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What Is The Last Film You Watched? (Older Films)


Mr. Breathmask

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I can never decide which part of Jaws I like more, the land part or the out to sea part; everytime I watch it I change my mind, they're so damn good.

Jaws 2 on the other hand, I can think of a handful of scenes I like, but that's about it. No contest.

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Splash

I don't revisit it often, but it's aged pretty gracefully. Daryl Hannah has never looked lovelier (even with that hideous '80s perm), and Tom Hanks and John Candy have a nice unforced sibling chemistry. Some nice location photography in Nassau and New York City. It doesn't really feel like a Ron Howard film, especially with the lovely Lee Holdridge score.

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The problem for me with JAWS 2 is how annoying the teenagers are. I end up siding with the shark.

To tell you the truth I sided with the shark too sometimes.

I was thinking: "you totally deserve it because you didn't listen to your parents!!" :P

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I'm attempting to watch A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Directed by Steven Spielberg

"Ouch." - E.T. and Elliott

I'm just not exactly sure what the hell I'm watching, what Spielberg was going for, what Kubrick was going for. The problems are apparent right from the start as Spielberg utterly fails with these suburbia family scenes. This kind of thing was his forte. Jaws, E.T., Close Encounters...mere seconds into the household scenes, we instantly connected with these people. We knew them. We had been here before. It felt real. A.I.'s household scenes (comprising the first act, which goes on for 45 minutes) are a complete and total disaster and I don't think it's because the house looks like an IKEA showroom.

The woman playing Monica is a terrible actress here. Again, this is uncharacteristic of a Spielberg film. He always gets a good performance out of his actors. There is such a weirdness to these scenes, to David and the relationship with Monica. I don't know, guys. I just don't know. Maybe this film just requires a totally different outlook. I was there on opening day, I used to watch this on a portable DVD player when they were first released instead of paying attention at school. Spielberg was my education. I tried to warm up to it. I tried to sort it out. All these years later, it's still a mess. Maybe it requires more thinking than I can handle. But then, Spielberg never exceled at that sort of thing. It isn't his style. Even if he were going for a kind of thinking man's Sci-Fi emulating Kubrick, I'm not sure he was successful.

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More thoughts: the opening shot of the waves is just awful. It reminds me of the opening shot of The Lost World: Jurassic Park, only total shit. That's the shot they chose for the opening of this movie? The opening scene with that awkward boring staff meeting that seems like it should have been deleted really sets the stage perfectly. You know at that point you're not watching a good film. No good Spielberg film starts out that bad. We'll ignore the irrational illogical decision to abandon David in the woods and just skip ahead to act 2.

Finally, there's someone with charisma in this movie. He seems to be the only normal dude in this thing and all he exists for is to fuck. This is where, for me, it's clear this thing can not be salvaged. Spielberg cons us into believing this will be a kind of anthology film and that we're now into the next story. But nope. He just joins forces with David. Things take an interesting turn for sure. Mad Eye Moody as...whoever, is pretty good. Finally, some good performances, although that "human thing" line is awful. See, like, why didn't Spielberg veto that line? It's so bad. This is where we find the most horribly dated and bizarre Spielberg scenes ever: the Flesh Fair. We get it, this was made around the year 2000. Yeah. That's fucking obvious. What isn't obvious is that Steven Spielberg made this.

Hmm...you know, I watched up to the arrival at NYC and I just stopped. At around the point that David meets the dad from the Lost in Space movie, it occurred to me that we already fucking knew the deal about him being a prototype for a line of Mecha based on his dead son. I get that he didn't know this, but it just seems like we shouldn't have, either. Like the film was put together all wrong and this 20 minute sequence of David discovering that he's a fraud and committing suicide should have been like a twist or something. Should we not have known? I'm not sure it could have been made in a way where we wouldn't have known. I just feel nothing for this robo-kid. Yet, I cried when the Terminator was lowered into the steel and when Data died.

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The pro-AI crowd is usually like "it has complex, thought provoking ideas, and it's dark - therefore it is a great movie!"

John Williams must have watched it for the first time and thought "whatever Stevie is taking, he was too much of a tight arse to share!"

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I actually like the first act of AI. Then again, I wasn't looking for an E.T. kind of casual family life. I mean, come on, it's a desperate couple trying to solve their problems with a machine. During this act the film actually asks interesting questions. It's only when the film leaves the apartment (act II and III) that things start to derail for me. Gigolo's Joe's big introduction scene is fine too (after that the film completely neglects him ... and me).

Alex

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Citizen Kane: Just saw it again on TV and yeah it's kind of good.

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Needs a remake

There Will Be Blood.

A Nolan remake to make it dark and gritty and grainy. The Dark Kane Begins.

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I love A.I. generally but I don't like much the scenes at Rouge City and I don't like the Gigole Joe characher at all.

On another note:

Has anyone seen The Car (1977) and if yes, how does it compare to Spielberg's Duel?

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I found the Rouge City scenes rather classless and the visual effects quite obvious and dated.

Maybe a fundamental problem with A.I. is that it isn't enough Spielberg or Kubrick. It's too much of a mess to sort out.

I'll stick with his classic action/adventure films...

Indiana_Jones_and_the_Kingdom_of_the_Cry

That one about three guys hunting down a predator in a boat...

600px-Munich_zip2.jpg

And his alien films...

War_OWorlds_Spielberg_3367.jpg

Oh, God, WAIT, NOT THOSE!!

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It's all very competently directed. And it looks great even these days.

But it has one fundamental flaw. The script.

And it almost undoes itself by that.

Karol

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I prefer the Tim Burton Batmans, The Rocketeer (you could argue this isn't a superhero movie, but I'd prefer it anyway), Batman: The Movie (1966) and Superman: The Movie/Superman II.

I dug that the Raimi Spider-Man movies didn't take themselves so seriously and had an appreciable amount of campiness, but they also had a pretty boring protagonist, forgettable music, terrible love interest and weak villains.

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I'm attempting to watch A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Directed by Steven Spielberg

"Ouch." - E.T. and Elliott

I'm just not exactly sure what the hell I'm watching, what Spielberg was going for, what Kubrick was going for. The problems are apparent right from the start as Spielberg utterly fails with these suburbia family scenes. This kind of thing was his forte. Jaws, E.T., Close Encounters...mere seconds into the household scenes, we instantly connected with these people. We knew them. We had been here before. It felt real. A.I.'s household scenes (comprising the first act, which goes on for 45 minutes) are a complete and total disaster and I don't think it's because the house looks like an IKEA showroom.

The woman playing Monica is a terrible actress here. Again, this is uncharacteristic of a Spielberg film. He always gets a good performance out of his actors. There is such a weirdness to these scenes, to David and the relationship with Monica. I don't know, guys. I just don't know. Maybe this film just requires a totally different outlook. I was there on opening day, I used to watch this on a portable DVD player when they were first released instead of paying attention at school. Spielberg was my education. I tried to warm up to it. I tried to sort it out. All these years later, it's still a mess. Maybe it requires more thinking than I can handle. But then, Spielberg never exceled at that sort of thing. It isn't his style. Even if he were going for a kind of thinking man's Sci-Fi emulating Kubrick, I'm not sure he was successful.

It is a terrible film.

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