28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[Dukefrukem]

Let me clarify - I understand perfectly well why any human being would feel bad about 9/11 or any other terrorist attack. I don't mean to say anything callous about the very real and innocent people who died. But to have one's worldview changed because of it is to have lived in complete denial of the evil nature of American foreign policy.

The way you worded that post is eye opening. I didn't really think anyone could refuse to feel remorse or empathy of ANYTHING related to the events on 9/11, but I'll just assume the opposite from here on out.... Foreigners always see the US as this evil empire and it's citizens as blind followers of the leaders regardless of who takes office every 8 years. Got it.

On topic, it does look like Spielberg changed his life after 9.11 just looking at his wiki.

In 2007 he donated $1 million for relief efforts in Israel during the 2006 Lebanon War.

In 2008, Spielberg pulled out of his role as advisor to the 2008 Summer Olympics in response to the Chinese government's inaction over the War in Darfur.

In 2018, Spielberg and his wife Kate Capshaw donated $500,000 to the March for Our Lives.

Not much before 2001.

[Grouchy]

Evil seems to me something of an overstatement; amoral seems closer to the mark. Basically US foreign policy has one major objective, which is to secure favourable conditions for American business across the globe, irrespective of the human cost.

Yeah, this. Nailed it.

[Grouchy]

The way you worded that post is eye opening. I didn't really think anyone could refuse to feel remorse or empathy of ANYTHING related to the events on 9/11, but I'll just assume the opposite from here on out.... Foreigners always see the US as this evil empire and it's citizens as blind followers of the leaders regardless of who takes office every 8 years. Got it.

No, no, I seriously don't feel any animosity towards the American common citizen, I promise it. But, just to name one example, I'm Argentinian. There were recently declassified CIA documents proving the US involvement in Operation Cóndor, which cost thousands of Argentinian lives in the late 1970s just to move the country's politics towards the far right and destroy its democratic process. I don't think this is the average American's fault, of course, but if you don't see a connection between decades of this kind of shit abroad and a terrorist attack on American soil, I don't know what to tell you.

[Grouchy]

PS: You're referencing famous work, but I can't help but notice that the very famous climax of some features a major character making active choices, from "HERE'S JOHNNY" to "I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that."

What's David's moment of decision? He never has one.

Are you sure "HERE'S JOHNNY" is an active choice by Jack Torrance? Despite the entire movie being about ghosts manipulating his worst instincts?

David's moment of decision, since you need it so badly, is his stated quest to become a real boy.

[baby doll]

"A.I" was a sci-fi movie from a major American director (his first in how many years?) who was also coming off a round of Oscar noms. It was definitely intended for a wide mainstream audience.

Spielberg doesn't pander (well, usually) but he's definitely a crowd-pleaser down to his bones. Always has been, always will be. He wants the biggest audience he can find, every time outt.

This is also one of the reasons I don't think "A.I." works on an aesthetic or thematic level. There's something tragic and more than a little creepy about David and everyone he meets (particularly Gigolo Joe) which actively works against the usual Spielberg schmaltz, where he's overtly referencing "Pinocchio" and "Peter Pan" and, again, trying to soften a set of pretty depressing ideas.

PS: You're referencing famous work, but I can't help but notice that the very famous climax of some features a major character making active choices, from "HERE'S JOHNNY" to "I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that."

What's David's moment of decision? He never has one.

Eyes Wide Shut was also a well-promoted summer release from a major distributor with A-list stars but it's no one's idea of a crowdpleaser. There's no law that says mainstream movies can't be adult, tragic, and/or creepy, or that Spielberg can't do something different once in a blue moon (especially coming on the heels of a huge box office hit).

As for HAL having a choice, the statement you quote strongly implies he doesn't: HAL didn't decide not to do that; he can't do that because he's been programmed not to jeopardize the mission.

[Skitch]

I feel like to answer all those separately would turn the thread into a big Last Jedi discussion which wasn't the point, but they all make perfect sense to me. The Dern thing in particular has been addressed to death and the film itself makes it clear she's Poe's superior in hierarchy so she doesn't owe him shit. Maybe the cave one is the closest to an actual plot hole.

Agreed.

[Dukefrukem]

No, no, I seriously don't feel any animosity towards the American common citizen, I promise it. But, just to name one example, I'm Argentinian. There were recently declassified CIA documents proving the US involvement in Operation Cóndor, which cost thousands of Argentinian lives in the late 1970s just to move the country's politics towards the far right and destroy its democratic process. I don't think this is the average American's fault, of course, but if you don't see a connection between decades of this kind of shit abroad and a terrorist attack on American soil, I don't know what to tell you.

No I do. I'd like to believe we are a lot smarter as a people in the 21st century. I see these kinds of events along with the Iran–Contra affair where I feel like American Adults were so much dumber in these decades (i mean, look how far we've come from the 50s) that these kinds of things would never happen again. Guantanamo Bay being the exception to the rule. I really would like to look back on these generations when my generation starts to fill in the Washington seats and I would hope, we'd be looking a totally different landscape. I'm so tired of this perception and i'm only in my 30s.

[baby doll]

In 2007 he donated $1 million for relief efforts in Israel during the 2006 Lebanon War.

To relieve Israelis?

[Grouchy]

No I do. I'd like to believe we are a lot smarter as a people in the 21st century. I see these kinds of events along with the Iran–Contra affair where I feel like American Adults were so much dumber in these decades (i mean, look how far we've come from the 50s) that these kinds of things would never happen again. Guantanamo Bay being the exception to the rule. I really would like to look back on these generations when my generation starts to fill in the Washington seats and I would hope, we'd be looking a totally different landscape. I'm so tired of this perception and i'm only in my 30s.

Well, that's a very optimistic viewpoint... I hope you're right, but then again, you guys have a president who threatens to bomb countries via twitter. Mind you, I don't mean to offer Obama as an alternative - the guy was pretty much the same as any other US president with the exception of Kennedy where foreign policy was concerned.

EDIT: And besides, it's not like the people affected get a clean slate. Ask any adult Argentinian who never met their parent because he/she was kidnapped, tortured and thrown alive from a plane into the River Plate how they feel about this declassified information.

[Irish]

Eyes Wide Shut was also a well-promoted summer release from a major distributor with A-list stars but it's no one's idea of a crowdpleaser.

Both were heavily marketed, commercial, mainstream films. By crowd pleaser I mean: Everyone involved --- from director, to writer, to cast, to distributor --- wanted the audience to leave the theater saying "Wow! What a great movie!" and immediately run all over their respective towns telling everybody they knew to go see it.

When Tom Cruise shows up on The Tonight Show, we're probably not talking about an arthouse film.

There's no law that says mainstream movies can't be adult, tragic, and/or creepy, or that Spielberg can't do something different once in a blue moon (especially coming on the heels of a huge box office hit).

These movies resonated with mainstream audiences in ways similarly cerebral sci-fi did not. (Off the top of my head: Soderbergh's "Solaris" and PW Anderson's "Event Horizon," and whoever the hell made "Automata.")

As for HAL having a choice, the statement you quote strongly implies he doesn't: HAL didn't decide not to do that; he can't do that because he's been programmed not to jeopardize the mission.

The segment is about HAL's human evolution. He's broken but doesn't realize it, which leads him to making the choices he does, and those include spying on the astronauts, refusing Dave, and ultimately, [

Show Spoiler

iirc, attempting murder? it's been awhile.

].

Are you sure "HERE'S JOHNNY" is an active choice by Jack Torrance? Despite the entire movie being about ghosts manipulating his worst instincts?

It's the climax of the film, ie the culmination of choices the characters have made.

David's moment of decision, since you need it so badly, is his stated quest to become a real boy.

David's quest is an expression of his base programming and Spielberg's thematic impulses, nothing more.

[Dukefrukem]

To relieve Israelis?

I would assume so. Spielberg is Jewish.

[Grouchy]

Both were heavily marketed, commercial, mainstream films. By crowd pleaser I mean: Everyone involved --- from director, to writer, to cast, to distributor --- wanted the audience to leave the theater saying "Wow! What a great movie!" and immediately run all over their respective towns telling everybody they knew to go see it.

When Tom Cruise shows up on The Tonight Show, we're probably not talking about an arthouse film.

Well, if we lived in a world where only those two categories existed, how dull would cinema be indeed... But people like Kubrick, Spielberg and Scorsese (and Hawks, Ford, Hitchcock, even Preminger before them) were masters at combining commercial appeal with a personal worldview in their filmography. And, coincidentally, two of the names I've just dropped collaborated on A.I.

Besides, I think even the most challenging arthouse filmmakers expect their audiences to enjoy their films, perhaps at a different level than the more commercial fare, but still. Are you telling me Haneke doesn't want his audience to leave the theater thinking they've seen something worthwhile?

It's the climax of the film, ie the culmination of choices the characters have made.

I know it's the climax, I'm just saying, given your restrictive notion of the characteristics any movie protagonist must have, is mind possession all that different from computer programming?

David's quest is an expression of his base programming and Spielberg's thematic impulses, nothing more.

I think I give up - you hate the film so much you even refuse to see the obvious plot threads it rests on. In the flesh fair we're given a glimpse of many robots who have passively accepted their fate. In contrast, for whatever reasons, David has not. Come on, man, you consider yourself a sci-fi fan.

[Irish]

But people like Kubrick, Spielberg and Scorsese (and Hawks, Ford, Hitchcock, even Preminger before them) were masters at

I mean, you're sorta making a bad faith & reductive argument here but what I find interesting is that most if not all the men on your list would consider themselves entertainers and only entertainers. Forget about artist. Forget about auteur. Ford, in particular, would vehemently deny there was a trace of "personal worldview" in his movies (and did, on camera).

given your restrictive notion of the characteristics any movie protagonist must have

Come on, man, you consider yourself a sci-fi fan.

Are you really gatekeeping sci-fi on the basis of "A.I."? LOOOOOOOOL

[Grouchy]

I mean, you're sorta making a bad faith & reductive argument here but what I find interesting is that most if not all the men on your list would consider themselves entertainers and only entertainers. Forget about artist. Forget about auteur. Ford, in particular, would vehemently deny there was a trace of "personal worldview" in his movies (and did, on camera).

What? My argument is not in bad faith at all.

And yeah, Ford, Hitchcock and Hawks would deny it - and it would be disingenuous given how much we can trace about their life experience in their work. I don't think Preminger would deny it. Scorsese, Spielberg and Kubrick would definitively not deny it. They're New Wave filmmakers and savvy about film analysis of Old Hollywood. In fact, Marty is quite vocal about advocating personal filmmaking.

Are you really gatekeeping sci-fi on the basis of "A.I."? LOOOOOOOOL

... What? It's not a Western.

[Irish]

given how much we can trace about their life experience in their work.

That isn't quite what I'd call expressing a personal worldview or making a personal film.

But also:

People pretend to think they know Stanley Kubrick, and think they know me, when most of them don't know either of us. And what's really funny about that is, all the parts of A.I. that people assume were Stanley's were mine. And all the parts of A.I. that people accuse me of sweetening and softening and sentimentalizing were all Stanley's. The teddy bear was Stanley's. The whole last 20 minutes of the movie was completely Stanley's. The whole first 35, 40 minutes of the film – all the stuff in the house – was word for word, from Stanley's screenplay. This was Stanley's vision.

Eighty percent of the critics got it all mixed up. But I could see why. Because, obviously, I've done a lot of movies where people have cried and have been sentimental. And I've been accused of sentimentalizing hard-core material. But in fact it was Stanley who did the sweetest parts of A.I., not me. I'm the guy who did the dark center of the movie, with the Flesh Fair and everything else. That's why he wanted me to make the movie in the first place. He said, 'This is much closer to your sensibilities than my own.'

http://www.movingpictureshow.com/dia...ergCruise.html

If you believe him, kinda plays hell with your theory.

PS: Notice he doesn't mention where the Blue Fairy came from. Wonder why.

[Grouchy]

That isn't quite what I'd call expressing a personal worldview or making a personal film.

Not quite the same, yet they all obviously did that as well. It would be weird to claim that The Quiet Man, The Wrong Man and Rio Bravo aren't personal films.

http://www.movingpictureshow.com/dia...ergCruise.html

If you believe him, kinda plays hell with your theory.

PS: Notice he doesn't mention where the Blue Fairy came from. Wonder why.

I've read that before. I believe him and I don't understand what it would play hell with... What theory? The theory that A.I. doesn't suck? What are you talking about?

[Ezee E]

I always forget Eyes Wide Shut was in NYC because it feels so much like a city in England. It's never bothered me though.

[baby doll]

Both were heavily marketed, commercial, mainstream films. By crowd pleaser I mean: Everyone involved --- from director, to writer, to cast, to distributor --- wanted the audience to leave the theater saying "Wow! What a great movie!" and immediately run all over their respective towns telling everybody they knew to go see it.

When Tom Cruise shows up on The Tonight Show, we're probably not talking about an arthouse film.

These movies resonated with mainstream audiences in ways similarly cerebral sci-fi did not. (Off the top of my head: Soderbergh's "Solaris" and PW Anderson's "Event Horizon," and whoever the hell made "Automata.")

I'm not totally sure what you're arguing here. Doesn't anyone who makes and distributes a film want enthusiastic responses and good word-of-mouth? To clarify my own position, I take "crowdpleaser" to mean specifically light, upbeat fare that elicits from the spectator a warmly sympathetic response to the characters in the narrative (I would classify Catch Me If You Can and The Terminal as successful and unsuccessful examples of crowdpleasers, respectively).

As for Tom Cruise, in terms of its narrative construction, unresolved ambiguities, and less than likeable protagonist, Eyes Wide Shut seems to me closer to an arthouse film than classical Hollywood. Nevertheless, it was released by a major distributor and received lots of advance publicity. I don't recall if Cruise or Kidman ever made an appearance on The Tonight Show, although we seem to agree that one of the show's principal functions is to sell movies. And as Steven Soderbergh has pointed out, the major distributors are just responding to market forces; if audiences suddenly decided that they wanted to see films like Eyes Wide Shut instead of Marvel comic book movies, all the major film companies would be fighting to get in on the action.

And which movies are you talking about that resonated with mainstream audiences? (If I recall correctly, neither Soderbergh's Solaris nor Event Horizon did well at the box office, and neither was especially cerebral either.)

The segment is about HAL's human evolution. He's broken but doesn't realize it, which leads him to making the choices he does, and those include spying on the astronauts, refusing Dave, and ultimately, [

Show Spoiler

iirc, attempting murder? it's been awhile.

].

I don't think the film supplies us with sufficient information to assess whether or not HAL is actually broken. For all we know, HAL may have been correct in his prediction that the device would fail. And when he starts to murder the crew, he's simply following his directions to their logical conclusion, since the mission can't go forward if the astronauts take him offline.

It's the climax of the film, ie the culmination of choices the characters have made.

Except Jack is under the influence of evil spirits and thus hasn't made a free choice any more than David does in his undying love for his "mother."

David's quest is an expression of his base programming and Spielberg's thematic impulses, nothing more.

Oedipus' crimes are an expression of his hamartia and Sophocles' thematic impulses, nothing more.

[Skitch]

The Lion King is shit.

[TGM]

The Lion King is shit.

I assume you’re referring to the new one?

[transmogrifier]

The Lion King is shit.

I've said this before, but the original is probably the most overrated animated film of all time. It's so damn boring.

[megladon8]

Be careful. You're doing that Meg thing where use blanket statements to indict everyone under the "MERICA" flag, versus an event where the sole purpose was to kill Americans. If you don't want to feel bad for a terrorist attack fine. Keep it to yourself.

Nah I just do that to troll you because you get so uppity about it. You cant handle any criticism of your capitalist utopia, because everything has worked in your favour.


Irish - regarding A.I. and David not being able to make a choice, I don't think I agree.

Is not the premise of the film that David's A.I. is so advanced that he has bridged the gap between machine and man? That is to say, he wasn't feeling love just because he was programmed to, but because he actually felt love?

I would agree with your argument if David was in fact incapable of making choices and taking a driver's seat to his own story, but I disagree with that idea. I think he was very much in control and making decisions the way no machine ever had before.

[baby doll]

Irish - regarding A.I. and David not being able to make a choice, I don't think I agree.

Is not the premise of the film that David's A.I. is so advanced that he has bridged the gap between machine and man? That is to say, he wasn't feeling love just because he was programmed to, but because he actually felt love?

I'm not sure I see the difference. Emotions as cognitive evaluations are automatic: I see a bear; I make a cognitive evaluation that the bear is a danger to my survival; I feel terror. I can't choose not to be afraid of the bear. In A.I., David most definitely felt love because he was programmed to (remember the imprinting sequence?) but that doesn't make the feeling of love any less real. Or to put it another way, just because the feeling is real doesn't mean it's not programmed.

[Irish]

I'm not totally sure what you're arguing here.

That you don't spend $100-140 million dollars of Hollywood studio money and hire A-list talent to express the personal. That these films are tailor made for a mass audience and that Kubrick and Spielberg care very much about audience reaction during every step of their productions. That the end product reflect their interests and sensibilities shouldn't be a surprise because it is a natural outcome of creative work, and while specific sensibilities will make a work unique they don't necessarily make it personal.

You guys are talking about these movies as if they are haute couture and made for a narrow audience, as if Spielberg is Rei Kawakubo and Dreamworks is Commes Des Garcons. But he isn't and it's not. Spielberg doesn't create for the runway crowd. He creates for Walwart shoppers. There isn't anything wrong with that, especially when you're as good at it as he is.

I don't think the film supplies us with sufficient information to assess whether or not HAL is actually broken.

I think the attempted murders and his singing "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true" might be some sort of indication as to his mental state.

Except Jack is under the influence of evil spirits and thus hasn't made a free choice any more than David does in his undying love for his "mother."

If this were true, then both novel and film would be deathly dull. Luckily, there's an arc to Jack Torrance's character. He makes choices and those choices change him over the course of the story.

Meanwhile, David is the same kid at the end of "A.I." as he was at the beginning. His needs and wants never change. You could tell him a 1,000 times that his mother doesn't love him, that she's never coming back, or that she's in fact dead and it would make no difference to him.

This also one of the reasons why I don't think the film works, and that it almost approaches an experimental, audience-hostile, anti-narrative, because it attempts to be a narrative drama in which the protagonist doesn't change (If it has fully embraced this aspect, it would have been a much more interesting movie.)

Oedipus' crimes are an expression of his hamartia and Sophocles' thematic impulses, nothing more.

We can argue over the question of fate in "Oedipus" and the role it plays in the story's outcome and why and how that makes the work resonate across centuries --- but Laius still made the choice to send his son away, and Oedipus still made the choice to leave Corinth. If those characters don't make those choices, the rest of the plot couldn't happen and the story would collapse.

[baby doll]

That you don't spend $100-140 million dollars of Hollywood studio money and hire A-list talent to express the personal. That these films are tailor made for a mass audience and that Kubrick and Spielberg care very much about audience reaction during every step of their productions. That the end product reflect their interests and sensibilities shouldn't be a surprise because it is a natural outcome of creative work, and while specific sensibilities will make a work unique they don't necessarily make it personal.

You guys are talking about these movies as if they are haute couture and made for a narrow audience, as if Spielberg is Rei Kawakubo and Dreamworks is Commes Des Garcons. But he isn't and it's not. Spielberg doesn't create for the runway crowd. He creates for Walwart shoppers. There isn't anything wrong with that, especially when you're as good at it as he is.

I fully stand by my claim earlier that A.I. is the closest Spielberg has come to making an arthouse film based on its episodic narrative construction and the divided response it elicits from the spectator in relation to its protagonist--in other words, based on what's actually on the screen and not the film's reported budget or even necessarily its makers' intentions. Films, after all, are open to a diverse range of appropriations; so even if Kubrick and Spielberg intended it as a feel-good crowdpleaser for the family crowd, there's nothing to stop me from appropriating it for my own purposes as a troubled art movie for grownups. I think your investment in generic labels and price tags is blinding you to what the film is actually doing.

I think the attempted murders and his singing "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true" might be some sort of indication as to his mental state.

As I've already argued, HAL's murders (both attempted and successful) can be interpreted as the logical outcome of his programming. The film doesn't definitively rule out the alternative possibility that HAL suddenly snaps, which raises the intriguing possibility of AI suffering from hamartia, but it doesn't definitively endorse it either. (Incidentally, he only starts singing "Daisy" after the astronaut deactivates part of his brain.)

If this were true, then both novel and film would be deathly dull. Luckily, there's an arc to Jack Torrance's character. He makes choices and those choices change him over the course of the story.

Meanwhile, David is the same kid at the end of "A.I." as he was at the beginning. His needs and wants never change. You could tell him a 1,000 times that his mother doesn't love him, that she's never coming back, or that she's in fact dead and it would make no difference to him.

This also one of the reasons why I don't think the film works, and that it almost approaches an experimental, audience-hostile, anti-narrative, because it attempts to be a narrative drama in which the protagonist doesn't change (If it has fully embraced this aspect, it would have been a much more interesting movie.)

We can argue over the question of fate in "Oedipus" and the role it plays in the story's outcome and why and how that makes the work resonate across centuries --- but Laius still made the choice to send his son away, and Oedipus still made the choice to leave Corinth. If those characters don't make those choices, the rest of the plot couldn't happen and the story would collapse.

Although he doesn't change, David, like HAL, does make a choice: He chooses to revive his mother briefly rather than waiting for the late model robots to develop a more durable reproduction. He makes this choice for essentially the same reason Oedipus leaves Corinth and Jack sells his soul for a drink: Because he makes a judgement that it's better than the alternative, and that judgement follows from his programming (David reckons that now briefly is better than waiting indefinitely, Oedipus that not murdering his mother and marrying his mother is preferable to doing those things, Jack that he really needs a drink).