Word: spielbergisms
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...been a strange year for American movies. The most popular films of 1987 have a dark hue: violent policiers (Beverly Hills Cop II, The Untouchables, Lethal Weapon, Stakeout), corrosive Viet Nam memorials (Platoon and Full Metal Jacket), thrillers about sexual anxiety (Fatal Attraction). Steven Spielberg has flown to the dark side of E.T.: in Empire of the Sun a boy goes to war, and nearly goes mad. Even the comedies are cynical. The Secret of My Success got Michael J. Fox into bed with his uncle's wife to help advance his career. The Witches of Eastwick sent Satan...
...Spielberg decided to take the manly course of growing up onscreen. Adapting J.G. Ballard's fictionalized memoir of his days spent scavenging for survival in a Japanese concentration camp, Spielberg and Playwright Tom Stoppard (Travesties, The Real Thing) do a reprise of the director's favorite narrative recipe. A child is separated from his parents, confronts adversity and is reunited with them. But here the child is not abducted by poltergeists < or locked in a De Lorean time warp. Young Jim (Christian Bale) loses his way because, in the tumbledown panic of escape from Shanghai, he reaches for his precious...
...even in this Spielberg war, wisdom brings bitter lessons. It teaches Jim that he may -- must -- filch food from the dying and take shoes from the dead. When P-51s zoom above him, the plane-crazy boy crash-dives into delirium; his dreams have singed him by flying too close, poisoned him with their oil and cordite. Alone with an ailing woman (Miranda Richardson), who stokes his first erotic fantasies, Jim looks up and sees the atomic blast over Hiroshima as a blazing crystal vision. Even at the end, when a plane drops bundles of Spam and Luckies like...
...longer than its running time, and this one eventually begins wandering, like Jim, in search of an elusive climax of reconciliation. But this is caviling in the face of two splendid young artists: Bale, 13, who carries the character of Jim through four years of hell and puberty, and Spielberg, who again proves that he is our top picturemaker. He has energized each frame with allusive legerdemain and an intelligent density of images and emotions. He has met the demands of the epic form with a mature spirit and wizardly technique. Spielberg has dreamed of flying before, and this time...
...Empire of the Sun, Steven Spielberg grows up onscreen. -- Walker is a mock epic that lies grandly and giddily about Nicaragua...