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Post by Jeremy on Jan 24, 2021 18:35:23 GMT -8
Since folks here have had discussions about Blade Runner and Ex Machina in the past, I'm curious if anyone has thoughts about AI: Artificial Intelligence.
I watched the film all the way through for the first time last night (had seen a few chunks of it around 2003, and was rightly horrified out of my youthful mind), and I've got mixed feelings. Despite impressive special effects (for the time) and an excellent performance by Haley Joel Osment, the film played out less like a Spielberg/Kubrick blend than a tug-o-war between their divergent styles. Individual scenes were quite good (I loved the first act, and the focus on the mother-son relationship), but a lot of the setpieces clashed with the early tone the film set up - the extended Flesh Fair scene, for instance, wobbled unevenly between creepy and ludicrous.
It was undeniably an interesting film, but also quite frustrating at times, as the whole didn't quite feel equal to the parts. It raised some interesting questions about sentience and emotion, but didn't quite explore them in the ways it initially purported to. A lot of this ground has been covered in the past, since the film is nearly 20 years old, but I'm wondering how others reacted to the film, either at the time it was released or in the years since.
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Post by ThirdMan on Jan 24, 2021 23:53:31 GMT -8
To the best of my recollection, it got a mixed response overall upon the time of its release. Years later, though, some critics ranked it as one of the best films of the decade.
Anyways, upon release, a lot of folks felt Spielberg watered down Kubrick's material, and made it more sentimental than it would've been in Kubrick's hands. Many also felt the final section felt very tacked-on. I haven't watched it in many years, so I don't have many thoughts to offer: I think I liked it, but didn't love it.
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Post by guttersnipe on Jan 25, 2021 7:13:11 GMT -8
I kinda have to chuckle about you guys talking about mixed responses, because I'll always remember that when I saw it at the cinema, I was the one of a group of six (one of the few times I've been to the movies with a substantial crowd) who loved it when everyone else hated it. I think that's around the time that I began to realise that it didn't matter to me if I was out of step and decided to always stick to my guns.
Personally I never really worried about the Kubrick/Spielberg dichotomy because I think the former's input is really more of a skein that allows Senor Spielbergo to pursue his own auteurist agenda (I'm still quite surprised that Kube actually permitted him to do it given the real umbrage he took with Schindler's List). As such, I don't think it's particularly deep or perplexing in the way it would be under the GOAT's supervision, but that's fine because I think it still fits very comfortably into Spielberg's obsessions and ouevre regarding innocence, discovery and of course, aliens.
I think the Flesh Fair actually works rather well; if it's jarring then it's only fitting because David has zero experience of anything beyond his home life, so the transition from a cosy if sterile home life to a raucous demolition derby via a heartbreaking abandonment in the woods is as grim an 'adolescence' as can be. The aesthetic helps enormously to carry the film across its triptych structure; so the first section has some warm wood furnishings and a repeatedly circular/oval motif in its designs, the 'adult' world is somewhat grimy and decaying, where the strongest colours are luridly and artificially applied (mainly in the brothel and along the highway; what Matt Groening refers to on Futurama commentaries as "the Blade Runner dark and drippy") and the final sequence has an odd mix of the coldness of the very first scene (the rain against the window, the chilliness of the student robot) and the visitors' attempt to recreate David's home so that he can feel comfortable again (if I remember correctly, their craft contrasts the circles and ovals by being really cuboid?).
I've always found it a very engrossing, visually dazzling and highly emotional pursuit, and a quite visionary take on the fairy tale. I can't recall if you like Forrest Gump, but it reminds me somewhat of its parable nature, where an entire world is unfolding around a character who is largely untouched and oblivious to his broader circumstances (David's goal at the end of the new Ice Age is exactly the same as it was as a 'son').
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Post by Jeremy on Jan 25, 2021 11:22:24 GMT -8
The responses do seem to run the gamut from "one of the best films of the '00s" to "Spielberg's biggest disaster" and everywhere in between. Which, by itself, makes it worthy of discussion.
I found the film to be visually arresting, with inventive use of near-future designs (the new technology was weaved into contemporary settings without feeling out of place). But the tonal inconsistencies tend to drag it down; a lot of the disturbing moments can come off as cheesy (like the aforementioned Flesh Fair), and vice versa (the oddball Dr. Know sequence). It is certainly an intriguing film, one which maintained my interest for nearly all its 140-minute duration - which is itself an impressive feat - but I never quite clicked with what the film was offering.
I did have a similar response to Forrest Gump, which was also fairly aloof and muddled in its messaging. But I found Gump to be more consistent overall, with an obvious sense of ironic detachment from the first scene to the last. Both engaging films despite their flaws, however; their parable settings justify some of their natural strangeness.
I should add here that I'm not much of a Kubrick fan - I tremendously respect his style and influence, but his films (at least the few I've seen) strike me as too cold and distant to really click. Had he been helming AI from start to finish, it would likely have been more consistent, but I expect I'd find it less engaging.
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Post by guttersnipe on Jan 25, 2021 14:21:34 GMT -8
But the tonal inconsistencies tend to drag it down... I never quite clicked with what the film was offering. I suppose this is the crux of where we differ in our responses and the reason why I brought up Gump as a similar parable. I think when I view the character as a somewhat immutable vehicle, it conspires to make the world-building quite interesting by his/her/its refusal to yield to it. I don't really know how else to put it, but I do completely understand why people (including the guys I watched it with at the time) found it distant or difficult. I think to a man they agreed that they didn't like the final act, but I think a) they simply wanted it to be over and b) leaving the film with David simply sinking to the depths is way darker a move than most filmmakers would take and renders the fairy tale aspect inert. Maybe if Kubrick had made it he would leave it at that (several of his films end with the protagonist's death, or the entire world being destroyed), but to me it makes the film something of a gift that he passed the baton of the idea to a man with very different sensibility and more interest in the journey of a child. His clinical approach is the most common criticism levelled at Kubrick, although I think there are plenty of colder filmmakers. Incidentally, I watched Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema this evening (it's a documentary series with each episode devoted to different subgenres of film), and tonight's was about cult movies, including the very clip from Robot Monster of the space gorilla coming out of the cave to the activity from the bubble machine thing. Remember me spending bloody ages making a GIF of that? Told y'all it was an unsung masterpiece.
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Post by Jeremy on Jan 25, 2021 19:55:28 GMT -8
Okay, okay, I admit that Robot Monster is cinematic genius. Happy? The funny thing about the AI ending is that it apparently wasn't tacked on by Spielberg - it was always Kubrick's idea to conclude the film in that fashion. Part of the reason this film has improved in reputation over time, I believe, is that more people have gone from seeing the final 20 minutes as a last-minute course-change by a new director to a man trying to retain the vision of a close friend he'd just lost. In that light, the ending is more respectable and appreciable, even if it still may not be the preferred endpoint for the story itself. Anyway, I don't mean to sound too negative toward the film, which I generally did like. And even the parts that feel clinical or distant justify themselves in doing so. Most of the principal characters are not naturally emotional beings, so obviously there will be some inherent coldness to their exploits.
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Post by guttersnipe on Jan 26, 2021 4:13:44 GMT -8
Ah right, I couldn't really remember some of the circumstances of the production (I was back in school then!), despite buying the special edition DVD on day one, which genuinely irritated one of said friends who'd gone with me to the cinema.
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Post by Jeremy on Jan 27, 2021 21:01:04 GMT -8
I was really not a fan of Team America: World Police. There is some impressive puppetry in the film (and in some cases, impressive in being intentionally awful), but on the whole it felt unfocused, scattershot, and overlong. And... it just wasn't funny. Lots of cheap jokes of both the political and scatological variety, many of them stale and predictable. I'm not the biggest South Park fan, but that show can produce biting satire by focusing on a topic and shredding it for 22 minutes. Team America is four times the length of a South Park episode, doesn't focus on any topic outside of the broad and buzzy War on Terror, and continually goes for all the obvious jokes. I didn't even click with the action-movie parodies. (A Matrix freeze-frame gag? That was dated even in 2004.)
There were some things I liked. The celebrity cameos were pretty funny, because it is always amusing to mock Hollywood actors giving their non-acting-related opinions. (The Alec Baldwin scenes are arguably even funnier now than they were at the time the film was made.) And some of the musical numbers were pretty funny - the "Pearl Harbor Sucked" song was my favorite part of the film.
But unfortunately, most of the comedy fell flat. Maybe it would have clicked if I had watched it back when its targets were more current, but I was a kid back then and it would have doubtlessly warped my then-impressionable brain.
(Side note, I was impressed that they didn't bother creating a marionette version of Sean Penn, but instead got the actor to play himself. Hahaha! If that joke struck you as obvious and immature, you understand how I felt watching Team America.)
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Post by guttersnipe on Jan 28, 2021 7:24:30 GMT -8
Well, speaking as one of the few (?) people who has seen both Team America and Svankmajer's Alice, I hope that your latest venture into puppetry hasn't put you off the genre, because they're very much cut from a different cloth, despite both being quite literally cut from cloth.
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Post by Jeremy on Jan 28, 2021 18:36:32 GMT -8
Bwaha! No, I'm still up for more puppet shenangans. (Case in point, the complete run of Dinosaurs will finally be available to stream this weekend, according to the latest news reports from Howard Handupme.) I'll check out Alice at some point.
I think part of my issue with some of these puppet films is that they require the writers/actors to give the lead characters a lot of personality to compensate for the relative lack of expression. The Muppets have great, well-defined personalities honed over several decades, but most of the puppets in Team America are kind of blank slates, so their characters wear thin pretty quick. Although credit where its due, at least Team America never really tries to take itself too seriously or provide a Serious Dramatic Backstory to its expressionless leads the way Happytime did.
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Post by ThirdMan on Jan 28, 2021 20:00:45 GMT -8
I am SHOCKED that Jeremy didn't like Team America. SHOCKED, I say!
Well, not really. I just wanted Jeremy to be subjected to filth. F**K YEAH!
BTW, the reason they had Matt Damon's puppet speak like that isn't because Parker and Stone have any issues with the actor. It was simply because the mould of the puppet came out looking stupid, so they rolled with it.
Anyways, do you mean to tell me that you didn't even laugh when the "black panthers" were released to maul the Hollywood elite? I don't remember many specific moments from the movie, but that part definitely got me.
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Post by Jeremy on Jan 28, 2021 21:09:53 GMT -8
The "black panther" scene was cute. Reminded me of a similar scene in The Lego Ninjago Movie, albeit (no surprise) more graphic. Overall, I did get a few laughs from the celebrity scenes, although I indeed did not know what to make of the Matt Damon puppet.
And yes, congratulations J.C., I can never un-see the things I've seen in this film. Nicely done!
In other news, I watched A Town Called Panic today, and found it positively delightful. The animation is simple yet incredibly effective, and the film has a loosey-goosey vibe that it sustains throughout its running time, conjuring up one ludicrous idea after another. (The best part is when the horse misses his piano lesson because he and the cowboy and Indian fell into the center of the earth and were later captured by a giant robot penguin.) It's such an utterly charming, endlessly silly film, and watching it in French somehow made it even funnier. The often hilariously-unfitting voices, coupled with the subtitles, are a joy to listen to.
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Post by guttersnipe on Jan 29, 2021 7:53:46 GMT -8
Excellent, glad you enjoyed it! I rewatched it recently and had actually forgotten about one of my favourite gags which is when Horse has to take a phone call from his piano teacher as to why he's missed practice without admitting that he's currently climbing out of the earth's core, and drops the phone in the lava resulting in fire blasting out the receiver at the other end.
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Post by Jeremy on Jan 29, 2021 12:08:32 GMT -8
I burst out laughing at that scene. So goofy, yet so inspired. The entire film was filled with that kind of cheerful absurdist nonsense (the moment when the characters literally plug in the sawfish is another highlight).
In terms of 2009's overall animated output, it probably still wouldn't make my Top 5 (Up, Coraline, Cloudy/Meatballs, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Mary & Max), but that's hardly a criticism. Just an impressive year all around.
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Post by Jeremy on Feb 2, 2021 20:03:08 GMT -8
Watching The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption within a few weeks of each other was an interesting experience, since it emphasizes the similarities and the contrasts between the two. Most tellingly, Shawshank is such an obviously superior film (better pacing, shorter running time, less ludicrous plot elements) that I'm tempted to go back and knock a half-star off my Green Mile score. Oh well.
Anyway, I don't have a great excuse for not watching Shawshank before now (I was planning to see it about ten years ago, but at the time was not allowed to watch films featuring certain prison scenes, so I ended up forgetting about it for a while), nor do I have much to add. It is interesting to me that Tim Robbins starred in this the same year as Hudsucker Proxy, such a vastly different film in tone and style, yet he feels perfectly at home in both of them.
But yeah, Shawshank is a great film, and now I want to rewatch the prison episode of Green Eggs and Ham for all the in-jokes.
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