I include this, not because it pissed me off, but because I enjoyed it and felt guilty about it afterwards. No plot holes, no unbelievable behavior, just the basic premise: At an elite private girls’ boarding school in the early ‘60s, the students (for proto-feminist reasons) stage an uprising to stop a plan to merge with a boys’ school. At the end, when a bunch of them on horseback (and in full fox-hunting gear) ride in to block the cops from the besieged dorm, I’m going, “YEAH! Power to the . . . rich, overprivileged schoolgirls! . . . Wait . . .”
I’m not basing my opinion of the movie on what my co-workers had to say. I am using the anecdotal evidence of what my co-workers got from the film to stand against your sweeping baseless generalization.
I’m not trying to convince anyone of what the movie’s “really” about. I’m just assailing the ludicrous position that one must see the entirety of a film before one can draw the simple conclusion of whether one lieks it or not. When you get done scratching up that strawman, take a minute to relax.
–to reinforce you bias against a movie you haven’t seen. Got it. Thanks for clarifying.
And another thing: Pointing out specific things of value within a specific movie is a “sweeping baseless generalization”?
Although actually, don’t bother explaining; your bizarro world logic is so clearly either just baiting me or totally irrational that I’m gonna reduce the noise level in my head by moving on. I am, however, looking forward to your list of other movies you’ve never seen and your detailed critiques of exactly where each one went wrong. I see a website in your future; maybe “twothumbsupmyass.com.”
Incidentally, lissener, do you watch every movie you can? No? I thought not. Well, then you must have some basis for deciding which ones you want to see, and which ones you don’t want to see. Do you rely on film critics? IMDB plot summaries? Trailers? One can get a pretty good picture of a film’s subject matter, tone, etc. through these methods. I find them, when used all together, to be almost infallible at giving me a picture in my mind that matches the films. I go to see the ones that I like.
I once participated in a Pit Thread on these boards about Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine. I had formed a picture of that film from clips, trailers, reviews, etc. A thundering, braying herd of posters raised objections, saying that it was impossible to judge without seeing the whole thing, in its entirety, down to the last second. Then I watched it, and I was exactly right in my impression. The only difference was that I’d wasted over an hour of my life, and the herd stopped braying, having nothing else to say.
Our courts judge based on the evidence available to them. They draw legal, binding conclusions based on the testimony of individuals, physical artifacts form the crime, and the like. They rule in most cases without the benefit of a high-def video capturing of the actual crime itself. I can decide from similar evidence whether or not a film is worth seeing… in other words, whether or not I like or dislike it, on a basic level.
Moore wastrying to get Clark, whose name is on the restaurant, to give his opinion on the events surrounding one of the people who work for him. There’s nothing wrong with that in principle, even if the way he went about it was obnoxious.
I am not justifying Syndrome’s actions. I’m saying the writer only made him evil to justify the bashing he gave him, and that the entire movie is one big straw man for him to vent his frustrations on.
I know this is an extremely popular view on this board, but for the record I think it is dead wrong. The movie wasn’t about robots going evil. It was about robots being human. Which emant that some were good, some evil, some made hard choices, and some took the easy route. It was also probably about not being so dependant on one thing that it takes over, but that’s more about society in general and not robots. The action movie bit wasn’t Asimov, of course, but Asimov is a bit dry for theaters.
It’s starts out reasonably enough with the Vice President dying and the President having to choose a new V.P. He decides to chose a woman as his new VP (there is a side-plot regarding another candiddate). She is, naturally enough, opposed by the odious Republican Senator (played by Gary Oldam).
It starts out ok and they even made a brief effort to portray Oldman’s character as being somewhat sympathetic but they soon forget that. It turns out that she may have a sex scandal in her past but she refuses to confirm or deny it because she’s a strong woman of courage etc. etc. All Republicans are mysoginistic assholes etc. etc.
In the end, we have the President
basically invade Congress and demand that they confirm her as their new VP, which they do all while giving him and her a cheering/screaming standing ovation. Oldman’s character slinks away as the vicious little man he really is
Then, to top the unnuanced, partisan crap-fest that was the movie they have the audacity, the increidble arrogance to claim that the movie is:
Even if this is the case, it would still be a betrayal of Asimov. Asimov’s robots were not humans, they were machines, and Asimov’s stories were not philosophical contemplations on the implications of AI, but were mostly just meant be entertainments which played off the Laws of Robotics to create logic puzzles around which he could construct murder mysteries.
Darn it, I expected the film would be, y’know, about the actual events in Munich. I think the movie’s focus trivializes those events.
I should probably note that I object to the way Spielberg politicized the movie. You can argue about Israel’s morality in the context of hunting down the terrorists, but using a fictional book, and purporting to have a truthful movie, to try and “humanize” the butchers who slaughtered Israeli athletes, is low. I am perfectly willing to debate or discuss the morality of . Spielberg’s one-sided hackjob is not a fit argument, however. Comments made by the director imply strongly (*very * strongly) that he read the book, decided on a whim that it must be true because it was written, then made the movie.
That insults the memory of the Israeli team and trivializes their deaths. It insults the people who took justice/vegeance (your choice) for them, whether they were right or wrong. Heck, it even insults the terrorists, and that’s saying something.
I have to disagree. The basic premise is not too far removed from Asimov’s The Evitable Conflict. The movie differs when the problem is neatly solved
by taking out the leader AI, after which everything snaps back to normal.
I don’t see any indication Asimov would be “betrayed” by this movie any more than Ian Fleming was “betrayed” by the later James Bond movies. Heck, he loved Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, so he had no elitism against schlocky sci-fi movies.
Incidentally, the Trek movies that pisses me off most is Insurrection, though they all (except the second) have problems.
The movie that pissed me off - Home Alone. I’m no “what about the children?!!” freak, but that children’s movie was chock full of hardcore violence played for cartoonish laughs. I walked out.
The movie that pissed my aunt off - Chariots of Fire. She went to see it after it won the Best Picture Oscar in 1982. When she came back, she announced, “If that’s the best movie Hollywood made, then I’m never going to the movies again.” AFAIK, she never has. I never saw the film myself, so I don’t know exactly what annoyed her so.
The movie that pissed some random strangers off - Kill Bill. Da Missus and I went to see it in a nearly empty theater - about three other couple. One of those couples walked out about 80% of the way through the film. My wife and I figured that the couple had no problem with the first 97 bloody deaths, but found the 98th bloody death to be deeply offensive.
It was a joke. See someone posted about hating the Mariah Carrey movie *Glitter * and the Britney Spears movie Crossroads. I did the old switcheroo and talked about the Ralph Macchio movie. Get it? OK maybe it wasn’t that good. I do this mostly to amuse myself.
Of the subject I love that stupid movie Crossroads. I’ll watch it anytime it is on TV. Best soundtrack ever. Ry Cooder is briliant. And I am not talking about the Britney Spears movie.
Now I’ll go back to the thread since I fell about three pages behind.
I may be wrong (as I frequently am) but I think that was an actor meant to look like Michael Moore. I only saw it the once but I’m pretty sure. If it was him my opinion of him would go up. It seems to me he lost his sense of humor a long time ago.
