In Contention

Tag: A.I.: Artificial Intelligence

  • ‘A.I.: Artificial Intelligence,’ a decade on

    It was June 29, 2001. I was in film school. I opened the local paper, read my friend, the film critic’s, review of “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence,” Steven Spielberg’s distillation of a project he and legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick had developed together for years.

    I was nervous. I had, for one, hit a post-adolescent anti-Spielberg stretch (which I fully own as childish, but attribute in part to my feelings on the “Saving Private Ryan” vs. “The Thin Red Line” situation of a couple of years prior). Like any cliched film school student, I was a Kubrick obsessive. I wanted this to come off without a hitch.

    The review was positive. Not an all-out rave, but enough to really get my hopes up. I hit the first matinee of the day, bells on, ready. The film washed over me and it didn’t connect. Something felt off. I heard the film, but I didn’t listen to it (to paraphrase, of all things, “White Men Can’t Jump”). So I adopted early on an attitude toward the film that I soon would understand as limited even if it wasn’t ill-considered.

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  • 10 years ago this weekend

    I’m thinking I’ll write something formal up tomorrow, as this film and I have enjoyed quite the journey over the past decade. For now, I’ll let the beautiful work of Janusz Kaminski tell the tale.

  • The best films of a decade

    Tom Cruise in Minority ReportThis column has been the elephant in my living room for months.

    Putting together a list of the year’s best films is easy. It’s fresh. It’s in your mind. It’s, in many ways, the expected culmination.

    Putting together a list of the decade’s best films is a different chore altogether. Yearly rankings fly out the window as a proper gauge, because tastes shift and impacts either dwindle or deepen. Revisiting films is called for, but fitting in the works you missed along the way is also imperative. It can be maddening.

    And the truth is, you can’t see everything. All you can do is try to be as honest about how you feel as you can. And even then, no list can be definitive on a personal level, let alone authoritative.

    And so the whittling begins, and in many ways, the process is the reward. The ultimate collective is a mere reminder of the journey through 10 years of film product. But some things stuck out along the way.

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  • The new millennium Oscars?

    Viggo Mortensen in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the KingLooking back over the previous Oscar winners for Best Picture since 2000, the start of a new century (and a new millennium), I find myself wondering sometimes what the hell the Academy was thinking.  It’s no secret I disagree with the Academy a lot, but I can also admit that when they get it right, they get it right.

    But since 2000, their Best Pic choices have run the gamut from incredibly ridiculous, “Gladiator” and “A Beautiful Mind” being just goofy, to bang on, with “The Departed” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.”  I am told the Academy is moving in a more progressive direction, willing to take more risks, and I suppose some of these winners do just that.  But they could have gone further.

    Year by year, here’s a quick look, with some thoughts about who might have won, and who should have at least been nominated…

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  • Spielberg and blockbusters

    Can he do it? After becoming (in his own eyes) a serious filmmaker with “Schindler’s List,” “Amistad,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “A.I.” and “Munich,” is Steven Spielberg able to re-create the magic he almost always brought to his pure entertainment blockbusters?

    It takes a look at his journey as an artist to even attempt a reasoned understanding of such a question.

    On one hand, I argue that he was always a brilliant director, “Jaws,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and “E.T.” all great examples of his artistry, yet he himself was never satisfied by the reaction to those films by the Academy. It is well documented that Spielberg coveted acceptance in the film community, seeing the Oscar for Best Director as the ultimate acceptance from Hollywood. Snubbed for “Jaws” in 1975, he behaved like a petulant child as live cameras caught it all on film, invited in to see his reaction when he was nominated…but — he wasn’t.

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