Spielberg & Kushner's Munich '72 / Israeli vengeance film

I'm not gonna like your movie either.

POSITIVE NINE BILLION STYLE POINTS

-- TOMBOT (stick...), November 9th, 2005.

hahah otm

Mayor Murray Hamilton, ladies and gents.

I don't think The Big Red One is as great as Fullerites claim either, but he and Spielberg are no more alike than either of them resemble Malick.

The post-Normandy SPR narrative harkens back to '40s WW2 movies like "A Walk in the Sun," and improves on most of them.

No I wouldn't say either is much alike either, although there are some obvious similarities between TBR1 and SPR (and not just the Normandy sequences.)

You know, if you would stick to this argument there wouldn't be an argument here. YES, Spielberg is great at imagery. Virtually everything else about his "serious" films, I've found ultimately distasteful. Not because I am not a fan of "classic style" or whatever you wish to call him today, but because I. Cannot. Stand. The. Types. Of. Scripts. And. Actors. He. Usually. Works. With.

Capiche? This has virtually nothing to do with any other movie maker or director or style of script that I might or might not enjoy or some preference for, what was it, '70s pastiche over classic Hollywood style. It has to do with NOT wanting to watch Spielberg indulging his more maudlin side, and preferring to watch Spielberg indulging his '30s action serials side or, uh, his dinosaur side, or something. Because I think that, in non-cinemtagraphoricalesquey terms, he goes way OTT (and yes, I know it is not "him" necessarily going way OTT but I mean ultimately a dude like Spielberg has a lotta say in the scripts and actors he chooses to work with and how they turn out. We're not discussing, like, Brett Ratner here).

and I think Donnie Wahlberg, John Livingston, Neal McDonough, and the rest trounced Hanks and co. in their acting.

again, how was liberating france 'stupid and morally compromised'?
Which part of SPR was about 'liberating France'? The part I saw was about doing your duty, rescuing one guy at the cost of numerous lives, the evilness of the average German, etc..

I hated the fact that they bring up the pointlessness of the mission but then throw it aside for more rousing rah-rah imagery. I think I could almost forgive the middle section of the film (which had some great war-movie performances from Vin Diesel and the like) if not for that last 30 minutes - Tom Hanks superhero, EARN THIS, I'M A GOOD MAN RIGHT?

The Big Red One wasn't a complete success, but its flaws were more honest and interesting than what I saw of SPR. Lee Marvin and the camp survivor, the kid firing into the furnace stall long after the German is dead.

Spielberg is great at imagery = Spielberg is great at the most important part of moviemaking.

>they bring up the pointlessness of the mission but then throw it aside for more rousing rah-rah imagery.<

Here again we come back to the Fuller/Truffaut/whoever maxim that there are no antiwar films. Are any scenes where weapons are fired 'rah-rah'?

A great war film not yet mentioned in this thread is Empire of the Sun.

Maybe to YOU. I prefer my movies to be exciting and well-paced whether they have a bunch of amazing shots in them or not.
Therefore: Thin Red Line & SPR = shit.

I don't want to see your movie either.

Again, I think it's highly precious that a Spielberg fanatic is actually throwing around terms like that in a fairly dismissive and insulting way.

The whole imagery is the most important part of the whole of moviemaking comment is approaching Geirism.

Not many Bela Tarr fans here, then.

That Tarantino is great at PACE! He musta written Kill Bill with one hand on the remote and the other on his dick.

>great empty visualists like tarkovsky<

I don't want to see your movie either. BANG! the Comedy Rule of Three!

The part where, if the squad hadn't shown up where they did when they did, the Germans would have controlled the bridge and thus prevented a major part of the Allied offensive from Normandy into the rest of France. A development that is positively Kubrickian in the way that chance and contingency interfere in human planning, if not pulled off with quite the same depth or panache.

I don't consider "dumb escapism" insulting. Comparing an ambitious war film to one featuring a character named DANNY THE TUNNEL KING could be, tho.

Seeya when "Munich" opens. I'm off to tell Tom Stoppard and Tony Kushner they are CRAP.

but this maybe applies to my own reasons for liking spielberg's films. i really genuinely connect to a lot of the anxiety and fear and guilt and awe that pervades his work. his serious films are almost always about guilt rather than anxiety or fear or awe. SPR is ALL about guilt to me, it's in some ways a reflection of white american midwesterners being the ones to liberate the concentration camps--saving people they neither knew nor maybe even cared about. the investigation of THAT pretty amazing event is what the movie seems to be about to me.

but my point i guess is that i am willing to look past all his considerable flaws, just like i am willing ot look past Malick's considerable flaws in TTRL, or ANY ARTIST EVER because none are perfect, is because i find some emotional, intellectual, or even spiritual reward in their work. i find all 3 in spielberg.

whoops.

That's mighty white of you, Thurston. Go get yer ass blown off.