Viewing Thread:
"Damnit Spielburg!"

Watching Minority Report the other day, and it's really quite a good movie.

Until Agatha starts talking about what the kidnapped son would have been like had he have lived.

Then at the end, when Tom Cruise and his Missus are back together and are having a new baby.

Oh how sweet. How bloody lovely. How stupid and sickening and so like bloody Steven Spielburg to stick a piece of crap like this into the movie when it really didn't need it.

Minority Report was good if they left it with the bloke shooting himself.

But what happens?

Spielberg "This isn't happy enough"
Audience "We like it, it's been resolved. Although I must admit I was shocked when Cruise actually did shoot the kidnap man"
Spielberg "No, I want to jet my happy-joy onto the last 20 mins again"
Audience "But we're fed up with you doing that."
Spielberg "You must leave feeling happy and serene and lovely."
Audience "No, we're grown ups thanks. Just as Private Ryan didn't need some weeping old man as bookends, and AI really should have stopped at the ocean floor"
Spielberg "No, I must make sugar ending...nnnnnngggg...nnnnggggg"
Audience "Oh jesus he's going to spum his twisted, rich white-man version of happy onto the screen now"
Narrator "And the precogs all lived in a cabin on an island for ever and ever"
Audience "Hang on, so your idea of happiness is a tech-free utopia? But you use cutting edge visuals and CGI. This doesn't make sense"
Spielberg "War is Hell"
Audience "And what's up with re-editing ET you beardy wizard?"
Spielberg "That had guns in. Guns are bad"
Audience "I'm leaving now. You have become a McDirector, tossing out sterile, Hallmark versions of your once-celebrated 70s heyday moments of true cinema magic"

AI was great although the ending did suck massive donkey balls. It should have indeed ended on the ocean floor, which I thought in the cinema it had done.....but no, it had to go on!

10,000 years later or whatever....it's like something out of Monty Python. And that ending voice over. "David had never had a birthday so they baked a cake." That was too much. I almost died the first time!

Anyway, I borrowed Minority Report on DVD off my mate the other day having only seen it once in the cinema. I've tried to watch it twice now but I keep starting too late. The first time I got half an hour through before falling asleep and the following night I passed out about 5 minutes after I put it on. I'll try again tonight, but yes I remember that scene with Agatha talking about Sean and it was sickening. The ending itslef though wasn't really all that happy considering the murder rate was going to skyrocket! I suppose the pregnancy was a bit much though. Damn you Spielberg and your Matthew Perry-ness.

AI, was crap. The ending was possbily the most torturous piece of cinema I've ever watched. It shouldn't have ended on the ocean floor, it should never have been allowed to get that far.

Yeah, he does that a lot. To be fair, the ending of Minority Report wasn't all sugary toss, all the crims are let back on the streets and I liked the fact that Cruise was a drug user. Now AI, that was a disappointing ending. It was great, all the way up to the ocean floor, then he blew it. Aliens? Why? It made me feel dirty.

Magnolia rules.
From the "This, lord, cannot be just one of those things" opening right up to the finale.
One of my favs.

The problem with Spielberg is he feels the need to blow his sugary wad over the end of all his films.
Minority Report was excellent, right up until the end.
Same as Private Ryan and the "Tell me I've been good" speech and crying old man.
Same as AI. Should have ended at the ocean floor but nooooooo, Spielberg has to use his soft-focus, god-light moral uppity beard to make us all go "Aaaah".
He admitted in an interview that he could never make Close Encounters now

"I couldn't have Roy Neary abandoning his family to go onboard the mothership. I was younger then, the character acting out of pure self-interest was appealing."

Here - don't question PTA, the man has four movies to his name, each one a blinder. Magnolia is like an opera taken and somehow switched into film. It has the most graceful direction backed up by simply outstanding acting, a three hour film that feels brief.

Grix Thraves wrote:
> Best I've ever seen Cruise was in Magnolia.

Magnolia is probably the most over hyped load of trash i have ever seen.
I watched it when I was 12 and didnt fully understand it, maybe I will give it another go.

I liked Vanilla sky, I think that is Cruise's best performance.

Best I've ever seen Cruise was in Magnolia.

BEARDS. wrote:
> I'm hoping that one day Hollywood will release a good film in the
> style of The Outer Limits, where it will all seem to be going
> excellently right up to the last minute where they show how it's all
> gone terribly wrong.

Ahh yes, I love how it all ends tragically.

That program was great