Munich

[MikeWaters]

IF you liked Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List, then that's all you needed to say. I know what category you are in.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

IF you liked Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List, then that's all you needed to say. I know what category you are in.

Care to elaborate?

I think I know where you're going and let me just say that Spielberg does uplifting and feel good better than most. There is a place for those kinds of movies, and sentimentality is capable of being effectively portrayed. But dark and despairing themes are not his strong suit (such films are probably my favorites). Spielberg should leave those to film makers who can pull them off well like Woody Allen, Werner Herzog, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese .

[SeattleUte]

Speaking of overdoing it (I don't know if I would call this excess sentimentality but it was a close kin), I thought the scene where he was humping his wife and flashing back to the massacres of the Israeli Olympians to be totally over the top. Not moving or profound and probably therefore in bad taste. It was sort of Spielberg run amok.

[MikeWaters]

I thought that technically, the opening battle in SPR was very good. But after that it descended into typical Spielberg schlock.

Schindler's list is overrated, mainly because no one dared criticize it. I have to admit, when I saw it, I didn't even let myself criticize it. But when a friend, son of a Jew, criticized it, all of the sudden, I realized I had been being dishonest with myself.

Munich was not a superb film, for reasons you have noted. It was disjointed and long. But finally, Spielberg made a film that didn't have the word "Spielberg" imprinted in the bottom right-hand corner of every frame.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

I thought that technically, the opening battle in SPR was very good. But after that it descended into typical Spielberg schlock.

Schindler's list is overrated, mainly because no one dared criticize it. I have to admit, when I saw it, I didn't even let myself criticize it. But when a friend, son of a Jew, criticized it, all of the sudden, I realized I had been being dishonest with myself.

Munich was not a superb film, for reasons you have noted. It was disjointed and long. But finally, Spielberg made a film that didn't have the word "Spielberg" imprinted in the bottom right-hand corner of every frame.

Touche; not bad.

I thought he kind of spoiled Schindler's List with the ending. But the comandant picking off Jews in the compound from the balcony with scoped rifle and with the naked girl at his side, the train to Auschwitz, etc.,--who could not be moved and shaken to tears by those scenes?

Likewise, the scene in SPR with the cowardly Jewish intellectual cowering on the stairs while a few yeards away his protector and comrade cried out for help as he was being slaughtered by a Nazi--who could dismiss that as anything other than maximally powerful film making. I agree the opening scenes of SPR were amazing, but that scene I just described is the one that really has stuck with me.