Spielberg's Next: KIDNAPPING OF EDGARDO MORTARA

[AndyDursin]

"Serious Steven" at work with Rylance again...does not sound like a particularly interesting subject matter to be honest.

http://deadline.com/2016/04/steven-spie ... 201735799/

[DavidBanner]

I think this is his next after Ready Player One - unless they've postponed that one.

I'm not surprised he's working with Rylance again - that's a good choice.

Based on his scheduling, it sounds to me like he does:

spring 2016 shoot - Ready Player One
spring 2017 shoot - new Pope movie
spring 2018 shoot - Indiana Jones 5

[AndyDursin]

Ready Player One is shooting now I take it or is about to. I meant his next after that one.

Either way, on the heels of Spotlight, another feel good movie for Catholics everywhere lol...albeit one that's also likely going to have a hard time finding much of an audience

[Monterey Jack]

...does not sound like a particularly interesting subject matter to be honest.

Neither did Bridge Of Spies on paper, and yet that was a pretty good damn movie. In Spielberg, I Trust.

[AndyDursin]

I don't trust Spielberg as I once did, sorry to say, though I did like BRIDGE OF SPIES.

But on paper, for me, that seemed to be a far more interesting subject matter than this. I'd expect AMISTAD or MUNICH like grosses if he's lucky with that subject matter.

[DavidBanner]

Given where Spielberg is in his career, the grosses aren't the guiding factor here.
To me, it's similar to where Eastwood is. The guys pick some projects that figure to be box office hits, and others that they're just interested in. Some because they're potential serious movies as humorously noted in the first post. Spielberg certainly goes back and forth between openly commercial fare (Indiana Jones) and more "serious" fare.

Granted, he was in producer status on Jurassic World, but even so, that was a huge windfall for Universal and for him. Correction, yet another huge windfall for Universal and for him.

It looks to me like this is how he'll finish his career - doing these back and forths where one year he does a Tintin and the next year does a Lincoln. (Not counting War Horse in there...)

[AndyDursin]

Well of course. And he's literally been doing it already for years alternating between "serious" and "escapist" fare.

I just don't find the subject matter compelling, and frankly, I haven't found Spielberg's body of work over the last, say, 15-20 years to be very strong either. I did like Bridge of Spies and found Rylance brilliant, but that was the first Spielberg movie I've thoroughly liked in literally years.

[DavidBanner]

Undoubtedly, Spielberg's later work has really not held up in comparison to his earlier, better movies. (Something we can say about nearly every filmmaker, including Kubrick, Hitchcock and Scorcese.)

Nothing he's done in the last 25 years has even gotten near Jaws or Close Encounters. Or, I would argue, his earlier work on television where he really shined. There's a reason that Sid Sheinberg supported him at Universal - it wasn't that he just got lucky. Sheinberg knew he had some talent, and he then repeatedly demonstrated it on television.


Looking over everything since 1990:

1991 Hook - starts out kind of interesting and then totally loses its way into gooey sentimentality.
1993 Jurassic Park - fun movie, taking advantage of some of the bigger visuals from the book but jettisoning the stronger character material. I enjoyed it, but it goes in one ear and out the other.
1993 Schindler's List - Spielberg's first obvious Oscar bait movie where anyone really took him seriously. It's actually an extremely good film - until the final 10 minutes or so, where it dissolves into sentimentality as Schindler inexplicably bursts into tears with his workers and an unnecessary coda that really should have been in the EPK material.
1997 Lost World - okay movie for its first hour or so, before it falls into cheap mechanics and increasingly unbelievable situations - the worst being the Godzilla movie ending.
1997 Amistad - frankly boring movie about what could have been an interesting subject. Obvious Oscar bait, and it only comes alive during the flashback to the shipboard scenes.
1998 Saving Private Ryan - actually a very good movie, his strongest since Schindler's List, again until the final 5 minutes where the whole thing dissolves into cheap sentimentality.
2001 A.I. - actually a better movie than people thought at the time. It's dealing with some fairly complex issues, and it's got enough guts in it to make me wonder how much better the movie could have been if Kubrick had actually produced it with him rather than just developing it. The ending on this movie is not what it appears - it's a surprisingly ironic statement by Spielberg that many critics badly misunderstood, and it was always a part of Kubrick's original plan for the movie, not an add-on by Spielberg.
2002 Minority Report - fun and interesting movie for its first 4/5, and then it all dissolves into the usual sentimentality, sadly.
2002 Catch Me If You Can - fun Oscar bait, but frankly not that interesting. I was surprised at how bland the whole thing came off.
2004 The Terminal - strange choice for Spielberg. I suppose he just thought it would be fun to do an airport comedy. Really not sure why he did this, other than that as a producer, he thought it made for a handsome package.
2005 War of the Worlds - pretty good sci-fi/horror movie, convincingly building the dread over the first 90 minutes. And once again, it all comes apart in the final 5 minutes or so, with that old friend, sentimentality.
2005 Munich - fairly effective Oscar bait movie. I watched this again a year ago, and was more impressed with it ten years later than I'd been at the time of its release. It's slow in spots and a bit impressed with itself, but this is better than people give it credit for being. It's not at the level of the early movies, but it's at least watchable.
2008 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - Shockingly ordinary. If anything, it almost looks like a parody of his earlier Indy movies from the 80s. (If anything, it's a sign that he and Lucas and Ford waited 15 years too long to make the movie, and also a sign that making Indy 5 is not the greatest idea)
2011 Tintin - overly frenetic CGI animation movie that never captures the spirit of what made the Herge comics fun for kids to read. It made money but was not a lot of fun to watch.
2011 War Horse - Oscar bait attempted adaptation of a stage play, a play that is built around puppet work. Switching the theatrics of the puppet for real horses completely loses the point of the play and of the act of creation on stage.
2012 Lincoln - decent but overlong Oscar bait movie that should have been titled "The Thirteenth Amendment". Daniel Day Lewis' performance appears to have a halo around it, but James Spader nearly steals the movie as Bilbo. Comparing this to even Schindler's List, you can see that we've come a fair way down the mountain.
2015 Bridge of Spies - decent Oscar Bait movie, with a great supporting performance by Mark Rylance. The script, with input by the Coens, tries a bit too hard to be smart and witty, and the movie runs on too long, but there are nice moments.

There's really nothing in there that really would make me say "Wow" like Jaws or Close Encounters. But there are good movies scattered throughout and Spielberg remains a master craftsman. Frankly, I think that Peter Benchley's evaluation of him back in 1974 was quite accurate - he's the most successful 2nd Unit director of all time.

[AndyDursin]

I've written this before but have long thought of HOOK as a major turning point -- in a bad way -- for Spielberg. It marked the beginning of him working with "movie stars" and shooting not on location (as so many of his films had been) but almost entirely on sets. It's a claustrophobic movie that has some wonderful scenes and moments in it, along with a marvelous Williams score, but doesn't come together as a whole and feels really, really bloated.

Plus, the whole start of him working with Kaminski a few years later also soured me on his work compared to the "first half" of his directorial career. I don't find Kaminski's work appealing and that, too, created a dividing line, along with the numerous outings with the likes of the Toms (Cruise and Hanks).

[Monterey Jack]

For the hell of it...

-Duel: A

-The Sugarland Express: A

-Jaws: A+

-Close Encounters Of The Third Kind: A+

-1941: C

-Raiders Of The Lost Ark: A+

-Poltergeist (you know who really directed it ): A

-E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial: A+

-Twilight Zone: The Movie ("Kick The Can" segment only): C-

-Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom: A

-The Color Purple: A-

-Amazing Stories ("Ghost Train"): C

-Amazing Stories ("The Mission"): B+

-Empire Of The Sun: A-

-Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade: B+

-Always: C+

-Hook: C+

-Jurassic Park: A-

-Schindler's List: A+

-The Lost World: Jurassic Park: C+

-Amistad: B+

-Saving Private Ryan: A

-A.I.: Artificial Intelligence: B+

-Minority Report: A

-Catch Me If You Can: A-

-The Terminal: B

-War Of The Worlds: A-

-Munich: A

-Indiana Jones & The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull: B-

-War Horse: A-

-The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn :B+

-Lincoln: A-

-Bridge Of Spies: A- (liked it better the second time around)

[AndyDursin]

I'd rather get the flu again than have to sit through AI a second time.

[Monterey Jack]

A.I. is rough, but also fascinating. I need to watch that again, especially in the wake of that marvelous LLL set of Williams' phenomenal score.

[AndyDursin]

There aren't many films I've disliked so much that I can no longer listen to the music written for them. AI is one of those instances, sadly. I probably would have liked the film if Kubrick had made it -- for me it was a wholly unsatisfying meshing of Spielberg and Kubrickian sci-fi tropes that did not work. And the "flesh fair" with the "celebrity robot cameos" was embarrassing. I can live without re-watching the scene where Haley Joel is sadistically fed spinach and thrown to the bottom of the pool...an easy pass there for me.

My quick "grades" which do fluctuate based on my repeated viewings -- and these would be on a very specific "Spielberg Scale" as well, so the degree of difficulty (so to speak) is higher lol:

Duel B+
Sugarland Express A-
Jaws A+
Close Encounters A+
1941 B+
Raiders of the Lost Ark A+
E.T. A+
Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom B+
Color Purple B
Empire of the Sun A
Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade A-
Always C+ (doesn't work, but it's beautifully shot)
Hook C+ (but has some magical portions)
Jurassic Park B+ (not on the level of Spielberg's prior classics)
Schindler's List A
The Lost World D (objectively, as much as I hate AI, this is probably his worst movie)
Amistad A- (his most underrated film)
Saving Private Ryan B (overrated, but an A for the first 30 minutes, declines throughout)
A.I. C
Minority Report B (liked it better the first time)
Catch Me If You Can B (fizzles out in the final third)
The Terminal C+
War of the Worlds C-
Munich B- (well made but overly "clinical" and has the world's most awkward, pointless sex scene)
Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull C
War Horse C
Tintin B- (technically sound but joyless)
Lincoln B- (for boring)
Bridge of Spies B+ (his best film since Amistad for me)

[Monterey Jack]

I can live without re-watching the scene where Haley Joel is sadistically fed spinach

He eats the spinach of his own volition.

[AndyDursin]

I can live without re-watching the scene where Haley Joel is sadistically fed spinach

He eats the spinach of his own volition.

Whatever. lol.