Sometimes I get wrapped up in movies and books to the point where the world could blow up around me and I wouldn’t notice…and then that one scene comes along and the movie turns into just another movie.
A few months ago a saw Dr. Zhivago for the first time in years. Yuri returns to his country house in the dead of winter, and much is made of how cold it is, how the snow has drifted even inside the house…how frost has drifted over all the furniture in the entryway and icicles hang from the staircase. Yuri runs up the stairs to the study and scrapes some frost off the window so he can look outside.
He then sits down at the desk, opens a drawer, pulls out a bottle of ink…and starts writing!
WTF? Ya mean ink is the ONLY thing in that whole house that didn’t freeze after months of below-freezing temperatures? Was this magical ink? Maybe it was made with alcohol instead of water? Maybe someone stuck a block heater in the desk drawer to keep it fluid? Hell, I once made the mistake of leaving a fountain pen in my car while I was at work for eight hours and the cartridge exploded! Who wrote that scene, anyhow?
I love it. We get a post about Dr. Zhivago, and then two about how Star Wars 2 sucked.
I agree though, that was a wierd bit. But the frozen house was pretty cool. A similar thing happened to me when I was watching Saving Private Ryan: I was totally into it but then at the end when the very same guy who they let go comes back and shoots the guy in the group. The German guy? It just totally blew it for me. All of a sudden I was “out” of the movie thinking “Yeah, right. That soldier is now in the town to deliver a little hot leaded death?” It was just too much of a coincidence for me.
It’s not the same chap in Saving Private Ryan. Various FAQs on the film claim it and allege Spielberg confirmed it in an interview (which I can’t find).
why do people keep having to dwell on the bad aspects of otherwise good movies?
the love scene between anakin and padme? first of all, love, be it on earth or tatooine or whatever, IS CORNY! REAL LIFE LOVE IS CORNY!!! that’s just what love is! appreciate the fact they aren’t dumbing down probably the most important romance of the star wars saga. without that love scene/marriage and consequent “pumping out” of luke and leia, we’d have no episode 4, 5 or 6! it was an important romance, albeit a corny one. leave it at that! because in reality, love is cheesy, love is otherwise bad poetry and love is CORNY!
and ironic, like life. out of such sweet, cheesy, young love and lust, comes rebellion, betrayal, power, yada yada…anakin and padme are young! don’t expect anything moving and profound to come from two people who have never experienced love before. i’m guessing that most people who diss the star wars love scene were themselves no shakespeare, cassanova or don juan during their pre-pubescent first love years…
instead of commenting on the terrible-ness of star wars episode 2, let’s talk about how friggin cool yoda’s fight scene is. that, was sweeter than anything i’ve ever scene on the big screen.
Nope. Yoda’s fight scene just looked desperate to me – a cheap laugh for the audience that just didn’t convince me. Fair enough, it’s not supposed to be a documentary, and I wouldn’t have brought it up otherwise, but I thought it was awful.
Anyway, with regard to the OP, I found the tacked-on bookends to Saving Private Ryan to be unnecessary and patronising (almost as if the audience couldn’t be expected to ‘get’ the point of the film without spelling it out). It destroyed the atmosphere that the historical parts of the film had built.
For me, it would be The Crimson Rivers. I started a thread about this a few weeks ago but no one replied.
The movie started out great. It reminded me of Se7en and The Silence of the Lambs. The opening credits were superb. I even got over the fact that they dubbed the voices in English ('twas a French film).
Then came this video game-esque fight scene between one of the cops and several skinheads. It was très bad. It just about ruined the rest of the movie for me.
One that popped into my head when I read the thread title was also from Saving Private Ryan but what jolted me out of the film was the Ted Danson cameo.
Actually most cameos jolt me out of the film. Including Hitch’s. I stop and think ‘oh there he is’ and then get back to the film.
Back to Saving Private Ryan, while they’re waiting for the Germans to arrive in town, Ryan tells Captain Miller about his memory of his brothers, him, and the girl in their barn. Apparently he thinks this is funny and nostalgic. I didn’t find it one bit funny; it just made me think that he and his bros were jerks.
Along Came A Spider, at the start (or near start) when Alex Cross’ partner gets into the car accident and the car falls over a dam. It just looked more fake than, well something really fake. It also kinda took away from the otherwise good movie.
Hey, I routinely go 24 hours without eating, sometimes more if I’m busy or stressed like the people on the show. And if you’re not eating, not crapping is no problem.
Gosh, I agree that that scene was overdone (in the book, it’s less dramatic; Sam flounders more than drowns), but it’s a necessary point. Frodo had decided to make the rest of the trip alone. Sam was determined to come with his “master”, and was such a loyal friend that he was willing to try to swim to the boat (though he knew he wouldn’t swim). I don’t think this was a trick to get Frodo to rescue him – I think Sam decided “I’ll go with him, or die trying”.
Frodo probably could have saved him and set him offshore downstream, but I think he had respect for Sam’s gumption (and probably figured Sammy would just try to swim after him again).
p.s. Is “flounders” a word?
In XXX (not really a spoiler, as it was seen in the previews) XXX outskis an avalanche. A couple times, we see snow on the camera lens as the avalanche just misses us (and Vin Diesel). But the whole scene is obviously CGI. Meaning that they made an illusion look like another illusion, to the point of sacrificing POV.
Show Boat - not the world’s best film, but I enjoyed it…
…up to the point where Howard Keel’s character (can’t recall the character’s name), returns to the boat, sits his daughter on his lap and sings to her.
This is a child who has not seen her father since she was an infant, and here, effectively, is a total stranger picking her up and setting her on his lap with no protestations from the kid.
Whenever I watch the film, I have to think in the context of “well, fifty years ago, that would have been “okay” to pick up the kid, after all, the audience knows he is her father and it’s important to the storyline”. Were the film made today, the kid would have been taught (hopefully) to scream bloody murder and run away from him.
Gives me a little reality check and a shudder. The Musketeer was a pretty good film.
For about 15 minutes.
Until, beginning with the tavern brawl scene (which I usually love to watch), it turned into Crouching 'Teer, Hidden Dumas.
And portraying Cardinal Richelieu as a wuss. Sheesh, let’s make Albert Einstein look like Ernest, while we’re at it…
It was the second most manipulative and condescending moment in the movie. (The first was Frodo getting stabbed by the Cave Troll’s spear and then lying still and apparently holding his breath until the battle was over and his friends approach his ‘dead’ body… BULLSHIT!)
Seeing Sam float lifelessly beneath the water, eyes open…was shit quite frankly.
Now I love the movie but those two “Spielberg” moments just piss me off.
I was very fascinated with Lord of the Rings until the fight-ish scene with Saruman and Gandalf. When Gandalf was spinning around on his shoulder/head and his hair was stiff, it looked so goofy to me, it reminded me I was at a movie. Bummer!
