Click here for part one of my Top 15 Movies of 2011 list, numbers fifteen through eleven, and here for part two, featuring numbers ten through six. Buckle up, now, as it’s time for the home stretch, the best of the best (at least in my humble opinion) of 2011!

5.  Young Adult – Juno writer and director Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman re-team for a deliciously dark comedy about a twisted, pretty-much irredeemably terrible young woman named Mavis Gary (a magnificent Charlize Theron) who returns to the small hometown she left years before, in an attempt to win back her old jock boyfriend (Patrick Wilson). He’s married with a young baby, but so what?  During her week back in town, Mavis bumps into another high school classmate, the nerdy, disabled Matt (Patton Oswalt). The two strike up a weird sort-of friendship, and the way the arc of that pairing avoids any of the typical movie cliche ways that those sorts of relationships usually unfold on-screen is only one way in which this movie is unremittingly awesome.  The running gag about the way Mavis wakes up each morning, the terrific chemistry between Ms. Theron and Mr. Oswalt, and that pitch-perfect ending are just a few others.  A phenomenal film.  (Click here for my full review.)

4.   The Adventures of Tintin — Should anyone be surprised that the team-up of cinematic titans Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson produced gold?  This deliriously joyful, madcap adventure is non-stop pulpy fun from start-to-finish.  The film just zips on by, one incredible sequence after another, with Mr. Spielberg showing us once again how he is an absolute master at staging an action scene and assembling a crowd-pleasing adventure film.  The animation is gorgeous, the voice-work is impeccable (highlighted by another brilliant performance by the great Andy Serkis — I also praised his work in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, when I wrote about that film earlier on this list), and when the closing credits ran I couldn’t believe the film was over already.  This one is going to get a lot of play in my household in the coming years, of that I have no doubt.  I can’t wait for the sequel, in which Mr. Spielberg and Mr. Jackson will apparently switch roles (so that Mr. Spielberg will produce the film and Mr. Jackson will direct).  (Click here for my full review.)

3.  Bridesmaids — Kirsten Wiig and co-writer Annie Mumolo, working with brilliant comedy director Paul Feig (creator of Freaks of Geeks), producer Judd Apatow, and a tremendous cast of women, hit every note exactly perfectly in this comedic home-run.  The film is riotously funny and outrageous,… [continued]

And now for the second-half of my Steven Spielberg double-feature — War Horse. (Click here for my review of The Adventures of Tintin.)

When I first saw the trailer for War Horse, I dismissed it almost immediately.  Something about the swelling music and the dramatic shots edited together rubbed me the wrong way, as if the trailer was screaming for us to understand that THIS IS A SERIOUS (read: Oscar-bait) FILM!!  Equally unappealing to me was that, on the other hand, what appeared to be a story about the adventures of a miraculous horse seemed to be to be incredibly silly and childish.  If the words “a Steven Spielberg film” hadn’t been in there, I would have immediately resolved not to see the film.

But there’s just no way that I can miss seeing a new film by Steven Spielberg on the big screen, and I’m glad that I didn’t write this film off because War Horse, while not a masterpiece, is a very solid film and a much different type of story than I was expecting.

The weakest part of the film is the first thirty minutes or so.  That’s the part of the film that is most like what I feared the movie would be.  A boy forms a miraculous bond with a beautiful horse, and then that amazing horse plows the field that everyone declared was impossible to plow.  Now, I’m no farmer, but the film presents us with two pieces of information that every character accepts as fact:  that, a) the horse Joey is far too small to be a plow horse of any kind, and that b) the rocky field is considered to be un-plowable by even the biggest, best plow-horse.  So, of course, Joey is able to plow the field, which brings us right into fantasy-land.  I was worried.

But then World War I breaks out, and the boy, Albert, loses his horse to a young man going off to war, and the film really begins.  I was worried that War Horse was going to be the adventures of this amazing horse at war.  Luckily, though, with one small exception (the scene in which it seems that Joey volunteers to pull the heavy artillery, in order to spare another, injured horse), the film is not about the heroic actions of an anthropomorphized heroic horse.  Rather, Joey is the vehicle for telling a series of different vignettes about World War I.  As Joey passes from owner to owner, and the war progresses, we meet various different characters on all sides of the conflict (British, French, and German) and so are presented with stories covering a wide range of the spectrum of experiences (mostly pretty… [continued]

Steven Spielberg has only directed one film since Munich (click here for my review) in 2005, and that was the tragically disappointing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2008 (which I prefer to pretend never happened).  That’s a long dry spell for one of the masters of modern cinema.  Luckily for us all, Mr. Spielberg burst back onto cinema screens in a big way, late last month, with the release of not one, but TWO new films, released just three days apart from one another: The Adventures of Tintin and War Horse. I saw them both during a terrifically fun late-night double-feature.  I’ll be back here soon with my thoughts on War Horse — for now, let’s dive into The Adventures of Tintin.

The film is, of course, based on the long-running French-language comic-book series written and illustrated by the Belgian artist Hergé.  It draws upon material from several of the Tintin books, including The Secret of the Unicorn (which was, at one point, the sub-title for this film — I’m not certain when that was dropped), The Crab with the Golden Claws, and Red Rackham’s Treasure. Tintin, Boy Reporter, purchases a model of a three-masted sailing ship, The Unicorn, at an outdoor market and immediately finds himself embroiled in a globe-trotting adventure involving various parties’ search for the wreck of the actual ship The Unicorn, which is rumored to contain an enormous treasure.

The film is magnificent, a viscerally entertaining romp all the way through.  When the film ended and the lights went up, I couldn’t believe it was over — the time had passed so quickly.  I’ve heard people comparing The Adventures of Tintin in tone to Raiders of the Lost Ark. While Tintin doesn’t equal that masterpiece, there certainly are similarities in terms of the film’s pulp-inspired adventurous spirit, and the rapid pace in which we (and the hero character) are thrown from one exciting action-sequence into the next.

Actually, what the Adventures of Tintin reminds me of, even more than Raiders, is the prologue to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, depicting one of young Indy (played by River Phoenix)’s adventures.  Not only is our protagonist a fairly young boy who is surprisingly tough and clever for his age, but there’s a delicate balance between intense action that features peril for our hero and an almost slapstick comedic sensibility.

That’s a tough balance to find, but with Steven Spielberg’s hand at the helm (not to mention producer Peter Jackson’s), it’s a balance that The Adventures of Tintin makes look effortless.  There are so many thrilling sequences that stick out in my mind, from the film.  There are the flashbacks… [continued]

My friend Rabbi Ethan Linden has written a wonderful article on his blog about HBO’s recently-concluded Game of Thrones mini-series (which I LOVED) and some broader thoughts about the fantasy and sci-fi genres.  Here’s an excerpt:

People love to make fun of the superhero comic book genre, the fantasy genre, and the science fiction genre, both in movies and in books.  This is unfortunate, because all three of these types of fiction provide some the most fertile ground for the creation of words that, though different from our own in important ways, nonetheless allow us to reflect on the realities of our customs, cultures and institutions.  For some reason, these three genres are often considered to be “nerdy” or “dorky” and the typical mainstream reviewed will often make a snide remark about the intended audience for these types of fictions before launching into a review of the actual material in front of them.  (Take a look at this New York Times review of the TV series for a prime example.)  That these genres are taken seriously is a shame, because great fantasy, science fiction and superhero stories can be among the best ways we have of thinking deeply about who we are.

You can read the rest of Rabbi Linden’s terrific post here.

This is a superlative article, over at Hitfix.com, listing 25 Movie Sequels That Hollywood Should Have Made.  The list is spot-on, with excellent choices both common (Serenity) and obscure (Devil With a Blue Dress).  Warning: reading this will make you a little sad that sequels to these films do not exist, while X-Men Origins: Wolverine does.

Check out this great new trailer for the adaptation of John Le Carre’s novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  Looks phenomenal.

Speaking of trailers, Steven Spielberg has finally released a new film, his first since Munich in 2005!  (What’s that, you say?  He directed an Indiana Jones film in 2008?  No, no, you’re wrong, there’s no way Mr. Spielberg could have had anything to do with that train-wreck.)  Anyways, take a look at the trailer for War Horse.

Cars 2 didn’t really interest me, but I’m looking forward to the next Pixar film:  Brave.

Here’s a look at the latest Mission Impossible film: Ghost Protocol.  None of the first three Mission Impossible films have been as great as I’ve wanted them to be, but I’ve enjoyed them all, so I’d be excited for this fourth installment even if it wasn’t Brad Bird (The Incredibles, The Iron Giant)’s live-action directorial debut.

Here at last is our first teaser trailer for John Carter (Of Mars).  Is it possible this is going to be good?  I’m not sure, but… [continued]

I’m here at last with the long-delayed final installment of my Spielberg in the Aughts series with a look at Mr. Spielberg’s 2005 film, Munich. This was pretty much the only Spielberg film from the last decade-and-a-half that I’d unabashedly loved when I first saw it in theatres, and I’m pleased that I found the film to be just as strong when re-watching it last month.

In September, 1972, eleven Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich were held hostage and eventually murdered by members of Black September, a Palestinian terrorist group.  Following those terrible events, the film postulates that an Israeli Mossad agent named Avner (Eric Bana) is asked to lead a small, secret group of Israeli agents assigned to hunt down and assassinate the men who the Israelis hold responsible for the Black September plot.

I think that Munich is one of, if not the most, mature and emotionally devastating films that Steven Spielberg has ever made.  There’s no question that Mr. Spielberg is one of our preeminent masters of the pop crowd-pleasing adventure film, and he’s also shown great skill at tackling more serious topics in films like Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, and more.  In all of those films, though, the lines between good and evil were very clearly drawn.  What fascinates me about Munich, and what gives the film a power equal to if not surpassing those films I just named, is that this story is all about shades of gray.  There are no clearly defined heroes or villains in this film, and while one might enter the film with pre-established sympathies for either the Israeli or the Palestinian side in these events, the film wisely avoids painting either side as entirely heroic or entirely villainous.

As Avner and his team set about tracking down and killing their assigned targets, we see not only how Avner and his men (who each begin the assignment with varying degrees of idealism and toughness) begin to feel the mental and moral effects of their bloody work, but also how their actions — however justified they (and some audience members) might feel them to be — serve to extend the cycle of violence.  When Avner’s team kills a target, it’s not long before another terrorist group strikes back against Israeli targets, and so on and so forth.

Note that the film’s making a point about how violence serves only to beget violence is a subtly — but critically — different message than saying that the actions of this Israeli team are entirely without justification.  I don’t think the film gives that message at all.  I remember reading some criticisms of this film, from Jewish perspectives, that took… [continued]

A few days ago, Devin Faraci wrote a great piece over on Badassdigest.com (a really phenomenal site that I can’t recommend highly enough) about the terrible ending of the classic Bill Murray film, Stripes.

Mr. Faraci is right on the nose — the last 30 or so minutes of Stripes are really quite terrible.  Now, I must admit that I’m not a huge fan of the first two-thirds of Stripes, either.  I think I saw the film way too late in life to really connect with it the way other children of the eighties did.  Despite my long-held love for Bill Murray’s movies of the 1980′s (epitomized by my near fanatical worship of Ghostbusters), somehow I missed Stripes throughout my childhood — I only finally saw it when I was in college, and by then I just didn’t find it all that funny.

But Mr. Faraci’s article got me thinking about other good films undone by their endings… and wondering if there any films, as Mr. Faraci asks, whose first two-thirds are so good that I forgive their weak ending?

(Let me state that, obviously, SPOILERS LIE AHEAD for the films under discussion!!)

Let’s begin with some films that start off strong but are, in my opinion, completely ruined by their terrible endings:

No Country for Old Men — I was totally engrossed in this tense, beautiful film for much of its run-time, but the ending totally sunk my enjoyment.  After following the character of Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) throughout the film, and totally investing in him, I couldn’t believe how that character was completely abandoned and ignored in the final few minutes of the movie.  The film’s title — No Country for Old Men — and the way the end of the film focuses on Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) indicates to me that the Coen Brothers intended the film to be the Sheriff’s story, not Llewelyn’s.  But the movie never earns that.  It never shows us the message given by its title, and Tommy Lee Jones’ monologue in the last scene.  What was it about the death of Llewelyn Moss that so affected Sheriff Bell?  For a man who had clearly been involved in other cases that involved murder and death, what was it about this particular event that shook the Sheriff so deeply?  We’re never told, and ultimately, as a viewer, I didn’t care too much about Sheriff Bell — I was invested in Llewelyn!  And having the end of his story be cut off by the finale really disappointed me.

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence — Not that the first two-thirds of this film were so perfect to begin with, but had the movie ended with David… [continued]

In 2005 Steven Spielberg returned to sci-fi with his version of H. G. Wells’ famous story from 1898, War of the Worlds.

Not surprisingly, rather than being a period piece, Mr. Spielberg set his adaptation in the present day.  Tom Cruise reunited with Spielberg to star as Ray Ferrier, an affable but cocky guy separated from his wife (played by the beautiful Miranda Otto, who played Eowyn in The Lord of the Rings).  When she and her new husband go away for the weekend, Ray has to look after their two children: Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and Rachel (Dakota Fanning).  Despite his efforts, he finds that he has trouble connecting to either one of his kids.  Then aliens attack.

Mr. Spielberg, along with writers Josh Friedman and David Koepp, have chosen to take us through the story of an alien apocalypse through the eyes of these three “every-person” characters.  We witness the horrific events of the invasion through their eyes, as they struggle to survive.  While that’s not exactly a ground-breaking choice, I think it’s an effective way to structure the film.  We don’t have a sense, until the very end, of what exactly is happening — who the invaders are, what they want, or what the governments of the world are doing to fight back — and that only adds to the tension and terror of the film.  Ray and his kids are swept up in cataclysmic phenomena, and so are we as the audience.

There are some extraordinary visual effects sequences in War of the Worlds.  This big-budget sci-fi film was clearly made by a director who is a master of his craft, ably assisted by a huge assortment of talented artists, designers, and visual effects wizards.  Ray’s initial encounter with a tripod — and his frantic flight away from it while the monstrosity tears across city blocks and vaporizes other terrified civilians — is a tour de force sequence that make clear that Spielberg & co. meant business with this story.  The tripods’ attack on the ferry, the battle on the hilltop towards the end of the film… these are extarordinarily well-realized sequences, dark and violent and intense.

I love that, in many respects, Steven Spielberg chose to make a much grimmer film than is his usual practice.  There’s not a lot of fun to be had in War of the Worlds, nor are there many rah-rah crowd-cheering action moments (of the type found in, say, Independence Day).

But somehow, War of the Worlds still leaves me a bit cold.  I can’t say it’s a movie that I can get too excited about.  Is the problem that the film is TOO grim?  Or is perhaps the problem that… [continued]

You might have thought that Tom Hanks had a crazy accent in Catch Me If You Can, but that was merely a prelude to the ludicrously silly sort-of-Slovic voice that Mr. Hanks puts on for his role as Viktor Novorski in Steven Spielberg’s 2004 film, The Terminal.

Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks) has just arrived to New York City from the Eastern European country of Madeupistan.  Er, excuse me, Krakozia.  Unfortunately, his country undergoes a military coup while Navorski is in the air.  By the time he arrives in New York City, all relations between the United States and Krakozia have been severed, and due to a variety of legal permutations, Mr. Navorski is unable to enter the U.S. but is similarly unable to return to Krakozia.  In short, he finds himself stuck, indefinitely, in the airport.

Let the comic hijinks commence!

I commented in my review of Catch Me If You Can on my feeling, when I first saw the film back in 2002, that it was a surprisingly slight film for Mr. Spielberg to make.  That probably caused me to dismiss the film a little too quickly at the time.  Well, if Catch Me If You Can is slight, then The Terminal is practically nonexistent.

That sounds harsh, which isn’t my intention.  There’s certainly some fun to be had in The Terminal. It’s just that while Catch Me If You Can was a light, fun film, it did have a pretty dramatic emotional core.  The Terminal sort-of shoots for that as well, but there’s just not much there.  What’s left is a fun, frothy film, but one without a whole heck of a lot to say.

(My wife thought that Viktor’s predicament — in which he is forced to go to some extreme lengths in order to adapt to survive the stranded situation in which he finds himself — reminded her of Mr. Hanks’ role in Cast Away.  I’d never thought of The Terminal in that way, but she’s right!  The difference, of course, is that The Terminal doesn’t have any of the dramatic underpinnings of Cast Away.  That’s putting it mildly!)

The Terminal has a fairly episodic structure.  Through a variety of vignettes, we see Viktor adapt to his crazy situation and somehow make for himself a remarkably pleasant life living in the airport.  He gradually bonds with several of the other off-beat but kind airport employees — played by Chi McBride (Boston Public), Diego Luna (Y tu mama tambien, Milk), Gupta Rajan (just as entertaining here as he was in The Royal Tenenbaums), and a pre-Star Trek Zoe Saldana (and, by the way, it’s a riot to see Ms. Saldana play a Star Trek fan in this film,… [continued]

When I began this project of rewatching the last decade-and-a-half’s worth of films directed by Steven Spielberg, I was hoping that I’d discover (or rediscover) some great films that I had perhaps dismissed too easily when I originally saw them in theatres.  I wondered if watching the films now, years later and separated from the hype and expectations that came with their original theatrical releases, would allow me to appreciate them more and perhaps cause me to re-evaluate my original opinions.

So far, though, that hasn’t happened.  I’ve enjoyed (for the most part), re-watching The Lost World, Amistad, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, and Minority Report, but for all four films my opinions have remained almost exactly what they were when I first saw them.  (In a nutshell: mediocre, good, horrible, mediocre.)  But then, this week, I arrived at Catch Me If You Can.  I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed this flick!

Based on the autobiography of Frank Abergnale, Jr. (and co-written by Stan Redding), Catch Me If You Can tells the story of Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio), a young man who, for years, successfully conned people into thinking he was an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer, and who forged millions of dollars worth of checks.

Mr. Spielberg skillfully strikes a deft balance with the tone of the film.  There are some great moments of humor to be found in the tale (I particularly loved Hanratty’s knock-knock joke), and over-all the film has a fun, light tone.  And yet, at its core, Catch Me If You Can is really a profoundly sad story.  To me, the relationship between Frank and his father, Frank Sr. (Christopher Walken) is the back-bone of the film, and it is heartbreaking.  In Frank Jr. we see a young man who, for all of his experiences, is still basically a child, looking for his father’s approval and desperately hoping to find a way to return his life to his idealized vision of how things used to be — with him, his father, and his mother all living happily together in a nice suburban house.  Frank Sr., meanwhile, has seen his business slowly fail (in the film we see him continually dogged by the IRS, and one assumes, despite Frank Sr.’s repeated claims, that this is not without good reason) and his wife leave him, but he is too proud to admit when he needs help and too angry at the government (and the society that allowed him to fail) to push his son to stop the increasingly elaborate con that he’s spinning.

Mr. Walken’s unique line-delivery can make him a ripe subject for parody.  For me, his one scene in Pulp Fiction has forever defined Mr. Walken in my mind… [continued]

When I first saw Steven Spielberg’s film  Minority Report in theatres back in 2002 (the only time I’d seen the film until I watched it again on DVD last week), I remember it becoming startlingly clear to me that the man has trouble with the endings of his films.

I recognize that the present-day epilogues to Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan are overloaded with schmaltz and are completely unnecessary to the story, but I’ve never been bothered by those endings (the way others have been, most famously William Goldman, who eviscerated Saving Private Ryan in his famous review).  I was so emotionally engaged with the stories and characters in both of those films that I was not bothered with their endings (even though the logical part of my brain did realize that Mr. Spielberg was laying the emotion on a bit thickly).  But as I wrote last week, I thought the final 25 minutes of A.I. were abominable and possibly the worst 25 minutes Steven Spielberg had ever put to film.  The ending of Minority Report isn’t quite at that level of jaw-dropping terribleness, but I think the first hour and 45 minutes of the film are a very solid, dark sci-fi thriller that is completely undone by the last 35 minutes or so.

At first, Minority Report kept me very engaged.  It’s easy and popular to hate on Tom Cruise these days, but I think he’s a far better actor than he gets credit for, and he’s an engaging lead here.  Mr. Cruise plays the generically-named Tom Anderton, the top-cop at the new Pre-Crime division that has been set up in Washington, DC.  Using three “pre-cogs” (psychics kept under sedation), the Pre-Crime team are able to intercept murders before they happen.  After six years of operation, in which the team has virtually eliminated homicides in DC, a national referendum has been set to determine whether Pre-Crime divisions will be set up in other cities across the U.S.  In advance of this, John and his team are under investigation by Federal Agent Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell).  Everything goes to hell when the psychics predict that John himself is about to commit a homicide.  He goes on the run, determined to prove his innocence, but finds himself setting in motion events that might undermine the legitimacy of the entire Pre-Crime unit.

For that first hour and 45 minutes, Minority Report is a solid, gritty little film.  It goes to some surprisingly grim places.  There’s an early scene in which we learn that apparent super-cop John Anderton is actually a rather broken man.  With the rain falling outside, John sits in the dark in his cluttered apartment, watching holographic projections of… [continued]

After re-watching Jurassic Park (click here for my review) and The Lost World (click here for my review) last month (as part of my look back at the last decade-and-a-half’s worth of films directed by Steven Spielberg) I figured, what the heck, why not take another look at Jurassic Park III (executive produced by Mr. Spielberg and directed by Joe Johnston).

While not as bad as I’d remembered, like The Lost World this third Jurassic Park film is a pale reflection of the first one.

In some respects, I think I like Jurassic Park III better than the second installment.  Whereas The Lost World was slow and rambling — with a story that was all over the place — Jurassic Park III has a much leaner, meaner narrative: a group of people crash on the island and must find a way to survive long enough to reach the coast where rescue hopefully awaits.  That’s a simple hook, and I think it serves the film well.  The story gets going quickly, and from there moves right along like gangbusters straight through to the end.  There’s an intensity and sense of danger that I felt the second film was completely missing.

There are also some terrific action set-pieces.  Here is where Joe Johnston’s background in the world of visual effects serves him well.  We finally get to see some Pterodactyls (teased by the first two films), and they’re worth the wait — the whole sequence in the Pterodactyl cage is a tense, exciting adventure.  I also love the Spinosaur/T-Rex fight early in the film (shades of the King Kong/T-Rex fight, I felt, but that amused me rather than annoying me), as well as the Spinosaur attack on the river, in the rain, that takes place late in the film.

Whereas The Lost World chose — mistakenly, I think — to focus entirely on Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm, this third film wisely returns the focus to Sam Neill as Dr. Alan Grant.  I love Mr. Neill in this role, and it’s great to see him back front-and-center in this film.

Unfortunately, despite those strengths, there’s also quite a lot of weaknesses to Jurassic Park III, things that keep the film squarely mediocre in my mind.

First of all, other than Sam Neill, I think the film’s ensemble is pretty weak.  One of the key components to the first film’s success was how many great characters there were in the piece — and the great actors chosen to portray them.  But like The Lost World, while the lead character in Jurassic Park III is interesting and sympathetic, the rest of the ensemble is flat.  I love William H. Macy, but he… [continued]

Now that we’ve arrived at 2001′s A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, I can finally start calling this series looking back at the recent films of Steven Spielberg by the original title I’d thought up: “Spielberg in the Aughts.”  (My first thought, last month, was that I’d look back at the last decade of Mr. Spielberg’s films, none of which I’d ever revisited after seeing them in theatres — but then I realized there were several of his films from the ’90s that I wanted to revisit, too, while I was at it!  Click here for my review of Jurassic Park, here for my review of The Lost World, and here for my review of Amistad.) 

I hated A.I.: Artificial Intelligence when I saw it in theatres.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I thought the first three-fourths of the movie — right up to the point when Haley Joel Osment’s David finds himself trapped underwater staring at the Blue Fairy but unable to reach her — was a solid if somewhat dour sci-fi film.  But then the movie kept going.  I felt those last 25 minutes-or-so were the worst 25 minutes that Steven Spielberg had ever committed to film.  Those 25 minutes were so bad that, for me, they entirely destroyed the film.

So what did I think, a decade later?

Well, after nearly ten years of having the thought in my head that the final 25 minutes of A.I. were the worst 25 minutes of film that Steven Spielberg had ever shot, those 25 minutes had been quite built up in my mind, so not surprisingly they didn’t quite live up to the heights of awfulness that I had remembered.  Also, after having seen the entirety of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I can no longer state with certainty that the end of A.I. represents the worst 25 minutes that Steven Spielberg has ever put on film. 

But I will say that I still thought the ending was entirely awful on almost every level.

The basic plot of A.I.: Artificial Intelligence was developed, over many years, by Stanley Kubrick.  As the story goes, Mr. Kubrick worked on the film for years — and often discussed the project with his friend Steven Spielberg — but for a variety of reasons never actually made the movie.  Following his death, Mr. Spielberg got involved with the project in an attempt to realize this unfinished work that Mr. Kubrick had begun.

As a movie-fan back in 2001, I was ecstatic that Steven Spielberg (the man who made E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind) was returning, at long-last, to sci-fi.  I was intrigued to see Mr. Spielberg bring the extraordinary visual expertise and… [continued]

My revisitation of the last decade-and-a-half of the films of Steven Spielberg continues!  I’ve already looked at Jurassic Park and The Lost World, which brings me now to 1997′s Amistad.

In an attempt to recapture the magic of 1993 (in which he released two films in a single year, the dramatic historical film Schindler’s List as well as the crowd-pleasing action spectacle Jurassic Park), in 1997 Mr. Spielberg released both the Jurassic Park sequel The Lost World as well as the historical epic Amistad. 

In 1839 a group of African slaves broke free aboard the Spanish slave ship Amistad and killed most of the crew.  When they were intercepted by an American naval vessel, the slaves were imprisoned and brought to trial.  A group of abolitionists became aware of the case, and hired a young, inexperienced lawyer named Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey) to take the case.  Mr. Baldwin was forced to retry the case multiple times, as the politics of a nation heading towards Civil War bestowed upon this small case an enormous weight in the potential fate of the nation.  Ultimately, the case was brought before the U.S. Supreme Court, where former president John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins) assisted Mr. Baldwin in arguing for the release of the Amistad slaves.

As is often the case, Mr. Spielberg assembled a talented group of actors to embody the characters in the film.  Mr. McConaughey does a fine job as the jovial, slightly naive lawyer Baldwin.  The role doesn’t feel like much of a stretch for him (particularly after playing a lawyer the year before as the lead in 1996′s A Time to Kill), but he reins in some of his more over-the-top mannersisms which allows him to fit well into this historical drama.  Fresh off of The Lost Word, Pete Postlewaite pops up again as an equally unlikable fellow — this time, he’s the lawyer assigned to prosecute the Amistad case.  Stellan Skarsgard and Morgan Freeman play the abolitionists who are drawn to help the Amistad slaves.  Though neither has much to do in the film, both make the most of their small parts.  Other familiar, talented members of the cast include Nigel Hawthorne as President Martin van Buren, David Paymer (The Larry Sanders Show, State and Main) as Secretary Forsythe, Xander Berkeley (24) as the presidential advisor Hammond, Anna Paquin (X-Men, True Blood) as Queen Isabella, and I was pleasantly surprised that I had forgotten that Chiwetel Ejiofor (Serenity, Spartan) has a fairly substantial role as the translator who assists Mr. Baldwin in communicating with the Amistad slaves.

But the two standouts of Amistad are Djimon Hounsou as Cinque, the young man who who leads the Amistad revolt and as such becomes… [continued]

Last week I began my look back at the last decade-and-a-half of Steven Spielberg films with Jurassic Park.  Now my project to revisit all of the films that Mr. Spielberg has made since 1993 — films that, with the exception of Saving Private Ryan, I have only seen once — continues with Mr. Spielberg’s 1997 Jurassic Park sequel, The Lost World.  (I’ll be calling this series Spielberg in the Aughts, but I can’t really use that title for a film made in 1997…!)

I remember being very disappointed with this film when I saw it back in 1997.  It was the first time I had gone to see a Steven Spielberg film in theatres and come out disappointed.  (But not the last…)  So when I watched this film on DVD, I was curious to see if I liked it any more now, so many years later and divorced from all the hype of the time.

In a word: no.

I will say that The Lost World looks great.  Mr. Spielberg and his frequent collaborator, genius-level cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, have darkened their palette this time out.  Whereas the first Jurassic Park was quite bright for much of it’s run-time, The Lost World has a much more shadowy look to it, and that is effective at adding a layer of spookiness and mystery to the proceedings.  The dinosaur CGI effects still look pretty great.  One of the few scenes that takes place in bright daylight is the introduction to Pete Postlewaite’s great white hunter Roland Dembo and his team, as they attempt to capture a number of dinosaurs in the midst of a high-speed run across a plain.  There are no shadows in which to hide dodgy effects, but none are needed — ILM’s CGI creatures (combined with some top-notch work from Stan Winston’s animatronic workshop) look fabulous.

But that’s pretty much the only good thing I can say about The Lost World.  I found the story to be a mess, and the characters flat and uninvolving.  From the get-go, The Lost World was operating at a disadvantage to its predecessor, Jurassic Park, because its source material was much weaker.

I still remember being blown away when I first read Michael Crichton’s novel, Jurassic Park (well-before the movie came out), and I was so excited when the news broke that he was working on a sequel book.  But I was underwhelmed by The Lost World when the novel was released.  It just didn’t seem anywhere near as interesting as the first.  Wisely, Mr. Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp chose to jettison much of the source material — but what they came up with in its place wasn’t much better.

Right from the beginning… [continued]

1993 was a banner year for Steven Spielberg.  That year saw the release of two films that he directed: Schindler’s List and Jurassic Park.  Both were phenomenally good, though two more different films I can scarcely imagine.  To my younger self, those dual accomplishments in 1993 embedded Steven Spielberg in my mind as a director at the top of his game who could pretty much do no wrong.  If he could succeed at making both a potent, emotional historical drama, as well as a nail-biting sci-fi action spectacle, then the man could do anything.

I remember very clearly when I first saw Jurassic Park on the big screen.  It scared the hell out of me!  That seems sort of silly now, but I wasn’t prepared at the time for how intense a film it was.  Seeing it projected on the big screen, I was totally blown away by the visual effects, and also by the incredible sound.  Jurassic Park is one of the first films that really made me think about the sound design.  I think it was the incredible sound-scape that contributed to the intensity of the film as much as the amazing imagery.

Watching Jurassic Park, today, on DVD, the film doesn’t have anywhere near that intensity.  It does, however, hold up rather well.  The CGI effects that were so ground-breaking at the time still look great.  That’s a pretty amazing achievement — I’m sure you don’t have to think too hard to come up with a lengthy list of films whose visual effects were groundbreaking at the time but are pretty laughable today — and it’s a testament to the quality work done by all the artists involved with the film.  It’s pretty amazing to me how well-made the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park are.  There wasn’t a single shot that jumped out at me as being silly or fake-looking.  This is important in allowing the film to retain its effectiveness, even almost twenty years later.  It’s critical that the dinosaurs work as believable creatures — otherwise I think you’d be plucked right out of the story.

But the reason why Jurassic Park still works today isn’t just about the dinosaurs — it’s also about how carefully and successfully Mr. Spielberg (and screenwriters David Koepp and Michael Crichton, adapting Mr. Crichton’s novel) establish a believable, interesting ensemble of characters to hang the story around.  It takes almost a full hour of the film before the dino-mayhem really begins.  That time is well-used, as we get to know and care about the folks who are about to be terrorized.

Sam Neillhas never been better than as Dr. Alan Grant, the paleontologist hero of the film.  He’s ornery but not in an… [continued]

Last month I wrote about discovering and really enjoying, in college, some films from what I consider to be Steven Spielberg’s “middle period,” in which he began moving from the crowd-pleasing adventure films that he did so well (epitomized by Raiders of the Lost Ark) to more serious dramatic material (Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, etc.)  Rewatching The Color Purple for the first time in a decade, I found that there was still a lot to enjoy, though in some ways I felt the film was a bit simplistic.  (Click here for my full review.)

But I found myself quite mesmerized by Empire of the Sun when I re-watched it last month (also for the first time in about ten years).  This is a dramatically under-rated movie, and a strong piece of Mr. Spielberg’s over-all filmography.

Young Jim Graham is a spoiled British schoolboy, living with his parents in great luxury in Shanghai in 1941.  When the Japanese invade, he is separated from his parents in the chaotic evacuation of British citizens and is left to his own devices to try to survive in the dangerous war-time world.

Whereas I found The Color Purple to have a bit too much schmaltz, Empire of the Sun is surprisingly tough in its depiction of Jim’s four-year ordeal in war-torn China.  Although the film centers on a young boy (as do many of Spielberg’s films — see ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, AI: Artificial Intelligence, etc.), this is — for the most part — a tough, honest film.  There are moments of Spielbergian romanticization — mostly having to do with Jim’s fascination with airplanes — but I found those to be moving scenes that furthered my emotional connection with the story being told, rather than distracting me from the reality of Jim’s situation.

That’s a tough balance to find — but when he’s at the top of his game, no one is better at finding that balance than Steven Spielberg.  And he does fine work here.  There are long stretches of the film without any dialogue, propelled by the gorgeous and haunting imagery (and a lush but not overly intrusive score by John Williams).  When there is dialogue, it’s tight, well-written stuff penned by Tom Stpppard (Brazil, Shakespeare in Love).

Spielberg is well known — and rightfully so — for his skill in getting strong performances from his child actors, and Empire of the Sun is a stand-out in that department.  Jim is played by a young Christain Bale (who’s been having quite a moment, playing Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins & the Dark Knight as well as a variety of other high-profile roles in films such as The Prestige, Terminator: Salvation, and Public… [continued]

The Color Purple, released in 1985, finds director Steven Spielberg at an interesting point in his career.  After having directed the first two Indiana Jones films as well at E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial in the early eighties, Spielberg apparently had a desire to move towards more weighty, dramatic material.  But his “serious” films of the late eighties (The Color Purple, along with Empire of the Sun and Always) didn’t meet with an enormous amount of critical acclaim (compared to his successes in the nineties with films such as Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan).  But, in college, I decided I wanted to take a look at those “middle period” Spielberg films, and I was quite pleasantly surprised by their quality.  It’s been a while since I’ve last seen those films, though, so when I spotted The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun in the discount DVD bin at my local Newbury Comics, I snatched them both up.

I haven’t had a chance to get to Empire of the Sun yet, but my wife and I watched The Color Purple last month.  It wasn’t quite as good as I had remembered it, but I still think it’s a better film than people tend to think.

Adapted from the novel by Alice Walker, The Color Purple tells the life story of an African American woman, Celie.  Growing up in turn-of-the-century Georgia, the poor girl struggles through hardship after hardship.  She is raped by her father as a young girl, and gives birth to two children who he takes from her.  She is married off to a cruel local farmer (Danny Glover), who beats her and forcibly separates her from her beloved sister, Nettie.  Later in life she forms an unexpected friendship with her husband’s mistress, the vivacious singer Shug Avery (Margaret Avery), who sets Celie on a path towards finally coming out of her shell and finding some happiness for herself.

The Color Purple is notable for some terrific performances from some well-known actors who, looking back on the film now, are unbelievably young here.  Whoopie Goldberg, in one of her very first screen appearances, plays Celie, and she is fantastic — soulful and full of life, even though she has very little dialogue in the film.  Whoopie is a talented comedian, but I have found that I’ve always preferred her in straight dramatic roles, and this is no exception.  Danny Glover doesn’t often play the “bad guy” in films, but he does a great job here as the monstrous Albert.  He cuts quite a menacing figure.  Oprah Winfrey appears, also in one of her first screen appearances, as the vivacious and strong-willed Sofia.  Her performance is a little over the top, but… [continued]