I have long found that Spielberg can win me over, and keep me, right up until some climactic moment when he tries too hard and loses me completely. That was true of Schindler's List, Empire of the Sun, A.I., and a lot of others. (He never won me over for Saving Private Ryan.)

Good tactics, crappy strategy, I'd say.

Yet oddly enough, 1941 is utter crap.

But it's fun crap. "Look! A baby wolf!"

Okay, maybe not, but I suspect at least part of the problem with that movie was a young Spielberg being unable to rein in Belushi and Akroyd.

I'll probably wait until it's on DVD.

But disaster flicks are so much better on the big screen!

Now if they would only bring back Sensurround....

But it's fun crap. "Look! A baby wolf!"

Okay, maybe not, but I suspect at least part of the problem with that movie was a young Spielberg being unable to rein in Belushi and Akroyd.

The jitterbug scene was brilliant, but for every good thing in the movie there were 2 or 3 (or more) bad ones.

Now if they would only bring back Sensurround....

Or Smell-O-Vision!

It's a grand display of how well he knows how to work us over, and yet the desperation with which he tries to get to us is repulsive.

So true.

As fas as Schindler's List goes, I remember sitting in the theater digging my nails into my palms, saying to myself "That bastard Spielberg is NOT going to make me cry." It didn't work. Tears streaming. I rationally recognized the emotional manipulation and couldn't stop it. All the Americans I was with (this was in Bucharest) were crying too.

Of course, the Romanians behind us nudged each other and pointed at us and asked, "What's wrong with them? Do you think they are Jewish? " So YemotionalmanipulationMV.

(additional note of irony - the theater had been a synagogue. You know, before.)

See, I'd say his best includes Saving Private Ryan, which actually gets to me in a way the vast majority of his films don't.

I still kind of like SPR too, but it is emotionally manipulative in a really cliche way. Ultimately, I think film is an emotionally manipulative medium, so I don't necessarily think that's an automatic strike against a picture, but SPR was very cliche about it. It was kind of like Spielberg took every war movie ever made and blended them together to try and make an Uber War Movie. As Miracleman once said -- from the moment Hanks' character finally tells everybody he's a school teacher, you know he's a goner.

I found the breakdown scene in Schindler's List way too much, but the film was so good up to that point--Neeson and Fiennes were both blazingly intense--that I forgave it. I am also incredibly fond of Close Encounters.

The DVD is great though - you can start the movie after the Spielbergian Old Dude Scene (tm), just watch the beach landing, i.e., the Spielbergian Movie-Within-a-Movie Intro (tm), and call it good.

I'm going to see WotW on Saturday with a friend who worked on it, and suspects she isn't going to be credited, although I gather her position usually is. So we're going to sit through the credits and either cheer, or boo. Maybe I'll let that dictate my liking for the film.

I'm going to try very, very hard to not let Tommy get to me.