Spielberg just can't gratify morons!

Rating: 9/10 (22 June 2002)

People who quibble about plotholes seem to miss the point entirely. But it is sadness knowing that people will never cease to miss the point. Most never attempt to find one. So Spielberg needs to stop bending over backwards for commercial success. The high concept here is too sublime to cheapen with mainstream action sequences, no matter how 'creative' they are. It is also beautiful filmmaking, not gaudy or excessive like George Lucas' recent travesties. Spielberg's future is not superfluous eye-candy but an essential part of the work. He assumes his environment exists, and so it does. No heavy-handed pans or long shots besides those which are relevant. So Spielberg creates atmosphere as well as he always does - in AI, Schindler's List, E.T. All these movies have palpable atmosphere, ripe with both emotion and intellect. And SS disowns the notion of consistent future, opting instead for the likely medium between what is and what will be. Like AI, his setting changes with the plotline - the plotline doesn't work around the setting. No foresaking the practice of allusion with excess - all allusions in this movie are loaded, literary-like, with relevance. Although I don't like the Matrix fanfare(the sound effect - horns and spiders crawling up the stairs?) Thematically this movie is somewhere between a Comedy and a Tragedy. I just hope that Tom Cruise's late line, vaguely remembered as "You know your own future which means you can change it," is meant to be taken with a grain of salt. But the resultant philosophical can of worms is too big to open right now. Regardless, I love this movie. See it. 9.5/10(here, 9/10)