Steven Spielberg’s slavery drama exemplifies the late-career inconsistencies of the hitmaker. Startling moments of dramatic intensity and eye-popping depiction of the horrors of slavery are marred by heavy-handed preachiness. Thus, like many films of the post 80’s era we can admire the film but never feel fully satisfied by it in the end.
Showing posts with label Steven Spielberg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Steven Spielberg. Show all posts
Thursday, 5 June 2014
Friday, 8 March 2013
Schindler's List
Steven Spielberg’s celebrated Schindler’s List, his comeback film of sorts, seemed to validate the already successful filmmaker with his first Oscar. Its massive success, universal acclaim and mondo awards, 20 years on, as usual, results in increased scrutiny and re-examination. It’s never enough to let go of a massive success without reinspection periodically for cracks and flaws. Schindler’s remarkably survives the ravages time, for the most part the best parts of Spielberg represented and though some of the worst parts rear their head occasionally, it remains a unique cinematic experience.
Monday, 24 December 2012
Lincoln
The comparison has already been made but indeed Lincoln plays a historical episode of The West Wing, a modest affair considering the canvas of American history at Mr. Spielberg's disposal. By the story of Lincoln, admirably is confined to the two month period or so in which he sought to pass the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, with most of the conflict involving the political dealings it took to secure the two thirds House vote. With Spielberg histrionics kept in check, the only misstep is the needlessly long running time, and at times overly verbose Tony Kushner dialogue.v
Wednesday, 5 December 2012
Catch Me If You Can
Despite the mostly unanimous praise and monetary success for this picture, Catch Me If You Can works best as a counterpoint to most of the films on Spielberg’s filmography - a tepid light-as-air crime comedy, mildly charming, mildy funny and mildly suspenseful, a kind of cinematic modesty rarely seen in any of his films.
Catch Me If You Can (2001) dir. Steven Spielberg
Starring: Leonardo Di Caprio, Tom Hanks, Martin Sheen, Amy Adams,
By Alan Bacchus
Spielberg finds his hero in the real-life figure of William Abagnale Jr (Di Caprio), a kid caught in the middle of his parents' divorce. He witnesses the self-destruction of his father (Walken), who is failing as a parent, husband, entrepreneur and in the American dream. Running away from home, Abagnale never desired to become a conman, and almost by accident he discovers ways to cheat the financial system and exploit the welcoming nature of American citizens for his own benefit. Soon Abagnale finds himself forging cheques, faking identifications of airline pilots, lawyers and doctors, and at his worst deceiving his fiancée (Amy Adams).
In writer Jeff Nathanson’s attempt to constrict the actions of William Abagnale Jr. within a two-hour script, the film comes off as a scattered montage of his life, a difficult narrative method to make work. Nathanson only partly succeeds. The depiction of Abagnale’s schemes are fun, executed not so much in the procedural detail of a crime film but with a soft swagger of a '60s sex romp. What doesn’t quite land is the plotting of the chase - that is, the character of Carl Hanratty (Hanks), the FBI agent hot on his tail.
Despite the aggressive pursuit of Abagnale, Spielberg’s tone is so pillowy-soft we feel that if he ever goes to prison it’ll be the Shawshank Redemption kind, full of charming personalities and old-boy flavour. It's part of Spielberg’s desire to retrofit the film into a Wilder-esque '60s farce, completely separated from any kind of real-world danger. The Frank Sinatra crooning show tunes hit this on the head too hard for me, a surprisingly uncreative, played-out device. The naivete and ease with which the fanciful girls succumb to Abagnale’s charms is obviously the main attraction of the film, and certainly Mr. Spielberg turns Di Caprio into a boyish playboy with ease. But it’s this artifice which props up the film.
Abagnale’s core internal struggles, his identity issues and desire to run away from his domestic conflicts, are obvious metaphors to Spielberg’s well-documented childhood and career-long affectations. That said, the casting of Christopher Walken, who acts more like Christopher Walken than an emasculated underachieving absentee father, is a distraction. I understand Mr. Walken’s unique voice cadence and now iconic persona please most viewers, but to me he’s a scene-chewer who distracts us from the important emotional relationship in the film.
Looking back on Leonardo Di Caprio’s career, before Django Unchained this was the last time he’d attempted comedy. His boyish affability is a natural for the character’s innocent charms and unassuming, and thus manipulative, nature. The rest of his career would see him wallow in self-despair and heavy, brooding tortured characters, choices perhaps made in an attempt to distance himself from his roots as a child actor in television comedy and the Titanic burden of being a teen mag sensation.
But now, 10 years later, what’s most important is how this film sits on Steven Spielberg’s filmography, admirably next to his other anachronistic and unambitious pictures such as Always and The Terminal.
***
Catch Me If You Can is available on Blu-ray from Paramount Pictures.
Friday, 28 September 2012
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) dir. Steven Spielberg
Starring: Harrison Ford, Kate Capshaw, Ke Huy Quan, Amrish Puri, Philip Stone
By Alan Bacchus
As we all know, the story begins before Raiders of the Lost Ark in Shanghai in 1935. The Paramount logo fades into a giant metal gong, which sounds the beginning of an elaborate Busby Berkeley style musical number featuring American singer Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) singing “Anything Goes”. Our hero, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford), is also in the bar making a deal for the lost remains of Nurhaci – last emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Fighting and action ensues, which finds Indy fleeing the scene with Willie Scott and Indy’s young protégé, Short Round (Ke Huy Quan). Next thing you know, they’re on a flight across the Himalayas before they’re forced to abandon the plane using only a yellow dingy for a parachute. After a rollercoaster ride down the mountain, off a cliff and through treacherous rapids they settle down and are found by a kindly old Indian man.
At the man’s village, Indy is tasked with finding a lost Sankara stone, a rock with magical powers, which Indy thinks can bring him 'fortune and glory'. The trio travel to Pankot Palace where they soon find themselves battling sword-wielding warriors, a shaman with the power to rip a man’s beating heart from his body and a young Maharaja who uses voodoo dolls to subdue his enemies. In addition to rescuing the magic stone, Indy frees the children from the village and wins the heart of the nation. Breathe.
If it’s even possible, this second entry of the series moves at a pace more blistering than Raiders. In fact, the film is one long journey from one place and event to another with no time for thought or decision making. It’s as if a supernatural force of nature is blowing Indy and his troops to the Indian village and compelling them into their mission.
Again, as with Raiders, Indy goes through a series of trials and unbelievable obstacles. There’s a greater undercurrent of evil through this journey. In Raiders it’s the physical and transparent threat of the Nazis, but in Doom the enemy isn't revealed until the middle of the film, when Mola Rum (Amrish Puri) rips the heart from the shell-shocked slave. Throw in brainwashing elixirs and enslaved children and you have a really dark and violent film.
Among the great set pieces is the fantastic opening musical number, which teased us at the thought of Spielberg revitalizing the classic Hollywood musical (it hasn't happened yet). In fact, the next scene showing the exchange of the Emperor’s remains is a wonderful sequence cleverly using the table’s ‘Lazy Susan’ for suspense (Hitchcock would have been proud). There’s a rollercoaster/theme park action scene which feels like just that – a theme park ride, and the glorious finale – the rope bridge confrontation - is shot with David Lean-like perfection.
Spielberg, Lucas and the boys certainly didn't set out to make a culturally responsible film. In fact, it's a series of egregious racial and cultural clichés and stereotypes. Is there anything vaguely close to “Chilled Monkey Brains” or “Snake Surprise” in the Indian cuisine? Has the Indian culture ever had a history of ritualistic human sacrifices? And voodoo dolls are not even in the right hemisphere. But really, who cares? The dinner scene is now a classic from the series – completely ridiculous and hilarious in its excess.
How could Temple of Doom match Raiders? It couldn't. Watch this film as pure fantasy - even more over-the-top and self-reverential than the first film - and rediscover a great adventure. Enjoy.
***½
Wednesday, 26 September 2012
ET: The Extra Terrestrial
It would be hard to argue against 'E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial' being Steven Spielberg’s best film, the one film that fulfills all the promise of the once wunderkind youngster whose childlike viewpoint of spectacle cinema resulted in a monumentally successful and influential career. Looking back, E.T. is a culmination of all of Steven Spielberg’s skills, the man firing on all cylinders, delivering a film so silly, corny, unhip and yet impossible not to be moved by.
E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (1982) dir. Steven Spielberg
Starring: Henry Thomas, Peter Coyote, Drew Barrymore, Dee Wallace, Robert McNaughton
By Alan Bacchus
The fact is E.T. represents the perfect storm of creative inspiration. It would seem everything in Steven Spielberg’s career had been leading to this point. The personal story of a young boy, burdened with the divorce of his parents, who finds solace in another forgotten soul - an alien botanist accidentally left on Earth by his extra terrestrial colleagues - is told with a lean and energetic directorial style and filled with beautiful backlights, elegant camera moves, naturalistic comedy and magic realist wonder.
To say Spielberg doesn’t emphatically push his emotional buttons would be denying the inherent joys of this picture and its whole purpose of being. Spielberg, who like his idol Alfred Hitchcock always made ‘point of view’ a conscious thematic touchstone, is more explicit with this than in any of his previous films. Spielberg views the world through a child’s eyes. It's not only his camera placement, as he composes his adult actors at the waist and never shows their faces, but the dramatic treatment of the story. This was the first film of the adults vs. kids theme of '80s family cinema, and at every turn Spielberg presents the world from the mindset of the children. Whether it’s the childlike logic of using Reese’s Pieces to make first contact with E.T., or camouflaging him amongst the various toy dolls in Elliot’s bedroom, Spielberg is remarkably consistent in tone.
There was also something marvelous about Spielberg’s dialogue in those days – a spark of naturalism not present in his movies today. And certainly the performances he gets from Henry Thomas, the precocious Drew Barrymore and the teenaged Robert McNaughton are one of a kind. Even a small role from C. Thomas Howell and his BMX cronies made an impact. And Allen Daviau’s cinematography and John Williams’ aggressive music score, as if directed by an energetic child with an expensive toy box, are amplified for maximum impact.
E.T. would not be made as well by Spielberg today. Think about how risky this venture is for a filmmaker at the height of his career: a story about a space alien who befriends a young boy going through the pains of a divorce, a film with no stars, hung on the performance of a 10-year-old and a goofy-looking rubber alien that doesn’t talk. And so in spite of its obstacles, E.T. hangs on the unique singular unabated vision of its director, free of the safety net of the older mature filmmaker he is today. Only the spark of Walt Disney in the 'Golden Age of Animation' can compare.
Sadly, there was a palpable shift in Spielberg’s career after this. He just wasn’t the same. There were two lesser Indiana Jones pictures later in the decade, a couple of admirable but equally flawed ‘mature’ films in The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun and a failed return to the awestruck magic realism in Hook. And although Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan and his other varied films of the 2000s were well crafted, exciting in parts, sometimes moving, and critically and commercially successful, he was never the same.
The spark in Spielberg had gone out after E.T.. This is not uncommon with artists and filmmakers. Francis Coppola’s career can easily be defined as before Apocalypse Now and after. For Spielberg the shift was palpable, as if he exhausted all of his creative energies into E.T., the end of one phase of his career and the beginning of another.
****
E.T. is available on Blu-ray from Universal Home Entertainment. It's chock full of extras, including those from the 20th Anniversary Edition. But thankfully, aside from a digital restoration in picture and sound, the film edit has reverted back to its 1982 state. Excised are the deleted scenes inserted into the special edition from 2002. Gone are the CGI E.T. and those pesky 'walkie talkies' that digitally replaced the guns from the original version. Thank you, Mr. Spielberg, for coming to your senses.
Tuesday, 14 August 2012
Jaws (Blu-ray)
Hot off the terrific ‘Spielberg-approved’ digital print of 'Jaws', ultra pristine and perfect, playing in select cities across the continent (including TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto), comes the first-ever Blu-ray edition of the film. It’s been over 5 years since Blu-ray won the HD war (we miss you HD-DVD), and for some people it has taken longer than expected to get master titles such as 'Jaws', 'Lawrence of Arabia' and 'Star Wars' onto Blu-ray. I always knew flooding the market with all these titles at once would dilute the value of each of these releases. Unfortunately, 'Jaws' had to wait this long…
Jaws (Blu-ray) (1975) dir. Steven Spielberg
Starring: Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw, Murray Hamilton, Lorraine Gary
By Alan Bacchus
It's been worth the wait and the re-release on Blu-ray has given the film another shot of acclaim and appreciation as one of the greatest films of all time (despite not making the Top 50 cut from Sight and Sound Magazine).
The film is amazing no matter what format (even VHS!). On Blu-ray, it’s spectacular. It’s one of Spielberg’s least glossy films. Filming mostly in exteriors on locations and on the ocean meant there was little artificial lighting to be done. Instead Spielberg relied on Bill Butler’s camera realism for dramatic effect. But hell, the film looks sharp enough to cut glass. Filmmakers in the mid- to late-'70s often used trendy diffusion filters, which created a soft look to many films. Jaws has edges - razor sharp edges like shark’s teeth, a look only enhanced by high definition.
If anything, the special features offer minimal extra bonuses that have not already been seen in previous incarnations. The ‘new’ materials include a fan-created documentary entitled The Shark is Still Working: The Impact and Legacy of Jaws. It’s actually an older documentary, up-rezed in HD specifically for this disc. Unfortunately, it’s pretty awful and dated. Roy Scheider’s voiceover is overwritten and offers a simplistic examination of the making of film featuring anecdotes already familiar to us but told as if we’ve never heard of the film before.
The treasure of this disc is still the Laurent Bouzereau-produced 2-hour making-of documentary, originally released on the Jaws LaserDisc in the '90s. Bouzereau’s doc, comprehensively told, tells us everything about the production and has the story of Jaws covered from every angle. The candor of Spielberg, who is never shy about revealing details of the production, is still a joy to watch, and no one can tell a story better than Richard Dreyfuss.
****
Jaws is available on Blu-ray from Universal Home Entertainment.
Wednesday, 18 April 2012
War Horse
Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Peter Mullan, Emily Watson,
**½
By Alan Bacchus
There's a great deal going on in War Horse, but enjoyment of the film essentially comes down to how much you can stomach the Spielberg brand of syrupy schmaltz, where metaphors are loud and clear, no emotions are left unexpressed and almost nothing is between the lines.
If this was a year in which modern films paid homage to the past (i.e., The Artist and Hugo), War Horse would also fit in with this company, harkening back to not only the "mature" Steven Spielberg of the late '80s (The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, Always), but the dreamy cinema of John Ford. Ford has creeped into almost all of Spielberg's films in some form of another, but at times, War Horse is, shamelessly, The Quiet Man revisited.
Certainly the opening act does, which feels like a film within a film - the story of the birth of the warhorse Joey and how he came into the company of the Narracott family, specifically smitten young son Albert (Jeremy Irvine), with whom he develops a unique bond. This all takes place in the rolling green hills of Devonshire, beneath impossibly beautiful cloudscapes, shot with the same kind of compositional perfection that made Ford famous. The overly tender sweetness of Albert's unspoken love for the horse, which seems to hypnotize both he and his father (Peter Mullan), is devoid of any kind of reality. For good and bad, it's the stuff of old world Hollywood dream factory filmmaking.
Spielberg settles down for much more accessible second and third acts, where the horse is brought into the cavalry to fight in WWI. This is where Spielberg never misses a beat – choreographing and directing phenomenal action scenes with breathtaking scope and intensity, a talent still unrivalled by even the hottest young directors. The story cleverly follows Joey's Odyssey-like journey from owner to owner, each of whom exhibits their unconditional attachment to the horse. Twists occur that allow us to see both sides of the battle and show the confounding tragic irony of the war as a conflict of cockeyed gentlemen fought by innocent and naive kids with nothing at stake except their lives.
Despite the mushiness, Spielberg does engineer a satisfying and cathartic reunification at the end, a moment drawn out to excess, but a scene in keeping with the storybook tone of the rest of the film, and thus earned dutifully by Spielberg.
This review first appeared on Exclaim.ca
Thursday, 8 March 2012
The Adventures of Tintin
Starring: Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg
****
By Alan Bacchus
International audiences embraced this film to the tune of $395 million. Sadly, American audiences did not. Perhaps people didn’t know what Tintin was. Rin Tin Tin the dog maybe? A cartoon for kids maybe? Either way, most of America missed out on one of the best films of the year, a great adventure story from an old master in a new medium.
What’s remarkable is the authorship Spielberg injects into the film. Despite working in a sterile motion capture studio without an actual camera and in animation, nothing looks fake or cartoonish. In fact, it’s arguably the most photorealistic animated film I’ve seen. Other than the faces of the characters, Tintin is a real world.
The backstory of the project is now well known, first optioned by Spielberg in the 1980s. While making Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Spielberg put the film on hold until he could find a way to shoot it without making it another Indy Jones film. And so, when Spielberg teamed up with Peter Jackson's Weta Studios, which created Gollum in Lord of the Rings, Tintin the film was born, as was the Jackson/Spielberg collaboration.
The story of the intrepid young amateur sleuth, who, through the purchase of a model ship at a local market, incites a globetrotting adventure for lost treasure is lean and mean action filmmaking. Writers Peter Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish honour the fun in discovering the mystery of the Lost Unicorn ship and crafting delightful pot-boiler characters to support the heroes. For instance, the moustache twirling villain, Rackham, is a deliciously upper class snob out for revenge; the affable Thomson/Thompson cops feel like a comic duo plucked out of the silent era; and of course Tintin's trusty four legged partner, Snowy the dog, is part of a long tradition of cinematic dog sidekicks.
As such, despite the most advanced new millennium technology, the film still feels like old fashioned swashbuckling adventure this side of a Michael Curtiz/Errol Flynn.
The Blu-ray special features are clear to point out what separates this film from other motion capture pictures, including Avatar, Spielberg’s mise-en-scene, and they don’t get lost in the technological mumbo jumbo. Tintin looks and feels like a Steven Spielberg film, from the delightful comedic action right down to the composition, lighting and pacing that are distinct to the man.
And if you’re scared off by the thought of watching another kids’ film, I was pleasantly surprised to see as much guns, blood, violence and questionable behaviour as in any of the Indiana Jones films. Hell, Tintin is barely out of his teenage years and he carries his own pistol! Captain Haddock’s alcoholism, which serves as a major plotting device, is the main hurdle in his character arc and recalls the character traits of a politically incorrect bygone era.
In the end, Tintin still feels like an Indiana Jones film. However, it’s not a knock-off but rather a revival of that youthful energy in escapist entertainment Spielberg used to have as a young director. In the past 20 years, every one of Spielberg’s attempts at recreating the fun of Raiders, ET or Jaws has either failed or under-delivered. Films like Minority Report and War of the Worlds were failed by weak attempts at adult characterizations and adult themes. There’s nothing mature or serious about Tintin. It’s full-tilt retro action cinema at its finest.
The Adventures of Tintin is available on Blu-ray from Paramount Home Entertainment.
Tuesday, 17 January 2012
The Sugarland Express
Starring: Goldie Hawn, William Atherton
***½
By Alan Bacchus
Pauline Kael famously remarked about The Sugarland Express that it was “…one of the best directorial debuts ever.” How prophetic Ms. Kael was at the time. Revisiting Steven Spielberg’s first theatrical feature now is still a wonderful experience. At only 27 years old and already with four years of extensive television directing experience and one of the best made-for-TV films ever made (Duel), Sugarland was a natural extension from Spielberg's previous work.
Lou Jean Poplin (Goldie Hawn) visits her convicted husband, Clovis Poplin (William Atherton), in his pre-release correctional facility. Clovis has only four months before he is released, but Lou Jean threatens to leave him if he doesn’t escape from prison and help her reclaim their foster-homed child. Clovis does what he’s told and together they skillfully flee the premises unnoticed by the guards.
As soon as Lou Jean and Clovis are on the road the momentum starts to build. They quickly find themselves in a car chase with a state policeman, after which they kidnap the cop and steal his car. Now speeding away in a stolen cop car holding a cop hostage, the stakes are sufficiently raised to alert virtually every officer in the state.
Spielberg’s innate skills in producing order out of chaos are in full force. Much of the film takes place in one long convoy – the threesome in front with 200 cop cars behind them. It’s overkill to the nth degree, but hey, we’re in Texas and it's a comedy. Spielberg's instincts are impeccable in this regard. A relationship between hostage and hostage-taker develops, and much of the humour arises from the absurdity of this unusual relationship. Overnight, Lou-Jean, Clovis and officer Slide become 15-minute celebrities. Like the Bronco Chase, the citizens of the small towns they pass through surround them, touch them and throw gifts at them – a virtual Christ-like adulation. It’s refreshing to see how natural and organic Spielberg portrays old country Middle America.
The journey ends at the home where their child is in foster care. At this point, for the first time, Clovis and Lou Jean are forced to face the reality of their situation and come to grips with the decisions they’ve made. Spielberg is tougher on his characters in the end than he would be in later pictures. SPOILERS...Clovis is shot and killed and Lou Jean is sent to prison for five years. Spielberg cleverly manipulates his audience by emphasizing the care-free aspects and only freckles hints of their inevitable demise into the story. The tonal shift in the ending is not unnatural and is earned, the same way as in Bonnie and Clyde and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
It’s fun to see Spielberg’s favorite cinematic trademarks developing right before our eyes – his use of overlapping dialogue, his confidence with crowds, big set pieces, and his love for quirky characters and natural dialogue. However, in the past 20 years he’s clearly lost this ear for dialogue, which is a shame. His cinematography looks much different than today, but his camera moves are all the same, tracking and craning to reveal his characters in the most innovative (and motivated) ways.
Most cinephiles have memorized shot-for-shot the early Spielberg classics, including Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Raiders of the Lost Ark, and so there are no surprises when watching those films multiple times. That’s why The Sugarland Express is worth a visit, as it gives you a chance to rediscover a great filmmaker straight out of the womb and with a clean, unblemished slate.
Wednesday, 4 January 2012
The Lost Wold: Jurassic Park
Starring: Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Vince Vaughn, Pete Postlethwaite, Arliss Howard
***
By Alan Bacchus
Spielberg’s sequel to the thoroughly enjoyable and successful Jurassic Park at times feels like a shamelessly perfunctory and lazy exercise in tent-pole filmmaking using the bare minimum of creative energy to get more dinosaurs onto the screen. But Mr. Spielberg's superb flare for cliff-hanger and action filmmaking overachieves what was on the written page.
Arguably, Michael Crichton’s novel The Lost World was better than his first book. Sadly, the same inspiration was not put into the movie version. Barely anything from the book makes it to the screen with the exception of Ian Malcolm (Goldblum), who serves as the hero this time around.
But with Ian Malcolm as the protagonist, sadly his character loses all the edge from his unique presence in the first movie. Malcolm is so utterly dull and saccharine, it’s hard to believe it’s the same character from Jurassic Park. Presumably he’s still a slightly deranged mathematician (excuse me, chaotician), who had the best dialogue in the first film – specifically the great exchange about evolution and the metaphor of Hammond's manipulation of DNA being like a kid wielding his father’s gun – but there’s no sign of anything as intellectually challenging from Goldblum's mouth here.
There’s no doubt that the lack of involvement of Michael Crichton in the screenplay has something to do with this. David Koepp, whom Spielberg has gone back to on numerous occasions since (ahem, Crystal Skulls), has no desire to plug Crichton's scientific and technical proclivities into his screenplay.
The setup to get Malcolm to the island wouldn’t even pass muster in a B-movie. In the opening, years after the first Park incident, Malcolm is summoned to park impresario John Hammond’s house where he’s informed of 'Site B', another island full of dinosaurs where the abandoned dinos now run free from their cages. With almost no time to breathe Malcolm and his new cohorts are back on a boat to the South Pacific on their adventure.
Malcolm declares it a rescue mission to save his paleontologist girlfriend (Moore), who is already there. The group, including a journalist (Vaughn), a tech expert (Eddie Carr) and... shriek… Malcolm's young daughter, is soon being chased and nearly killed by rogue dinos. Things finally get interesting with the introduction of a second team sent in by the corporate douchebag, Peter Ludlow (Howard), who wants to bring the dinos back to civilization for his own zoo exhibit.
The most interesting character here is Roland Tembo, played by the great Pete Postlethwaite (who sadly died recently), a South African game hunter who is here for no other reason than to express his domination and shoot a T-Rex. Tembo is a great character because he exists within his world, neither good nor evil – a pragmatist and both friend and foe to all characters.
After the rough patches in the opening act, things kick into high gear when nightfall hits and those awesome T-Rex dinos start attacking. In fact, one of Spielberg’s best ever set pieces involves Eddie’s attempted rescue of Malcolm, his girlfriend and the journalist while they hang over the side of a cliff in their RV. The intensity of this sequence is elevated by John Williams’ magnificent action score. In fact, The Lost World is one of the last great scores by the master and one of the best he’s ever done for Spielberg.
I still don’t know what to think of the final sequence, which takes place in San Diego – a new environment in civilization. It plays like the King Kong scene in New York but without the emotional weight. The liberated T-Rex running wild curiously presents no threat to anyone, but the change of scenery indeed provides an unexpected twist in the story.
Tuesday, 3 January 2012
War Horse
Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Peter Mullan, Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Niels Arestrup
**½
By Alan Bacchus
This film certainly lived up to the expectations as an often stunning action/war film with some phenomenal production values recreating WWI warfare and lively horse action. But it also features heavy doses of syrupy Spielberg sentimentality that, in his later years, he keeps grabbing for and just never seems to reach. As with most of his post-1982 work, War Horse is admirable in some moments but not a complete winner.
John Ford's influence on this film is even more front and centre than in Spielberg’s other works. The opening act featuring the birth of the animal and his rearing as a plow horse on a quaint English farm feels like Ford nostalgia from The Quiet Man or How Green Was My Valley. Even the unique cinematography tries to capture the saturated look of early Technicolor. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work. The inconsistent lighting and background cloud cover seems to have been over-corrected, and on a few shots I even noticed the actors standing in front of green screen-generated cloudscapes. These opening scenes on the homestead set up the bond between man and horse, specifically Albert (Jeremy Irvine), a teenager who's smitten with the young stead, and the titular horse, named Joey by his master. The plotting of Albert's father (Mullan), who is penniless and desperately needs Joey to plow the field, is the schmaltzy, syrupy stuff mentioned before. Peter Mullan and Emily Watson, normally endearing personalities on screen, are rendered dull in the case of Mullan and overly deified in the case of Ms. Watson.
The film hits its gears in the second act when Joey is brought into WWI to fight in the British cavalry in a series of spectacular action scenes. Twists occur over the course of the journey, which allow us to see both sides of the battle and show the confounding tragic irony of the war as a conflict of wonky gentlemen fought by innocent and naive kids with nothing at stake except their lives.
The worst moments in the film are with the normally wonderful Niels Arestrup. Playing a Frenchman who speaks English, he comes into possession of the horse with his granddaughter. These scenes stop the film dead, but luckily the horse eventually moves on to new owners for the film’s rousing finale.
It's not news that Spielberg has lost his edge, and here, like in most of his films, the quieter moments are marked by a tin ear for dialogue. This is unlike some of his films, such as Close Encounters, ET, Jaws and The Sugarland Express, in which the actors spoke in natural rhythms no matter how outrageous the situation, and the humour contained a whimsical joie-de-vivre. Here, every gag is hit home with a sledgehammer of subtlety and stung by John Williams' forgettable music contributions. I know there's some loyalty here, but the aged John Williams and his turn-key orchestral arrangements have been so lacklustre over the past 15 years, I firmly believe he's pulling Steven down.
Despite rolling my eyes at the gushing sentimentality, Spielberg does engineer a satisfying and cathartic reunification at the end. It’s a moment drawn out to excess, but the scene is in keeping with the storybook tone of the rest of the film – a scene Spielberg earns dutifully. War Horse is no masterpiece, but at times it’s rousing, cinematic entertainment.
Saturday, 31 December 2011
1941
Starring: Bobby Di Cicco, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Treat Williams, Toshiro Mifune, Nancy Allen,
**½
By Alan Bacchus
No one talks much about this picture these days, as it has been mostly forgotten by those who are old enough to have seen it when it was first released, and it's barely been seen by younger people. That said, with Steven Spielberg at the helm in the prime of his career - sandwiched between Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Raiders of the Lost Ark - we can't dismiss this film entirely. It's a loud, grating and obnoxious film to be sure, but there's still some memorable moments and sequences to marvel at, as well as an unforgettable rousing score by John Williams.
Penned by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (Back to the Future), Spielberg takes inspiration from the true story of a false alarm of a Japanese attack on Los Angeles, which put the city on high alert for one terrifying night in 1941. In an attempt to move away from the dreamy, epic sci-fi existentialism of Close Encounters, 1941 became an over-produced slapstick comedy of epic proportions.
The converging stories involving the varied cast include Toshiro Mifune and Christopher Lee as Japanese and Nazi sub captains encroaching Los Angeles by sea, Tim Matheson as a failed pilot trying to bed Nancy Allen aboard a B17 bomber, Bobby Di Cicco trying to avoid a fight with the bully figure of Treat Williams, Ned Beatty as a civilian who has been entrusted with guarding a massive artillery gun on his front lawn and John Belushi as a trigger-happy pilot running amuck through everything.
Some of the more astounding set pieces include the destruction of L.A. Harbor, finishing with the awesome site of a Ferris wheel rolling off the pier. There's also a brilliantly choreographed airplane dog fight low over the streets of Hollywood, and one of Spielberg's best ever sequences in the USO dance sequence featuring Bobby Di Cicco dancing his way around Treat Williams for the love of his girl.
Between these sequences is a whole lot of screaming, explosions and massive destruction. Most of the fine cast is wasted with Spielberg's exaggerations. Other fine actors showing up with unheralded roles include Slim Pickens, Murray Hamilton and Lionel Stander.
Spielberg himself has acknowledged this as a massive failure but also as a learning ground for his more controlled, efficient and economical productions from Raiders on. Take everything with a grain of salt in this one, but cherish this for Spielberg’s confident hubris and impressive production values, however grotesque they may be.
Wednesday, 28 December 2011
Jurassic Park
Starring: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Samuel L. Jackson
***½
By Alan Bacchus
Back in the day, this picture was considered a bit of a 'comeback' film. After nearly a decade of successful but tepid films from the hit maker, the headlong, thrill ride-style of filmmaking in Jurassic Park signalled a return of sorts to the late ‘70s/early ‘80s period of Spielberg’s career. That said, Jurassic Park feels a lot different than Jaws or Raiders. It has the mark of an older filmmaker, a family man with a little edge lost, but still a master of action, suspense and cliffhanger cinema.
With today's eyes, any soft spots, false notes, bad casting and sappy sentimentality are glossed over by Spielberg's remarkable adaptation of Michael Crichton's techno-action novel.
The novel was a terrific page-turner with a cleverly structured narrative written as a mysterious scientific puzzle of sorts before launching into a full-blown adventure story. The novel worked best in the set-up and less so with descriptive action. As co-writers, Crichton and Koepp did the best they could to retain as much of the scientific, historical and ethical diatribes of the novel with the need to satisfy the demand of tent pole/blockbuster entertainment.
Spielberg's film works essentially as a series of impeccably crafted set pieces. The opening sequence still dazzles with a group of park rangers trying to corral some unearthly beast inside a seemingly indestructible cage. Some critics at the time complained that he showed us his dinosaurs too early in the film. On the contrary, look closely and Spielberg is very clever with his reveals. While he does show off some of his dinos in full wide shots early on, it's the kinder, softer dinosaurs, like the gentle and graceful Brontosaurs. Yet, he conspicuously hides his menacing creatures until the midway point, including the famous T-Rex sequence.
Before then, Spielberg masterfully teases us with a brilliant first-half set-up. By the time the T-Rex reveals itself and attacks with full force, the scene is a confluence of layers and subplots - the fearless ignorance of Hammond, the sabotage of the clandestine corporate rival and the science lessons effortlessly supplied to us.
The scene is still remarkable, particularly the CG-rendered dinosaur, a technology still in its infancy. The CG dinos still look fantastic because of their placement against real live sets, actors and props as opposed to the overuse and reliance on CG in George Lucas's new Star Wars films.
For cinematography fans, the film is also significant for being Spielberg’s last collaboration with a cinematographer other than his current go-to man, Janusz Kaminsky. While I admire Kaminsky's work, there was something to be said about the varied lighting Spielberg received from working with a variety of cinematographers over the years (e.g., Allen Daviau, Mikael Salomon, Douglas Slocomb, Vilmos Zsigmond). Dean Cundey's work here is terrific, as he provides a significantly different look than Kaminsky's work in The Lost World. Cundey's bold colours and brilliant backlighting pop Spielberg's characters out of the frame better than Kaminsky could ever do.
Rick Carter's production design is deservedly celebrated. While the dinosaurs are wonderful, it's the details of his sets and props that put Jurassic Park in the relatable and believable world of today. The design of the park, from the gift shop toys to the detail on the ID badges of the employees, is all from Spielberg and Carter, who spared no expense in putting the audience into an identifiable situation.
Sure, Sam Neill and Laura Dern are mostly boring as the heroic duo, and the injection of the two children into the story still has me rolling my eyes. But the ability of Spielberg to ratchet up the tension and sustain a level of spine-tingling suspense from beginning to end is the stuff of cinema geniuses like Alfred Hitchcock.
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Starring: Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, William Hurt, Frances O’Connor, Sam Robards
**
By Alan Bacchus
After the untimely death of Stanley Kubrick in 1999, Spielberg was given this project as a gift to adapt into his own film as his expression of his 20-year friendship with the master. Unfortunately, the film just doesn’t work. Sure, as the stories recounted by Spielberg and Jan Harlan on the DVD featurettes say, it fit the sensibilities of Steven Spielberg better than Kubrick, but an intriguing concept is bungled by Spielberg’s aging tin ear for subtext.
I admire the all ‘round good intentions, the idea of two completely opposite but equally great cinema masters collaborating on one film. All roads are paved with good intentions, but this road wanders around aimlessly en route to its destination.
There’s a terrific idea at the core. And it’s probably Brian Aldiss’s, the author of the sci-fi story upon which this film is based. The moral question asks what the human responsibility is to a robot that is made to be just like humans. If a robot can love like a human and thus feel the pain of love as a human, are we obliged to treat him or her like one?
Unfortunately, Spielberg articulates this moral question with the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the head in the opening scene. It comes in the form of William Hurt’s speech declaring his intention to create a robot boy who can love, and in the counter-argument from his articulate female associate (April Grace), the ethical conundrum of such a venture. It’s a particularly awful and shameless speech written by Spielberg, depriving us of the ability to infer the theme based on what’s said between the lines. This is called subtext, a fundamental necessity for good cinema. And how Mr. Spielberg forgot this is astonishing.
This is not thinking man’s science fiction. This is children’s storybook entertainment. Even less so, because even when we do tell our kids the moral of our bedtime stories, it’s always done AFTER the story is over, not before.
It’s a shame because discarding this opening scene would make the experience of A.I. completely different. Of course, we would also have to get rid of the blockhead Pinocchio metaphors that continually hammer us with the subtext front and centre. So maybe this film with Spielberg at the helm was doomed from the start.
Along the way, we can appreciate the craft of many of the set pieces. Janusz Kaminski’s superlative lighting, for instance, creates an interesting sci-fi look combining the neon-drenched slop of 80s cyberpunk with the blinding backlit look usually seen in Spielberg’s pictures. And whether or not you find the Flesh Fare scene grossly juvenile, the explosion of light and colour is spellbinding.
Same with most of the performances, particularly Jude Law as the dervish lover robot who talks like he’s Fred Astaire singing and dancing his dialogue in an MGM musical. And Haley Osment's gradual arc from monotone robotic articulations to full fledged human emotions is deft and effectively subtle.The second act road trip and male bonding of boy and gigolo is enjoyable and adequately distracts from how far off the rails this film goes.
Even with the opening scene and the Pinocchio nonsense included, the film could have been salvageable if the third act wasn’t an hour long. This film just keeps going and going, one climax after another and doesn’t want to stop. Ultimately, I think the failure of this film is a product of Spielberg's age. The attempt to bring back that 'Spielberg magic' of his youth fails, as it has disappeared. As such, A.I. feels like a sad knockoff of his earlier work.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence is available on Blu-ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment.
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
The Color Purple
Starring: Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover,
**1/2
By Alan Bacchus
You take the good with bad with Steven Spielberg, especially with The Color Purple, his first ‘serious’ movies, a movie outside of sci-fi/thriller/adventure genre he’d made his name in. Though Spielberg treads for the first time in such important subject matter like race, poverty, abuse in the deep south, his trademark magic realist sentimentality inadvertantly conflicts in almost every scene and the tragic events which befall Alice Walker’s main character Celie.
It’s a large scale, epic story told over a period of 30 years or so from the point of view of a woman scorned with almost every conceivable act of maltreatment one could inflict on another human being. The opening shows Celie giving birth to a child conceived with her father, then taken away from her arms, presumably to be given away or even thrown into the wintery wild to die. The core relationship for Celie is with her devoted sister, Nettie, the only person who ever loved her. And so when Celie is married off to a dispicable farm owner Albert (Danny Glover), she goes from frying pan to the fire. Albert’s dominance is even more aggressive than her father's, eventually kicking Nettie out Celie's life never to receive contact with her ever again.
The rest of Celie’s life is one long physical and psychological beatdown by her tyrannical husband. It’s not until Albert’s love-struck former companion, sophisticated lounge singer Shug Avery (Margaret Avery), comes to town does Celie find a confidente. Gradually over the course of 20 years Celie’s grows into her own skin and embraces her own womanhood, and some degree a lesbian sexual orientation she doesn’t fully understand, nor reconcile.
As I rewatched The Color Purple in high definition Blu-Ray, it was same the odd contradictory experience as always. As usual there’s a superlative inventiveness in mise-en-scene in almost every scene. Spielberg’s ability to choreograph the actors and the camera with dance-like precision in order to highlight every emotional beat to the audience is astounding. There’s a palpable classical approach reminiscent of his main influences John Ford, Michael Curtiz and even Alfred Hitchcock. Watch the scene when Celie and Nettie are handclapping in their room early on, a scene which plays out without ever seeing Celie, instead visible only as shadows on the wall. Or the emotionally-charged finale where Celie meets up with Nettie for the first time. It’s a John Ford moment ripped right out of The Searchers and a dozen other of his classics.
And yet, the concerted effort to be visually clever hogties the scenes. Spielberg’s formality skews the emotions toward artificial melodrama. Spielberg's enthusiasm runs wild and unabated, overdramatizing many of the key beats. The separation of Celie and Nettie for instance, when Albert drags her kicking and screaming from his farm, with Nettie screaming with engrossed exagerration “Why!!!? Why!!!?”
Most of the supporting characters, in particular the men, are characterized without an ounce of depth or colour. Both Celie’s father and husband Albert are indignified beyond belief as immature tail chasing children who lose their marbles and act like cavemen in pursuit of their women. Even Harpo and Sophia are characterized as a cartoonish antidote to Celie’s quiet introspection.
Spielberg does make up for Sophia by giving her the most extreme and emotionally devastating character arc in the picture. Her transition from a headstrong independent woman, to a broken down housemaid and shadow of her former self is in our face, but dramatized by the best scenes in the film and the best performance as well – Oprah Winfrey. Watching poor Sophia leave her Christmas family reunion to drive her upper class matron back to her home wrings out so much emotional pain.
Miraculously Spielberg, despite drowning us with tears, manages to execute a stunning emotional finale. A series of scenes and actions which lead to the reunification of Nettie and Celie: Celie’s discovery of Nettie’s letters, her confrontation with Albert at the dinner table, Albert’s redemption by engineering Nettie’s return to the country and finally, that John Ford moment I mentioned above when she first see’s Nettie’s car drive up the country road.
Does Spielberg’s blatantly sentimental treatment of such sensitive subject matter betray the gravitas of Walker’s material? I'm still not sure, but either way I will forever be reviled by and inexplicably drawn to this movie.
‘The Color Purple’ is available on Blu-Ray from Warner Home Entertainment
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
Poltergeist
Starring: Jobeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson, Beatrice Straight, Heather O'Rourke, Zelda Rubenstein
***1/2
By Alan Bacchus
Prior to the production of ET Universal Studios allegedly had a clause in Spielberg's contract which forbade him from directing another picture while prepping that seminal film. Thus emerged rumours that Poltergeist released a week apart from ET, produced and co-scripted by Spielberg, had used Tobe Hooper as the proxy though which he could author a film in within the boundaries of his contact.
Did Spielberg take control of the directorial duties of this film? Apparently Tobe Hooper and Spielberg both have denied the rumour, same with many of the crew, though some have admitted Spielberg had a strong hand in the onset decision making. Some say, half the storyboards were created by Spielberg. Whatever happened on the set, the Spielberg ‘magic touch’ is wholly palpable when watching this film.
It’s still a wonderful frightening piece of family horror, a classic ghost/haunted house story, set in Spielberg's favourite setting, the same type of suburban sprawl as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and ET. Like Jaws, Duel, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Spielberg (and Hooper) managed to tap into some of those fundamental nightmares and fears we have as both children and adults. For parents, the fear of losing one’s child results in the disappearance of the innocent youngest child of the waspy Freeling family into the television. For kids Spielberg exploits our fears of inanimate objects such as a grotesque old tree perched beside young Robbie’s window, or his disturbing clown doll which overlooks him at the foot of his bed.
Spielberg essentially reworks the formula from The Exorcist to produce a friendlier and more mainstream version of Blatty/Friedkin’s chiller. Poltergeist is not 'chilling to the bones' like The Exorcist, nor will it leave any grown ups with nightmares, but it’ll still scare the shit out of children and it has enough memorable imagery to remain pop culturally relevant.
The plotting is structural perfection. First establishing the saccharine suburban community where the Freeling family have located. Then establishing the mysterious noises coming from the television, and young Carol Anne’s abilities to communicate with them. After the ghosts have some fun moving chairs around the house, things turn evil fast when Carol Anne, in a particularly evil thunderstorm disappears into the closet, only to be heard vaguely in the air and in the TV. The family employs a group of paranormal scientists to figure shit out, but eventually they realize they're in over their heads and to turn to the slight but effective soothsayer Tangina to bring Carol Anne back.
Craig T. Nelson plays the father figure much like how Richard Dreyfuss anchored his suburban family in Close Encounters. Unlike that film Spielberg makes sure the family unit stays together, and through their impenetrable bond, triumph over evil – distinctly 80’s-friendly conservative family values.
Visually the film is a stunner, in every department production value turned to the max.
As such it looks more like a ET than Texas Chainsaw Massacre that’s for sure. In fact, everything in the film points to Spielberg. The domestic naturalism of Craig T. Nelson, Jo Beth Williams and even the child performance of Heather O’Rourke have the Spielberg stamp. Same with the camera work and mise-en-scene. Watch the scene when the exit portal is released near the staircase and Carol Anne's spirit moves through her mother. The awestruck reaction shots of Nelson and the paranormal scientist evoke the same expressions of wonderment as the John Ford-influenced moments seen in almost every Spielberg film. And even though it’s a beautifully composed by Jerry Goldsmith, the score could double as John Williams.
The moment when Diane enters the light in the closet leave one breathless, like the emotional goodbye between Elliot and ET. The emergence of Dianne and Carol Anne from the supernatural world feels like a rebirth, or like the family born again and baptized in the tub in the water. Or maybe that’s too much of a stretch. In any case, it furthers the distinctly Christian values of his previous films.
As such, though it’s not a “Steven Spielberg film”, Poltergeist, in addition to ET and Close Encounters, works as an unofficial third part to a ‘suburban magic’ trilogy. Spielberg would try on numerous occasions recapture the feelings we got from these other films, and even though he's made some great films since then, they've never quite had this particular type of cinema 'magic'.
Poltergeist is available on Blu-Ray from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Monday, 31 May 2010
War of the Worlds (2005)
Starring: Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Tim Robbins, Miranda Otto
**1/2
By Alan Bacchus
Lately we’ve finally started to see some of the Steven Spielberg pictures appear on Blu-Ray. Unfortunately it’s the later post 2000 films when his deal with Paramount had that particular studio working his Dreamworks home video releases. It’s been a fun looking back on these latter films, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls, Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report and now War of the Worlds. Each of these films seemed to look better upon first viewing than its subsequent screenings. Maybe it’s because Spielberg’s pictures work best on the big screen. Well, considering ALL films look better on the big screen than on television this isn’t a valid excuse.
Like Minority Report War of the Worlds works best as a series of set pieces with another another crack at reconciling Spielberg's own fractured childhood home life shoehorned in. It worked with Close Encounters and ET, but years later the domestic plotting feels unnatural and overwritten. Once upon a time this was Steven Spielberg’s greatest gift of filmmaking, other than his technical proclivity, his ability to pull naturalistic and warm performances. But over the past 15 years or so, the direction of his actors have become ice cold and stiff - every time someone opens their mouth we get dialogue written to be natural, but in that effort coming off as completely unnatural.
As for War of the Worlds, its best viewed as a technical exercise par excellence and none better than set piece #1. The magnificent build up to the invasion is expertly crafted. It’s a scene which has been done time and time again and most recently time and time again by that Spielberg wannabe hack Roland Emmerich. Under Spielberg's eye for spectacle these scenes are as tense and suspenseful as anything before it. Spielberg wonderfully foreshadows the destruction of the elevated freeway explosion which closes off the first act. The gigantic concrete structure dominates his frames in the opening scene teasing us as to how the structure will come into play (and be destroyed in magnificent fashion) later in the film.
There's a distinct feel for Spielberg's 70's, 80's films in here as well. This is due to Janusz Kaminsky's unique photograhy. It’s certainly one of his best looking films. Through some in camera or post-production process he achieves a wonderfully textured grainy look, a markedly different visual palette to today’s crisp and robust High Definition-shot films.
Spielberg’s reverence to the famed original George Pal version of War of the Worlds, a film which arguably set the bar for alien invasion films, and in my humble opinion, has yet to the surpassed. Admirably Spielberg exercises some restraint creatively and is more reverent to the HG Wells and Orson Welles version of the story than other filmmakers would be. Like the Welles radio program, Spielberg doesn’t expand the world beyond the perspective of these characters. We don’t know what’s going on in the rest of the world other than news reports. Spielberg’s camera compliments this as well, using long takes with an expressive roaming camera putting the audience in the point of view of his characters.
And miraculously he keeps his film under two hours.
War of the Worlds disappoints because it’s not hard to imagine what this picture could have been if he directed it in the 70’s or 80’s. It has the look, but not the heart. The fact is, Steven Spielberg is rather tame now, no longer the fresh enthusiastic wunderkind of his youth. As an older married man with kids and maybe even grandkids, the folly of youth and his instinctual edge is long gone. Spielberg has even admitted, if he made Close Encounters of the Third Kind now, he wouldn’t have had Roy Neary leave his family for the aliens. Spielberg is also let down in these films by an aging John Williams, whose scores have become increasing indistinct and forgettable.
I think Mr. Spielberg is badly in need of a reboot. It wouldn’t be too hard. Here’s how to do it:
1) Ditch his awful screenwriting collaborator David Koepp and buy an awesome spec script from the Hollywood black list
2) Take a break from Janusz Kaminsky and hire Christopher Doyle or Harris Savides
3) Send John Williams into retirement and some other young composer looking for a break
4) Keep the running time to 90mins
'War of the Worlds' is available on Blu-Ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
Saving Private Ryan
Starring: Tom Hanks, Ed Burns, Tom Sizemore, Matt Damon, Jeremy Davies
***
By Alan Bacchus
The opening 30 mins of this film so heavily weighs people’s opinions of it – negatively and positively. Many people I know love the D-Day scene and dismiss the rest. Like the ‘Schindler’s List’ detractors this group seems to become more populated the older the picture gets. I certainly didn’t have this opinion when I first saw it in the theatres. I, like many others, went along with the band wagon of Spielberg’s visceral rebooting of the modern ‘war film’. But these 10 years later it’s interesting to watch the picture again with a more critical eye.
The first scene is still a doozy. And with it Spielberg and his cinematographer Janusz Kaminski essentially wrote a new language manual of war/battle cinematography. The ‘documentary-look’ which moved beyond mere hand holding the camera was given even greater gritty texture with Kaminski’s unusual de-saturated look, flashed film and short shutter angles. Absolutely no one was using 45degree shutter angles at the time, and now it’s a staple of a cinematographer’s bag of tricks.
I don't agree with the extreme naysayers who feel the first 30mins is brilliant and the rest is crap. Though it makes good hyperbole, it’s also quite valid. The fact is, the final Remmel sequence – the ambush by Tom Hanks’ infantry platoon and their last stand at the Alamo bridge is as thrilling an action sequence in any film ever made. And in my opinion a better sequence than D-Day. Remmel is better because a) we know the characters by now and thus have greater attachment to their survival; b) Spielberg and his writer Robert Rodat split up the sequence into a number of tense set pieces resulting in more contriolled rhythm and pace; and c) despite the chaos, Spielberg achieves a sense of geography where we know where everyone is at any one time.
In between these two scenes includes enough smaller moments of action and battle to successfully keep out adrenaline and our wits up until the raucous Remmel ending. The scene which features Vin Diesel’s Caparzo character falling victim to sniper fire, pulled right from Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Full Metal Jacket’, is a fine set piece.
Unfortunately when guns aren’t firing or bombs exploding Spielberg is also as heavy-handed with his character-based drama, to near excruciating annoyance. I never liked the bookended scenes in the present day featuring the older version of Private Ryan revisting the soldier’s graves in France, and I hate them even more now. They are so god-awful it opens and closes the film with such a sour taste it almost taints the entire film. The characterization of the older Ryan as a feeble old man hobbling toward the graveyard weeping as he searches the graves for Capt Miller is an emotional stink bomb. I’ve met many veterans of the War through a number of war documentaries I’ve worked on, and none of the men I met would have been weeping with such uncontrolled restraint. Even the awful actors in the background, the old man’s family members who look like beauty pageant queens tenderly following the man from behind walking on eggshells and taking quick snap photos has the subtlety of a bull in a china shop.
The final bookend scene hammers home an overarching journey which attempts to put into greater perspective war, courage and sacrifice by bringing it to the present. After witnessing the well orchestrated death of Captain Miller at the bridge we should have felt the emotional gravitas enough to see Hanks bite the dust by the bullet of that German POW released by Miller himself. And then there’s that awful morphing dissolve from Damon to the old man...but enough of that.
When Spielberg exits the DDay sequence, he puts us into the Allied basecamp with General Marshall and the discovery of the deaths of the Ryan brothers and thus causing the mission to save Private Ryan. It’s an awkward transition from the visceral realism of DDay to the shameless political maguffin, with General Marshall’s eye-rolling heavy-handed speech about Abraham Lincoln stretching our ability to suspend our disbelief. There’s even more bluntness through the rest of the picture which though not as sickening as these scenes but reinforces the fact that ‘Saving Private Ryan’ is an action picture.
Despite the problems with Spielberg’s picture, it should be savoured best as an action picture – one of the greatest ever made. A film which defined a new cinematic language for war and set a new bar for military realism for the future.
To contrast the lingering effect of ‘Saving Private Ryan’ with the ‘other WWII film’ that year, ‘Thin Red Line’, there’s little comparison as to which is the better picture. Terrence Malick’s spiritual elegance is like a fine wine aging gracefully adding more tastes and flavours with each tasting, leapfrogging over Spielberg’s technical proficiency.
“Saving Private Ryan” is available on Blu-Ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment
Thursday, 15 April 2010
Minority Report
Starring: Tom Cruise, Max Von Sydow, Samantha Morton, Colin Farrell, Peter Stormare, Tim Blake Nelson
**1/2
By Alan Bacchus
Oh what promise... I remember the excitement this combination of story, star, genre and director conjured up when first announced. Steven Spielberg doing a pure sci-fi action picture with then respectable, pre-couch jumping Tom Cruise, from a story by high concept master Philip K. Dick. Unfortunately Spielberg’s inability to edit himself results in a needlessly engorged and extended movie which goes on half an hour too long.
For two thirds it’s a marvellously executed genre-film. John Anderton (Tom Cruise) as a near future cop who leads a team of pre-cognition crime solvers who use a trio of soothsaying human vegetables to predict murders before they happen. Using images retained from these fractured memories and a pretty darn cool interactive editing system John becomes a 21st century sleuth. But when precogs predict the next murder to be committed by Anderton himself, it’s the hunter being hunted. The chase is on, with a number of thrilling set pieces pushing the film forward toward its overly twisty glorified whodunit mystery.
‘Minority Report’ succeeds a technical exercise and an excuse for Spielberg to craft a number of creative and visually stunning set pieces. None better than the opening scene when we see John execute his skills at cyber sleuthing, running, chase, tackling. Spielberg’s uses some familiar Hitchcockian cinema techniques to ratchet up the suspense of whether John can make it time to save a cheating housewife and her lover from getting knifed to death by her vengeful husband.
When John finds himself on the run, Spielberg engineers at least two more stunning action sequences. One, a very long running and car chase which has John fighting off his old colleagues zipping around in jet packs and ending in a fist fight in a robotically controlled automotive plant. The other features John getting an eye transplant at the hands of a seedy underground doctor played memorably by Peter Stormare and then being tracked by a group of robots spider sentries.
Unfortunately everything else in between these scenes creatively dull and tedious. Virtually all of the dialogue is information and exposition about who is who and what the fancy gadgets do what. Colin Farrell’s presence as a devout internal affairs wonk who is morally opposed to the procedure of imprisoning people before they commit crimes engages in some interesting existential discourse, but under the blockhead writing and Spielberg’s hurried direction, these themes are conveyed to us with zero subtlety.
The actors talk as wooden as their dialogue. Max Von Sydow, assuming the slippery and thus evil European bigwig role is just awful. Tim Blake Nelson who plays the quirky archivist is robotic and just plain creepy for no good reason. Lois Smith as the elderly woman who created the precognition system has only exposition to spew out and has much trouble masking this dubious narrative purpose.
If the movie ended squarely on that one hour and 45min mark when John discovers he is indeed the murderer he didn’t think he could be, Spielberg would have had a perfect ending. Killing Leo Crow not only puts the film and its lead on a precarious moral tightrope, it hits home the dark sci-fi cynicism which makes Dick’s material so thought-provoking. But Spielberg lets everyone off the hook and neutralizing this moment with another twist which sends the film in a completely different direction. The revenge of John’s son’s death represents the highest emotional gravitas for the lead character, and so when it’s revealed this as a red herring for a considerably lesser significant betrayal by John’s boss for political reasons, it’s a buzzkill of monumental proportions.
The final 30 mins involves so much catch-up, backtracking, and exposition it’s a strain for everybody involved to keep up. And by the end, a good film is wasted by Spielberg’s inability to say cut, print, call it a day.
‘Minority Report’ is available on Blu-Ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment.
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