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Post by scienceisgod on Jul 12, 2017 22:06:22 GMT
What's the worst thing about Spielberg, even if you otherwise like him? I'm interested in unconventional criticism more than jabs about sentimentality. Thanks.
Discuss:
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Post by johnspartan on Jul 12, 2017 22:39:33 GMT
What's the worst thing about Spielberg, even if you otherwise like him? I'm interested in unconventional criticism more than jabs about sentimentality. Thanks. Discuss: His genius has run out. Schindler's List was his last good movie. |
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Post by marianne48 on Jul 13, 2017 1:07:56 GMT
His showy affectations of cinematic technique, which are bad enough in his Peter Pan syndrome movies but border on the tasteless
in his "grown-up" films. Saving Private Ryan's D-Day battle sequences are one example. There were countless movies about the Holocaust before Schindler's List came along which related the horrors of the events, and none of them had to resort to a cheap stunt like the "girl in the red dress" scenes that audiences were expected to ooh and ahh over. War Horse and Lincoln were ponderous and dull. But audiences are expected to fawn over them because of their subject matter, not their quality as films; Spielberg's publicists go overtime on the hype.
John Williams' scores are appropriately overblown and derivative--they often seem to be (slight) variations of the same tedious
melodies.
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Post by Popeye Doyle on Jul 13, 2017 1:13:21 GMT
His daddy issues.
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Post by ck100 on Jul 13, 2017 2:19:34 GMT
He's making unnecessary Indiana Jones sequels even though he has admitted he was done with the series with Last Crusade.
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Post by twothousandonemark on Jul 13, 2017 2:45:18 GMT
I think he's simply done it all & he's shown there's not much left in the tank. Munich was probably his last very good film, though Minority Report was probably the last one I enjoyed (more entertaining than the former).
Lincoln should've been more epic than such a talkie stage play with soft edges. He used to take chances; no longer.
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Post by twothousandonemark on Jul 13, 2017 2:48:55 GMT
His showy affections of cinematic technique, which are bad enough in his Peter Pan syndrome movies but border on the tasteless in his "grown-up" films. Saving Private Ryan's D-Day battle sequences are one example. There were countless movies about the Holocaust before Schindler's List came along which related the horrors of the events, and none of them had to resort to a cheap stunt like the "girl in the red dress" scenes that audiences were expected to ooh and ahh over. War Horse and Lincoln were ponderous and dull. But audiences are expected to fawn over them because of their subject matter, not their quality as films; Spielberg's publicists go overtime on the hype. John Williams' scores are appropriately overblown and derivative--they often seem to be (slight) variations of the same tedious melodies. While Schindler's List was exceptional, my #26 all time, SPR's middle 3/5ths were quite soft. 'Look sir! She reminds me of my niece sir!' ...lines like that have all but turned me off full re-watches. |
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Post by sdrew13163 on Jul 13, 2017 2:56:34 GMT
He was once the most risky filmmaker in Hollywood.
Now he doesn't take a single risk in any of his movies.
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Post by bonerxmas on Jul 13, 2017 3:14:56 GMT
in the 70s he had better technical skills than any living director, maybe the only person to really learn from citizen kane and apply things welles experimented with, but he went to see with e.t. and nobody took note of it, lots and lots of bad shots, bland two-shots, recycling shots from scene to scene, and he also brought back in the awful slapstick stuff he had used for 1941, people constantly crashing into shelves and furniture, stepping in pizza, etc., and temple of doom could have been directed by any hack, i dont think he realized he had passed his peak
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misstique
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Post by misstique on Jul 13, 2017 5:27:39 GMT
His showy affections of cinematic technique, which are bad enough in his Peter Pan syndrome movies but border on the tasteless in his "grown-up" films. Saving Private Ryan's D-Day battle sequences are one example. There were countless movies about the Holocaust before Schindler's List came along which related the horrors of the events, and none of them had to resort to a cheap stunt like the "girl in the red dress" scenes that audiences were expected to ooh and ahh over. War Horse and Lincoln were ponderous and dull. But audiences are expected to fawn over them because of their subject matter, not their quality as films; Spielberg's publicists go overtime on the hype. John Williams' scores are appropriately overblown and derivative--they often seem to be (slight) variations of the same tedious melodies. ^ This!!!! |
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Post by mslo79 on Jul 13, 2017 8:12:29 GMT
johnspartanMunich/War of the Worlds, both from 2005, are his top movies for me as everything else i have seen is a distant 3rd to those two.
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Spleen
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Post by Spleen on Jul 13, 2017 13:18:57 GMT
Well, you might have avoided lazy jabs about sentimentality, but some of the idiotic cliches you got instead are no less tiresome.
This:
"John Williams' scores are appropriately overblown and derivative--they often seem to be (slight) variations of the same tedious
melodies."
and this:
"Schindler's List was his last good movie."
Want to make me bang my head against a table with their sheer, deep, stupid wrongness. Criticising Spielberg for being "too sentimental" may be stupid, but at least shows some sensitivity to what's actually going on in his films. The above to comments are from people who haven't actually watched a Spielberg film in the last 20 years - not really. The first comment is from someone who hasn't listened to one, either.
Then again, it's hard for me to come up with a well-articulated criticism myself; the closest I can get is by thinking of his worst artistic failure (and it's not like he has many), Hook. Part of the problem with this film is he simply throws everything and the kitchen sink as well at the screen, and this isn't really a problem with his films generally.
But one problem with Hook that is a genuine criticism of Spielberg's other films, or many of them, is his tendency to lazily reach for the most ready-made, un-thought-through moral position available as a lens to judge his characters. This becomes a failing in Spielberg's more fantastic films - where we're thrown into highly novel situations that demand us to re-examine our ideas of right and wrong; but so far as the ethical viewpoint being foisted on us is concerned, we never really left Kansas.
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Post by CoolJGS☺ on Jul 13, 2017 13:50:09 GMT
My criticisms of Spielberg are on a per movie basis.
His filmography is too diverse.
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Post by marianne48 on Jul 13, 2017 14:00:41 GMT
To Spleen: Yes, I have listened to several Williams scores--but if you've listened to one, you've listened to 'em all. I would recommend listening to the works of one of the greats, Nino Rota for instance, and compare his versatility to the tiresome retreads that Williams has put out.
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Post by vegalyra on Jul 13, 2017 19:40:21 GMT
Sugarland Express was his last good movie. J/K
I think he's done some great work and some of my all time favorite films were directed by him. But he has done some losers as well. In general everything up until the early 1990's = good, most everything after = weak.
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Post by scienceisgod on Jul 13, 2017 21:30:25 GMT
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Spleen
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Post by Spleen on Jul 13, 2017 21:53:15 GMT
To Spleen: Yes, I have listened to several Williams scores--but if you've listened to one, you've listened to 'em all. I would recommend listening to the works of one of the greats, Nino Rota for instance, and compare his versatility to the tiresome retreads that Williams has put out. You think Williams's Spielberg scores sound alike, but that Rota's Fellini scores don't? What setting did you use to get that result ?Part of why I find your remark exasperating is that it's utterly beside the point as a criticism. Good composers generally have a recognisable voice and even when they don't their pieces still tend to sound alike. So what you're saying is of no moment even if true. But you specifically said that Williams keeps using the same tunes, and that is clearly false. The violin theme from Schindler's List is not at all similar to the shark motif from Jaws and neither resembles the Raiders March, nor does any of these three sound like the resemble the melodic material that opens Catch Me if You Can. There is as much melodic variety in Williams as there is in anyone. Almost all of the cliched disparagement of John Williams's work is completely and ludicrously wrong. For instance, "overblown" - it's often unthinkingly repeated as a criticism, but it's hardly accurate in describing the composer today - if indeed it ever was accurate - when he often uses minimalist spotting and if anything too-subtle underlining, including in Spielberg films like Lincoln. |
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Post by Primemovermithrax Pejorative on Jul 13, 2017 22:23:25 GMT
What I hate most about his movies is the cruel streak towards animals (I mean simulated not real). The only filmmaker that I can think of who does similar is Paul Verhoeven (he wanted to film a scene where the Boddicker gang blows up a pet store).
He will kill a monkey or a dog and make a big joke out of it.
But Spielberg is astonishingly overrated thanks to the media hype.
His best entertainment films remain those done in the 70s--Duel, Jaws...
He tried to do a Hitchcock with tv, but Amazing Stories sucked. The only good one was done by an obscure director (Mummy Daddy).
I dismiss all this "Oscar" movies.
I think Jurassic Park is massively overrated--the FX achievement (which owes more to James Cameron than Spielberg) is impressive but Spielberg had nothing to do with it.
He also was the first to use CGI in an impossible fashion when the tyrannosaur magically appears at the end of the film with no possible way of entering the room without the raptors detecting.
He uses John Williams as a crutch (he is smart though-he knows the importance of music in film-something Walt Disney instructed on in the 1930s).
On the scandal front, Sean Young said she was harassed by a "movie mogul" early in her career and he tried to get her blacklisted for rejecting his advances.
Years later, she was asked what advice she would give to an actress starting out to get advancement, and she shrugged: "sleep with Spielberg."
She was up for a role in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
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Flynn
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Post by Flynn on Jul 13, 2017 23:23:08 GMT
To Spleen: Yes, I have listened to several Williams scores--but if you've listened to one, you've listened to 'em all. I would recommend listening to the works of one of the greats, Nino Rota for instance, and compare his versatility to the tiresome retreads that Williams has put out. I think I have to agree with Spleen somewhat. Although I can see how someone might hear the scores for Star Wars and Harry Potter (and some other large orchestral works) as being the same, there's no way anyone could say that his scores for Schindler's List, Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal, and Angela's Ashes are the same. Those scores are very different from each other and show a lot of range. There's nothing wrong with preferring Rota's music over Williams's, but as someone who has studied film music for more than 20 years, I can tell you that a John Willians score is working much harder than one by Rota; in fact, it's working harder than a score by pretty much anyone else. Williams tells something about the film and its characters through the music. When taking it apart, you learn things about the film through the use of harmony, melodic features, and modulations, among other things. As for the emotionality in his music, personally I prefer it. But then again, I understand what you're talking about. In the last two decades, people have become very very sensitive to emotional feelings. I have no doubt his music is more emotional than you prefer, but it does match my preferences. |
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