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

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.

"everyone but Matt Damon and Ed Burns and that cowardly one gets killed" = "joyous happenstance of the heroic few"

jorelly, I would like to discuss this further with you. Why do you think that? I am not sure I understand what some members of the audience are referring to when they are referring to "pacing"--a slowly paced movie can be just as rewarding as a quickly paced movie, so I don't think any of the people here are discussing some kind of pow-bam-boom-action-only type of idea. Pacing is pretty relevant to storytelling, which the majority of films claim to do--like I said, we're not talking fast versus slow, we're talking inconsistent and clumsy versus smooth and compelling (at any speed of pace).

So, I would like for you to defend your statement.

but really, all people mean when they talk about good pacing in film is that there are no long boring parts between the cool parts.

http://www.imdb.com/Name?Bay,+Michael

Uh, yeah. What Dan said. Unless you're trying to claim Spielberg as some kind of avant garde, this doesn't make much sense on this thread. Spielberg is clearly doing both--if you asked him, he'd say the same.

Regardless, if filmmaking somehow doesn't include the story, whatever it is, a person is trying to tell with their film, does it include the actors or the music or etc etc etc? Or are you really trying to split it right down to the idea that filmmaking is nothing more than moving photographs, and as such arguments about a filmmaker that criticize his choice in things besides pure cinematography are irrelevant???

Stenc, "pacing" is very relevant to shit-throwing monkeys whose visual experience has been hardwired by bad TV.

This is utterly batshit insane. 'Pacing' is a function of editing and narrative - you want to tell me no critics in history, Agee to Kael to Rosenbaum to Farber etc. - have ever considered that in valuing a film?