Ready Player One (4/5 Stars)

Steven Spielberg, the father of blockbuster, made his splash in the genre in 1975 with the movie Jaws. In addition to being a great action movie, it had a great “making of” story. Apparently the main reason Spielberg kept the shark off-screen for most of the movie was because he couldn’t get his fake-looking mechanical shark to work. He spent most of the making of the movie innovating off of the top of his head various ways to accomplish the presence of a fearsome creature while not actually showing it. Contrast this situation with his latest Ready Player One, a movie backed by fully mature computer technology that can materialize anything Spielberg could possibly want and then some with an absurd ease. The climax of the movie is an insanely complex battle that takes place on an entirely digital snowscape with entirely digital characters, the most notable being Mecha-Godzilla and the Iron Giant. Think about it: only forty-three years ago, Spielberg couldn’t get his shark to work. The seemingly exponential progress of the visual arts in movies is absolutely mind-blowing.

Ready Player One seems preternaturally designed to exploit this new capability. The movie takes place in 2045 in a dystopic version of Columbus, Ohio. Apparently the outside world has turned to shit, so everyone now spends their lives in a virtual reality called the Oasis. The Oasis is everything you could possibly want it to be and you can be anybody you want to be in it (at least physically). It was dreamed up by a man named Halliday (played by Mark Rylance). It has rules much like World of Warcraft and leans heavily an ethos of ultimate freedom i.e. anarchy. Apparently if you kill someone in the Oasis, you get to keep all of their digital money and purchases. This lawlessness has seeped into the real world. A giant corporation has monopoly power on much of the Oasis and uses rent seeking to gain more. It also has a sort of debtor’s prison set up, where if you go into debt buying their stuff, you can end it up in a box in a warehouse in the real world spending your days mining virtual gold.

What drives the plot in Ready Player One is the last wishes of the Oasis creator. Apparently he hid an Easter Egg somewhere in the Oasis. The person who finds it, gets control of the entire thing. The Oasis creator also really loved 1980s pop culture, so every character who wants to find the Easter Egg has to steep himself in that stuff. In fact, there is a scene where the CEO of the evil corporation (who not coincidentally looks exactly like the principal in “The Breakfast Club”) tries to buy the services of our humble hero Wade. He attempts to do this by making a lot of 1980s pop culture reference, as if you know, he really cared about that stuff.

I for one do not care about 1980s pop culture references and believe that any author/screenwriter who believes that anyone in the 2045 would care is delusional. As Mr. Spielberg is responsible for many of the 1980s references himself, one could add the term narcissistic to delusional. And on a personal note, I have a general protest against metaness, in this case a heavy reliance on references to 1980s pop culture. Meta-ness is a bit like telling the same joke twice. It is remembering how great and/or funny some thing in the past was, which is generally an inferior experience to viewing something great and/or funny right now. (Why watch a movie that relies on your memory of past movies to work? Why not just rewatch the old movie? That is what I say.) But its not correct to simply attack the conceit of the movie without addressing how a movie is about it. Putting aside the silliness of the idea and the inferiority of meta-ness, the movie is well made. I mean that first car chase scene. Amazing.

My favorite part of this movie is the inclusion of a mercenary character named I-R0k, who is unmistakably voiced by the great T.J. Miller. The character looks like a bad ass. He has a cavity in the shape of a skull in the middle of his torso. However, he talks like a total nerd and gives away the underlying absurdity of this world, that however elaborate and mind-blowing it looks, it is actually just a bunch of people in trailer parks sitting on their couches wearing goggles.

Given how far the visual capabilities in movies have come in the last fifty years, it seems like it should continue to progress. But look at this movie, what is left to be accomplished in this field. What can be done visually that has not already been done before? Perhaps at this point, when visual delights like this become routine and maybe boring, the movies will come full circle and recreate the problem Spielberg encountered in Jaws. That is, the shark wasn’t working so he could not rely on anything visual to create action and suspense. Instead, he focused on story and character. If scenes like the war in Ready Player One become common-place, and there is nowhere bigger and elaborate to go, perhaps the movies will finally get back to the basics of storytelling.

Bridge of Spies (4/5 Stars)

Steven Spielberg has been around so long now that it is fair to say that his style isn’t like old school filmmaking as much as it is old school filmmaking. His fluid framing, the polish of the dialogue, and the frequency of virtuous themes represent the Platonic ideal all other filmmaking either imitate, elaborate upon, or reject. “Bridge of Spies,” has all the hallmarks of a very by the book movie. There are no missteps mainly because the movie takes very few chances. If you are acquainted with Spielberg, you will recognize a lot of his signature moves that he has already proven are effective in many other movies. “Bridge of Spies” is the safest movie in theaters right now. I doubt there will be many people who won’t like it. But isn't like this is Spielberg's best movie as much as it feels like a breather between great movies.

“Bridge of Spies,” is a historical period piece set in the Cold War late 1950s about an admirable man named James Donovan. He was an insurance lawyer who was summoned to represent in court a captured soviet spy named Rudolph Abel (played by Mark Rylance). Nobody really wants Abel to not be anything other than guilty but at the same time there is this whole American Constitution thing and everybody deserves a capable defense. Donovan proves capable enough to save his client from execution.

Then things take an interesting turn when an American spy named Francis Gary Powers is shot down over Russia. Donovan is called upon to negotiate an exchange of spies. This will all know from our history books, he succeeds at doing. What makes this story new (and probably why Spielberg chose to make a movie about it) is the revelation that Donovan went out of his way to also exchange a release of an American student named Prior from East Germany at the same time. The U.S. government really doesn’t care whether the student gets released as long as Powers comes back so Donovan’s mission is entirely altruistic and self-imposed. He is in fact negotiating not only with the Soviets, the East Germans, but also the C.I.A. And he deserves every bit the title of master negotiator. Donovan is played by Tom Hanks perfectly cast as a smart idealistic American everyman.

The movie is but a series of conversations and it is to the credit of Spielberg and the writers (which happen to include Joel and Ethan Coen) that there is an intriguing amount of trick storytelling that interrupt the what could have been easily stale scenes. Actually we can look a little further into some specific scenes because it is a really good example of superior filmmaking. Take for instance the scene where James Donovan brings up the idea of representing the spy to his wife and children around the dinner table. What needs to happen in this scene is he has to tell his wife about the case and she has to voice the reasons not to do it: social shame, helping the soviets, somebody else’s problem, etc. The scene has a subplot to it. In the previous scene Donovan has his assistant cancel a dinner date to work late on the new case (it is after all just a Tuesday.) At the family dinner Donovan’s daughter reveals that she was just stood up by her boyfriend. It becomes clear that the daughter and the assistant are dating but Donovan doesn’t know it. This is pretty funny and is good for a couple of laughs. Now the interesting part: the scene ends and the daughter and the assistant are never heard from again in the entire movie. That is to say the subplot is a red herring whose sole function is to provide some laughs during the dinner table scene not because these are important characters. Or take the scene where Donovan meets the East German ambassador for the first time. The ambassador pours two drinks while his back is to Donovan. He turns around with the two glasses. The camera tilts down to look at the glasses and then tilts back up to see Hanks’ quizzical expression. This camera move and the expressions stereotypically imply that the drink might be poisoned. The drink isn’t poisoned and there will never be a poisoning in the movie but Speilberg inserted those moves in for purposes of suspense for the sake of suspense. After all the audience does not know whether the drink is poisoned (or whether the previously mentioned romantic subplot goes anywhere) so it does not really matter whether it is or not as long as the audience feels that it might be for a moment and becomes more involved in the scene. This sort of thing shows off Spielberg’s knowledge of a movie audience's general attention span. Right when a talking scene might start to get boring he will figure out a way to instill some suspense or some joke whether it has anything to do with the storyline or not and it always works. 

 

One more thing should get some notice and that is the performance of Mark Rylance as the Soviet spy Rudolph Abel. He underplays the role in such a sublime way that it becomes almost comedic. He is not afraid of the U.S. government as much as he is just resigned to everything. He does not particularly care whether he gets a defense or not. At one point he comments, “The boss is not always right, but he is always the boss.” What an incredibly Soviet thing to say. Whereas when an injustice happens to an American he may actually get mad about it or worry about the outcome. The difference I suppose is that in America our ideals and rights give us hope that justice may prevail and so a fight for justice is worth it. 

Why do I feel like somebody is trying to teach me something. Anyway good movie, Dad. 

Lincoln (5/5 Stars)

Hmmmm….yummy political sausage….nomnom

Movies about the political process are about as rare as movies about marriage. We tend to romanticize politics by only making movies about campaigns, that romantic engagement between candidate and constituency, whose love for each other is consummated on election night right before the credits roll. Then like every romantic comedy that ends with a wedding we are left with the impression that everyone lived happily ever after. Love never faltered and the impassioned promises made in the campaign speeches were borne into reality by magical political storks. Abracadabra. Getting hitched/elected was the hard part and everything after was easy.

“Lincoln” the newest directorial effort from Steven Spielberg, is that incredibly rare movie that is about the actual work of being a politician. In it, our 16^th President, Abraham Lincoln, spearheads an effort to get the 13^th Amendment, which abolished slavery, passed by the required two-thirds vote in the United States House of Representatives. How rare is it for a movie to be about passing a bill in Congress? Well, according to what I’ve rated on Netflix, I have seen 1700 movies. I went through them all to find something similar on this topic. I found almost nothing. There are a few television series that have successfully written about the political process (Aaron Sorkin’s ‘West Wing,’ Armando Ianucci’s “Veep,” David Simon’s “The Wire) but to find a political movie that was not directly concerned with an election, I had to go all the way back to 1939’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Is it not amazing that whenever filibuster reform is discussed on the 24-hour news networks that they keep bringing up a movie from 1939? We literally do not have a more current movie to draw upon for examples of the political process. All we have is “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and that short cartoon from schoolhouse rock “I’m Just a Bill.” So when I say that “Lincoln” is the best movie I have ever seen about Democracy, you can take that with a grain of salt. The bar is extremely low.

“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” is a decent movie and great democratic propaganda for a nation on the edge of an apocalyptic war with fascism and communism, but it still makes the same goddamn mistake that every political movie has made since and in my opinion what has completely gridlocked the legislative branch we currently have. That mistake is the idea that an impassioned speech about principles will somehow convince the other side to change their position. It was bullshit when it worked in the 1939 movie and it is bullshit now. What I love most about “Lincoln” is that it shows politics how it should be done: down and dirty in the mud of power, greed, and nasty compromises.

For this reason and how it is so clearly and efficiently represented, the writer Tony Kushner should win an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The job performed is to represent all constituencies that Abraham Lincoln has to appease to in order to pass the Amendment. There is the Conservative Republican led by Preston Blair (Hal Holbrook) who are anti-slavery but prize the preservation of the Union above all else. Lincoln has to promise them that he will take into consideration any peace offer by the Confederates, even if slavery is to remain intact, if it will end the war. Lincoln has to keep this secret though from the Radical Republicans led by the abolitionist firebrand Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones). The radicals are not merely for equality before the law but total racial equality (i.e. going into the south, breaking up plantations and redistributing property amongst the ex-slaves). Lincoln has to temper the positions of this voting block in order to make the idea of a 13^th Amendment palatable to everyone else. But even if Lincoln gets the unanimous support of all the Republicans in Congress he still needs twenty Democrat votes to get past 2/3rds. Practically all these votes are pro-slavery. So Lincoln decides to call upon three “fixers” from Albany (James Spader, John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson) to do some bribing. They focus on lame duck congressman who have lost the past election and will be out of a job come the next term. They are offered political posts like postmasters and treasury secretaries in exchange for a “Yes” on the 13^th Amendment. Each voter has his own opinions and motivations. It takes extremely good writing to get everything explained in such a way that is clear, creates suspense, and does not bog down the momentum of the story. It is accomplished and then some with enough room for Kushner to throw in updates from the Civil War and some domestic strife for Lincoln to deal with, i.e. the hysteria of his historically crazy wife Mary Todd (Sally Field) and the wishes of his son Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to join a war effort that has already cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

This is all rather serious stuff; so much so that one of this movie’s greatest attributes is that it is also consistently funny. The three “fixers” provide a good part of the comedic relief but the main component of humor is Abraham Lincoln himself, played brilliantly by Daniel Day-Lewis. It has often been chronicled that the historical Lincoln was a great joke and storyteller and in this movie we are treated to a retelling of his best material. Have you ever heard of the one about Ethan Allan and the portrait of George Washington in an English outhouse?

The portrayal of Lincoln in this movie does great justice to the man as a politician. Many times I have read about politicians who were great at actually getting things done as opposed to politicians who were just great at making speeches (think LBJ and FDR as opposed to JFK and BHO). One consistent attribute is the ability to making others believe that they are in agreement without any real commitment being made. There are many great examples of that being done in this movie by Lincoln. The trick is to listen thoughtfully and then tell a rather vague yet humorous story. For instance in the beginning of the movie, Lincoln is speaking to a couple of black soldiers. The black soldiers speak of equal pay with white soldiers and having black officers someday. Then they press Lincoln on what will happen to them after the war. “I’m not very good at shining shoes and cutting hair,” one says. Lincoln then makes a self-deprecating joke about how hard it is for anyone to cut his hair. “My last barber committed suicide,” he jokes. Then the conversation is interrupted by a couple of other soldiers and the conversation topic is eluded. Classic Politician. This great technique goes back thousands of years all the way to Jesus. Instead of focusing on the details of current policy that can lead to many minor points of contention, tell a parable vague enough that everyone can agree with it in theory. The fact that Lincoln was able to do this in private and at the same time actually craft a definite specific policy that successfully passed is the essence of his genius. I am of the opinion that it takes genius to aptly portray genius and that is what makes this one of the best movies of the year.  

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (5/5 Stars)

Billions of Blistering Blue Barnacles!

When Steven Spielberg’s action-adventure classic “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark,” opened in France way back in 1981, plenty of the reviews kept on repeating an obscure word, Tintin. Curious as to what the French word meant, Spielberg asked for a translator to find out. It turns out the French critics were consistently comparing Indiana Jones with a long cherished French series of comic books by Herge named “The Adventures of Tintin.” Indiana and Tintin had plenty in common. They were both intrepid adventurers (Indiana an archeologist and Tintin a journalist) whose exploits brought them to exotic locales in search of mysterious artifacts or ancient treasure. Both stories employed a break neck pace of action adventure and situational humor, not to mention some classic colorful characters met along the way.  So it is no wonder that Spielberg (with much help from Peter Jackson) would be the perfect choice to adapt Tintin into a movie and apparently has been working on this one off and on for more than twenty five years. As one who has read almost every single Tintin comic book (they are great!) I can say that this movie could not have been done better. It is Tintin and everything that was great about it. I hope they make many sequels. If you were one of those that were disappointed by the last Indiana Jones movie, than you must go and see this one. It is exactly what you want from that type of movie.

The plotline of this movie takes elements from several great Tintin books, most noticeably “The Crab with the Golden Claws,” “Red Rackham’s Treasure,” and especially “The Secret of the Unicorn.” Tintin notices a model ship of the pirate Red Rackham’s 17^th century galleon at a flea market and pays a pound for it. Almost immediately other interested parties ask to buy the ship from him. They give him dire warnings. Tintin takes the boat home with his journalistic curiosity fired up. He does research on Red Rackham at the library and comes home to find his apartment ransacked. There is something about that boat that people want! Could it hold the secret to Red Rackham’s lost treasure! What follows is a series of holdups, secret messages, code-breaking, marvelous coincidences that lead to strange far off adventures, espionage, intrigue, and the like. Tintin (voiced by Jamie Bell) is accompanied by his faithful dog Snowy. Along the way he meets an alcoholic skipper named Archibald Haddock who has a tendency for swearing colorful phrases like “Billions of Blistering Blue Barnacles!” and happens to be one of the two last descendants of an age old feud between two pirates, Captain Haddock and Red Rackham. Captain Haddock is played by Andy Serkis, the best motion capture actor in the business (he also did Gollum, King Kong, and the Ape in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”). The last descendant of Red Rackham is played by Daniel Craig. There are also plenty of thugs with guns that like to capture and kidnap Tintin and to be outwitted by an escaping Tintin. We are also treated to two bumbling police officers named Thomson and Thompson. They are identical twins that wear the same black suits and bowler hats so try not to get them mixed up. They are voiced by the comedic duo of Nick Frost and Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz), an inspired choice of casting if there ever was one.

The Adventures of Tintin employs the best use of animated motion capture that I have ever seen. This is a particular type of animation that was pioneered by Peter Jackson for the character of Gollum in LOTR and made into entire movies by Robert Zemeckis. It is a poor substitute for live action in that the humans never quite escape the uncanny valley (this was one of my main dislikes with a movie such as Beowulf), but since Tintin is a comic strip, the characters make more sense inhabiting the uncanny valley than they would in the real live action world. The Tintin drawings themselves were rather simplistic. To search for an actor that looked exactly like Tintin would have resulted in finding a pretty weird looking actor. It is better this way.

Not to mention the control that animation gives the makers in constructing some ridiculously intricate action sequences. Take a look at the climatic chase scene that starts at a palatial villa and goes all the way down to the Oceanside through winding streetscapes while a tidal wave of water from the local dam gushes down right behind them. It is shown almost entirely in one shot without any edits or changes in camera angles. This is something that would be impossible to shoot in live action, but since it is animation we get to view a ridiculously intricate sequence that never cheats or confuses. The planning that must have gone into it was obviously extensive and the result is very good. Of course a movie that is live action like “Mission Impossible” will always be more effective thrills wise (you won’t get vertigo watching an animated film) but that doesn’t mean animation can’t be exciting or fun and Tintin is all of that.

The Adventures of Tintin should be a lock for the Oscar for Best Animated Picture. This should be the first time in many years that Pixar (Cars 2) does not come home with the trophy. 

War Horse (4/5 Stars)

Have you ever noticed in war movies just how lucky the main character always seems? Like for instance, if the army is charging into impending doom, than the people on the left may get shot and the people on the right may get shot, but the hero always seems to go unscathed. Bombs go off nearby but they never seem to hit their mark. At the end, the hero is surrounded by a sea of corpses, but he always is not dead, or if he does die, it always happens in the final battle, you know the one right before the movie ends. This may not be realistic but it is a basic necessity of storytelling. If you killed off the main character in the middle, then well, where does the story go from there? We aren’t all geniuses like Hitchcock.

“War Horse,” is an ingenious solution to that problem. In this movie, we follow a horse, not a person through the mire of World War I. The horse impossibly survives (as it must for storytelling reasons) but the various people that own it are still subject to the dangers of the War. In effect, because a horse is not much of a main character even though the story follows it, we are introduced to and say goodbye to a series of main characters that are not required by the storyline to have blindingly good luck. When they should die, they do. Moreover since the horse is not a person, it has the ability to be captured and switch sides in the war. The warhorse here does exactly that, starting off with the British, than being captured by the Germans, and back and forth again. Since everybody the horse meets is neither too cruel nor vicious, the movie, even though it takes place in a war, does not have a bad guy or evil side. So unlike other war movies where you would root for the good side because you don’t want the good guy to die or the bad guy to live, in this one you just want the war to end. As anti-war movie structures go, this particular one is rather ingenious.

The emotion and dialogue of this movie remind me of very old movies. There was less cynicism in those movies (perhaps because of the time or perhaps because the movies weren't very good) and that lent them a certain unapologetic sappiness. For that reason, this movie is kind of hard to get into, particularly in the beginning when there isn’t a war going on. The movie makes a big deal about the horse being able to plow a rocky field. An actual crowd of neighbors turns out to yell inspirational things as if they were in a Disney movie about an underdog sports team while the surly landlord becomes disgruntled because the farmers may actually be able to pay the rent and keep living on the land. It’s a bit too much for peacetime. When the war starts to pick up, the forthrightness and sincerity of the characters feels a bit more comfortable. In a life and death situation, a certain level of sappiness can be forgiven and even be appealing. The ending is ridiculously beautiful or plainly ridiculous depending on how you feel about group hugs and glorious sunsets that tint the entire landscape a golden hue of sepia. I liked it. I also like how we have apparently gotten to the point in special effects where we can manipulate the rate of snowfall to that exact point where it looks the most beautiful and not the least bit cold. The cinematographer of the movie, Janusz Kiminski, should be a shoo-in for an Oscar Nomination.

There is something that is rather weird about this movie. Look at the posters and the commercials and the unapologetic sappiness. This is being sold as a family movie and it is rated PG-13. At the same time, the director Steven Spielberg (same guy who directed such very R historical masterpieces like “Schindler’s List,” and “Saving Private Ryan.”) has once again done his homework. We see the arc of World War I, from the first fights on horseback to the stalemate of trench warfare. We are also treated to the murder of deserters; the horror of waiting for the artillery to maybe hit your part of the trench; the suicidal nature of a trench assault against machine guns; and to top it all off, a nerve gas attack. This is a PG-13 movie. The way Spielberg pulls this off is by a conspicuous lack of blood. We may see a line of men run into machine gun fire, but when they are hit with bullets, they merely scream out, crumple, and collapse.  There is however no blood. Even when the camera zooms out over the battlefield for a crane shot, we may see a field littered with corpses, but the kids should be unaffected because the corpses aren't leaking blood. And when a 14 year-old-boy is executed by a firing squad for deserting, for the sake of the children, the camera is conveniently located behind a rotating windmill. So we see the boy standing there with a firing squad in front of him. The windmill rotates and obscures the boy for a moment, the firing squad shoots their guns, the windmill moves again, and reveals the now dead corpse of the boy on the ground. Thank God for the kids that there is no blood. PG-13.

This is disconcerting for a couple of reasons. First of all, are we really fooling the kids? They aren’t stupid. If someone gets shot with a gun and dies, they have obviously violently died no matter how much blood is actually seen. And if we hear guns going off and see the dead corpse of a boy that was one moment before still alive, isn’t it obvious what happened whether a windmill partially obscured our view of the event or not. Secondly, isn’t it a bit disrespectful to the people who died in the war by pussyfooting around what actually happened? (Deserters were indeed shot in WWI.) At least that is what I thought was the very point Spielberg was making when he bluntly showed how people died in “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan.” There was something very noble about those movies. Spielberg made you look the characters in the eyes and recognize their humanity before they were brutally killed. It wasn’t glamorous and it wasn’t gratuitous. It just was. I’ve got nothing against family films and nothing against realistically violent war movies, but to combine the two harms both genres. This movie should have been rated R and there should have been blood. If you want to make a nice family movie, don't make it about the horrors World War I. 

One of the lasting legacies of Steven Spielberg is what he has done to the MPAA ratings system. No other single director has made such a big impression on it. The very reason we have a PG-13 at all is because Steven Spielberg somehow got “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” rated PG. Lots of parents took their little kids to see it and sort of thought that the whole tear-out-the-heart-for-a-human-sacrifice scene a bit too much. (By the way I love that movie.) Then with “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan” he introduced the rule that no level of violence would ever make a movie NC-17. Now he has again raised the bar for violence in a PG-13 movie by killing an untold amount of people of all ages. In his defense, Spielberg gets away with this because all of these movies are very good and basically respectful. The problem is that our rating system is objective, so if a movie director wanted to do something really disgusting on the PG-13 level, all he would have to do is point to “War Horse,” and say, “See, if this has already been done before why aren't you letting me do it.”

Oh well, maybe if we split PG-13 into PG-10 and PG-15.


 

Indiana Jones: The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 06/04/08

Indiana Jones is good enough. By that I mean it doesn't do what numerous sequels have done and make you wish the movie was never made at all. This movie is mediocre true, but at least Indy doesn't suffer a harsh fate like the Bruce Willis' John McClane (Die Hard) whose wife divorces him before every sequel or Tommy Lee Jones' Agent K (Men in Black) who also gets dumped as a sacrifice to an inferior sequel. The worst perhaps was Sigourney Weaver's tragic fate between Aliens and Alien 3. At least Harrison Ford's entire family doesn't die nor is he somehow impregnated with a killer ET. Instead Indy is reunited with an old flame from the 1st movie, Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), and they actually hit it off together. How sweet. 
It's also good to note that Spielberg's fun action chops are still in good form also. There are a duo of good chases sequences, a couple nice fist fights, and I especially liked the addition of man eating ants to the lexicon of snakes, bugs, and rats.
Shia LeBouf, although an actor I respect, doesn't scream action hero or greaser badass to me. I'm not sure who I would cast in his stead but I'd be surprised if there weren't a better unknown out there. Someone with a little more dangerous edge. Cate (the Great) Blanchett also leaves something to be desired as the Soviet dominatrix Dr. Irina Spalko. Try as she might I couldn't help but be reminded of that movie cliche 'the Implausibly tough girl.' Is it really believable that she can do all those physical feats with that skinny build.
Still Shia and Cate are never entirely unenjoyable. What huge flaw this movie has concerns the aliens, which in this movie take the place of earlier mystical stalwarts like God and Indian Voodoo. The problem with aliens though is that they don't come equipped with any real sense of purpose. I mean, I can understand why God hates Nazis or why a Cultish deity would desire blood sacrifice, but I don't get why aliens would especially dislike Soviets. I still don't understand how Cate actually met her fate or why the aliens would want to kill her. If Lucas and Spielberg could have given reasonable motivation to the ET's I think this movie could have been just as good as the other three. 
There is still plenty to like here though. I especially like the fifties stereotypes. The Anti-communist rally, the fight between the squares and greasers, and especially the completely unexpected involvement of a (Spoiler Alert!) nuclear blast. (Spoiler Ended) 
Almost Spielberg and Lucas Almost. They haven't killed the franchise yet by the way. They could conceivably make another one and I would probably find my way to seeing it. 

(The last movie I saw at the Odeon in Firenze)

Munich 01/09/06

This movie is three hours long. That's a long time. I wasn't expecting it to be that long. Once I felt the two hour mark go by I was always looking for the inevitable telling signs of the conclusion. I was looking for them for about an hour. There's a real problem here and it's all about pace. Spielberg is a genius in the commercial thriller sense. If there's an action sequence, this guy can do it. But almost noone can do it for three hours straight. A movie that moves this fast has only the energy for two hours max, Otherwise simpleminded viewers like me get tired of the constant action. Which I did. 
Another thing to point out for future reference. (Again all due respect to Spielberg, great filmmaker with good intentions). Thriller and 'prayer for peace' don't exactly mesh. He moved the camera too much. This three hour movie needed a slower pace to fulfill the time requirement. Less is more they say. Here it is.
If I must say another thing. I don't really know that much about the Munich 'incident' that this film is based on. After watching the movie, I still don't know any exacting details of what happened. It's shown in brief and only for the purpose of spurring the story of vengeance exacted by Israeli secret agents. I got the feeling that Spielberg already assumed I knew everything about it. Like what happened, when it happened, how it happened, and what exactly was Black September. I have a suggestion, maybe a little brash, but here it is: It may have been a better idea not to base this story on any real events. Maybe Spielberg should have just made the whole thing up. That way he could give his message, tell it the best way he can, and wouldn't have to deal with all the critics who say he didn't get it right. I mean all the characters technically don't exist anyway right. Right, exactly my point.
As I conclude I feel I must say something about the good parts. I liked the reality of it. The way that assasinations never seem to go completely right. That the assassins make mistakes. The fact that they have to rely on those who aren't trustworthy. That once a man starts killing, he becomes overwhelmed by the fear that those harmed will seek revenge. This movie shows those realities that most movies don't show. This may not be a perfect movie, but it is honorable. It's a prayer for peace.