comment #1

Aguirre says ...

to stick to 07 films, i'd watch A.I. a dozen times before i suffered through AMERICAN GANGSTER or INTO THE WILD again, and maybe 2 dozen before i even considered subjecting myself to another round of ACROSS THE UNIVERSE.

comment #2

Dan Revill says ...

Must resist commenting. Must. Resist. Oh fuck it.

You're on crack. A.I. rules, and you know it.

comment #3

cinefan says ...

I think Wells would like to banish every film Spielberg directed - well, except, of course, for The Last Crusade. Of course, if you're talking about underwhelming Spielberg films, you could do worse than picking that one.

comment #4

Sax says ...

A.I. is a masterpiece, the most unsentimental film Spielberg ever made, which somehow absorbs and contains the genius of Stanley Kubrick (He knew he could never make this film) and uses it as one more tool, one more color in the palette. It breaks every rule of Syd Field dead-end film-story-telling and succeeds in ways I'm still trying to understand. Gigolo Joe seemed to recapitulate the whole history of movies from Al Jolson to Gene Kelly, to the Tin Woodsman. See it again. In the immortal words of Pauline Kael, it makes most of the movies released this year look like "something you'd hold out on a tooth pick"

comment #5

DarthCorleone says ...

Amusing thread, given that just the other day I remarked on the unusually high number of A.I. fans among the HE commenters.

comment #6

corey3rd says ...

it's about a killing machine that took the guise of a cute little boy. I have little desire to watch this film again.

Always...that's a Spielberg that can vanish.

Benchwarmers, Grandma's Boy, Eight Crazy Nights and especially Across the Universe

comment #7

Geoff says ...

KUBRICK and Gigolo Joe would have made all the difference. Flawed film.

comment #8

Noah says ...

If you really wanted them banished, you simply wouldn't talk about them.

comment #9

lawnorder says ...

A.I. is a flawed, yet brilliant film. It never fails to unsettle me and I consider it one of Spielberg's best. I also think it contains John William's best score. An extremely underrated film.

comment #10

arch451 says ...

I wish I could forget Shoot 'Em Up...and I'm almost there: it's a very forgettable movie.

comment #11

tophertilson says ...

There are sequences in A.I that are as good as anything done in the last twenty-five years. I still have mixed feelings about it as a whole, but I've never started watching the movie without finishing it. And as ADD-riddled as my brain is, that's pretty high praise.

comment #12

Mumbleboy says ...

Loved the film when it came out and now that this thread has started I am going to be sure to put it next on my list of DVD's to watch. It wasn't perfect. Personally, the Robin Williams and Chris Rock cameos were the weakest points.

Haley Joel's performance is amazing. That scene where he's being taken into the woods and abandoned hits me hard every time. Just watch his performance as he comes to the realization that he's being left behind by the being he was programmed to love so completely.

Thanks for getting me to think about this film again and lighting the desire to rewatch it. After that, maybe I'll go rent Green Mile and watch it for the first time.

comment #13

Craptastic says ...

Guys,

This is obviously bait. Don't bite.

Wells knows from all of the Spielberg postings that a lot of us hold A.I. in high-regard.

I've never seen someone so dislike his/her readers before.

comment #14

JohnCope says ...

Jeff, if you genuinely cared to reconsider your de facto stance on this film (which I know you don't) I could point you to several fine pieces written by several first rate critics on why AI is a truly great film. In the meantime, all I can tell you is to not be surprised when AI turns up on many, many ten best of the 00's lists in a couple years--I'm talking Film Comment, Cahiers, Sight and Sound, etc.

comment #15

erniesouchak says ...

I think about half of "AI" is interesting, and although I have no desire to see it again, I don't think it deserves complete banishment. The oeuvre of writer/director Ed Burns, on the other hand, is another story....

comment #16

NDH says ...

I thought A.I was absolutely sensational. The ending in particular was brilliant, even though most people seem to have a problem with it. When someone tells me "A.I. was kinda cool, but I didn't like it when the aliens showed up at the end," I want to sock them in the face. This reaction might sound harsh, but it's due to a cumulative effect of being confronted with human stupidity over the years.

comment #17

christian says ...

The scene with Osmet being abandoned is one of the most emotionally brutal things Spielberg's ever done. It's painful to watch. And Osmet deserved a nomination. I said it.

And of course, that fucking teddy bear!

But Jeff could watch MIAMI VICE how many more times?

comment #18

Craig Kennedy says ...

What, Hillary didn't sneeze today? Heath Ledger is still dead? No Britney news? No problem, there's always Spielberg!

When I consider things I'm "never going to see or think about ever again," H-E increasingly comes to mind.

comment #19

dgunz says ...

Love A.I. So...there!

comment #20

StoneFan1 says ...

Hey, Jeff!!!!!!!!

You clealy DON'T get "A.I."

Please read the review by Andrew Sarris if
you want to get it!

Best Picture of 2001
Best Actor of 2001
Best Director of 2001
Best Score of 2001

comment #21

Leonardcoenbrothers says ...

Posts like this used to make me crazy... not that Jeff can't dislike whatever he wants, but that he seems to think that his viewpoint is the only valid one....and then I got into the world of blogging and became acquainted with a term called Link Baiting. It explains everything. It isn't easy getting traffic to a blog, so you've gotta do what you've gotta do.

comment #22

source188 says ...

A.I. is the greatest film Stanley Kubrick could never make. Watching the film the first time, the final 10 minutes or so set me into a strange mood of bittersweet longing and It still gets me every time watching the kid spend one and only one sunny day with his mom.

comment #23

Doug Pratt says ...

I'm afraid what you have to do is break A.I. into three parts. The first act, which ends with the rear-view mirror shot, is an outstanding, brilliant, moving short film about the meaning of life, and should never be discarded. Your life is enriched with every viewing. The middle act, with Jude Law and stuff, is tolerably entertaining and interesting, like any decently made big budget sci-fi action film, and is worth watching if you happen to catch it while channel surfing. The final act is bad science-fiction (the ice pack melts, the oceans rise, and then the oceans freeze without receding?) and terrible, tedious, embarassingly bad filmmaking that would spoil the entire movie if the first act wasn't so brilliant. Let us envision Steven Spielberg someday entering the gates of movie director heaven, and Stanley Kubrick charging at him immediately, with an axe.

comment #24

Craig Kennedy says ...

If Wells wants to be the AM talk radio host of entertainment bloggers, all the power to him, but he's said himself he fancies his readership is made up of industry movers and shakers and early-adopter types.

I guess even the Wellsian Ubers need junk food too.

comment #25

p.Vice says ...

I guess in 2008 we get the "any excuse to trash a movie" story instead of the "ad revenues aren't coming in fast enough" boo-hoo paypal groveling.

Here's a suggestion Jeff... take the IMDB top 250 films and write individual articles that trash each film on the list. That'll keep bread on the table for months!!

comment #26

Monument says ...

I'm pretty ambivalent about that movie, I don't hate it, but I wouldn't ever go out of my way to see it either. I also never really understood the appeal of that precocious little dwarf that Spielberg was so enamored with.

comment #27

Aguirre says ...

LEONARDCOENBROTHES - link baiting is part of it, but mr. wells genuinely seems to be an eccentric (okay, the man's a nut job), unfunny asshole... and that's precisely why i visit this site so often. his posts are so infrequently enlightening - only when taking a pulse or providing advance word on a film - that one can only hope that a trip to hollywood-elsewhere (which never really comprehends the "elsewhere" bit) elicits the same sort of nauseating glee as reading about the exploits of britney spears. but at the end of the day, jeff has an aggressive love of both movies and the industry that spawns them, and that makes his little blog invaluable. that being said... these flagrantly nauseating spielberg posts are making me less and less inclined to come here... and i am really starting to dread the TIN TIN project where spielberg and peter jackson join forces and lure the wells vitriol like nothing before.

as far as A.I. is concerned, jeff tries his damned to be a man's man when it comes to these things (he prefers his movies to communicate via testosterone and gravitas rather than emotion), and the slightest whiff of sentimentality sends him barking for his keyboard. it's just so... predictable and stubborn... and sad as well that he'll never realize that A.I. is a far superior, and more importantly INDELIBLE work than a complete mess like MIAMI VICE. okay... well, i'm glad i've vented my wells frustration that's accumulated during this awards season... i can now resume allowing the brunt of this site's hostility being shared by jeffmcm and D.Z.

comment #28

renorambler says ...

I'll repeat what I've said many times...if SS had just left Osment down under the water I'd be talking about this film as one of the best, if not the best, Spielberg film he has ever made. Alas, the same problems exist with Minority Report. Leave Cruise in Lock Up and it would have been a Masterpiece. The nice thing is I can watch both films and turn them off at that point as if the endings don't really exist.

comment #29

dave l says ...

A.I is a masterpiece. I watch it once a year. Wells is wrong.

comment #30

EOTW says ...

You guys ever notice that Jude Law never blinks once in AI? I love that seen where he's telling HJO how they made us better than they'll ever be and his eyes shift down a second but never blink. And the ret of his work is great in it too.

Ditto to the guy talking about how SS flubbed the ending on this and MR. when I saw both in the theater, I PRAYED those were the endings, but alas, they weren't. SS's sentimental endings are a problem, but MUNICH has a PERFECT ending!

comment #31

mutinyco says ...

The death of humanity is a pretty perfect ending to me...

comment #32

Zoidberg says ...

I saw A.I. four times when it was in theaters....
Makes me cry my damn eyes out.

comment #33

JohnCope says ...

I can't believe that people still complain about the ending. Or the ending of Minority Report for that matter. I guess the problem for those who can't accept them is that they can't possibly be profound if they aren't overtly dark and despairing. As someone else pointed out, the end of AI as it stands is far more "despairing" and far more genuinely complex by mixing the tragic with sentiment than it ever would have been had we been given the eye roll inducing Requiem for a Robot style Leave-Haley-Under-The-Ocean ending people seem to want. This would have simply declared that "All hope is bullshit, man". So juvenile.

The optimism at the end of WOTW, say, is daring precisely because Spielberg doesn't expect you to forget the mega Holocaust he's depicted up until that point. He's simply asserting that the reconstruction of the family unit is a valuable building block to reassemble civilization and that it is an essential one given our specifically human disposition. Or do we all think Spielberg is alternatively so cynical as to disregard the horrors he has shown us? The profundity and daring exists in accepting our human dependency while acknowledging its ultimate frailty. AI is no different. It's just that there he positions this idea as a more obviously cosmic constant within a more obviously cosmic context.

comment #34

renorambler says ...

It's not that "all hope is bullshit." It's that SS feels the need to leave the audience with a tidy (or tidier in the case of A.I.) and SENTIMENTAL ending. He usually crosses this line in his films and I say that as a fan. Even a couple of moments in Schindler towards the end felt false.

And don't even get me started on E.T. I felt so manipulated and bruised after seeing it as a kid that I have never watched it again. I cringe at the thought of seeing it for a second time even to this day.

comment #35

JohnCope says ...

"It's not that "all hope is bullshit." It's that SS feels the need to leave the audience with a tidy (or tidier in the case of A.I.) and SENTIMENTAL ending. He usually crosses this line in his films and I say that as a fan. Even a couple of moments in Schindler towards the end felt false."

I've never understood the contemporary hatred for the SENTIMENTAL. I can only assume it's being equated wholesale with the equally broadly defined idea of being MANIPULATED (blatantly?). SS's unashamed indulgence in manipulating our feelings is what is seen as false I guess (because it's contrived?) and the intended results of this blatant manipulation (forced empathy) is resented. Is that about right? So unapologetic melodrama really is "out" these days?

Once again, I suspect something larger is at work and what it really boils down to is the fact that people are not willing to be vulnerable to their own sympathies when the filmmaker is so directly invoking them. I don't have any problem with that as long as the filmmaker's "sentiments" feel like honest observations or sincere pleas to recognizably human capacities we are all capable of sharing. Obviously this is a subjective call. Your mileage may vary.

comment #36

DarthCorleone says ...

I have conflicted feelings about the endings of AI and Minority Report both, but I do not think the two are analogous.

Minority Report's ending does feel happy and tacked-on, but if you picture the last act as a hallucination of Anderton (a la Gilliam's Brazil), it puts a nice ambiguous twist on the film. There is plenty of evidence in the film to support this interpretation, even if it's not explicit.

As for AI, on my first viewing, Haley's fall from the building seemed like a beautiful and natural ending, and I was compelled to ruminate over all that came after long after I saw the film. Ultimately I agree with JohnCope above that it is a complex and satisfyingly dark ending.

comment #37

lazarus says ...

John, it isn't just the idea of A.I.'s coda that bothers me. It's the way in which its handled. The Ben Kingley-voiced robot sitting down on the bed like Kenobi in Jedi and blurting out this exposition...it's just amateuristic.

Kubrick may not have ended it underwater either, but he certainly would have done a better job with whatever came after.

comment #38

JapAdapters says ...

Jesus fucking H. Christ, what a bunch of sniveling whiners.

People, there are plenty of people who don't like Spielberg, because he has a propensity for ruining his movies with pandering bullshit. You weren't aware of this? You've never heard it said that he's too sentimental/concerned with B.O./lacks courage, etc.? Really? These aren't legitimate criticisms? REALLY?

Saying AI was part of a great movie is exactly the point: Spielberg can't help himself, he HAS to tack happy endings onto his shit and it has -- for many people -- spoiled his genius. Obviously he has plenty of people who like his shit but you can't really think there aren't people who don't share your opinions. Get over yourselves, get of Spielberg's dick, or both.

And, for fuck's sake, the Welles bashing gets ridiculously old. Criticism is fine but what kind of asshole calls a person 'a piece of shit', 'a horrible human being', 'pathetic', etc. ... and keeps reading his shit??? You don't like him, then go the fuck away, shut the fuck up, or (at the very least) complain half as much. Please.

Pssst, some people don't like John Wayne either.

comment #39

DavidF says ...

What's funny is that Wells is so obviously baiting people now.

Everytime he mentions Spielberg he ends up with a dozen HE readers (like myself) talking about how underrated AI is downthread.

So, without the Indy trailer in his hands yet, with no fresh Festus jokes to unveil, he posts a pointless diss of AI. Whatever.

comment #40

Ponderer says ...

"Saying AI was part of a great movie is exactly the point: Spielberg can't help himself, he HAS to tack happy endings onto his shit..."

If that's the point, it's horrendously flawed. The last third was Kubrick, Kubrick, Kubrick. Spielberg's major creative contribution was the second act. The first act was almost exactly what wound up on screen, and third act follows Kubrick's basic beats to a tee (except that Kubrick's version had the mother a bit more of a lush). Every bit of it is in Kubrick's plot - the forwarding to the future, the resurrection of the mom, the last happy day, everything.

The second act is where Kubrick's plot had gigantic holes.

The third act is KUBRICK. All this is well documented, and hell, appeared in print before Spielberg had even decided to the film. Spielberg followed Kubrick's intent. If you want to fault SS for that, fine, but Spielberg's goal was try to complete what Kubrick had left behind, and frankly, I admire him for the giant balls.

comment #41

DavidF says ...

And, all due respect to those who think AI and Minority Report would be great if not for he endings...you didn't get the point of either.

Suggesting that AI has happy or sentimental ending is riddiculous to me. Certainly it is emotional but the mom is gone and either David is dead or bound to be in a perpetually lonely state. Teddy's no better off.

The argument that the end of Minority Report is a hallucination is interseting but doesn't really work to the extent the film is a noir mystery...that said, as I've said before on the boards, Spielberg could have made that ending better by not removing the end title which said something along the lines of "The following year there were 200 murders in Washington, DC," as we watch the happy pre-cogs get on with their lives.

Still, that is implicity if you use your brain and so it's not a HAPPY ending in my book.

comment #42

Dan Revill says ...

DavidF, I always wondered why Spielberg removed that title card. I was 99% positive it was on the movie I saw in the theater, and then when I bought the DVD, nada. I was somewhat disappointed by that edit. Oh well.

Inspired by all this bullshit, I rewatched A.I. tonight. It's still moving. I actually quite like the second act - the Rouge City sequence is particularly awesome to watch - in a way it reminds me of a more neon saturated LA from Blade Runner. Also, didn't realize Adrian Grenier was in it for a moment or two. Kinda funny really.

comment #43

DarthCorleone says ...

DavidF>> O.k., but why does it have to be a noir mystery? The reveals and machinations of the third act are so over-the-top and cliche for that genre that I'm left feeling that a mostly great film becomes a little pedestrian.

I know about the debate over the title card. For my interpretation to work, the title card can't be there, so I'm happy with the change and the resulting ambiguity.

Regardless, as someone says above, it's implicit that discontinuing the Precog program is going to result in murders. Minority Report deals in plenty of greys throughout such that I'm not sure the title card is necessary.

comment #44

KeithNYC says ...

I think its pretty obvious what Jeff is doing. Some of the effusive praise for AI by HE readers in the last few weeks has fueled Jeff's insecurity that he just doesn't "get" the film. Consequently, we get his lame post trying to disparage AI under the guise of an article about "cyborg art".

I am still not sure how anybody can describe the ending as sentimental or happy. That final scene of each light going out in the house knowing that it is truly the end for David is one of the most haunting endings I have ever seen. The Chris Rock and Robin Williams stuff was annoying but the rest of the film is perfect.

comment #45

Rosebudsthesled says ...

I don't think A.I. will be on anyone's ten best lists (except the risible Armond White's). I don't hate it the way a lot of people do, I just find Osment's performance cloying and the ending unsatisfying. Jude Law and Teddy make the rest of it watchable, but not memorable or any good.

It's always nice to have a fourth Indiana Jones movie, but Spielberg needs to concern himself less with trying to recapture his past blockbusters and make a small, intimate thriller in the style of THE LIVES OF OTHERS. His last truly great film is also his most underrated, CATCH ME IF YOU CAN. MUNICH is his flawed masterwork, with a brilliant first 2/3rds and a terribly damaging ending. But he's still Spielberg.

Critics like Wells have always been out to get Spielberg from day one because of his success. Let's face it: he knows how to make brilliantly entertaining movies. And isn't that what movies were meant to do in the first place?

comment #46

rocco says ...

Fuck, if 30 years from now all I do is talk about being in touch with the cosmos but find staisfaction in such petty acts as baiting faceless strangers, god help me....

comment #47

The Winchester says ...

"A.I. is the greatest film Stanley Kubrick could never make."

I felt that about There Will Be Blood.

I find it hilarious that everyone here is talking about Wells baiting everybody for their AI love, when really I think he was hoping for people listing what movies they could have erased from thier minds. And I wish I could erase the Underworld movies from my head.

And for the record, I thought AI was just alright, and even though I own it thanks to Columbia House, I don't believe I've watched it once. Although, any scene with Jude Law is pretty damn solid.

comment #48

Sax says ...

I have to post again on this. The ending of AI is sentimental? Are you guys high? The robot kid gets to 'become human' and fully understand what it means to feel love ... he gets one day of it--followed by an eternity of grieving and loss. Was he better off as a robot? Maybe. But his plight at end of AI serves as a perfect metaphor to anyone who has lost a loved one. Spielberg's mercilessness here (and I assume Kubruick's as well) speaks a resonant truth about the world. And it isn't a sentimental one.

comment #49

mutinyco says ...

Okay. There is no debate. You guys didn't get it.

This is what happens at the end of A.I.

Ready? Ready? One last time.

David is found and thawed by super machines in the far future. They "plug into him" and play back his experiences. He is a treasure to them -- he actually existed during the time of humans, their ultimate ancestors. He is the last remaining link to humanity. But he has been programmed to forever be a child in love with his mother, desperately obsessed with one day becoming a real boy -- and he will never understand anything different. The final sequence takes place inside David's "mind" as he is programmed to virtually experience a day with his mother as a real boy. And at the end of this virtual day, David is put to sleep. He is terminated. He is dead. Like all humans, he dies at the end. And with his demise, so goes the last remaining link to humanity...

comment #50

corey3rd says ...

Pootie Tang was the better film that came out that weekend.

comment #51

le corbeau says ...

Let's debate the ending of The Sopranos some more, too...

However one thinks of the meaning of the ending (and I think Mutinyco is basically right, minus sneering at everyone else), the only real point of A.I. is what it says about us as children and parents.

The first act is about how we treat our children as yuppie lifestyle accessories, and often find their absolute neediness inconvenient when our narcissism has other priorities.

The second act is about pop culture, and our resentment that the TV doesn't do a better job of raising our children for us; our unwillingness to recognize that our trashed-up culture might be bad for our kids and it's irresponsible of us to let them loose watching and experiencing adult things.

The third act is about Alzheimer's and death.

That sentimentalist Spielberg!

comment #52

Monument says ...

Hey Captain Mutiny, I get it, I think most of us get it, I just didn't like it...at all. And those of you calling AI a masterpiece are definitely smoking something.

comment #53

mutinyco says ...

Sneer. Sneer.

comment #54

Stephe96 says ...

The first time Haley Joel Osment said, "I wanna be a real boy" in "A.I.", I thought, "Uh oh. Spielberg's really underlining that Pinocchio subtext. The 20th time he said "real boy" I was laughing at the screen. And I hope Osment was paid a bundle each time he said "Blue Fairy." Ugh. I wanted to bang my head against the wall.

And that "Flesh Fair" sequence? What the hell was that all about? That just may have been the most poorly directed sequence of Speilberg's career.

"A.I." was a terrible movie.

comment #55

MAGGA says ...

Yes I have been smoking something, but I think it has mostly worn off now, and I will still call A.I a masterpiece for the rest of my life. Munich and Minority Report and Schindlers, E.T, Raiders, Close Encounters, Jaws and Empire Of The Sun as well. Spielberg is the greatest living director, and once he gets his done with Indiana Jones and The Lose-lose Prospect Of Revisiting Past Glories he will probably blow my mind with Interstellar, Lincoln, maybe he can even get me interested in a movie about nrcissistic hippies.

comment #56

Mark B says ...

There have GOT to me more movies worthy of the kind of hatred that Jeffrey has exhibited towards this one of the years. Yes, A.I. is flawed in some fairly significant ways, but still.....geez.

comment #57

Rosebudsthesled says ...

There are only three films in my lifetime which I can honestly say I hate (KILLER OF SHEEP, based on comments I made a few months ago, is not one of them). I have seen flat out, terrible disasters like MR. MAGORIUM'S WONDER EMPORIUM and VAN HELSING which were wastes of my time; and MST3K movies like THE BEAST FROM YUCCA FLATS and SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS--and those two genres are bad, mind you, but not hateful.

The only three films which have ever pushed me to the breaking point of hatred are I AM SAM, SPANGLISH and LADY IN THE WATER. I AM SAM was relentlessly sentimental and contrived, and what's more, Penn's performance was probably the worst overacting of the decade. SPANGLISH I didn't hate so much because of its acting (although it was bad) as much as it was its screenplay, which felt, to me, very misogynistic. I found the characters infuriating and their motivations to be completely out of touch with reality, especially Paz Vega's. LADY IN THE WATER would have just been a boring mediocrity had it not been for Shyamalan's egotism. The fact that he had to cast himself as the writer, and then create a whole subplot where he kept asking Bryce Dallas Howard about whether he'd be remembered seemed to make the film largely about him and his legacy. Adding Bob Balaban as a film critic didn't help matters either.

Will there ever be a fourth film that drives me this crazy? I'm sure there will be.

comment #58

StoneFan1 says ...

"The third act is KUBRICK"

Thank you for pointing out that FACT!

The third act everybody hates had nothing
to do with Spielberg and EVERYTHING to do
with Kubrick!

THE END!

comment #59

quizkid82 says ...

Anyone who thought the end of "A.I." was a happy one clearly wasn't paying attention.