 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Isn't it a joke that we are comparing a film like ANNIE HALL to STAR WARS?!!!
Or ANY film from differing genres for that matter.
George C Scott was right.
Of course he was. And yes, comparing ANNIE HALL to STAR WARS and debate which one is "better" is silly.
It is fun conversation nevertheless.
|
|
|
|
|
|
THE PRODUCERS
well, at least a tie w/2001
or
Best Director to Kubrick, Best Film to PRODUCERS
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I would probably change 90% of the Oscar choices for BP. That would include:
1927-28: Sunrise (this did win Best Artistic Production, but not BP)
1936: Modern Times
1940: Fantasia
1941: Citizen Kane
1948: The Red Shoes
1950: Sunset Boulevard
1955: The Night of the Hunter
1956: Giant
1958: Vertigo
1959: North by Northwest
1963: America America
1966: Seconds or Blow-Up
1968: 2001
1969: They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
1973: American Graffiti
1975: Nashville or Dog Day Afternoon
1979: All That Jazz or Apocalypse Now
1983: The Right Stuff
1985: Brazil
1986: The Mission or Blue Velvet
1988: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
1989: Field of Dreams
1990: Goodfellas
1991: Barton Fink or Jungle Fever
1996: Breaking the Waves
1997: The Ice Storm
1999: Magnolia
2000: Almost Famous
2003: House of Sand and Fog
2008: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
2011: The Tree of Life
2012: The Master
2013: Inside Llewyn Davis
2014: The Grand Budapest Hotel
2015: Joy or Brooklyn
2016: Silence
I tried to stick to English-language films only as that seems to be the Oscar rule.
To MARK R.Y. : THANKS FOR SELECTING 'THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY?' AS THE BEST FOR 1969! I THINK THAT YOU AND I ARE (possibly) THE ONLY ONES AROUND WHO'D AGREE ON THIS.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jim, I'm sorry it took me all this time to answer one of your other questions: Yes, BRICK FOXHOLE, about the murder of a homosexual, was the basis for CROSSFIRE. (I've been away from this thread a while, recovering from the TCM Festival.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I would rate THE TRUMAN SHOW, AMERICAN HISTORY X and A SIMPLE PLAN above both Shakespeare in Love and Saving Private Ryan.
I admire Ryan, but it is a fatally flawed film in many respects, despite it's often staggering high points.
I also REALLY admire SIL & Gwyneth in all her glory!!
Also, don't forget, this was the year of the stupendous MIGHTY JOE YOUNG remake.
I have seen SAVING PRIVAT RYAN back in its day when it came out, but have not since. Why do you consider it "fatally" flawed?
I mostly remember it for the highly impressive Omaha Beach scene.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Posted: |
Apr 27, 2017 - 10:53 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Hurdy Gurdy
(Member)
|
The main two things that almost kill it for me are the cheat at the start and end, when we see the guy in the graveyard fade into being Tom Hanks (or one of them) on the landing boat, but turns out he's old Ryan hisself. So we're seeing events that Ryan in graveyard couldn't have seen or experienced.
Then, when they finally get Ryan (mission accomplished, this guy MUST live, that's what the whole film has been about, why sacrifices have already been made), they let him dictate things (override a commanding officer) and continue into a major skirmish which will probably cost him his life.
Those things just don't work for me and could have been written around better.
But don't get me wrong, for the most part, it's a very good film.
btw, check out ACHTENBLOG.blogspot.com. Type in the words Spielberg or Saving Private Ryan and William Goldman.
He articulates it much better (and much more) than me.
I also agree about that awful Ryan reminisce about the ugly girl..just a horrible scene that hardly endears Ryan to the viewer.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RYAN should have won.
I always thought the prologue and epilog were unneeded and distracting.
But, everything in between is just brilliant.
THIN RED LINE also should have won BP
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
Apr 28, 2017 - 2:50 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Hurdy Gurdy
(Member)
|
Here's the Goldman piece I mentioned (written back in the day)...
-----------------------
Saving Private Ryan begins, as I'm sure everyone has told you, with an incredible battle sequence. Maybe that was true for them, but the version I saw sure began differently: a fifteen-second shot of Old Glory a-wavin' in the wind. With Copland-like music in the background. Even John Wayne would have been embarrassed to start a movie that way. Hearts and flowers, God bless America, all that awful stuff. Today, only the Farrellys could get away with something like that.
Then there follows a weird sequence which I have sub-titled "The Man With the Big-Boobed Girls." And I am not being facetious. This old guy lumbers around someplace, we don't know where, and behind him are a bunch of Norman Rockwell types, but all I can concentrate on are these big¬boobed girls who are tagging along. Then we find that we're in a cemetery, and a shot of a flag tells us France. Lots of crosses. He kneels, at a particular cross, weeps, some of the family run to him, the big-boobed ones hanging back.
Then a long shot of his moist eyes and as the camera moves slowly into a close up of those eyes, we know this much: we are going into flashback now.
The story that has moved this old man is about to be told.
And now we are into the battle sequence.
What to say about it? Fabulous, brilliant, extraordinary, whatever you want. And do you know why? The length: twenty four minutes. The stuff itself is absolute as good and no better than Francis Coppola's war stuff or Oliver Stone's war stuff. But here it just goes pulverizingly on and on. It was brave of writer Robert Rodat to write it that way and brave of director Steven Spielberg to direct it with that incredible relentless tension.
What to say about Spielberg? For me, as great a shooter as anyone in movie history. Clearly the most important American director of the last thirty years, and on occasion, the most brilliant.
When he is in his wheel house. More of that presently.
As anybody reading this must know, Robert Rodat's story is about a squad of soldiers sent on a rescue mission—to find a Private Ryan, a young soldier who has lost three broth¬ers in action. Ryan, once located, is to be sent back home be¬fore another tragedy totally destroys the remains of his family.
The last shot of the great battle sequence is a shot of a dead soldier named Ryan.
OK, so what the movie has to do is simple: get the rescue squad going after the kid. The Spielberg of Raider's of the Lost Ark would have taken maybe a minute to set that up. Tom Hanks, the squad leader would have been called into a commander's presence, told to find a Private Ryan. Hanks would ask why and the Commander would say what you know: to make sure he does not die like his brothers. Get him home now and get him home safely. Those are your orders. Go!
That is not a hard premise to set up. In this movie it takes Spielberg thirteen pretentious, operatic minutes. (An amazing length of movie time.) Climaxed when a General reads a letter Honest Abe Lincoln wrote which is s0000 moving, sports fans, it brings tears to the other high officers who are listening to the General.
Sure.
Then, after more uninteresting stuff, forty minutes into the movie, Hanks' squad finally sets off on their odyssey to find Private Ryan. And the hunt for him is just terrific. (A word here—he will not win the Oscar but Tom Sanders sure should—great production design.)
Sequence after sequence. The village with the French girl and the sudden Nazi's and the wrong Ryan. The church. The wounded area with the haunted pilot where they fmd out where Ryan might be. The bunker fight with the Nazi who Hanks releases and wonderful work between Tom Sizemore and Ed Burns and Hanks. Then the fight with the tank and off¬handedly, surprisingly, they find Private Ryan.
We are an hour and forty five minutes into the movie now. We have just had an hour plus of sensational storytelling. And I am so excited because I know what is going to happen now: they are going to take Ryan back only it is going to be so much harder than finding him was. Maybe they would revisit some of the places—would the pilot have killed himself, would the French girl be killed by sniper madness, would the madness of the entire enterprise come crashing down around them? The story was going to be like a great snowball, accumulating as it roared toward climax, gathering weight and size and emotional power as Hanks desperately tried to get the kid home to his shattered mother.
And guess what: the rest of the movie is a disgrace. Fifty plus minutes of phony manipulative shit.
Things start going south immediately. We are in a bombed French village which has a valuable bridge. Hanks tells Ryan to get ready. And Ryan—Matt Damon—says this: he doesn't want to go. Sure his mom has suffered, sure it's awful what's happened to his family, but these guys are his brothers now and he will not leave them.
Do you believe that? Do you believe that a young man who has just been informed his family has been devastated, that his mother has had grief overpowering poured on her, would say, hey, I'm sure mom'll understand but I want to stay here in the mud with my buddies.
Barely.
I can kind of make a case that Ryan is young and in such shock and feels so guilty at his good/bad fortune, he really at that moment wants to stay. OK. I go with that.
Then the first nail in the coffin: Hanks goes along with it—hey, what a neat idea, I'll stay too.
Inconceivable, as Vizzini would say.
Before I get to how it's done in the movie, let me make a parallel. Let's say you and I were given a sworn task by our father. To make sure little Matt next store gets to school that day. Our most important task on earth is to make sure that happens.
OK. We go to little Matt's house, tell him to come along. And he says this: "My best friend in the world is visiting me today. I won't go."
And you and I think about it and decide we have only two choices.
(1) To let him stay home.
(2) To stay home with him.
Take a second. That make sense? Are those the only two choices available? How about adding a third: bringing the little fucker to school.
In an awful awful scene, after Matt has stamped his foot in anger, Hanks and Tom Sizemore, the tough Sergeant have a talk.
Sizemore asks what Hanks' orders are and Hanks replies thusly: "Sergeant, we have crossed some strange boundary here. The world has taken a turn for the surreal."
And I am sitting there thinking no, nothing surreal about it. A simple request has been made that needs a simple answer.
Sizemore tells Hanks this. "Some part of me thinks the kid's right. What's he done to deserve this? If he wants to stay here fine. Let's leave him and go home."
And Hanks says "yeah."
And I say, where did the notion of leaving him and going home come from? Surely it has never been breathed on planet Earth before. What are you talking about? Then Sizemore hits him with the clincher: "But another part of me thinks what if by some miracle we stay and actually make it out of here? Some day we might look back on this and decide that saving Private Ryan was the one decent thing we were able to pull out of this whole God awful shitty mess . . . . We do that, Captain, we all earn the right to go home."
So they stay. (Sizemore's speech might have made sense earlier—when they were having the fight about staying or going home, earlier in the flick, before they had found Ryan.)
You know the worst thing? It would have been easy to have them stay and not be phony about it. How? Try this:
Matt makes his pitch. Hanks says I understand your emotions, but we're out of here right now.
Next cut, they are leaving the village. Next cut they are crossing the bridge. Next cut, walking in the countryside
-and then a close up of Hanks and he stares and guess what?—
—The Germans are coming, They're here, it's too late to leave.
Next cut, exactly what we have now, and go on as before, only with more urgency. And without the awful manipulation.
The Ugly Tree
The most damaging speech of the movie comes next. Hanks and Matt Damon are waiting for the attack. Damon says he cannot summon up his dead brothers faces and Hanks says, think of something specific. Hanks, when he thinks of home, thinks of his hammock or his wife pruning the roses wearing his gloves.
And Matt Damon starts into this long—two minutes, folks—remembrance of the last time he and his brothers were together. A sexual escapade when one of his brothers was trying to fuck this girl, a girl who "took a nose dive out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down."
The speech—ad libbed by Matt Damon is the only time we get to spend any private time with Ryan. And the speech does not exactly endear him to us. It also rips a lot of the emotional fabric of the film to pieces. I would love to know what the real script said at this point. And I wonder only this: how could Spielberg allow something this atrocious to happen?
The Shooting of Tom Hanks
A bunch of Germans come running toward camera. They get into prone position, start to fire. We are drawn to¬ward one particular German bad guy. Want to know why? He's the only one without a helmet. And, gasp, we realize he is that very same Nodzi who Hanks let live in the earlier sequence. (Spielberg has just discovered irony.) And, shock of shocks, he is the very one who plugs poor Tom.
Now of course, this is manipulation to the nth power. But that's ok, lots of movies do that. But it is not ok here. And why?
Because it gives the lie to the great part of the film.
That wonderful twenty-four minute sequence? What did that tell us about war? That it is awful, yes, of course that. But it also told us this: war is non-sensical, illogical, totally beyond human comprehension.
But here it is all totally understandable. Let a bad guy go, guess what, he will return, relentless and helmetless to kill you. (And hang around conveniently so the cowardly lion of the flick, the translator, can become a man by killing the very man who shot his captain.) In order for this sequence to be in balance with the entire film, that opening battle sequence would have to be altered so that it was about John Wayne fighting his way to glory and saving all his raw recruits around him. Then this bullshit with the German soldier is in keeping with the film.
But it doesn't fucking matter who kills Tom Hanks. His death is what matters. His death is the tragedy.
The Death of Tom Hanks
Hanks is dying, Ed Burns runs for a medic, Matt Damon is alone with Hanks. And do you know what Hanks' last words were? Of course you don't, no one does, not the first time they see the movie. Because not only are they whispered so softly, they have never before been spoken on this or any planet. "Earn this . . . earn it." Those are the words.
I have zero idea what that can possibly mean. My only explanation is this: Spielberg was up half the night before reading Philosophy for Dummies and he wanted to inject that nugget into his flick.
Ed Burns at the Cemetery
Hanks is dead, the awful pretentious voice of the actor playing General Marshall is treackling away, we hear ole Honest Abe's letter again and I am now waiting for the shot of Ed Burns with the big boobed girls back at the cemetery. Why do I know that is coming? Well, only two members of the squad are left, Burns and the cowardly translator and I know it can't be him because he was not with Hanks and the squad during the twenty-four minutes of glory at the start of the film. So it has to be Burns standing there among the graves.
Now the morphing shot comes -and I am looking at the old face of Matt Damon at the cemetery.
Well, you can't do that. Don't you see, he wasn't fucking there. He knew nothing of the attack on the beach, knew nothing of the odyssey that followed, and he never had a chance to hear about it. The only spare moment he had was when he was telling us all about his brothers and the ugly girl and setting the barn on fire.
When he was great, and he was great, Spielberg was a phenomenal storyteller. All gone. That, or he doesn't care.
How's about Spielberg's version of Moby Dick: "Call me Ishmael. I'm going to tell you a story of this ship and this one legged captain and this whale. Actually, I don't know if the guy was one legged. Never saw him, never saw the ship, never saw the whale, never talked to anybody who ever saw anything."
"Who better than I to tell you what happened?"
The other disgrace of this storytelling is this: there is no pregnant moment to the story. (I'm not going all intellectual on you—remember, the Zipper scene and Matt Dillon trying to electrocute the dog back to life were my happiest moments this year in a theatre.) But all stories do and must have them. They are the reason the story is being told. The pregnant moment of Shakespeare in Love is this: Will has a block. We do not tell of Joe and Gwyneth after he's written King Lear—the whole point is the guy can't write anything. Armageddon happens when it happens because the meteor is on its way.
There is absolutely no reason for this story being told now since Matt has no specific reason for visiting the cemetery.
Didn't have to be phony. Say it was Ed Burns. Who has the flashback legitimately. Say he had a reason for coming pick any one you want. Try this: Ryan has just done something splendid. Or Ryan has just died but had a good life.
"Remember that little shit you died for?" Burns might say. "Guess what? He turned out okay. Not worth your dying, Captain, but at least it's something. Thought you'd like to know."
The Ending
Just when you think Spielberg has stooped as low as even he can, new thresholds are reached. Four agonizing minutes of pretentious syrup, climaxing when Matt asks his wife has he been a good man? What is she going to answer? Her husband is clearly having a breakdown. She says yes and Matt—wait for it—he salutes!
Then Old Glory returns, waving at us for half a minute. I guess reminding us that God and Steven Spielberg are on the same side.
Medicinal Level—A.
Can't get much higher. Patriotism and the flag and easy answers galore. Phony and manipulative, all in the sense of Country.
What to say about Spielberg at this stage of his career? He will win his second Oscar for this work, and probably a third when he finds another 'importante' subject to hide be¬hind. (Religious persecution, racial injustice, patriotism.)
I have never met him, never been in a room with him, but no person can come so far in such a killingly competitive business without having a reservoir of anger and rage and dark-ness hiding in there somewhere. I just wish once he would let it show.
There is no reason for him to do anything else than what he has been doing. The movies are wildly successful at the box-office, the critics bow.
And if he had directed Bambi, guess what? Bambi's mother would never have died .. .
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The main two things that almost kill it for me are the cheat at the start and end, when we see the guy in the graveyard fade into being Tom Hanks (or one of them) on the landing boat, but turns out he's old Ryan hisself. So we're seeing events that Ryan in graveyard couldn't have seen or experienced.
Then, when they finally get Ryan (mission accomplished, this guy MUST live, that's what the whole film has been about, why sacrifices have already been made), they let him dictate things (override a commanding officer) and continue into a major skirmish which will probably cost him his life.
Those things just don't work for me and could have been written around better.
But don't get me wrong, for the most part, it's a very good film.
btw, check out ACHTENBLOG.blogspot.com. Type in the words Spielberg or Saving Private Ryan and William Goldman.
He articulates it much better (and much more) than me.
I also agree about that awful Ryan reminisce about the ugly girl..just a horrible scene that hardly endears Ryan to the viewer.
OK, I did misunderstand you since you said "fatally" flawed, and I interpreted "fatally" as beyond hope or redemption (as in "fatal"), even though you conceded the movie had good parts.
I know some people had problems with the old man at the end turning out to be Matt Damon's older self rather than Tom Hanks', but I admit, I actually exptected that to be Private Ryan from the very beginning of the movie, so it never bothered me that much; I did not view the ending as a "surprise" ending. As for the major skirmish at the end, I admit I don't particularly remember that. I have to watch the movie again one day.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Goldman is full of shit about the film being a "flag waving God bless America" patriotic propaganda.
It is the opposite.
Did he not notice the irony of the fact that the flag is displayed almost completely without color?
That the D-DAY landing is presented with awesome brutality, making the point that this is not a Hollywood sanitized vision of war. This is the real thing and it isn't 'glorious"?
I dunno. I admire the men who stormed Normandy. How can you be more brave?
I read this article when it first came out and i remember saying "yeah, look oath those chicks with the big boobs!"
We all seem to agree that the bookends to the film sucked. Big time!
b
|
|
|
|
|
|
I remember hearing a lecture by radical historian Howard Zinn around the time SPP was released. Zinn - whose politics mostly align with mine - was railing against the film; mocking it for glorifying war and American Imperialism and complaining that the Russians sacrificed more than the US ....blah blah blah.
I t soon became obvious that Zinn had not seen the film (sound familiar?).
Goldman obviously has seen the film but he is so obsessed with the Spielberg mystique that he can
not look at the film objectively. Had it said "directed by Oliver Stone ; "directed by Stanley Kubrick;: I bet he would have written a different critique.
bro
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
