Movies you thought wouldn’t enjoy, but got surprised..

[SlumpBuster]

Munich

My wife and I were standing in Blockbuster when she picked it up and I actually said, "Urghhh, you know its just going to be really slow with alot of talking and jawing. Jaw, jaw, jaw, lesson, lesson, lesson, preach, preach, preach."

Wow, was I wrong. Munich was compelling and enthralling and tight. It looked good, sounded great, and was paced perfectly. The series of set up and hit, set up and hit, set up and hit, really contributed to showing the grind that the team was subjecting themselves to. It felt like the movie Syriana wanted to be.

Also, I thought it was ambivalent and did not pick sides on the Isreal/Palistinean conflict, regardless of what the press said. However, if people watch it with preconcieved notions, or go into it looking for zebras, they will find what ever they are looking for.

Finally, there is this new way to film violence that I keep seeing show up. Violence is an important part of film making since is such a primary component of so many stories. Munich had it and Kevin Costner's Open Range had it a couple years ago. It is gritty, intimate, and realistic (not that I would actually know what a gunshot wound looks like). No slow motion or fake sound effects. Death is slow and messy. People don't just shut off like a light switch. I find it really disturbing and wholly unglamorous, but great film making. To me the difference between violence is between the way Scorsese films violence and Speilberg and Costner film it. I think Speilberg and Costner get it right. In all of Saving Private Ryan, the most gruesome and disturbing scene was Adam Goldberg's fight and death scene with the Nazi slowly stabbing him.

[daviethek]

My wife rented "The Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio" recently. I figured it was going to be a typical chick flick but it was in fact very good. It reminded me of working class family life in the 60's. Great performances by Woody Harrelson and Juliane Moore.

[Worf101]

1. "Tristan and Isolde" - A MAN"S romance movie. Lot's of fightin' and stabbin' and nekid wimmines.. oh and there's this love story too.

2. "Waterproof" - Burt Reynolds in a movie made on lunch money about secrets in a small Louisianna town call "Waterproof". Obviously filmed BEFORE hurricane Katrina.

Da Worfster

[RGA]

Munich

My wife and I were standing in Blockbuster when she picked it up and I actually said, "Urghhh, you know its just going to be really slow with alot of talking and jawing. Jaw, jaw, jaw, lesson, lesson, lesson, preach, preach, preach."

Wow, was I wrong. Munich was compelling and enthralling and tight. It looked good, sounded great, and was paced perfectly. The series of set up and hit, set up and hit, set up and hit, really contributed to showing the grind that the team was subjecting themselves to. It felt like the movie Syriana wanted to be.

Also, I thought it was ambivalent and did not pick sides on the Isreal/Palistinean conflict, regardless of what the press said. However, if people watch it with preconcieved notions, or go into it looking for zebras, they will find what ever they are looking for.

Finally, there is this new way to film violence that I keep seeing show up. Violence is an important part of film making since is such a primary component of so many stories. Munich had it and Kevin Costner's Open Range had it a couple years ago. It is gritty, intimate, and realistic (not that I would actually know what a gunshot wound looks like). No slow motion or fake sound effects. Death is slow and messy. People don't just shut off like a light switch. I find it really disturbing and wholly unglamorous, but great film making. To me the difference between violence is between the way Scorsese films violence and Speilberg and Costner film it. I think Speilberg and Costner get it right. In all of Saving Private Ryan, the most gruesome and disturbing scene was Adam Goldberg's fight and death scene with the Nazi slowly stabbing him.

Spielberg is one of the best at on screen violence. Schindler's List to me was the first film I had ever seen that truly made a killing by gun look real. Yes Platoon and Saving Private Ryan and several others can do blow-ups but a basic shot to the head has not looked more real than some sequences in Schindler's List.

But then Spielberg has more movies in my top 100 of all time than any other director. He has proven to me to be one of if not the most diverse directors. I like a lot of directors but generally speaking they seem far more comfortable in one genre. Scorceses does the gangster picture well - or the offshoot of that with the seedy parts of city life. He is less successful IMO when he moves beyond that genre. Tarantino is visually impressive and has a unique style that screams pop culture hip and is IMO great at dialogue even when it is proposterous.

Spielberg has done thriller as well as that genre has EVER seen in Jaws. He has done science fiction with E.T.(also maybe the best family film ever made), Close Encounters, Minority Report, Jurassic Park. He has done the action adventure drama as well as it can be done in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the Last Crusade was a darn good effort as well.

His serious films Schindler's List(IMO the best film ever made), Saving Private Ryan and Munich have all been highly regarded in almost every major critical category largely because Spielberg retains a fair hand and usually stays to the historical evidence. I say that knowing that historians have differing views of evidence but Spielberg seems to do his homework and entertains divergent views in his films. No film is historically accurate because historians themselves don't have absolutes - and film suffers from being a once made non changeable product. A history debate can be argued back and forth in academic journals. Spielberg usually gets the main points correct.

Spielberg has made a number of what I would call misfires like Amistad and the abysmally idiotic War of the Worlds but nobody is perfect.

And hey everyone forgets the Sugarland Express -- Quite a darn good movie which surprised me.

[SlumpBuster]

His serious films Schindler's List(IMO the best film ever made)

Actually, the best film ever made was Smokey and the Bandit.

But seriously folks. Speilberg's populist appeal can work against his films as a serious filmmaker. The logic would be "Since everyone likes his movies that can't be all that good, right?" Actually wrong. I actually liked Minority Report and AI (I also liked it them the second time around as Paycheck and The Island). I like them because even when Speilberg fails, he fails because he is over reaching, not because he is lazy/pandering/sloppy. When he fails, its like you can tell what he is trying to say, but he just can't find the words to say it. As oppossed to say, George Lucas. He failed with the Star Wars prequals because he wholly failed to guage what the public liked so much about the first three, because he became a slave to his vision, because he forgot his audience, and, finally, because he failed to temper his work with the constructive critisims of others. i.e. lazy and sloppy. Jar Jar Binks counts as the pandering part. "Oooo, let's make him Rasta! The kids will love it!"