Munich

ExtremeSleuth

ExtremeSleuth

Veteran
I just saw this film. Great film. I liked it better than King Kong. Spielberg did a great job with the film. The acting was really good too. Overall I loved the film. It really showed the angst and drama that people in Israel felt in 1972. It gave a good insight into a Palestinian mindset. Anyone else see it? What did you think of it? One of Spielberg's best IMO.
 
munich

munich

i'm going this week when my girls parents are in town for hanukkah.we're going to see munich or geisha. i remember watching the olympics (my whole family very much into sports) we were so horrorfied that this happened. i don't recall any thing in that olympics it made me very angery. i saw a documentary on the hostages and fouled up rescue, it was really good, it told me a lot that i did not know
 
It doesnt open by me until the 6th of January. I'll def. check it out. I heard it's Spielberg's most violent film. Thats what I'm talking about, no more "family" Spielberg.
 
Filmjunkie677 said:
It doesnt open by me until the 6th of January. I'll def. check it out. I heard it's Spielberg's most violent film. Thats what I'm talking about, no more "family" Spielberg.
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just to be safe a few spoilers ahead.








yeah it is very violent... its as much as if not more violent than Schindler's List. He did a very good job with the film though. Daniel Craig did a great job (almost made me look forward to him as Bond keyword ALMOST). I didn't know much about the 72 olympics and what transpired there before this movie, but this film made me really think about whats going on between the two cultures. It made me really think about everything. Really thought provoking. During the scenes that show what happened to the Olympians I was nearly brought to tears. Some of the Olympians tried to fight back when the Palestinians tried to enter the room. One was shot almost immediatley after they entered the room even though his hands were up and he was in tears. One tried to get out the window but noticed a knife on the ground and picked it up and stabbed a Palestinian in the head and took his gun and tried to shoot some more Palestinians. He was unsuccessful and was shot easily 50 times in the chest and head. The shot was the white wall getting splattered with the Israeli's blood and guts. It was really depressing what happened to them.

Whether it sides with Israel more than Palestine... to me i don't think he sided with either. He told the story of what happened that day and the events afterwards.

Overall I give the movie overall 5 outta 5 stars. Easily the movie is in my top 10 of all time.
 
Hans Moleman said:
Is that even possible?
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yeah its hard to believe but once you see it you'll probably agree. if its not its pretty dang close. but in my opinion its as violent as Schindler's List. It shows a lot more than List did. more guts (nothing like the opening battle of Private Ryan though) but it does sorta show some guts not a lot but you do see some.
 
wow we're seeing this tonite i told mylady and parents this is going to be a hard movie, thanks for the heads up i'll be holding on to her tightly cause i know she's going to be balling her eyes out
 
Wow, this one's dark. Spielberg showed he was getting a bit darker in the first half of War of the Worlds, but I wasn't prepared for this. Anyhow, it's good with a bunch of problems, which is sort of the norm for Spielberg. Maybe it's because he's so amazingly good when he's good, but he just strikes me as incredibly inconsistent. And it's an impressively brave film and very well put together, especially considering it was made in four months. (Although with a few more weeks in editing and a bit more trimming, it might have been a lot more compelling.)

I won't get into the politics, since they'll piss everyone off. Spielberg wasn't looking to make any friends with this movie. But I'm impressed that he was willing to make such a morally ambiguous film--and not just a tirade on how great peace is, either. He condemns everyone and then offers no alternative.

Stylistically it was great. Spielberg was going for a 1970s aesthetic and he pulls it off: zooms all over the place, long takes, a desaturated grainy look that's still clearly Kaminski, an anamorphic frame with odd wide angle shots and some weird almost abstract telephoto work. He's really going for a Coppolla thing, especially with....


SPOILERS







...the ultra-contrived sex scene intercut with the Munich Shootout at the end. What's the message? How was Avner having a flashback to an event he never witnessed? It struck me as false. The image of the World Trade Center at the end was not as cheesy as it could have been, but it was still contrived. Also, Copolla-esque were the shots of Avner getting paranoid and tearing stuff apart. I know someone's been watching The Conversation--but still can't come close to approaching its brilliant surreal haze of paranoia. Still, this feels more like a movie brat movie than Spielberg's 1970s work (which felt ahead of its time.) The French mafia-like family also reminded me a bit of the Godfather both thematically and in terms of how everything was shot.


Spielberg also goes crazy with car windows and putting a gajillion characters in frame by panning through reflective surfaces. I know every director loves mirrors, but it's almost fetishistic at this point. Then again, it's also brilliantly done and I'd be dissapointed if he didn't have his fun with mirrors. He knows how to use the frame (although some compositions felt forced and lacked the polish I expect from Spielberg.)

One of the members of the group who was hunting down the terrorists also struck me as false. His character arc was never completed and he was a bit one-dimensional from the start.

And my final and by far most serious complaint: what's up with the French family? The movie has no real protagonist in the traditional sense because Avner is just too cold to become empathetic. The movie's really more about the world he's living in than it is about him. So the French family functions as a frame to hold together the narrative threads like Marsellus in Pulp Fiction. All the different governments get their information from them, and they tie everything together. Whenever the narrative gets slow, Avner goes to his French informants and it picks up considerable. But...the French guys have no clear motivation, are one-dimensional, and are totally apathetic to everyone. We don't know their motivation, and everything thusly feels arbitrary. Perhaps Spielberg meant to link all the hate that fuels the other characters to this one apathetic family and show that it's all empty, but the issue is that this device almost negates their hatred in the first place. The French guys don't feel mysterious or anything--just goofy and out of place. It's a smart device, and a necessary one, but it doesn't work.

Anyhow, other than the above, the movie is incredibly impressive. It's painfully even-handed but I can't fault that because it's supposed to be and that makes it all the bleaker. You empathize a little bit with everyone but are disgusted by them a lot more. A lot of it is tremendously well filmed and it has a Hollywood Rennaisance aesthetic that's very surprisingly updated to stay current. (And I think this does have to do with the film taking place in the 1970s.)

Anyhow, Spielberg remains my favorite working director. Not just because he's good, but because he's still innovating. (So is Mr. Lucas, but not necessarily in the right way--although unfortunately in the inevitable direction. Still, I'm a big fan of his, too.)

Oh, and this won't win the Oscar. It might not even be nominated. But it was way better than Kong, for sure.
 
hmm.. i just got back, man it was rivoting. the scene with him and his wife (i saw) was him imagining what they(the hostages) went thru and how it was interfering with his and her lives. is this justice, hell yeah, but at what cost? innocent lives and lives of people who want to be free and have their own country like the israelis had to endure for a 1000 years . man how can anybody have every answer to everyones own story? life doesn't work that way. so i like it when he leaves it up to you and you try to figure it out what the future has in store for us, and that's all i have to say about that. now where's my darn chocolates
 
I can't wait to see it. Speilberg is one my favourite directors, i hope he doesn't do a propoganda piece about Israel and how great Israelis are and palestinians are just barbarians etc.. Anyway, this could be a dangerous topic, so i'll just shut up.
 
Don't worry, that's exactly what he doesn't do. He's surprisingly even-handed. Disturbingly so, even.
 
ya he doesnt take sides at all in my opinion. it's visually a great movie and a lot of the acting was great. a big upgrade for bana since the hulk lol. IMO i think it will be nominated for best picture and i'm almost positive for best director and maybe just maybe cinematography (the cinematography was great IMO). best picture though is still up in the air for me but i'm leaning towards it being nominated.
 
Policar said:
Don't worry, that's exactly what he doesn't do. He's surprisingly even-handed. Disturbingly so, even.
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disturbingly even-handed hmm.....i thought well done showing the humanly side of all peoples fighting what they believe in. and YAS funny how every war america dipicts the enemy trying hard to stereotype them as stupid dirty sex fiend crazed lower than animals; let's see birth of a nation dirty stupid sex fiend blacks (niggars), all the cowboy movies crazed indians dirty sex fiend heathen stupid savages,ww1 german (krauts,huns), ww2 JAPS bomb pearl harbor JAPS front page ;slopes,slant eye buck toothed thick glasses and really into torture,nips. korean so called conflict ;gooks chinks. viet nam;dinks chinks gooks wow it just repeats itself. and yes it happens in other countries too, there is no right when everything is wrong
.and thats all i have to say about that
 
Okay, I'm going to have to take a lot of offense from that comment. What I meant by "disturbingly even handed" was that by not allowing the viewer to empathize with one central protagonist (and by not allowing the viewer to hate any one, either), Spielberg subverts the generic norms of the thriller, which is a genre where there is typically a "good guy" and a "bad guy" and in doing so he seriously jolts the viewer. By doing this in a film which is meant to function as a microcosm of the conflict over Isreal (see the scene where the Arabs and Isreali assassins sleep in the same room), Spielberg refuses to let the viewer hate either group and refuses to let the viewer empathize with either group. I'm not saying I find Spielberg's ideology disturbing because I expect the minority group (or the group most typically depicted negatively by the majority) to be portrayed negatively, I'm saying this is disturbing because it disorients the viewer who has been "trained" to look for empathetic protagonists in films.

You listed a bunch of racial slurs and called it an argument against my praise of Spielberg and then offered praise of your own. I don't even know what you're trying to say. If you want to disagree with me, disagree with what I wrote above--because that's what I meant.
 
oh by the way YAS that was a good clip it pisses me off that Chuck would say something that he doesn't believe in. because he is a very nice human being.what he said and him being the "good guy" is uncalled for.he had the power to say he wouldn't say that, so i wonder now, of course i'd have to see the whole movie to see what context it was said hmmmmm.... i guess i'll never know
 
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