Spielberg's "Lincoln"

Haven't seen. Got the feeling some people complained to Spielbergo about Schindler's List making Jews look pathetic and dependent on others for charity, so he decide to film the one story where Jews "get revenge real good". Not much into revenge fantasies.

S'pose I should check it out someday.

Spielberg dropped a big weeping turd in the second-half of AI.

Stellar post re: Spielberg's failures, Lumpy. Could not possibly agree more.

I want to hear more thoughts on Saving Private Ryan. I honestly thought that was a pretty great example of Spielberg schlock that holds up as an almost great movie.

Catch Me if You Can might be the last Spielberg I properly enjoyed. It felt solid all round.

  On 8/13/2012 at 6:05 PM, Gary C said:

Catch Me if You Can might be the last Spielberg I properly enjoyed. It felt solid all round.

Absolutely. He nailed that one, with a huge assist from both Di Caprio and Hanks.

  On 8/13/2012 at 5:57 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

I want to hear more thoughts on Saving Private Ryan. I honestly thought that was a pretty great example of Spielberg schlock that holds up as an almost great movie.

Yeah I probably should have swapped that out with AI. I was actually stunned by SPR the first time I saw it, as in shell-shocked. That kind of violence has been done a lot since then, so I'm probably desensitized, but at the time it was incredibly visceral and appalling. He does make some sloppy mistakes (the wrong number of characters walking on a hill after one has died), but those are niggling issues. And it has the Jeremy Davies cowardice scene, which I felt was particularly powerful. You're right I can't hate on it that much, no matter how many weepy middle-aged men Spielberg shows in flashbacks.

The premise is so damn over the top though, even for Spielberg. And I still prefer Thin Red Line by a mile, even with its flaws.

I remember two things about watching Saving Private Ryan. I know it should be the action scenes on the beach and the 45 degree shutter, but it's not.

Rather, I remember:

1. Watching it with my buddy's 65 year-old dad, who started crying at the very beginning when the old man is in the cemetery.

2. The suspiciously faptastic granddaughter in those same cemetery scenes. She stuck out like a Scooby Do character and gave me a boner while my friend's dad cried. In fact, I think him crying made the boner even better because he created a perfect diversion for my rape gaze.

She's below, second from the left. I couldn't find a better screenshot. Sorry, WATMM.

HAH! I did just find her credit on IMDB though and the following explains my reaction:

i have a bonar now

Wasn't she also in Saving Ryan's Privates?

Daniel Day Lewis Lincoln

Minority Report in retrospect has aged far better than it deserved to, and not because it's a great film but because there has practically been no big budget science fiction on the same intellectual or even cinematic level.

Reid, how could you forget Total Recall? ;)

i liked Saving Private Ryan minus Tom Hanks (who stopped being able to act post Forest Gump but then learned again for one movie, Lady Killers then forget quickly after) and minus the Indiana Jones last crusade nazi caricatures that they battle in the 3rd act. It was actually kind of an interesting twist to humanize a nazi in a World War 2 movie, but then the whole time micky mouse nazi was fooling them because as we all know every single german soldier is at their core an evil person.

  On 8/13/2012 at 8:07 AM, lumpenprol said:

Haven't seen. Got the feeling some people complained to Spielbergo about Schindler's List making Jews look pathetic and dependent on others for charity, so he decide to film the one story where Jews "get revenge real good". Not much into revenge fantasies.

 

S'pose I should check it out someday.

in a way it's probably one of the more ballsy films he's made politically speaking. The whole theme of the movie is that the israeli mossad team assigned to tracking down the arab terrorists become sort of sociopathic terrorists themselves by going to extreme measures (killing kids) to target each and every kidnapper. I didn't think it was a good movie at all, but i think you have the premise backwards, its very far from a movie about trying to make israeli jews look good. In fact one could argue it makes them appear pretty insane.

Huh, sounds like I should give it a chance. Agree about the Germans at the end of SPR too.

Not to derail a Spielberg thread, but I still think one of the best WW2 films, apart from Thin Red Line, is Europa Europa, which few people seem to have seen. Talking about humanizing Germans made me think of it again...

You know what wasn't half bad? The Valkyrie movie with Tom Cruise. I thought it was surprisingly decent, liked the digitally enhanced backdrops, thought it was a solid film for Singer (was going to say "return to form", but he never wowed me as a director...though Usual Suspects was "well done").

lol nice use of quotes

I know, I like implying that I could have done better...heh

  On 8/13/2012 at 10:23 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

i have a bonar now

lol

Tim Burton's production...

His.... his voice?

Sounds good to me. DDL is great at voices. Lincoln reputedly had a high and squeaky voice, not the rich bass people might like to imagine for such a gifted orator.

Lincoln's voice was, when he first began speaking, shrill, squeaking, piping, unpleasant; his general look, his form, his pose, the color of his flesh, wrinkled and dry, his sensitiveness, and his momentary diffidence, everything seemed to be against him, but he soon recovered.

--William H. Herndon letter, July 19, 1887

the trailer is shit, though most of the "big movie" trailers are.

  On 9/14/2012 at 11:59 AM, eugene said:

the trailer is shit, though most of the "big movie" trailers are.

Much like your posting.

I'm sorry but loooooooooooooooooooooooooool

I was ready to believe, but his delivery of "blood's been spilled to afford us this moment! now, now, now!" made me laugh. This could actually end up differently than we've predicted, as a train wreck for Lewis, not Spielberg.

Or it'll just be middling. You can already tell Spielberg is laying on the maudlin sentiment as thickly as ever...