Word: spielbergian
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...first and most important thing to say about Munich, Steven Spielberg's new film, is that it is a very good movie--good in a particularly Spielbergian way. By which one means that it has all the virtues we've come to expect when he is working at his highest levels. It's narratively clean, clear and perfectly punctuated by suspenseful and expertly staged action sequences. It's full of sympathetic (and in this case, anguished) characters, and it is, morally speaking, infinitely more complex than the action films it superficially resembles--pictures that simply pit terrorists against counterterrorists without...
...twists from memory to fantasy to "reality" (whatever that is in a Charlie Kaufman film) and for all the nods to the memory games played out in the brilliant stories of Philip K. Dick, Eternal Sunshine has a plot propulsion that's almost Spielbergian in its simplicity. A gentle creature gets lost and must fight to get back home--home here being his mind and his girlfriend, or what's left of them. The Spielberg movie this one most resembles is Always, in which a dead man tries to reconnect with his surviving wife...
Jumanji's plot (from Chris Van Allsburg's book and a script by Jonathan Hensleigh, Greg Taylor and Jim Strain) is the 486th rewrite of a Spielbergian fantasy: lost child meets the Dead Parents Society. The story doesn't advance; it just piles up, like a multiple-car wreck. And its whimsy is spiked with way too much spite. In this nightmare replay of Toy Story, everything is demolished: a pretty old home, a local mall, an innocent town. It's destruct-o-rama, kids! Fun for the whole dysfunctional family! Because it exploits children's weakness for noise, clutter...
This could turn into a story of Moonie-like brainwashing or, at least, a Spielbergian audition for spiritual star quality. But Bertolucci is remarkably open-minded; he is eager to entertain and then to accept the beliefs and rhythms of another, older culture. The film's loveliest sections are those that concern the life of Siddhartha, the Indian prince who renounced worldly pleasures and religious extremism to find the Middle Way of Buddhist truth. Siddhartha is played with improbable persuasiveness by Keanu Reeves, another of Bertolucci's eccentric choices in Little Buddha that...
Universal Studios Florida announced a $3 billion expansion of its Orlando theme park, 12 miles from Walt Disney World. The new venture will feature a Jurassic Park ride and other Spielbergian creations...