Lincoln (2012)

I've gone on record before saying that my feelings on Steven Spielberg have reached a point of full-out dislike. And I stand by that. I'm not a fan of his films anymore, at least not the ones he's been making lately. And by "lately" I mean roughly the last 15 years. I'm also a complete weirdo in the fact the only movie of his I've seen since "Saving Private Ryan" that I did like was "Kingdom of The Crystal Skull," so please feel free to take whatever I say with a grain of salt since apparently I'm insane.

Here's the thing, though. Spielberg is a good director. Seriously, he is. I'm not going to say he isn't a master at what he does, because that would be ignorant. There are just certain things he does which I don't like, and of the 3 primary issues I have with him, only 1 of those has to do with his actual directing.

The first thing is that I don't like the scripts he chooses. They're cheesy, overly long, preachy, and play it pretty safe and mediocre. He directs them well, but I'm usually very bored by them. Yeah that's a big issue to have, but it has nothing to do with his actual directing. The second thing is that he keeps hiring John Williams. Similar to Danny Elfman and Tim Burton, this symbiotic relationship has gone from working beautifully to becoming one of tired acceptance with a distinct overtone of forgettable "not caring anymore." And at this point, Williams really seems to be running low on ideas as the last memorable piece he wrote was "Duel of the Fates" for "Star Wars: Episode I." Back in 1999.

Third and finally comes the only real issue I have with Spielberg from an actual directorial standpoint. There comes a time, oftentimes several throughout the course of his films, where something dramatic will happen, usually having something to do with racism and the like. In any case, someone will make a dramatic gesture, will say something, or will do something to fly in the face of the established oligarchy that has been opposing them. Everything slows down, the camera pans around everyone at a low angle as they look upwards with thoughtful expressions or mouths agape as they slowly nod their heads with new understanding on life and humanity,  all to John Williams' music swelling underneath.

This happens in nearly every Spielberg drama I can think of. And I hate this scene. I really do. It's so cheesy. It's so telegraphed. It's so cliche. And it's seldom really earned. It's just there because well, that's what Spielberg does a lot of. People are always labeling grand, sweeping action shots as "Spielbergian," but why doesn't anyone else use it to describe that hunk of cheese as well? He uses it more often than the first one, it seems to me.

I think it's the head nod. That's what kills it for me.

So it was not without some sense of apprehension that I went to go see "Lincoln." I'm not going to lie, I really wasn't digging this one from the trailers. Maybe if it had been another director I would have had more interest in it, but because it was Spielberg, I knew it would be cheesy and preachy. And I was right about that. It was cheesy. In fact it was cheesier than I had imagined it was going to be. And it was indeed preachy, but not as much as I had feared. So we've got a plus and minus with that.

But one thing I didn't count on "Lincoln" being was so droning, and even bordering on dull on occasion. And the reason for that is because the only reason this film exists is to get a few more Oscar nominations (and probably wins) for Daniel Day-Lewis. Now some of you may read that as being overly callous, but what else am I supposed to think about a film that is made up of Daniel Day-Lewis performing monologues for roughly 73% of the 2 and a half hour run time?

This should have been called "Speech: The Movie."

I'm going to come out and say right now, however, that if you like Daniel Day-Lewis, you will love this film for those exact reasons. Perhaps that is one of the benefits of being a weird method actor that only does a movie once every 5 years or something - when they finally get you to star in something you know nobody else is going to matter.

Daniel Day-Lewis is undoubtedly good as Abraham Lincoln. I did genuinely like him in it, he was quite convincing, and yeah I guess he "became the role" as he is wont to do. But honestly I didn't really feel an appreciable difference between his performance and any other good actor who would have probably played the part just as well. At no time did I think to myself "Only Day-Lewis could have pulled this off. Nobody else would have been close."

Does that make "Lincoln" bad or Day-Lewis' performance not matter? No, of course not. I'm just throwing it out there before the awards season begins and everyone starts kissing his ass as The Greatest Living Actor again. He's good, but perhaps people are mistaking lack of quantity for excess of quality. I call that the "Terrence Malick" effect. Although Day-Lewis is far better at his trade-craft than Malick is at his own.

The rest of the elements really don't matter too much, to be perfectly frank. It's set during Lincoln's last few months as he fights to pass the 13th Amendment, and much of the movie is political maneuvering as the Republicans fight to get a majority of the vote in the Senate in order to pass it. That's all well and good, and it is interesting to learn about aspects of the country's history that I was unaware of. But it's just a backdrop to see Day-Lewis start up with another amusing anecdote, which he does so often that it even becomes the topic of a joke at one point. And yeah, that was actually a funny joke, but we still had to sit through the long, plodding story afterwords.

To be fair there are many speeches Lincoln gives that are quite good. The best one that I recall concerns The Emancipation Proclamation, and the risks involved in doing it, and the potential fallout from it. Not only does that give us great insight into his state of mind, but it dumps a whole lot of exposition on us in a pretty believable manner, and clues us in as to why the 13th Amendment needs to be passed now. That's great stuff, but there just too many dull, repetitive monologues in between the good ones, and it makes Lincoln come off as more than a bit long-winded.

Tommy Lee Jones, playing senator Thaddeus Stevens I found to be a more interesting character than Lincoln, mostly because I liked his story and conflict along with his more fiery personality. The point when he is forced to compromise his values for the greater good is one of the more engrossing moments of the film. Unfortunately it's relegated to a 2 minute sequence and then never really brought up again.

He and his wig were honestly my favorite characters.

Sally Field will probably get some Oscar buzz, as its the kind of role that demands it. Was she good? Yeah, I guess. Am I going to remember her performance in a few days? Probably not. More than paying attention to whom they gave screen time to, I was more annoyed with the actors they wasted. Great actors like Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Jackie Earle Haley who are pushed to the back of the room and given pretty "nothing" roles. For shame.

There isn't much more to say about "Lincoln," honestly. I came away feeling profoundly unmoved. The schmaltz of Spielberg didn't help, especially during the painfully bad opening scene where two soldiers recite The Gettysburg Address back at Lincoln, and the ridiculous closing shot featuring Lincoln superimposed over a flame in a lantern (SYMBOLISM!) which looked straight out of an early 90's sitcom.

There's also the scene right before the Senate vote on the 13th Amendment which has a group of black folk walk into the balcony to be seated. Everyone instantly goes mute, stops what they are doing like they have "black radar" and stares at them. Then one of the senators slowly stands and says with great gravity "We welcome you here" like they're the first black people to set foot in the building. Because apparently Mary Todd Lincoln's servant didn't count even though she was there all the freaking time. But whatever. Everyone gets to slowly nod in approval. That's what's important.

I don't hate Spielberg. I just hate Spielberg's cheese. But since his movies are jammed full of it, it's difficult for me to enjoy one. It bores me and makes me roll my eyes every 5 minutes. But whatever. It will win tons of Oscars. That's what's important.

I miss Bill Oberst Jr.

THE BOTTOM LINE - You know exactly what this movie is, even if you haven't seen it yet. It will do nothing to surprise you. If that's what you want, here you go. Daniel Day-Lewis fans will call it the best of the year and demand Best Actor, although they did that before they even saw the film. I personally found it boring.

Poltergeist (1982)

It's time to dust off a classic to give it another shot. I'd seen "Poltergeist" years before, and my reaction to it was rather lukewarm at best. So while once again finding absolutely nothing at the video store I was interested in seeing, I bopped on down to the horror section to find something I maybe had missed (unlikely), and "Poltergeist" caught my eye.

"Hey," I said to myself "I should watch that again. Maybe I just didn't appreciate it before. Maybe this time I'll like it, because I should like it, right? It's a classic."

Now believe it or not, there is precedent for this. The first time I saw "The Exorcist," I wasn't too impressed with the scariness of it, although I thought it was a good movie. On a second viewing a few months later, however, I found it to be almost unbearably frightening. I also enjoyed "Let The Right One In" far more on a second viewing as well, so it is possible for me to do a 180 on a film. On the other hand, I've also given second chances to "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "The Deer Hunter,"  among other classics, and I still hate those films. Sometimes I just plain don't like a movie, I guess.

So long story short, I still don't like "Poltergeist" that much. And it still wasn't scary, although the potential was there. On second viewing, I think I can determine that one of the big reasons I don't like it is because I'm not sure that "Poltergeist" knows what kind of movie it wants to be.

Ok, this scare is pretty good. I'll admit that...

Sure enough, it starts off really good. The opening scene is simply chilling and creepy as all hell, with the little girl, Carol Anne, coming downstairs in the middle of the night to talk to the spirits in the TV that only she can hear. I'm not going to lie, that scene sent shivers down my back. That's some messed up stuff.

Not too long after that, however, the movie really starts losing me because I felt like none of the characters are taking this seriously. It's almost like they're in a comedy or something with how nonchalant they are about things at times. The mother, Diane, played by the absolutely terrible JoBeth Williams, is of particular fault for this. "Oh yeah, our daughter got sucked into the TV and is being held captive by a thing called The Beast, but that doesn't mean I, as her mother, have to freak out about it."

After Carol Anne disappears, Diane really doesn't display too much terror or anguish or even willingness to do ANYTHING to get her back, at least not to the point where it becomes believable. And while that may be the fault of JoBeth's wretched acting, I also have to blame the script and its priorities in display real human emotion. I mean, I know plenty of mothers. Several of my best friends are mothers. The amount of fear that can result from something like a kid taking a bad spill is enough to set your average mother near the point of a stroke. That's not an indictment, that's just life. BE TRAUMATIZED ABOUT YOUR MISSING DAUGHTER.

Kevin Bacon IS JoBeth Williams as Sally Field in "Sybil 2: The Reckoning"

There are also comedic beats which, for me, utterly kill the mood of the film. Of particular note is a scene where Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams try to ask their neighbors if they've seen anything strange going on. The amount of stammering and restarting of sentences in this scene is enough to make Bob Newhart say "Get on with it." I think it's supposed to be funny, but I honestly can't tell. They just set a pail next to that premise and milked it for all it was worth.

So basically yeah, I don't like the characters, mostly because I never connected with them because I never got the feeling that the actors ever knew exactly how their character was supposed to be feeling, and the emotions just jump all over the place from scene to scene to the point where it's really distracting. One moment they're terrified, and the next scene taking place not 5 minutes in movie time later, they're sitting back, having a drink and chuckling. It's not a very well paced film.

Speaking of pacing, another big thing that bugged me is that it feels like some scenes were misplaced. There are big set-pieces in the first act that in any other movie would usually be saved for the end. And while that does imply greater things to come, in the end it's kind of a let down.

For example, about 30 minutes into the movie, there's the scene where the son gets attacked by the tree out in their yard, which tries to eat him. He is snatched from near death by Craig T. Nelson (off camera, by the way), and the whole time I'm thinking that it's a scene belonging at the climax, for two reasons.

Tree tried to eat the kid. And NO ONE SPEAKS OF IT EVER.

First is the fact that everything after a TREE TRYING TO EAT YOU is pretty small potatoes. The famous scene with the clown doll is saved for the obligatory "4th Act" that "Alien" made mandatory for horror films, and while it is a pretty well done scene...come on. It's a doll. You can't top "Man-Eating Tree" with "clown doll." There is no possible reason that those scenes shouldn't have been switched.

The second reason is that after a TREE TRYING TO EAT YOU, why in the name of all that is holy would you stay in the house? Carol Anne's abduction happens at the same time as the tree attack, when everyone else is helping the son, but at the very least, GET YOUR REMAINING CHILD OUT. There's no reason for the son to stay. None at all. But there he remains for a good chunk of the film. For me, that just helped to highlight the fact that I never just the feeling that these people really knew what they were doing, and it was really distracting.

AND LEAVE THE DAMN HOUSE ALREADY!!!! THERE'S NO REASON FOR A 4TH ACT!!!

I also never understood the concept of "The Light," and what that was all about. The keep going back and forth between yelling at Carol Anne to stay away from the light and telling her to run towards it. I could tell that there was a very good reason that they were doing this, but since the movie never explains it to us, that whole dramatic tension is completely wasted.

Also, if you're going to enter another plain of existence...show it to us. The biggest cop-out of the film is the fact the we never see where they went when they entered the spirit world. I was expecting that dimension in "The Real Ghostbusters" where they kept all the spirits they captured with their proton packs! That would have been sweet.

I think the most disappointing thing though, more than anything else, is that I felt feeling that had I been the one writing the script, I could made it WAY more scary. And that's not some ambiguous statement. There were scenes in "Poltergeist" that while watching, I started to get on the edge of my seat in anticipation of something truly scary happening, because I saw it coming. Yet these scenes never did happen the way I thought they would. Every time I would say to myself, "Oh man, if they go where I think they're about to go, that's going to be wicked messed up." But it never happened.

Me? I could have made this movie SIIIIIIIIIIIICK. And it would have rocked.

Oh, but look who I found in a little cameo role! Check it out! Billy is digging a hole! Now he's got to find a way out of it!

Anyone who got that joke is AWESOME.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Poltergeist" is probably one of those movies that you had to be there for back in '82. Maybe then it would have been more effective. It defiantly has Spielberg's grubby hands all over it, which makes sense since he wrote and produced it (and reportedly all but directed it, too, instead of Toby Hooper), and for that reason there are plenty of striking visual moments, particularly a very effective scene with Craig T. Nelson outside a cemetery. However, the cheesiness of Spielberg taints what could have been a really terrifying film. It's a movie everyone should see, since it's important to the horror genre, but it's far from the best out there. I would actually recommend Tobe Hooper's masterpiece, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" over "Poltergeist" for something truly disturbing.

War Horse (2011)

I think my feelings on Spielberg have reached the point of full-out dislike. In the last 10 years, he's only made a single film that I've enjoyed: "Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull." And I'm not going to say that was necessarily a "good" movie since, make no mistake, it was hands down the weakest of the series, but it wasn't bad. I enjoyed it. But even though I liked it, almost nobody else did. Can't say that I'm not a rebel.

In fact, you could move that time table back another 5 to make it 15 years and it would only add one more film to the list: "Saving Private Ryan." Only a pair of decent films in a decade and a half is not a good track record. Anyway, the whole point I'm trying to make here is that it used to be that Spielberg coming out with a new movie used to be cause to get pumped. Now I just roll my eyes and groan because I know that eventually I'm going to have to force myself to sit down and be bored for 2 and a half hours. But I have to watch, right? It's Spielberg.

"Thank you. We enjoy Spielberg."

"War Horse" just irritated me. I think I could just leave it at that. It was irritating. And the biggest reason I found for the irritation was the fact that it was about a character that I felt nothing about. The horse is supposed to lead us through this journey which connects people across countries and war, but it just comes off as exceedingly forced, because nothing in the story comes across as natural. Now, some of this may be because of the fact that the acting in this movie is unbearably awful from all the humans involved, but another aspect is that IT'S A HORSE! Why is everyone totally enraptured with it?

What I never understood about the horse was that every single person who gazed upon it was immediately and inescapably entranced by it. People went slack-jawed every time they met him, staring blankly as they slowly reached up and stroked its mane like it was some siren or telepathic super-being. And it's to the point where they are willing to put their livelihoods and in some cases even their lives in danger, just so they can have the horse. And I never had any idea why, but I finally reached a conclusion. I know what the horse's deal is:

It's an X-Man. Or X-Horse I guess. My theory is that it's like Professor X and can control minds for its own diabolical reasons.

He gets this look every single time he sees that horse, despite having owned him for years. Dude, just have sex with it already. It's so obvious you want to. Just bite down and do it.

It's amazing the things people will do in this movie, just for a freaking horse. I know that plenty people have a thing for horses, but it really gets ridiculous. They spend their life savings to buy him when they didn't even need him (TWO people do this, actually). They rush into a firefight to save him. They disobey direct orders from their commanders, possibly risking prison or execution because they can't stand the thought of the horse not making it. Not only that, but people who are constantly SURROUNDED by horses look at this horse like it is Zeus come down from Mount Olympus and wearing a saddle while John Williams swells his hackneyed score over top of the proceedings.

And every single person who ends up in the possession of this horse, and there's a few, seem to have a clinical need to say "You can't!" after every single freaking occasion where any prudent person does something NOT in accordance with the horse's best interests. It gets really, really old and just winds up sounding really whiny. And in the end, it really does end up sounding like they're brainwashed. But at the same time, it does make it pretty funny to watch from the perspective of them being controlled by a telepathic Mr. Ed.

And I just had to keep coming back to the same question: Why?

IT'S. A. HORSE.

Oh right. It's touching. Whatever.

There was only a single scene in the entire film which worked for me. It involved a British soldier going out into Dead Man's Land to free the horse after it got tangled up in barbed wire. In doing so, he is almost certainly at a 90% chance of being shot. (::eye roll:: "WHY?") After by complete luck nobody shoots him, a German solider comes out of the trench to help him cut the horse free. It's a good, touching scene about two people separated by war who might otherwise have been friends. And the only reason this scene works is because the conversation doesn't revolve around them fawning over the damn horse, like every other conversation in the movie does. The conversation is about "How are we going to work together to accomplish this?"

That is, until they cut him loose, the horse stands up, they fawn over its majesty and start arguing over who should get it. Great. I guess the horse's mind control doesn't work when the horse is lying down.

So basically the story ends up being about a magical horse. The horse is magical. Everyone loves it, and it touches the lives of everyone it meets. And it doesn't matter that it takes place during WWI, when millions of people are dying all around. At least the horse is OK. What a crock of cheesy crap. And I'll say the same thing about "War Horse" that I said about "Hugo" and "Tintin":

If they hadn't been directed by really famous directors, these would have been laughed off the screen and forgotten in a week. Hey Spielberg, make a good movie again or just shut the hell up.

If I want magic horses, I'll watch this, thank you very much.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "War Horse" was dumb, cheesy and waaaaay too long. Spielberg has now officially made my "Who Cares" list. Skip it.

The Adventures of Tintin (2011)

::sigh::

I remember when Steven Spielberg used to be awesome. Do you? "Jurassic Park?" "Hook?" "Saving Private Ryan?" "Jaws?" "Schindler's List?" "Raiders of The Lost Ark?" Good times.

Now he seems to be a parody of himself. The soul seems to have been sucked out of his work now. Between "A.I." and "Minority Report", "War of The Worlds," "Warhorse"  and most (not me) would say "Kingdom of The Crystal Skull" it seems like you could replace Spielberg with a robot at this point and not notice much difference. To be fair, he has always, and will always have an amazing eye for incredible visuals. The man knows what he's doing, not doubt, but his films seemed to be more heartfelt before. Now it seems he's making movies because that's what he's supposed to do.

Then again, it's amazing he has time to direct anything in between all the movies he produces. I mean, just take a look at the number of things Spielberg has produced on his IMDB page. It's over 100, and a third of them seem to be in the last 5 years. It's insane.

"The Adventures of Tintin" looked like another Spielberg movie that felt very safe and formulaic, and it was. Don't kid yourself - even with all the flashy visuals and action and explosions, this is a kid's movie. Not that there's anything wrong with that by its nature, but I know Spielberg can make good movies, and I feel this kids fluff is tremendously beneath him.

Kids will love this stuff, though. Undoubtedly they will. I cannot take that away from the movie. In those terms, "The Adventures of Tintin" does exactly what it set out to do, and succeeded quite well. There's lots of shiny things to look at, lots of swinging around on stuff, lots of prat-falls and a drunk guy acting really silly because drunk people are hilarious and not to be pitied. In fact, the captain being drunk quite literally saves the day on more than one occasion, and the heroes literally could not have been successful in their endeavors had the captain not been a hopeless lush.

I'll let you draw your own conclusions and thoughts from that.

"Please, Captain. I know your liver is the size of a boogie board and the consistency of a used grease rag, but for the good of the plot and sake of the world, we need you to shotgun that last sixer of Pabst...

So it's a kids movie. Whatever. That's fine. I'll stop griping about it, with the exception of one last thing that just irritated the crap out of me: Tintin speaking his interior monologues and doing the detective work in his head out loud. This...was nails on a chalk-board for me.

Just so you know what I'm talking about, every time Tintin is thinking about something...ANYTHING, he has to work it out in his head, so he does so out loud. Now this is obviously a hold over from its origins as a comic strip, where there were limited ways of showing what he was thinking, but when it's in a movie it just comes off as obnoxious and honestly making Tintin look like he needs some mental help because he seriously looks like a crazy person rambling to himself about nonsense. But how else could they possibly get plot exposition out there for all us dummies in the audience?

Oh right. He could just think it. Naturally.

He's basically this guy.

What blew my mind watching the opening credits (which admittedly were quite well done) was the cast that has been assembled here. Jamie Bell is the lead, but it also has Daniel Craig, the amazing Andy Serkis, freaking Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, Mackenzie Crook (the pirate with the wooden eye in "Pirates of The Carribean"), and Toby Jones! It's produced by Peter Jackson and the screenplay was co-written by Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, who are some of my favorite people making movies right now.

Holy. Crap. That's an awesome amount of talent. And to be fair, once again giving credit where credit is due, the cast does do a good job.

Of course, you can't really see them. You see, "The Adventures of Tintin" is CG. Why? I have no idea. It's filmed like a normal, traditional movie. Yes, there are stunts going on that are pretty outrageous but it's not like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," where these things couldn't exist in anything other than animated form. These are all people, and they are made to look fairly realistic, at least as much as the style of the characters can look realistic. It's actually kind of creepy, however. Some things should not be seen in realistic rendering.

What this ends up doing is giving a sense that there was no reason at all for this movie to be CG. Cast it in live-action and it would have still worked. The character models are already made to look a bit like their real-life counterparts. What's the big deal? There was nothing to justify it not being live-action. Heck, it might have made it better in making it not so cartoony and kid-oriented. Or maybe it's because I just want to see one movie where I get to see Andy Serkis' face!

I shall leave on this one final note of rage, because despite the fact that overall, I found "The Adventures of Tintin" to be kind of boring and annoying, there was one thing that legitimately made me mad. The rest of it was just kind of forgettable, but the one thing I can't overlook is the absolute waste of an incredible talent: Cary Elwes.

You see this guy? Right up there? Yeah. He's the man. What? Don't recognize him?

How about now?

Yeah that's what I thought. Cary Elwes is the bomb, and one of my favorite actors. I was so excited when his name appeared in the opening credits. He was listed as "Pilot" on IMDB, which I also had up and running, so I knew when a plane appeared, I would see him.

Well, the plane finally appeared! It gets shot down, and has to make a water landing. Oh man! He's getting out of the plane! He's gonna say something! Ok, he said something! What was it? Was that a French accent? Ok, they're near Morocco, that makes sense. Was that Cary? It sounded like him. Ok, now he's captured. They gonna make him talk? Is Cary gonna get to be all defiant and snooty? Wait, why isn't he saying anything? Why is he in the back of the plane just sitting there? It's been like 10 minutes, why hasn't he had another line? Ok so he's parachuting out of the plane now. And he's gone. Are we going to follow him? What happened to him?

::an hour later...credits roll::

HE NEVER COMES BACK?! WHY DID CARY ELWES ONLY GET ONE GOD DAMN LINE?!?!

One line. I couldn't believe it. You get freaking Westley from "Princess Bride" in your movie and you give him ONE LINE?!?! What's the damn point? How much did he get paid for that? He could have done that role on his lunch break! Wait, screw that. He could have done it in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee! WAIT, SCREW THAT! He could have done it in the time it takes for him to take a leak!!!

That blatant waste of incredible talent was by far the most upsetting thing to me in this otherwise lukewarm outing, and will probably be the thing I remember most about it, because of the shear incredulous nature of my reaction.

Inconceivable.

Joo kip using dat word...

THE BOTTOM LINE - "The Adventures of Tintin" doesn't suck. But it's a kids movie, and I'm just not interested in that. If you have kids, they'll have a blast, and you won't want to stab yourself in the jugular just to stop the pain, because it's not bad. But I have better things to do with my time. I just don't care, and I want Spielberg to make a movie that floors me again. Is that so much to ask? Recommended, I guess.