#24 - War of the Worlds
We are still in the bottom half of Steven Spielberg's filmography. And there is a period between 1998 and 2012 where he made a truly excellent movie (Catch Me If You Can). I call this his "Blue Period." This partly because the movies tended to be darker in tone but also because there is actually a blue tint to a lot of the color in these films, including War of the Worlds.
The basic conceit of the movie is that it is an alien invasion movie told from the perspective of an average man-on-the-street. There was a strong post-9/11 feeling to the tone of the entire movie. The strongest part of the movie is the first half when Tom Cruise is doing everything he can to keep his children safe from this overwhelming and terrifying force. That half has some really powerful images of disasters in the streets. Spielberg uses some incredible single shots to give you a claustrophobic sense of panic while moving through the winding streets. Also, the horrifying image of bodies floating down the river in full view of Dakota Fanning is a shocking moment of brutality destroying innocence.
But the second half falls off the rails. The son inexplicably runs off to fight somehow. And then Spielberg decides to get weirdly metaphorical about how 9/11 turns Americans violent and crazy. It only served to underscore how stitched-together and episodic the story was. Another critic once said that this movie was a dead-beat dad's fantasy: you are a terrible father most of the time, but when the chips are down, you rise to the occasion and save the day.
#23 - The Post
From my review on this blog:
Steven Spielberg is the greatest filmmaker of all time. But even Babe Ruth would have a swing and a miss.
Having just rewatched All the President's Men, I know that the era and the subjects involved in The Post are ripe for some real political drama. Unfortunately, the filmmakers decided on telling the story from the least interesting perspective imaginable.
... And when the story is told through the eyes of the leaker Daniel Elsberg (Matthey Rhys), it hums along with real tension. But the movie always feels like it is walking two steps behind the real story. The entire time you want to follow the The New York Times as they break the story. Or you want to stay with Bagdikian as he hunts down the clues for the Post. But instead, we are stuck in the family drama and moral dilemma of [The Post's publisher] Graham. I always felt like I wanted to leave that story and get to the real story.
There is a clear attempt on the part of screenwriters Liz Hannah and Josh Singer to capture the supposed zeitgeist of the time, capitalizing on the "I'm with Her" movement in anticipation of having the first female president. The fingerprints of this thinking are unmistakable in its ham-fisted highlights of the casual sexism of the day. There is a scene towards the end where a female legal aid is being yelled at by a US District Attorney and we are meant to take it as a snapshot of how women are demeaned. All I kept thinking about was how all legal aids are put through the ringer by those in power. And if that wasn't subtle enough, one of the last shots of the film shows Graham walking slow motion down the steps of the Supreme Court as a line of young women look at her in awe of her persistence. The message itself is not the problem, but that it feels like a finger-wagging lecture rather than a piece of entertainment.
Spielberg is still using all of his visual skills to make the movie come to life. The close-up shots of the newspaper machinery are fascinating to watch. Still the master of the single-shot, he knows how to draw out the drama and when to cut it up. It is able to visually increase the paranoia and pressure on the people involved so that there is some real tension. But all of this is undercut by going back to Graham's storyline. If her story had been another facet in an ensemble picture, it would be fine. But putting her in the spotlight unbalances the whole narrative.
And it's a shame because there are some really wonderful questions to be explored here between freedom of speech and the necessity of state's secrets. Where is the line? And the movie does explore when to follow your conscience even in the face of existing law and loyalties. These are all things that should have been explored in much more depth, but time was taken away to admire Graham's bravery in every scene.
...
The Post is not in any way a bad film. But there is little to recommend it in an already crowded field of films. It clearly belongs to the category of "Lesser Spielberg."
#22 - The Lost World: Jurassic Park
This movie has so many problems in terms of its actual substance. The biggest problem is how little it regards human life and places the lives of the dinosaurs as higher. This is embodied in Vince Vaughn's eco-terrorist character. His actions lead to the deaths of dozens of human beings both on the island and on the mainland. And this character never pays a karmic price. He is presented as virtuous and the people capturing the dinosaurs are evil. This is so morally absurd that it takes away so much of the film's re-watchability.
The reason that this film is not placed lower is that some of Spielberg's action sequences are wonderfully done. I can still see clearly the glass beginning to crack under Julianne Moore's hands, the tall grass pathways being made by the unseen raptors, the giant T-Rex sticking its head in the tent, and the raptor diving at into the hold under the door. Spielberg intentionally made a film with a different tone than the first Jurassic Park, but he lost all of the wonder and awe and instead had the movie devolve into a monster movie.
#21 - A.I. Artificial Intelligence
I hated this film when I first saw it. I still don't care for it as much, but it has grown on me. This movie was originally being developed by Spielberg's friend Stanley Kubrick before he died. You can see that this is his attempt to make a Kubrick movie with Spielberg touches. This is different than Minority Report, which is a Spielberg movie with Kubrick touches.
AI is visually rich and it wants to take on the tone of a modern fairy tale. And to his credit, there are moments that work along with Haley Joel Osment's performance. It touches on the the primal need of a child for their mother's love. To be clear, the movie is too long and often a bit boring, but David's journey is intense and pure in its quest. The final scene is overly long, but has the benefit of being emotionally satisfying.
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