Two ideas have been wandering around in my head for a while. One was Spielberg-based. Favorite movie. Worst movie. Progression. The other idea was a series of "roundtable" conversation dealing with various topics. The topic and info in the post. Conversation in the comments. That's the best implementation I've got of a roundtable in blog-form (will take better suggestions).
So why not smang them together?!
For our first Roundtable, Steven Spielberg. *applause* I was going to keep the topic directed at the question of "What is Spielberg's Worst Movie?", but let's open that up a bit. Our primary question will still remain the subject of his worst movie. Once we've tackled that, let's venture into relating questions. Favorite movie? Liked/disliked characters? Etc. Any thought, questions, statements related to the topic (Spielberg), throw 'em in there.
Info:
Rotten Tomatoes seems to be the movie rating standard, so you can find a list of Spielberg's work here. Be careful of his credit listings. There's no filter, so don't mistake Spielberg for the director of "The Legend of Zorro".
Imdb provides a more manageable list of director duties here minus the ratings.
Note: Spielberg is not the [official] director of 1982's Poltergeist and 1985's The Goonies, though often confused as such. Unofficially, Spielberg was heavily involved in both movies. For The Goonies, Spielberg worked very close with Richard Donner and the cast. His influence was there, but Donner was not usurped. Things were not so smooth for Poltergeist. Though Texas Chainsaw Massacre's Tobe Hooper is officially credited as director, many involved with the movie cite Spielberg as the real director. You can read that tidbit here.
At the moment when I first read this post, I would have described myself as "unfamiliar" with a fair number of Spielberg's movies. Then I clicked on the link to IMDB and thought, "Huh, I've seen that. Oh and that one...and that one. Okay. I guess I can respond to that." (To be fair, out of the 24 movies not described as TV series or Documentary Short or something like that on IMDB, I have seen: 14 and only 5 of those in the last 10 years, so I may be...rusty. But what the hell, this is the Internet and it's designed for people with uninformed opinions, right?)
ReplyDeleteSo here goes:
To be fair to Steven Spielberg, the movies that are most commonly cited as his worst I have (mostly) not seen. I did see the most recent Indiana Jones movie and did think it was terrible, though it did take seeing it with me to convince my husband that it was terrible. (After my comments on Rise of the Planet of the Apes below, I'm starting to wonder if maybe it is seeing movies with me that causes him to hate them.) I don't know. I just don't see Harrison Ford reprising the role as aging gracefully and there's really nothing I find sadder than a movie star who keeps trying to play the same roles he played in his youth. Could be just me.
If I had to pick one out of that whole list (that I've seen), I'd say it would be Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for the reason stated above which has pretty much nothing to do with Steven Spielberg, well, except for the fact that a failure to age gracefully by reprising the film series could be ascribed to him as well as his lead actor.
(I'm sure there were worse movies, but not having seen them, I'll keep my opinions to myself. I don't think my comment necessarily opens us up to any real "discussion," but I'll leave it at that.) :)
Ahh! So it was YOU! I remember, right after Crystal Skull was released, I was in Ryan’s apt. We were talking of the movie and Ryan seemed to like it. His biggest complaint was against the people who hated the movie “for not being Indiana Jones”. We talked of the fridge, the ants, Shia and his monkeys. Oh and the aliens! “Do aliens belong, or can they exist, in Indiana Jones?” Me, I didn’t have much feeling one way or the other for the movie as a whole. I didn’t really like it nor really hate it. I love Indiana Jones, but I wasn’t even hyped for the movie. I think my hype was reserved for Iron man and, mostly, The Dark Knight. So I wasn’t really letdown nor satisfied much.
ReplyDeleteI would place more blame on George Lucas. Whatever “greatness” he could lay claim to in the past, and whoever’s shoulders he may have stood upon, the dude is a mess. Cute wife, but a mess. The Star Wars prequels were highly marketed yet forgettable junk. It was an era of cinema that really took us nowhere. Crystal Skull is closer to the Star Wars prequels than its own franchise. Compared to earlier Jones’, Skull lacks a notable sense of adventure and fun. Thankfully, it’s not as ass-numbingly boring/terrible as the recent Star Wars stuff, but a far cry from Raiders, Doom, and Crusade.
Lastly, Harrison Ford has turned into a grumpy old man. He has two emotions: bored and pissed. Maybe he’s tired of fanboys thanking him for shooting Greedo. Maybe he’s pissed that his movie career didn’t pan out like he wanted. And it’s taken over the characters that he plays. Crystal Skull Indiana Jones is a Grumpius Rex. He wasn’t cool. Badass. Intelligent. Daring. Just an old man. Pissed at younglings. Fumbling his way through the action scenes.
Maybe we just need to look at this in another light, though. If channeled properly, like when he called Daniel Craig his “wookie bitch now”, Old Man Ford can be pretty funny. My idea would be to let him run loose and “rape” all his past characters. Grumpy Han Solo kicking his broken down Falcon while balding Chewbacca catches up on Reader’s Digest. There’s a mummy loose in the retirement home and Old Man Mr. President, with his room painted like Air Force One, orders the mummy to “get off my plane!”
Hmm, I remember Ryan liking Episode III, too. Was it also you that turned him to the dark side of the force?
Off the top of my head, I would list Hook and The Lost World: Jurassic Park as his two worst. Before a year ago, I would have gone with Hook as his worst. It was Spielberg doing Peter Pan. How could he fuck this up, right? Well, he did fuck up. He didn’t make a Peter Pan movie. Peter Pan ran away from the the lost boys and Neverland to England. Fell in love with Wendy’s daughter. Grew up into Robin Williams. Forgot who he was. But now Hook is back (somehow). Has taken Robin Pan’s kids (somehow). And now Robin Pan must go back! With the help of hot midget Julia Roberts! To reclaim his kids! And to accept that, once upon a time, he was a kid, too!
Fuck! I didn’t want that shit as a kid. I wanted a Peter Pan fantasy movie. Like the Disney cartoon, but in real life. And better (yeah, I went there). Pirates. Mermaids. Boys who are constantly lost. Alligators with clocks! The marketing said it was Spielberg and Peter Pan. My Happy Meal toys said, “It’s fucking Peter Pan! Go see that fucking movie, yo!” But it wasn’t Spielberg and Peter Pan. It was Spielberg and Robin Williams who couldn’t accept that, at one point in time, he used to be a kid. And there ain’t nothing wrong with being a kid! Bangarang!
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I quickly forgot of the movie, aside from my dislike of it, and moved on. I caught it on AMC a year ago and, surprised, kinda liked it. More grown up, I think I can see what Spielberg was going for. It was an “indie” film drowned in Peter Pan. All the adults were “stuck” in their life. Robin Pan was too much a stick-in-the-mud and he was losing his family because of it. Captain Hook is lost. He feels he has no purpose. He’s stuck in a goddamn island with fucking kids. He’s bored. Suicidal. All he can think to do is attempt to relive the past by taking Pan’s kids and forcing a fight. Robin Pan must try to remember the past to save his kids and reclaim his family. Both Hook and Robin Pan must grab the past. Hook readily. Pan apprehensively. But Hook does so for dead glory. Pan for his family.
ReplyDeleteI find the movie better, thanks mainly due to Dustin Hoffman and Bob Hoskins, but damn are those Lost Boys annoying. Bangarang! As well as Julia Roberts, still hot. Bangarang! Robin’s kids….fuck those kids. Those kids seemed to do everything in their power to make Robin Pan NOT want to save them. The girl with her whining and damnable, pirate-crying singing. The boy with his clock-smashing and “Run Home, Jack!”
So that leaves The Lost World: Jurassic Park as my choice for worst Spielberg movie. I love Jurassic Park. For me, the movie maintains the same magic as when I first saw it as a kid. And I have a soft spot for Jurassic Park III. It brings back some of the magic and wonder of the first movie without trying to step on its toes. As I mentioned before, JP3 gives us the same world, but forges its own path in that world. A lot of things aren’t done as well and the first movie, but JP3 is fun. There’s some adventurin’ to be had. Even as an adult, I’ll geek out while standing in line at the Jurassic Park Ride (both LA’s and Orlando’s). The music. The ride. The JP-themed restaurant (Brontosaurus burger!). I love Jurassic park!
The Lost World takes the world of Jurassic Park and burns that mother fucker to the ground. There’s a HUGE cast of characters and I don’t give a single fuck about any of them. Jeff Goldblum is starring. I love Jeff Goldblum. I know Jeff Goldblum plays Jeff Goldblum in every Jeff Goldblum movie, but I forgive him. I enjoy Jeff Goldblum being Jeff Goldblum. I do not like the Jeff Goldblum in The Lost World. He’s Ian Malcolm from the first JP in name only. He’s not even close to Ian Malcolm. Instead, he’s bored Jeff Goldblum. At no point in the movie is he scared or even surprised. Yeah, I know he was chased by a T-Rex in the first movie, so he’s seen some shit, but not a good character this does make. Those he loves are in danger of being eaten by DINOSAURS, and those close to him ARE being eaten by DINOSAURS and Jeff Goldblum could care less.
This was my first Julianne Moore movie. She’s hot yet bored. Vince Vaughn, too! Equally bored. And then there was Goldblum’s daughter. She gets waay too much screen time and spends it complaining about Jeff Goldblum’s parenting skills. And she’s responsible for this movie’s “walk out” scene. Every hated movie’s got one. The scene that breaks the camel’s back and pushes the viewer to either roll their eyes and continue onward or get the fuck up and leave. Her father is about to be eaten by a raptor. Daughter decides to go into an elaborate gymnastics pole routine (while the raptor happily waits for her to finish) and ends with her drop-kicking the raptor THROUGH the wall and onto something that impales the raptor. This little girl. That big ass raptor. THROUGH THE FUCKING WALL!
She ShockMaster’d that raptor!
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The mercenaries brought in by InGen were a collection of boring, pointless characters whose only motivation were to hold guns, drive jeeps, and die at specific times in the movie. But their leader did give the best character in the movie, Roland Tembo played by the now-late Pete Postlethwaite. He was engaging. He was memorable. He had a clear motivation: to hunt and kill a T-Rex. And his character progressed: the price of bagging the T-Rex became too high. I believe it was Roger Ebert who said that Pete was the only actor in the movie to act as if he was on an island with dinosaurs. I agree.
ReplyDeleteAside from the general theme of being bored, everyone was really sarcastic/joke-y. Especially when in dangerous situations. Jeff Goldblum and crew are hanging off the edge of a cliff inside a continually sliding trailer and they all join in to fake order fast food to the guy trying to help them. That guy soon gets spilt in half between two T-Rexes and still no one seems to give a fuck.
Towards the end of the movie, a T-Rex is captured, placed in the cargo hold of the boat, and shipped to San Diego. It’s night. Foggy. Everyone stands on the dock waiting for the boat. And the boat’s coming…..but it’s not slowing down. The boat appears. Everyone runs. And the boat runs aground. On board, everyone’s dead, supposedly attacked by dinosaur/s. But there are not dinosaurs. There’s a dead severed hand on the cargo door controls and the door is slightly opening and closing. Goldblum says something sarcastic and obvious as the T-Rex bust out the cargo hold and romps through San Diego. I remember being confused about this situation as I watched it in theaters and still confused now. What attacked the crew? Where are the attackers now? Was it the T-Rex? But how could it be when the T-Rex was still in the cargo hold? Why was the hand on the cargo door controls? To release the T-Rex to fight the attackers? Or did the T-Rex escape, kill everyone, then somehow get trapped back in the cargo hold? All without destroying the cargo doors at it did when it escaped in San Diego?
Somehow. Someway. The movie was a clusterfuck. Spielberg refuses to direct anymore JP movies and, like Hook, doesn’t talk about The Lost World. The franchise fell into a hole and a lot of goodwill was lost. I personally would blame The Lost World for most, if not all, the hate Jurassic Park III gets. A lot of people were burned and, despite it being closer to Jurassic Park than Spielberg’s own sequel, Jurassic Park III was cast aside. Overlooked. Forgotten.
I'm actually going to go with Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It was just soooo boring. I'm cool with a fair amount of Alien ideas, from rational beings to warpath terrorizers, but I fail to see the appeal of little flying light shows and a big mother ship that plays the tuba. The gravity of the whole thing was missing. It's not that nobody thought it was a big deal, because everybody did, but nobody knew *why* it was such a big deal. Nobody thought about the consequences of contact with an aliens. Were they terrified of possible violence? Were they interested in the possible advancement in science and technology? No, I felt like they were chasing aliens like some people would chase after an undiscovered species of tropical fish. It has no bearing on our lives at all, but hey guys, check it out! They were the most uninspiring aliens ever, because we didn't even form an opinion of them, until the very end, where they flash some lights and play some tones on the tuba. And that's what they brought to the world. Giant flying lights to put in your fish tank.
ReplyDeleteAs for his best, I don't feel qualified, as I haven't really seen any of the movies I've heard might be his best. I've seen pieces of some, but not the whole things.
Looking at the list of his movies, it's actually sort of embarassing how many of them I've never seen, many of which are supposed to have been sort of epoch-making for people my age. I've never seen Jaws, Close Encounters, Schindler's List, Amistad, or Minority Report, just to list the ones that I've heard the best things about.
ReplyDeleteOf the ones that I've seen, A.I. and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull are the only ones that I've completely despised. A.I. was actually OK, until it was spoiled in the last half hour or so.
I think Katy is being a little unfair to Ford in Skull, although I agree that the movie wasn't any good. In my opinion, Shia was the problem with that movie, especially Tarzan-Shia.
What's making this difficult for me is the realization of how small an impression *any* of Spielberg's films have actually made on me. None of these movies--not even the ones that I actually do like, like Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me If You Can, and Munich--are even close to being part of my desert island list. For whatever reason, and for better or for worse, his movies just aren't very memorable to me. In a lot of cases, I walk away from them, and in a week's time I can only remember (1) the basic concept, and (2) an action sequence/striking image here or there. Most of what happens between the opening and closing credits is a blur.
A.I. currently sits as the Spielberg movie I most want to re-watch. Tommy asked about it a couple days back and, as I tried to explain it, I realized I hadn't seen it in close to a decade. I can remember certain scenes. I can remember liking it. And, mostly, I can remember thinking that the movie had a perfect ending that was fucked up when the movie didn't end (and fast-forwarded into a new ice age with aliens).
ReplyDeleteClose Encounters and Schindler's List I've seen once each. I encountered Encounters (BAM!) not that long ago on TV, probably AMC, and don't remember a damn thing. Schindler I saw after hours at LSU as part of a required viewing for a history class. Given the subject matter and press, I found it not as hard to watch as I was led to believe. And, supporting Ryan's statement, I don't remember anything about the movie aside from the ending where the real life people Schindler helped lined up to put rocks on his grave. Oh and that Jerry [Seinfeld] made out during the movie.
For those that haven't, I would recommend Jaws and Amistad. Both being my favorite Spielberg movies. Though I've seen the movie countless times as a child and adults, Jaws somehow manages to still bring the magic. It's a movie that should suck. Had every right to suck. But is instead a timeless classic (outside of the ugly old people bathing suits). Spielberg developed an interesting world filled with interesting characters then plopped the three best on a small boat together to find an even bigger shark. And some scenes still creep me out.
Amistad is, for lack of a better word, "powerful". I affects me like no other movie has except for John Hammond's Gandhi. It shows us the worst of humanity and how a few people take it upon themselves to fight an unwinnable battle.....using the justice system! It's an amazing mix of legal loop holes, the legal status of slaves as humans and/or property, the concept of ownership, transatlantic politics, and the interpreted legacies of the nation's Founding Fathers.
It is Amistad that has my favorite Spielberg character of John Quincy Adams played by Anthony Hopkins. Adams is senile and equally jaded by what has become of America and her politics. He is forgotten and wishes to remain so. Hopkins' Adams gives a great statement in the climax of the court battle with a quiet intensity that only JFK's Kevin Costner comes close to in his much more emotional closing statement. Both Adams and Costner's Garrison hold a love for the ideals of America but are left lost and confused with her current state under those in charge.