Author Topic: 1990s US Bracket: Verdicts  (Read 712700 times)

skjerva

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Re: 1990s US Bracket commentary
« Reply #840 on: August 01, 2008, 01:12:23 PM »
Contact
vs.
Saving Private Ryan

if i had i my way, neither of these would move on.  at least Contact had the nice critique of Reason.  SPR pretty much only stank it up.

i'll write more later, i just thought i'd get the verdict out.

Round 1 complete!

i'm not ever going to feel like writing this one up so i might as well just barf it out.

both are way too long C 2:33, SPR 2:50 - i can imagine this material (really any material) needing that much time, but execution was nonsense in both cases.  both films rely way too heavily on syrupy scores to evoke emotion, horribly so in SPR, where the music seems to cue certain emotions in discordant ways (sorry, i don't remember where it happened, but remember being struck by it).  both films lazily bank on easy plot devices to evoke emotion - C opens with the motherless Ellie (what's sadder than being motherless?), nicely played by Jena Malone, losing her father at age 9 - seriously?  that's just CINECASTing lazy!  i couldn't even tell you what spielberg was trying to evoke in SPR, it's a freakin' war movie, we expect everyone to die, i just never cared. at all.  i actually went into SPR expecting to have the typically conflicted experience of a masterful film-maker tugging all the right strings to sucker me into balling, only for a short-lived 20min, at about the 1:30 mark, did i get into the film (around when Damon showed up).  it kinda blows my mind how bad this movie is.

SPR opens and closes with the freaking hideous Ryan family trip to the national cemetery.  trying to bank on the revisit gimmick in Schindler's List, this bit of fiction just irked to high heaven.  then, we are dropped into one of many hideously long and utterly uninteresting combat scenes.  seriously?!  what is the freaking point of a 15min combat scene?  over and over?  is this really going to give me a better sense of what it was like for the soldiers?  of course not.  just a wasteful, masturbatory nearly two-hours of combat enactment.  while we get a sense of several characters, they are developed very thinly.  of course we can't really get to know them over the nearly three hour running time because they are mostly just in CINECASTing battle.  and yes, i get it is a war movie, but who the CINECAST cares?  the film gestures to an anti-war message, but of course it isn't.  it is more a love letter to Country and the bitter pill that is essential - claims the hyper-individualist, super-rich Spielberg.  CINECASTing gag me!  then, of course, is the ridiculous pro-war statement of the meek, justice-oriented Upham (Jeremy Davies) closing the film by getting his man on and becoming a lustful killer.  clearly, this film pisses me off like few films do. all the worse because i would expect the film to be well crafted, but it awkwardly jumps from combat to combat.  i suspect Spielberg had some consultants that he felt compelled to appease and "honor" by listening too much to them about needing more battle scenes.  whatever the reason, POC! 

Contact, from the bits i noted above, mostly tries too hard.  a few nice cast members - Jena Malone, Jodie Foster, David Morse, and John Hurt as the eccentric Hadden (i guess Skerritt also filled his role nicely); McConaughey just didn't work for me, kinda emphasized the cheese that this film was.  Kent Clark?  really?  not clever, not funny, just lame.  oh, did i just use the slur lame?  i guess i was in the mood since Contact lazily falls back on the trope of the extra-sensory lame person - you see, Kent is blind.  Ohhhhhh. Ahhhhhhh.  a blind person super in touch with his ability to hear, as well as being super, extra compassionate to Ellie the Super-Scientist Outcast.  just lazy.  as i briefly noted in my first "write-up", Contact moves on only because it questions the sanctity of Science with important unprovables like Love, Family connection, and human contact in general.  i'll be shocked if this clunker makes it out of the next round.

[sorry for the super-cranky vibe.  i really didn't like SPR and mostly didn't like C, it was a chore to revisit them with the required write-up :p ]
But I wish the public could, in the midst of its pleasures, see how blatantly it is being spoon-fed, and ask for slightly better dreams. 
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St. Martin the Bald

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Re: 1990s US Bracket commentary
« Reply #841 on: August 01, 2008, 02:06:55 PM »
*uncomfortable silence*


Ummm...I agree..mostly because I'm afraid I'll get bitch-slapped if I don't. :-\
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secondcitywolverine

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Re: 1990s US Bracket commentary
« Reply #842 on: August 01, 2008, 02:25:19 PM »
*uncomfortable silence*


Ummm...I agree..mostly because I'm afraid I'll get bitch-slapped if I don't. :-\

HAHA  :D

skjerva: I remember reading/watching an interview with Spielberg and him feeling he did the same mistake he had with Raiders in which the opening scene is so monumental, the rest of the film didn't stand up. Do you think the storming of the beach scene was so intense, the rest of the film fell flat?

skjerva

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Re: 1990s US Bracket commentary
« Reply #843 on: August 01, 2008, 02:56:05 PM »
*uncomfortable silence*


Ummm...I agree..mostly because I'm afraid I'll get bitch-slapped if I don't. :-\

:) yeah, pretty hardcore, eh?

skjerva: I remember reading/watching an interview with Spielberg and him feeling he did the same mistake he had with Raiders in which the opening scene is so monumental, the rest of the film didn't stand up. Do you think the storming of the beach scene was so intense, the rest of the film fell flat?

not at all.  plus, the opening scene isn't the storming of the beach, it's the old Ryan with family solemnly walking to Miller's (Hanks) grave.  that said, i was COMPLETELY bored with the storming scene.  the bullets through water was neat, but i could otherwise have cared less.  people gave Wright crap for the Dunkirk scene in Atonement, but i don't think that came close to being as masturbatory as everything Spielberg was doing in Ryan.  i am honestly having a hard time believing how much i hated this movie.

i've been wondering how the film, and all the combat scenes, played for other folks.  i can understand some WWII vet liking it, or some family of a dead WWII vet, but a typical movie-goer?  i have no clue.
But I wish the public could, in the midst of its pleasures, see how blatantly it is being spoon-fed, and ask for slightly better dreams. 
                        - Iris Barry from "The Public's Pleasure" (1926)

gateway

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Re: 1990s US Bracket commentary
« Reply #844 on: August 01, 2008, 03:30:24 PM »
I'll give that the bookending scenes shouldn't be in the film, but they compose about two minutes of the movie, and are easily ignorable. As for the bulk of the film, all I can say is that every time I watch it I'm completely captivated by every sequence, every scene, every shot. There are only a handful of movies I can think of where I cared deeply about every single character, and Saving Private Ryan is one of them. Whenever it comes on TNT I almost always drop whatever I'm doing for the next three hours, because I know I won't be able to stop watching.

That's my vague, impassioned defense of Saving Private Ryan.
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St. Martin the Bald

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Re: 1990s US Bracket commentary
« Reply #845 on: August 01, 2008, 04:23:36 PM »
There are couple of minor scenes that have stayed with me:

One is where Hanks and crew are marching and as they crest a hill, the light seems to radiate from them - it shimmers across the the tips of the grass. Is he trrying to address the angelic innocence of soldiers in battle? I don't know but I really love that shot.

The other is another marching scene where a flock of sheep move across a meadow, perhaps speaking to the absurd surrealism or the hyper-reality of wartime.

Don't ask me why those two shots are ingrained upon me but they are, also the scene where Vin Diesel dies is very moving to me as well...as for the Normandy scene, I have relatives who fought in many wars and they say it captures the experience.
Masturbatory?
Maybe - but isn't that the point of art?
Spielberg has some chops, there's no denying it and perhaps he was indulging himself but again, I say that is the raison d'etre of art/film.
I would venture that your objection lies more in the subject matter than action of the director, and perhaps deservedly so if you feel that strongly about it. I don't think it glorifies war, just the opposite, that scene scared the sh*t out of me. It showed that people were puking, dying, crying all in the midst of performing a service to the free world (stopping the Nazis)...heroes are not cast in stone, but made of the same stuff we are...(if you buy into the fact that they were heroes). In fact it shows them committing acts of cruelty towards the end of that scene(letting the Germans burn instead of shooting them) so is it saying war leaves no one innocent or everyone is guilty?
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oneaprilday

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Re: 1990s US Bracket commentary
« Reply #846 on: August 01, 2008, 04:42:05 PM »
skjerva, I'm curious about your reaction to other war films, say, The Thin Red Line? Did the combat scenes in that film feel less masturbatory to you, and if so, why do you think so?
(I'm really just curious - I have no interest in defending SPR since I haven't seen it and don't much want to.)

Junior

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Re: 1990s US Bracket commentary
« Reply #847 on: August 01, 2008, 04:47:05 PM »
It seems skjerva and I will never ever agree on a movie. Ever.
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Re: 1990s US Bracket commentary
« Reply #848 on: August 01, 2008, 04:52:09 PM »
just a wasteful, masturbatory nearly two-hours of combat enactment.

[Woody Allen joke]

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secondcitywolverine

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Re: 1990s US Bracket commentary
« Reply #849 on: August 01, 2008, 05:03:38 PM »
Along the same lines of OAD, what did you think of Children of Men?