinematography that Kaminski bought to his movies (suited though it is to certain films, but another reason I hated Indy4)
‘Jaws’ ‘Raiders’ are amongst my all time fave cinema going experiences with his peak of ‘Schindlers’ as his masterpiece.
Question is, does he have another truly great film in him??
Seriously, though, when is the Beard going to make a film for grown-ups?
Film Fanatic wins the thread. First paragraph is spot on.
Michael Bay is a hack. Stephen Sommers is a hack. JJ Abrams is a hack. McG is a hack. Renny Harlin is a hack. Roland Emmerich is a hack.
Steven Spielberg is a master of form, if a little shaky now and again on content. I’d rather watch any of Spielberg’s worst than the best of any of The Hack Pack above. There’s always something interesting to be picked up on in a Spielberg film.
Also, from Jeff’s initial review of Crystal Skull:
“Sections of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull are a great deal of fun. I felt jazzed and charged during a good 60% or even 70% of it. I was more than delighted at times. What a pleasure, I told myself over and over, to swim in a first-rate, big-budget action film that throws one expertly-crafted thrill after another at you, and with plotting that’s fairly easy to understand, dialogue that’s frequently witty and sharp, and performances — Harrison Ford, Shia LeBouf and Cate Blanchett’s, in particular — that are 90% delctable from start to finish. It gave me no real pain, and a healthy amount of serious moviegoing delight.”
1941, Always, Hook, The Terminal, War of the Worlds, Raiders 4.
Perhaps directors should be judged on how low their lows are, and Spielberg’s lows are pretty much scraping the floor. And it ain’t like he had no money to spend.
Jeff, In the first line of your rebuttal to my initial post about you’re having no credibility is “I’m convinced that Spielberg is a high-end journeyman hack with an all-but-incorrigible sentimental streak.” Exactly my point. You often trumpet that conviction (which, obviously, I don’t share). So, no, I don’t believe you approach anything about Spielberg with an open mind, especially after your response is essentially a defense of your biases, and not a defense of your impartiality.
Wells to Frank O’File: What is this, the friggin’ Oxford Debating Society? You’re dug into your pro-Spielberg foxhole and I’m dug into mine. I’m not going to somehow reach you and persuade you to adopt my opinion and the opposite isn’t going to happen either. Either you get what Spielberg is basically about or you don’t, and obviously you don’t so fine…let’s just let it go and move on.
they can’t all be Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Jeff–
This is no longer about Spielberg. This is about your loyal readers who are sick of you sniping from your foxhole instead of using your literary talent to write about movies that you actually like and filmmakers who you respond to emotionally. It feels like you could make a drinking game out of the amount of times you’ve bashed Spielberg this last week alone. Every single year you choose an Oscar target to shoot at throughout this period of the year: Aviator, Munich, Eddie Murphy, Slumdog Millionaire, Inglourious Basterds, Precious and The King’s Speech all immediately come to mind. It’s really boring. Find something else to write about. Entertain us.
@Joe Gillis – I think you were spot on until the end, “Entertain us.”
I think what you should have written is “ENLIGHTEN us.” I think pretty much the entire problem is that Jeff writes this overabundance of TMI posts because he thinks it what makes the site “hum.” But I don’t come to this or any other film site for that. Instead, I want “tips.”
Just as one reads the business pages for tips on which companies are worth buying from, investing in and/or working for, I think many of us come to these sites to get a “leg up” on the general public about what films to watch and talk about. Time for me is limited – I can’t watch 3 days of movies (in a theater) anymore and hope one or two are worth it. Also, when you the “film guy,” your friends expect you to be up on what up coming movies have the most heat.
But less and less info of that type can be found here these days. But I will say this diarrhea of unedited, lack of boundaries posts do make me feel rather good about the fact that I veered off from a very similar mindset years ago and I didn’t end up nearly the same. Some of it sounds so much like what a younger, much angrier me wrote/said it gives me shudders.
I’m late to this particular party, so forgive me if someone’s already mentioned this, but:
That “echoing” in SPR between the close-up of the old man’s eyes and Tom Hanks’s…it may be a (slight) bait and switch but it also works quite well on a thematic level, since the whole point of the film is that Ryan (whose eyes do get their own CU later) lives on through Hanks & co.’s sacrifice — that is to say, in a way, he has to live for them as well.
I have my (many) problems with SPR as well, but this element is not one of them: Indeed, I felt there was something quite touching, almost Whitman-esque to it.
Yeege, it’s like some HE posters are afraid the cum-stains on their gowns won’t meet the minimum bid on ebay. I mean, two of the funniest things about Glenn’s Wells hardon are: 1) his conviction that it makes any difference to anyone, or anything, anywhere, and 2) his conviction that a dislike of Well’s criticsim of Spielberg’s films gives him a license to make all kinds of unpleasant speculations about Wells as a person. Again, the sort of thing that would get him popped in the jaw under different circumstances.
Please join us in a celebration of mecha-Yogi Berra’s life under the yum-yum tree daily at noon.
None of this nonsense convinced me. You have zero credibility when it comes to Spielberg. Case closed. Done deal. Fact.
Wow, for this kind of megaperson I would suspect a really large twitterfollowers list but to my surprise it is hard to find and there are more spielbergs…. does anyone the real twitter account? thnx !
I found this page bookmarked and really liked what I read. I will surely bookmark it too and also read your other articles tomorrow.
free college football picks
scrapbox
“Seriously, though, when is the Beard going to make a film for grown-ups? ”
You are absolutely correct. I was thinking the same thing the other day as I was showing a triple feature of Saving Private Ryan, Munich, and Schindler’s List to my three year old son.
I can’t stand All About Eve. Addison is supposedly telling us the story of Eve and Margo and Karen and Lloyd, and they include a bunch of stuff there where Addison is nowhere to be found. He’s telling us the whole story, right? And there are a bunch of scenes in which he’s not present and could not know every line of dialogue uttered. So that knocks the whole film down for me.
And while we’re at it, that jerk Jedediah Leland in Citizen Kane. He wasn’t present for all of those scenes of dialogue between Charles Foster Kane and Susan Alexander. But there he goes, lying to that kind reporter fellow in Citizen Kane, making up whole scenes of mise en scene and dialogue for that reporter’s consumption.
Seriously… Saving Private Ryan commits no crime by having the old man appear at the beginning and end. Just because you may jump to the conclusion that “Hey, it must be Tom Hanks!” doesn’t mean that any other possibility reduces the film. At this point, Private Ryan may qualify as one of the most widely misread films of all time. Ryan is indeed, as Bile Ebiri states above, representative of those who managed to survive the war. He’s the exceptional case among those, since an entire mission was undertaken in order to preserve his life. It’s something of an unflinching punch to the collective gut of the audience. Ryan, Reiven and Upham are the three survivors and they’re the three audience surrogates: the protected, the griping and the “chickenshit” to steal Mgmax’s description. As Mgmax says, it’s a bitter truth bomb to the audience, that the heroic John Wayne leader standing tall for what’s right in the midst of war does not survive. The three least likable, most “compromised” characters among the Americans survive, all irrevocably changed, yes, and all doubtless wondering how they’re going to live with it. It’s fairly hard-hitting stuff from a purported cotton candy-churner, as it forces the audience to come to grips with their own position, whether consciously or subconsciously.
Moreover, it’s not like Ryan is actually telling the story anyway. That is another projection. The point of flashing away from his eyes to the beach on 6/6/44 is to illustrate the gulf between the deceased in the ground and those who still live. Indeed, among those who lay dead on the beach–one of his own literal brothers.
Ultimately, though, one would be better off saying Spielberg is a singularly successful, important and relevant version of Shyamalan. Spielberg is an auteur, not a hack. The themes run through his work–among the first words uttered in the first War Horse trailer was “home” and that is the bedrock of his filmic philosophy–and whether they be a poisoned father/son relationship, mother love, shattered childhood and “lost children,” and so much more, it’s all there whether you find it agreeable or abrasive. There’s more going on beneath the surface of Catch Me If You Can, for instance, than either The King’s Speech *or* The Social Network. A hack doesn’t speak endlessly about the Brechtian and noir influences on Tintin for goodness sakes.
It’s like Scorsese and John Carpenter have said. With Spielberg, you are getting the cinematic equivalent of a well-mounted museum exhibit inside the guy’s mind with every film. Whatever his failings, we just have to come to terms with this. Take a negative review of War of the Worlds I remember reading. The person wrote that only Spielberg could take the end of the world and make it into a motion picture treatise on poor parenting. A hack would have given us some Lex-approved T&A, slapped on some whiz bang explosions with the aliens blowing up Trump Plaza and Yankee Stadium with a camera ostensibly attached to a buzzing hummingbird and like Favreau throw a hearty helping of AC/DC on top of it all, not a mobile domestic drama paced like an ’50s Hollywood western with natural selection, visceral defiance to occupational forces and post-9/11 trauma all on its mind. No offense, Lex.
Probably one of the better posts I’ve read on here. Hat top to Alex
*tip
Spielberg is a fucking hack of the worst sort. Wells could not be more right in his assessment. The commenters here remind me of all the jerkoffs in film school who would suck Spielberg’s dick. You guys are clueless. Clueless.
Jeff, HIRE ALEX and take a week off.
“he doesn’t have any intimate issues and passions (other than his love of cinema).”
Right, that’s why there are absent-dad issues in most of the films.
“Spielberg is a fucking hack of the worst sort. Wells could not be more right in his assessment. The commenters here remind me of all the jerkoffs in film school who would suck Spielberg’s dick. You guys are clueless. Clueless.”
Oh, since you said so…
Or you’re just the biggest douche bag on the planet.
The latter is probably correct.
Spielberg is a top 5 director of all time. Fact.
Ah, the wit and wisdom of Duluoz Gray — kudos for your intelligent, reasoned response! Here I was, siding with Alexander… but you sure did change my mind. It’s clear you know a lot about movies.
I’m just impressed your mom was willing to type the words “suck Spielberg’s dick” for you. She must be a good mom. Or at least she knows about sucking dick — she spelled it correctly, and I know spelling isn’t your strong suit.
What is this nonsense about Jeff only being about “hate?” His loves are here everyday. For the record, he’s right about his hates approx 70% of the time, but his loves are only right about 25% of the time. That is based upon my choices being correct 100% of the time.
I get true joy out of those who suck Spielberg’s cock. I may be an asshole, but you, my dim witted friends, have no fucking taste in cinema or art. And I’d rather be an asshole than have no taste.
Spielberg love is a good litmus test to decide whether one’s opinions are irrelevant and/or meaningless. If you love Spielberg, it means you’re a fucking moron who likes disposable shit. Have fun with that. Leave the real movies to those of us with some critical faculties.
And I’d rather be an asshole than have no taste.
I think this is in the DSM somewhere
Spielberg hasn’t made a complete film since Schindler, and even that had problems, but Schindler’s List, Empire of the Sun, Saving Private Ryan, The Sugarland Express, Jaws, E.T., and Raiders are as good as mainstream American filmmaking gets. And I would argue that Minority Report and Munich, while they had their problems, were still better than 99% of the pap that comes out on a week-to-week basis. But you have to balance that will stuff like the Terminal or Crystal Skull. The guy has lost it to some extent, sure. But calling Spielberg a hack is trolling plain and simple. The War Horse looks manipulative in the extreme; I’m not excited for it. But that doesn’t erase what Spielberg has done before.
I don’t understand why so much of the HE commentariat hates Jeff, and takes his opinions SO DAMN SERIOUSLY. fuck you uptight assholes. I don’t come here to read someone reaffirm my opinions. This is an entertainment blog, driven by Wells’ eccentric personality and opinions.
Anyway, I think Spielberg is a wildly uneven director, and wow, I’m surprised to say I halfway agree with Duluoz. I mean, not to the extent as to write off people that love Spielberg, but if he’s your FAVORITE director, you’re probably kind of a boring person. Do we have to agree a certain collection of directors are the greatest, or we’re philistines who don’t deserve cinema? fucking hell, you people. Spielberg is not usually an auteur, but a workman. I say usually not because occasionally he does work from the heart. Close Encounters and Empire of the Sun are films I think came from his heart, and I assume Schindler’s List does, too, though I haven’t seen it somehow. Jaws is somewhat auteur-ish, too, especially the first two-thirds. But, though I won’t go as far as to diagnose as Jeff does, I think many of Spielberg’s films evince a pathological desire to please and comfort above all else. Man, War of the Worlds would be a fucking masterpiece if it weren’t for the ending (and probably also fucking crazy Tim Robbins). I could forgive some bad scenes, but ya gotta stick your landing and not chicken out. And even then, it would be alright if the son had died.
Minority Report has the same issue, and don’t give me that “ending’s a dream” interpretation, it’s not supported by the film. Wells is not saying Spielberg is a bad director, but merely a craftsman of uneven quality as opposed to a true blue auteur, something I firmly agree with.
Great article you’ve written, is this your first website blog or have you been doing this a while? I’d be interested in reading some more of your things. Links please?
best way to pass a drug test
facebook fans
I am totally agree with your oppinion.this blog post is very encouraging to people who want to know these topics.
cheap MLB Toronto Blue Jays jerseys
cheap MLB Red Sox jerseys
cheap NBA Knicks Lin jerseys Sale